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<blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 4223011" data-attributes="member: 49613">OD&amp;D seems quite open to interpretation about just when you roll your hit dice... rolling every session is not unreasonable.But I would say, even then, that they're still a consistent number of hit dice.&nbsp; The notion that Johnny Orc is standing around being invincible one day, and the next day, purely because the PCs have shown up, he becomes a 1-hitpoint wonder... that's just far too arbitrary and contrived for me.I know that my response opens the door to a million arbitrary and contrived things to be trotted out.&nbsp; What can I say?&nbsp; It's a matter of degree.&nbsp; The status of an NPC possessing a modicum of stability is simply one of those things that's required for me to get a feeling of stability and depth from the fantasy world.&nbsp; Bob the Villager is Bob the Villager... he's not Bob the Weak one day and then Bobowulf the Mighty the next day.I can see what people are saying with their appeals to &quot;narrative&quot; and &quot;story&quot;: the game world is admittedly a contrivance.&nbsp; But there's a difference between a work by Jackson Pollock and a work by Bouguereau or Raphael.&nbsp; The former is just a bunch of squiggles, like an ugly wallpaper.&nbsp; The latter actually look like people and real things.&nbsp; They're obviously not real people and things (they're paintings!), but they look like them.&nbsp; They're pleasing because they possess a semblance of the basic congruence of real life.Fortunately I think that Minions can be interpreted in a way consistent with the old 'metaconsistency' of traditional D&amp;D.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Korgoth, post: 4223011, member: 49613"] OD&D seems quite open to interpretation about just when you roll your hit dice... rolling every session is not unreasonable. But I would say, even then, that they're still a consistent number of hit dice. The notion that Johnny Orc is standing around being invincible one day, and the next day, purely because the PCs have shown up, he becomes a 1-hitpoint wonder... that's just far too arbitrary and contrived for me. I know that my response opens the door to a million arbitrary and contrived things to be trotted out. What can I say? It's a matter of degree. The status of an NPC possessing a modicum of stability is simply one of those things that's required for me to get a feeling of stability and depth from the fantasy world. Bob the Villager is Bob the Villager... he's not Bob the Weak one day and then Bobowulf the Mighty the next day. I can see what people are saying with their appeals to "narrative" and "story": the game world is admittedly a contrivance. But there's a difference between a work by Jackson Pollock and a work by Bouguereau or Raphael. The former is just a bunch of squiggles, like an ugly wallpaper. The latter actually look like people and real things. They're obviously [i]not[/i] real people and things (they're paintings!), but they look like them. They're pleasing because they possess a semblance of the basic congruence of real life. Fortunately I think that Minions can be interpreted in a way consistent with the old 'metaconsistency' of traditional D&D. [/QUOTE]

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