Minions and fixed damage

[LostSoul]

Simply put, if you want game-world balance and believability, crits (and many other things) have to work both ways equally.

Or you could describe the game-world balance however you want. In the game world, minions get lucky hits in now and then. In the real world, they always do the same amount of hit point damage.

 

[Lanefan]

I've bolded the main gotcha in there. We're not looking for game-world balance, we're looking for game balance. 4E is not, never was, and never will be internally consistant, since not everything in the game uses the same rules.

Then what's the point?

It's a role-playing game, last I checked, and without a believeable stage (the world) it's hard to play a role.

Lanefan

 

[Lurker37]

Then what's the point?

It's a role-playing game, last I checked, and without a believeable stage (the world) it's hard to play a role.

Lanefan

That's your opinion.

Dozens of other successful RPGs on the market use the same division between rules for PCs and rules for NPCs. Trying to extrapolate rules to gameworld physics seems to be peculiar to D&D, and that's because 3.X made the highly unusual move of saying NPCs used the same rules as PCs. Most other games have specific rules to highlight how the NPCs are not the same as the PCs.

That NPC-PC equality is being discontinued is a strong indicator on how well that went. Not only did it make building new opponents a nightmare unless you did what most of us did and threw the rules out entirely, it resulted in a less believable world, because suddenly people could survive a fall off a 100 cliff into molten lava. It resulted in vehement arguments that people couldn't possibly get seriously hurt from being thrown from their horse. Ridiculous elements like this are finally removed, making the world far more believable because it is no longer shackled to a rules system designed to allow larger-than-life heroes to survive dramatic perils.

So my opinion is the opposite. The D&D world hasn't become less believable. It's become far, far more believable.

 

[Plane Sailing]

At one point, we'd simplified minion attacks even further -- a group of minions would make one attack roll, and the damage would be based on the number of minions involved in the attack (for example, one minion would attack for 2 damage, so 4 minions would make an attack together, rolling once, to do 8 damage total).

Hey, thanks for popping in and giving that bit of insight to the development process. I appreciate hearing about some of the intermediate designs (and for my money, such as it is, I think you made the right call there )

Cheers

 

[mach1.9pants]

Yep one of my pet hates of 4E was NPC classes implementation. Every master blacksmith(or whatever) had a ton of HP (couldn't die from failing from a horse in the RAW), a good base attack, etc. Now he will have however many HP I want to give him etc. It is what I did with the NPC classes anyway but it is nice to have the RAW backing me up

 

[AtomicPope]

The "swings" of dice rolling hasn't been taken out for speed, it's been removed for balance. Have you noticed that minions don't have "High Crit" weapons? If minions roll for damage then they might end up being more powerful then their exp costs suggests when they score a critical hit (max damage). By giving minions a flat damage amount it balances them against the potential brokeness when combined with Leaders.

In the Orc list the leader, Eye of Gruumsh, gives all allies in his aura a Death Strike - one final attack when they die. Imagine if every orc minion armed with a battle axe was able to roll for damage. With hot dice they could be doing 50% more damage. All of a sudden minions are wiping the walls with characters rather than Brutes.

Not speed - balance.

 

[hong]

Eh, the game can survive rolling damage for minions. If crits bother you, just say that minions never crit. At worst, you're just substituting one exception for another.

 

[AtomicPope]

Yep one of my pet hates of 4E was NPC classes implementation. Every master blacksmith(or whatever) had a ton of HP (couldn't die from failing from a horse in the RAW), a good base attack, etc. Now he will have however many HP I want to give him etc. It is what I did with the NPC classes anyway but it is nice to have the RAW backing me up

3e?


Yeah. I'm designing a campaign and I wanted the characters to be accompanied by an alchemist for their journey to the jungle. Now, he can be a feeble old man with an intimate knowledge of alchemy (I'm thinking ~13th level minion). He has mediocre stats but great skills. And, he's old as hell. One hit and he's down.

 

[AtomicPope]

Eh, the game can survive rolling damage for minions. If crits bother you, just say that minions never crit. At worst, you're just substituting one exception for another.

Not really. You've ignored the "Hot Dice" factor. If you end up rolling max damage on every minion hit it's the equivalent of critical hits (in most cases).

 

[hong]

Not really. You've ignored the "Hot Dice" factor. If you end up rolling max damage on every minion hit it's the equivalent of critical hits (in most cases).

You will almost surely not roll max damage on every minion hit. It all balances out. Trust me, I'm a statistician.