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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 4624602" data-attributes="member: 49613">So, I got to try 4E recently. Obviously I went into it with some set opinions and thoughts, since I've read about it and discussed it for months now, i.e. I knew going in that my regular coffee had been replaced with Folger's Crystals. But I was anxious to see it in action and the group I played with is a good group of guys, bright and very gentlemanly. So I pretty much knew I'd have some fun regardless.And it was fun. I don't want to go into a detailed review here of what I did and didn't like about the system, but just to focus on one thing which so far looks to me to be the most important issue mechanically: The Grind.I know people use the term "grind", and I think I'm using it the same way, but here's what I mean by it: bad guys have redonkulous amounts of hit points. We're fighting a bunch of cruddy human guards, you the kind of guys who don't bathe and have holes in their socks. The kind of guys that pay for a Fudd Lite with a soggy, sweaty copper piece and don't even tip and are surrounded by flies. And these clowns were soaking up like 55-60 hit points of damage before dropping! That was really drawing me out of the action and making me furrow my grognardly brow.See, I'm not talking about the big bad and his helper. I don't care how many hit points they have... they're supposed to be scary. But a bunch of palookas with more hp than Gojira? Does not compute, jefe. I was initially impressed with how much damage my character could deal out, only to realize that all of these numbers could be divided by 10 and nothing would change.And this leads me to a realization about 4E. Again, I'm skipping some steps in my assessment of it... this isn't a review. The bottom line is that I like the group of guys I played it with and I look forward to playing 4E with them again. I don't consider 4E to be "D&D" (it doesn't do what I want "D&D" to do but does other things instead) but that doesn't mean that I don't like it. I'll play other stuff besides D&D... if Folger's Crystals can produce a reasonable tasting beverage I don't care if it isn't technically "coffee" in my estimation. But that's not the realization that I referred to.My realization is that if I ran 4E it would be all about the Minions. I'd get around Grindeons & Grindagons by simply saying that 90-95% of all demi/human(oid)s (that's humans, demihumans and prey species like orcs and goblins) would be minions. So would most things with antlers (I can only imagine that a nice buck out in the forest has about 870 hp in this system, and so would use about an entire hunting party's supply of arrows to bring down) and other incidentals. The only non-Minions would be villains (major villains, lieutenants and sergeants) and actual monsters (stuff that's rare and terrorizes a whole region when it shows up).Then combat would look something like the Iliad. You'd have the characters like Achilles, Ajax and Hector cleaving through piles of hapless, decapitated extras until, gore-spattered, they encountered one another in a titanic and climactic struggle. Which is to say, the world is made up of Heroes (good and bad) and schlubs, and 9 out of 10 dudes (or more) are schlubs.If 4E's vaunted math actually works (I have no idea, I've heard conflicting things) then it should be reasonable to throw piles and piles of Minions along with one or two enemy heroes at the PCs, as long as it's all within the so-called "XP budget".I have no idea how this would turn out in practice, but if I were going to run it, that's what I'd do. Ideally, it would end up looking Homeric.</blockquote>

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