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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7641846" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.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.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.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.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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