My take.

[Jhulae]

If I'm not mistaken, early editions didn't even *have* rules for any kind of social encounters or even skills really. I guess there was some table for a 'background' thing like Carpenter or Farmer, but NWPs weren't introduced for a while.

Yet, somehow, people managed to -*gasp*- roleplay.

I really do see the fallacy of "The more structured a game's combat mechanics are the worse the RP is going to be". That just doesn't wash. Not one bit.

 

[hong]

Take the 'Cohen the Barbarian' problem. To a certain extent, the game has always had this problem, and 'Cohen' I think owes something in his conception to D&D. But with intelligence providing Reflex/AC, charisma providing Will, and presumably something like wisdom providing Fortitude the upshot of these rules is that any NPC that acquires attributes also acquires some unwanted attributes. Feeble accountants, aged octogenerians, and little old ladies suddenly are as strong of combatants in thier infirmity as they were in thier youth.

It's kung fu, d00d.

This strongly discourages me from treating non-combatant NPC's as even having attributes. Certainly I can't have them following any sort of consistant rules.

Clearly by taking the trouble to stat out aged octogenarians, such a character must have a significant role to play in the ongoing tale of your campaign. If an aged octogenarian does not have a significant role to play, you can treat them as a minion and (if the stats for the D&DXP kobold minion are to be believed) they will have no hit points at all.

 

[Lizard]

Clearly by taking the trouble to stat out aged octogenarians, such a character must have a significant role to play in the ongoing tale of your campaign. If an aged octogenarian does not have a significant role to play, you can treat them as a minion and (if the stats for the D&DXP kobold minion are to be believed) they will have no hit points at all.

So, in 4e, you really can clear out a village just by dropping cats on it.

How do those poor kobold minions survive to adulthood? How many die in childhood from the simplest of wounds?

 

[hong]

So, in 4e, you really can clear out a village just by dropping cats on it.

How do those poor kobold minions survive to adulthood? How many die in childhood from the simplest of wounds?

By obeying Hong's 2nd Law.

 

[Lizard]

By obeying Hong's 2nd Law.

And what happens when clever PCs decide to just herd a bunch of badgers down the kobold lair, knowing that any damage is fatal?

(Hell, the townsfolk know that, too, and probably surround their villages with angry cats.)

In minion-on-minion fights, winning initiative is important, as the first blow struck is also the last. Thus, I expect that in any long-lived campaign world, all minions will have evolved obscenely high initiative scores.

 

[hong]

And what happens when clever PCs decide to just herd a bunch of badgers down the kobold lair, knowing that any damage is fatal?

They have failed to obey Hong's 2nd Law.

(Hell, the townsfolk know that, too, and probably surround their villages with angry cats.)

The townsfolk would only know that if the DM who acts as their centralised hivemind has similarly failed to obey Hong's 2nd Law.

In minion-on-minion fights, winning initiative is important, as the first blow struck is also the last. Thus, I expect that in any long-lived campaign world, all minions will have evolved obscenely high initiative scores.

In any long-lived campaign world where the DM fails to obey Hong's 2nd Law, that is.

 

[The Little Raven]

And what happens when clever PCs decide to just herd a bunch of badgers down the kobold lair, knowing that any damage is fatal?

Do you ever produce examples that aren't predicated on the players and the DM completely lacking common sense? How about something sensible, instead of immediately resorting to the absurd?

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

When you read the rest of the critique you will see that building NPCs differently from PCs is also a bad option so it doesn't really matter if the NPC build rules solve this problem because if they do they create a other problem.

Imo 4E sacrifices too much believeability and "realism" for, game speed. 4E makes a nice miniature game but to roleplay in a believable world you have to ignore much more inconsistencies and silliness than in 3E.

You mean it's more "believable" and "realistic" and more "role-playing oriented," for that matter, for a fighter to have no options in a fight except to stand in front of his opponent and go, "I hit, I miss. I miss. I hit." Rather than being able to push your opponent back, concentrate your energies for a mighty finishing blow, or doing some other kind of maneuver to try to change the course of the fight and add some dash and interest to it?

Sorry, but I don't see 30 minutes of "I hit. I miss. I hit. I miss. I hit. I hit. I miss." as being either very good role-playing or a very 'believable' simulation of something as dynamic and chaotic as a melee.

 

[hong]

Do you ever produce examples that aren't predicated on the players and the DM completely lacking common sense? How about something sensible, instead of immediately resorting to the absurd?

Lizard is not "resorting to the absurd". He's operating from the basic premise that people in the game world are living, breathing entities, aware of cause-and-effect and how the rules arbitrate the results of actions.

This is slightly different to the basic premise that people in the game world are actors on a stage, aware of what makes dramatic or narrative sense in the context that the game is emulating a given genre of storytelling.

 

[Jhulae]

So, in 4e, you really can clear out a village just by dropping cats on it.

How do those poor kobold minions survive to adulthood? How many die in childhood from the simplest of wounds?

If I'm not mistaken, a cat could kill a commoner in *any* edition of D&D. How the heck have commoners (or children or 'baby kobolds') managed to survive in *all* past editions?