D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

That is a considerable misreading of the 4e rules and was never actually part of the rules.

It's spectacular how long these outright fabrications from the old edition war days survive to this day.
I don't think it's a misreading of the rules, since I doubt he read the rules, but I could be wrong about that. Rather I think that he's relying on what many proponents of 4e have argued over the years as a selling point of 4e. That a monster who is a full monster when it's level appropriate can be used as a 1 hit point minion later on so that it can still deal damage and be a concern to high level PCs, while still representing something that they would find too easy as a primary encounter.

That's an argument by 4e players that I saw a lot.
 

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If the bolded is to be consistent with itself across the entirety of the fiction then those minion Ogres have one hit point no matter what they do or who they fight, meaning one of them could be taken out by a determined kitten with sharp claws and easily one-shotted by any of its buddies during playful rough-housing.

As I really don't think that's what the designers intended, the only other explanation is that they're not minions all the time. And that means changing their intrinsic mechanics to sometimes make them not-minions, and that's where I find a problem.
Further, since grandma also has 1 hit point, those 1 hit point ogres should be invalids. The whole minion thing is a narrative device, which is why it rubs sim players the wrong way.
 

When you're 3 your cat has 25 hit points, when you're 15 your cat has far less hit points.
Tell that to the goose that I grabbed by the neck at 4 and dragged back to my family to show. Apparently it was a mean one Mr. Grinch, and went to bite people who got too close. I didn't know better and got my hands around it at a point where it couldn't bite me, purely accidently I'm sure. Anyway, that goose never came near me again.

That cat has the same hit points when I'm three as when I'm fifteen. I just do a whole lot more damage when I'm fifteen and outmatch it.
 
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Fighter 6: Ability Score Improvement
Fighter 14: Ability Score Improvement

Fighters are literally better at improving their physical and mental capacities than any other profession. Rogues are slightly better, as they get an additional ASI at Rogue 10. No diegetic explanation is given for this. They're just better at making their physical or mental capacities increase.

Barbarians, at least, have the paper-thin excuse that they achieve beyond-mortal-limit strength and endurance by completing their training, learning everything there is for a Barbarian to learn--if you squint, anyway. There isn't a diegetic reason actually given, it's just a thing that happens.
Training? I think you're making too much of this. And you've failed to address my point that literally anyone can be a fighter; any heritage, any culture, PC or NPC. Every class has unique features that result from a training regimen, supernatural imbuement, or other diagetic cause, even if the specifics aren't laid out to my personal satisfaction every time.

And who said any of this is "beyond mortal"? Where is that written? In 5e and it's derivatives, every heritage has the same ability score cap. How they get there can vary. Now, at the highest levels those caps can sometimes be exceeded, but I would argue such high level folks really do transcend things.
 

I don't think it's a misreading of the rules, since I doubt he read the rules, but I could be wrong about that. Rather I think that he's relying on what many proponents of 4e have argued over the years as a selling point of 4e. That a monster who is a full monster when it's level appropriate can be used as a 1 hit point minion later on so that it can still deal damage and be a concern to high level PCs, while still representing something that they would find too easy as a primary encounter.

That's an argument by 4e players that I saw a lot.
I didn't even think that was an argument. I'm reasonably sure that was the point.

@Hussar may have a different take than me, which is fine, but I definitely had no problem using a standard block for level 1 goblins and making the same "group" of goblins into minions around level 6 or so.
 

Which is my point, it's a gamist perspective when other editions all took a more sim approach that I prefer. I understand the gamist approach, I don't care for it and the adjustments made (AC, attack bonus, damage) don't make sense from a sim perspective.
Add to that the Narrativist perspective of skill challenges and other 4e elements and you have a game that feels very different from anything labeled D&D before or even since, at least to me.
 


As is usually the case, that depends on what you are simulating.

If you are simulating most published fictions, even those not tied to RPGs include increased scope/risk, and attendant character power increase, as properties continue.
And we're back to, "what does simulation mean"? I mean process and physics emulation, not simulation of genre or narrative conventions.
 

Certainly not, since the claim isn't true. It's often repeated though.

Keep in mind, Lanefan is of the opinion that a creature cannot ever have more than one, singular, statblock. Unless it's a PC, then it can have a statblock that changes over time as a result of context.


I mean, I would say that the actual thing going on is that statblocks are inherently contextual.

Because that's the inherent problem of the concept of "CR". There is no such thing as a singular threat-level that is universally true for a specific entity. Its threat level actually is relative to the context in which it appears. The idea that we can capture this through an abstraction that never changes is, simply, a mistaken belief. It's a beautiful belief! But it's inherently incorrect in the vast majority of cases. We can define levels, at which certain power can be expected--but any singular monster is not inherently level 15 or level 5 or level 2358234804. The monster is what it is. The gameplay abstractions change in order to correctly represent how threatening a particular creature is.

So we take a singular ogre; let's say it's Corrupted Ogre, empowered by demon blood, so it's even a bit tougher than a typical ogre. If we consider its threat from a 1st-level perspective? Nearly impossible to survive. Don't represent it as a monster. Represent it some other way--such as a skill challenge or an environmental hazard the players need to flee from, because they simply don't have meaningful ability to kill it, or if they do, it's not because of their battle prowess, it's because they've found One Neat Trick (Overlords Hate Them!). Now, consider the exact same organism, how should it be viewed from a level 5 perspective? Probably a Solo. It's now just within range of 5th level characters to take down in a straight fight, but it's tough, and taking it on without separating it from other monsters is decidedly unwise.

Repeat this process at higher levels. Perhaps at level 8, the correct mechanical abstraction is an Elite: strong, but you could take on two or even three of them without really being concerned. Perhaps at level 11, it's a Standard: the party could take on a pack of these things without really worrying much. And then at (say) level 17, this particular organism is no longer a meaningful threat unless it arrives en masse. (There are proposals floating around for a "mook" or something like that, a step between Standard and Minion, something that doesn't fall in a single hit, but doesn't have a ton of staying power either; generally, they're two-hit wonders, but a single crit will kill them.)

This isn't changing the inherent characteristics of the creature. It is, instead, recognizing that the mechanical abstraction is our servant, not our master. We can--and should--change the mechanical abstraction if that more accurately represents the experience that a given character should have.

And that's where Lanefan's argument breaks down. It depends on the assertion that a single mechanical expression of a creature must be the one and only expression it ever gets. Its mechanical expression is more important than the actual impact of the creature in context and the experience of a character of different strength fighting that enemy. Or, the rather rosy belief that it's possible to design a singular mechanical expression which definitely always produces the correct kind of experience, no matter what level the character is.
You start off really well. CR is inherently flawed because a monster is going to be easy against some groups of its CR and hard against others, depending on class make-up, ability picks, player ability, etc.

Where you go off the path, though, is the argument that an ogre with 111 hit points and an ogre with 1 hit point are fine as different expressions of the same monster. Even though the ogre with 111 hit points is intended for parties with single digit levels, and the one with 1 hit point is intended for parties with double digit hit point, a cat can't possibly kill the "easier" ogre. It can however kill the "harder" ogre with a single roll of natural 20. It gets even more ridiculous when you realize that 20 house cats WILL kill the minion ogre, but cannot kill the "easier" ogre with the 111 hit points.

This isn't a situation where monsters simply have different expressions like thugs, scouts, etc. where their stats will vary a bit. This is purely a narrative construct so that DMs can hit players with lots of dangerous monsters that go down quickly. That's the intended role for minions.
 
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I don't think it's a misreading of the rules, since I doubt he read the rules, but I could be wrong about that. Rather I think that he's relying on what many proponents of 4e have argued over the years as a selling point of 4e. That a monster who is a full monster when it's level appropriate can be used as a 1 hit point minion later on so that it can still deal damage and be a concern to high level PCs, while still representing something that they would find too easy as a primary encounter.

That's an argument by 4e players that I saw a lot.
But it kind of is using the same monster, just with 1 HP and higher AC, attack bonus and damage. I understand what they were trying to do and emulate, I just thought it was an inelegant solution.
 

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