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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 4266710" data-attributes="member: 49613">Maybe this will help, if the other explanations don't:I don't consider Minions as "relative to the PCs", and every time I see words like "narrativist" I want to go all Savonarola and round up every role playing book in existence and BURN them.  So explanations that hinge on making me despise my own hobby are unhelpful to say the least.What I focus on is the fact that in every edition of D&D it has been possible to have 1 hit point... a first level character or an unclassed "normal man" who rolled poorly could be walking around with 1 hit point.  Does that mean that like 25% of all non-adventurers die if punched in the face?  That would be a pretty lame world.  Rather, it means that when something inflicts 1 hit point of damage it is inflicting a life-threatening wound (a dagger is actually a deadly weapon, after all).Also keep in mind that the a combat round used to represent 1 minute, so a single hit from a knife or a dagger was probably several stabs... which could amount to only 1 hit point of damage.Therefore, hit points above 1 represent your ability through skill, luck or fate to avoid a potentially life-threatening injury and turn it into something inconsequential.Especially in 4E, where "healing" is accomplished by "taking a breather", inconsequential injuries are actually like taking zero damage.  Your hit points are the pool of "Not Be Killed Points" that you spend from to turn a being-killed into a not-being-killed.  Minions, even high level ones, simply don't have any of those points (either because they're losers or because of fate or because they lack some heroic spark).So the first time you stab a Minion in the heart, he dies from being stabbed in the heart.  The first time you stab a hero/villain in the heart, the blade turned against an armor buckle or deflected off a rib or he turned aside at the last moment or you were blinded by a Valkyrie or he parried.  Combat is still basically abstract (just more positional and using shorter rounds) so the DM still has to narrate exactly what happened.</blockquote>

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