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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7638875" data-attributes="member: 42582">There's actually little evidence for this in the history of D&D. Most kobolds, goblins and 0-level humans will be either up or down if hit by a AD&D fighter with weapon specialisationm 18 STR and a magic weapon (damage die +1 for magic +2 for spec +3 for 18/01 STR = minimum 7 damage on a hit and typically quite a bit more). But I've never seen it suggested that this does not make for good play.A 7th level specialised AD&D fighter with a +2 longsword fighting an ogre averages 2d12 + 14 = 27 average with a 16 minimum multiplied by the chance to hit. AD&D ogres have 4+1 HD or an average of 19 hp and a maximum of 33. That 7th level fighter therefore is going to take down many ogres in a single round. I've never seen it suggested that this does not make for good play.I don't really know what this means. In the fiction those kobolds, goblins, 0-level men-at-arms and ogres all exist. So does the PC fighter. I don't see how this issue of existince in the fiction bears on whether or not some opponents are liable to being swiftly dispatched by a PC.I don't give a toss whether or not [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] wants to play 4e. That has zero effect or significance for me.I'm responding to other claims, such as that 4e's minion rules lead to inconsistent fiction, are an incoherent frameworld for hp, etc. Those claims are false, and the only reasons being put in favour of them betray a failure to understand the 4e combat mechanics.There is nothing inconsistent about a fiction in which (for instance) mid-heroic tier PCs find dealing with ghouls a matter of life-and-death, and in which mid-paragon tier PCs can cut through those ghouls with relative ease.The notion that a ghoul or an ogre is "entitled" to its hp, or that it is "inconsisent" to resolve a fight with one by any means other than a series of to hit and damage rolls, simply betrays a lack of understanding of the 4e combat rules. The 4e DMG even spells this out (pp 54-55):A fight against thirty orcs is a grand cinematic battle. The players get to enjoy carving through the mob like a knife through butter, feeling confident and powerful. Unfortunately, the mechanics of standard monsters make that difficult. If you use a large number of monsters of a level similar to the PCs, you overwhelm them. If you use a large number of monsters of much lower level, you bore them with creatures that have little chance of hurting the PCs but take a lot of time to take down. On top of that, keeping track of the actions of so many monsters is a headache. Minions are designed to help fill out an encounter, but they go down quickly.In the fiction, an orc is an orc is an orc. Minions are a mechanical technique intended to facilitate a certain sort of action occurring in the fiction.  It's not inconsistent to change the mechanical parameters of an orc encounter - level, defences, hp, to hit and damage numbers, etc - because of the level of the PCs who are facing those orcs. And the whole suggestion is even more absurd coming from an AD&D player. From the mechanical point of view, there is no difference other than the technical and mathematical between using the attacks-per-round mechanic to reflect relativites of prowess (as AD&D does for fighters vs 0-level men-at-arms and the like) and using the defence-by-level, attack-and-damage-by-level and hp mechanics to reflect the same thing (as 4e does more generally via its minion rules).So if you envisage a 4e fighter standing there for 6 seconds doing nothing for 5-and-a-half of them, then moving instantaneously and metronomically on his/her turn, I guess that's your prerogative.That's not what the art suggests to me. Nor is it what the flavour text suggests to me. The flavour text for Piercing Strike (PHB p 118) is "A needle-sharp point slips past armor and into tender flesh." Mechanically this is expressed as an attack vs Reflex defence rather than AC. There is nothing there that suggests to me that it is inconsistent or incoherent for a mid-paragon rogue to use this particular combat skill to take down an ogre in 6 seconds. Whether such a feat is conceived of as a series of strikes or a single one seems to me a matter for the table.</blockquote>

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