Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deadstop" data-source="post: 4218349" data-attributes="member: 61557">Arguments about the unbelievability of the minion rules seem to rest on the notion that various particular individuals in the game world "are minions," and noticeably so.But that's not what minion status is for. An individual character (PC or NPC) considered as an individual is never a minion.Minions come in hordes of nearly-identical critters. That's why they have the bookkeeping-friendly hp.So, within the orc tribe, you don't have Grik who was born a normal monster and his cousin Grak who was, tragically, born a minion and has only survived to this day by being as obsessive as Thomas Covenant.If Grik and Grak are going to be encountered as a pair of orcs who put up a good fight, maybe even surviving to return another day, then the DM uses the stats of normal monsters or maybe even elites.If the "same" two orcs who are notionally named Grik and Grak are just parts of an orc horde whose stories the PCs will never know, then the DM uses minion stats for them and the rest of the horde.But most likely, the DM didn't pick out two orcs and give them names in order to use them as indistinguishable parts of a horde of minions, so you will never get the situation in which Grik and Grak suddenly "become" minions. Unless maybe the higher-level PCs, after the battle against the horde, happen to recognize two of the corpses as the same two orcs who gave them such a hard fight at lower level.(What about when the orc horde fights the town militia, both groups of which would be treated as minions were they to fight the PCs? Then the DM describes the fight however he likes, presumably not playing it out blow-by-blow. There's no need for him to acknowledge the "reality" that all of these combatants die from a mild shove -- because that's not the statement the minion rules are making about the world.)Likewise, Grargh the Ogre might be treated as a solo monster when he first comes up against the party, but later (assuming he survives) he might be treated as just one normal monster in a whole group of ogres and other monsters. That doesn't mean that Grargh's physical characteristics have literally changed inside the game-world, just that an ogre is no longer useful as a solo threat against the PCs (and therefore doesn't need the enhanced hp, defenses, and special attacks that make a solo a challenge for a whole party). Why is the GM reusing Grargh, then? Maybe he has the idea that, if the PCs recognize their old foe or vice versa, the encounter could become a social challenge instead. Maybe Grargh owes the PCs a favor for letting him live last time (or vice versa!). Or maybe the PCs can appeal to some element of Grargh's personality that they remember in order to change his mind about serving the Dark Lord of the Week. Thus, even with situationally fluctuating combat stats, Grargh can still serve as a recurring NPC with good backstory and characterization.The whole minion thing (and to a lesser extent, the elite/solo thing) are there to facilitate fun gameplay and sort of a cinematic flair. They don't represent in-game reality to the extent that a particular NPC "really is" a minion and dies easily no matter what the circumstances.Yes, that's a very different take on the relationship between game stats and in-game reality than 3e had. Like many here, I thought the 3e approach really refreshing when it first came out, yet I also see the downsides and am open to 4e's entirely different direction (which may well turn out to have plenty of downsides of its own over the course of the edition's life). Yes, it means the hit points of a creature and the hit points of an inanimate object measure different things, even though they use the same game-mechanical term.Obviously, a number of people don't care for that change, and that's perfectly fine. 'S'why there's more than one RPG system in the world.  But the "4e way" is not seriously putting forth that there are certain identifiable monsters who die when flicked on the nose, so that's rather a silly claim to be using against it.Deadstop</blockquote>

Verification