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

[CreamCloud0]

Because the game says so. It's CR 11 or CR 16 and the one with 111 is CR 8. While CR is inaccurate, it still gives the games intended approximate power levels.

oh CR, i see

A group of level 11 PCs is in a big minion ogre encounter and one steps backwards into a pen with 20 house cats, upsetting them and ending up dead to a single scratch.

Or that group is fighting those ogres and some kid who doesn't know any better throws a rock from the top of a nearby building and rolls a 20. Dead ogre minion.

Switch that to level 8 PCs fighting the level 8 ogre with 111 hit points and the above two situations can't happen. At least not the dead ogre parts.

okay, outlier situations like this is exactly why people have pointed out why there ought to be some sort of damage threshold safety net to prevent random cherry tapping from taking them out, the minion ogre's DC is designed to be relative to the PCs, not some stray feline or little kid.

 

[AlViking]

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.

If I'm playing, say Horizon Forbidden West, when you start you're fighting monsters like burrowers. As you level up, for a while the throw more of them to make it a challenge but eventually they just start throwing upgraded versions.

But go back to your old stomping grounds? You still fight those borrowers, you just kill them with 1 hit because you do more damage.

That's what I prefer, that there's a logical reason why I take them out easily when I'm higher level. I prefer the approach that 5e takes, relative power is measured by difference in AC, HP and damage. If a single magic missile doesn't take out that ogre when my character is 1st level I don't want it to do so at 20th.

It's just a preference.

 

[Umbran]

It depends on primary intent. For me, genre emulation is secondary.

Your particular desires really can't be something anyone but you can focus on in these discussions.

 

[Enrahim]

I mean, you can certainly assign some kind of diegetic linkage to "minion", "elite", etc. But that definitely wasn't the point.

The expected usage is that the stat block will change depending on the context of the PCs. The same ogre in the narrative might be a level 4 elite early in the PCs career, but a level 16 minion once the PCs are in the high-paragon tier and an ogre has gone from a major threat to a speedbump.

This is not matching up with evidence. I went trough monster vault and only noticed 2 instances of minions of significant higher level that their non minion counterpart: Bough Dryad and Cave spiders. These both make sense to meet in groups I guess. It is certanly not a design they are going for. Almost all minions have a same level counterpart, and the minion are clearly inferior in some way in the theming.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

It's probably more of a gamist construct, in that the stats are designed to maintain pacing in the challenge portion of the game.

It does also lean "narrative" in the sense that the monster's stats are being used in the context of presenting a challenge to the players, not to establish the presence of the NPC in the setting purely for its own sake. This lack of setting context is generally the portion that most simmers object to.

 

[TwoSix]

This is not matching up with evidence. I went trough monster vault and only noticed 2 instances of minions of significant higher level that their non minion counterpart: Bough Dryad and Cave spiders. These both make sense to meet in groups I guess. It is certanly not a design they are going for. Almost all minions have a same level counterpart, and the minion are clearly inferior in some way in the theming.

I don't have my books on hand, but I remember some examples existing in the MM1 and MM2. I believe that's where the ogre example first arose, somewhere deep in the shadows of the Edition War.

 

[AlViking]

Simulation of a world with processes and physics that results in matching a genre is not cleanly separable from genre simulation.

If I want to simulate movie logic for a heist like Oceans 11, I think BitD likely works better. That game is not trying to be a sim in the same sense that D&D is and if I want a realistic medieval combat sim, I'm not going to use D&D.

D&D traditionally hit somewhere in the muddy middle and to me the minion rules tried to emulate something D&D isn't designed for. Monsters are "real" in the fictional world. The stats represent that monster, not some dramatic prop or setpiece. At least to me, which is why they didn't work.

 

[Umbran]

D&D traditionally hit somewhere in the muddy middle

D&D, being the first, is thus based on the least learning about how to do simulation in a role playing game. The fact it does it poorly should surprise nobody.

 

[Pedantic]

It's probably more of a gamist construct, in that the stats are designed to maintain pacing in the challenge portion of the game.

It does also lean "narrative" in the sense that the monster's stats are being used in the context of presenting a challenge to the players, not to establish the presence of the NPC in the setting purely for its own sake. This lack of setting context is generally the portion that most simmers object to.

I'm becoming more empathetic to the stance we should avoid labeling mechanics with agendas. They end up serving as synecdoches for the design goals they try to implement, which might be aimed at an agenda. I'm not sure they can have any real valence in isolation.

The whole understanding of challenge implicit in 4e style encounter building could as easily be read in opposition to a gamist perspective. If outcomes are sufficiently predictable that player decision making isn't rigorously tested, does it provide gamist joy? I think you could certainly use the mechanic that way, something like Fourthcore, how PF2 can play, or maybe a modern derivative like Trespasser. I don't think you have to though, and that makes me question if ascribing an agenda to the mechanic is useful. You need context, some of which send to be necessarily meta.

 

[AlViking]

D&D, being the first, is thus based on the least learning about how to do simulation in a role playing game. The fact it does it poorly should surprise nobody.

It's worked well enough for tens of millions of people over the past half century. There are plenty of options for people that want something else.