What this does is blow away the very real possibility that while the high-level heroes can do 35+ hit points that doesn't mean they're every time going to on a successful hit; the dice might say 24, meaning Joe gets one more chance at glory (or more likely, a chance to surrender or run like hell).
Do you feel the same concern for the 1 hp kobold or orc or goblin in all those old modules? I mean, why can't those PCs just do 1/2 a point of damage and let those humanoids have one more chance at glory?
No system for combat resolution is infinitely granular. Boundries are drawn and limits on variability set. I mean, there's a chance that any outdoor combat will be disrupted by sudden torrential rain, but I don't know any RPG that expressly provides for this in its combat resolution system.
Your particluar concernt about 4e's minions is purely aesthetic. You're not showing that any inconsistencies have arisen or will arise.
Let's say the same 17th-level warrior, after finishing off poor Joe, rolls up the line and finds her next opponent to be Bob, a 1st-level PC with less going for him than Joe had; Bob's staring down swordinnahead probably faster than Joe got it. But because Bob's a PC his numbers wouldn't change in the slightest - they're locked in to what it says on his character sheet. So why in the name of mechanical and internal consistency isn't the same true for Joe?
The notion of "internal consistency" does no work here. By "mechanical consistency" I assume you mean something like
unchanging mechanical framing of the resolution. In which case your example makes no sense. If your 4e D&D game involves a 17th level PC fighting a 1st level PC the system has nothing to offer you. You're on your own.
Much the same as you can't use the AD&D mechanics to resolve the difference between taking one or three slaps of a shoe to kill that spider you found in your bedroll.
they are a representation of something that does: Joe's toughness. Not his toughness in relation to any specific thing else, but his toughness in relation to everything else put together.
What Mr. Baker fails to note in that quote (though for all I know addresses it elsewhere) is that the numbers serve another purpose: they provide the framework via which the players (and GM) can quantify elements of the fiction that need quantifying in order to give a playable game: base stats, combat skill levels, toughness, armour, etc. Put another way, you say the numbers in 4e aren't a model of the fiction, but if they aren't then how are the players (and the GM, for that matter) expected to mechanically interact with the fiction on any sort of internally-consistent basis - what model can they use, if not the numbers?
The numbers are not a model. They're a resolution system.
The players and GM interact mechanically by deploying the resolution system. That verges on tautological, but I don't know what else you are asking.
The numbers aren't always absolutes in and of themselves, but what they do accomplish is to define relative differences between one thing and the next
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Joe's 35 hit points tell us his relative toughness in comparison to every other creature in the game world...including but by no means limited to whatever he's fighting at the moment.
This simply isn't true in 4e.
An 8th level Ogre Savage has AC 19 and 111 hp. A 16th level Ogre Bludgeoneer has AC 28 and 1 hp (and never takes damage on a miss, because a minion). Which is tougher?
It's a trick question - they're of the same toughness, each wearing hide armour and wielding a greatclub, but statted differently for different resolution contexs.
Joe might be a pushover when faced with a 17th level warrior but his toughness relative to the rest of the world hasn't changed
This is the same for the ogre savage and ogre bludgeoneer. There toughness relative to the rest of the world is what it is. It is a feature of the fiction. It doesn't need to be statted out. That's not what stats are for - they're not tools for zoologists and ecologists, they're tools for players of a game wishing to resolve action declaratoins in that game.
all too often imagination and description simply aren't good enough, even if the GM gives the most in-depth narration you can conceive. Why's that? Because narrating the same scene to four different people is almost certainly going to paint four different pictures, one each in the imagination of each listener. And when you add that none of those pictures might match the actual picture the narrator is trying to describe, unless the narrator has a drawing or photo of the scene to bring everyone together you're inevitably going to get questions and misunderstandings; which IME can lead to some thunderous arguments if players base their actions on imagined or mis-interpreted scene elements that differ from what the narrator had in mind.
Give me a concrete example, from actual play, of someone being confused about the fiction of an ogre because it was statted as a 16th level minion rather than an 8th level standard. Until you do, I simpy don't believe that this is an issue.
And for this mechanical representation of the fiction to work in any sort of consistent and trustworthy manner, the numbers, once set, have to remain so unless something materially changes about the creature**. The players have to be able to trust that the setting is internally consistent enough in its mechanics that the ogre they met (and fled from!) at 1st level is mechanically going to be the same when they meet it again at 15th level, or when they go back to town and send their bosses out after it.
Again, present me with an actual play example that actually proves this.
I've played a 4e game in which the same players, playing the same PCs, have fought hobgoblins statted as standard creatures (the PCs were around mid-heroic tier) and as minions and swarms in the form of hobgoblin phalanxes (the PCs were around mid-paragon tier). The players did not confused. They were not unable to trust the setting. On the contrary this helped confirm their sense of the setting - PCs who once had been well-matched by a single hobgobling could now leap into the midst of a phalanx of hobgoblins and cut them down. The phalanxes could replenish their numbers and thus their fighting strength by incorporating stray hobgoblins (mechanically: the swarm can kill an adjacent hobgobling minion to heal).
The issues you assert will arise do not. The fiction is clear. The resolution process is clear. No on is confused or misled. There are no inconsistencies, neither in the fiction nor at the table.
Your assertion that minions produce inconsistency in the fiction is completely without foundation. They do produce a difference between how 4e mechanics work and your own aesthetic preference. But that's not an inconsistency in anyone's fiction.
