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

[Lanefan]

I would say the monster's status as minion/normal/elite should absolutely be diegetic. In fantasy characters tend to not have any problem to single out just who poses a real threat even in a sea of similar looking goons.

Sure. No problem with this.

My problem is that even the spindliest Ogre is going to have considerably more than one hit point; meaning that even from a highly experienced (i.e. very high level) warrior it might take more than one or even two hits to take it down if the damage roll is poor.

This is one area where a Body-Fatigue or Wound-Vitality system helps: everything has Body (or Wound) points as an intrinsic feature and the concept is completely diegetic even if the actual numbers are not, and if the creature has any Fatigue (Vitality) points they sit on top of the BP (WP).

 

[Lanefan]

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.

A creature's statblock can change over the long term as it ages and deteriorates, or learns and develops new skills, or whatever; but as most campaigns don't span all that much in-fiction time there isn't usually time for those changes to occur. Therefore, for play purposes stat blocks might as well be locked in.

PCs are bizarre in that they gain abilities and hit points etc. at a ridiculously fast rate in the fiction. Even in our system where advancement is by modern standards very slow, you can easily go from 1st to 10th level in three in-game years; and that's stupid-fast IMO when compared to the rest of the surrounding setting. In the WotC editions where training downtime isn't required a character can go from 1st to 20th in half an in-game year or less.

As such, PCs aren't the best thing to use as benchmarks here.

This isn't changing the inherent characteristics of the creature. It is, instead, recognizing that the mechanical abstraction is our servant, not our master.

In-fiction consistency is (or should be!) our master, and the mechanical abstractions should serve that first and foremost.

We can--and should--change the mechanical abstraction if that more accurately represents the experience that a given character should have.

Which blows up internal setting consistency. Just because a character perceives something to be a certain way doesn't mean that's the way it really is in the fiction (if it did, Illusionists would rule everything!).

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.

To the last bit: it does.

What it also does is flatten the power curve. The PCs get more powerful as they level up but the foes do not correspondingly get mechanically weaker. They just are what they are, and you've still got to do 20 points of damage to this Orc to kill it whether you're 1st level or 20th, and if at 20th level you only roll 1 on your damage die you've got to hit it again (baked-in by-level bonuses notwithstanding, and IMO those get out of hand at higher levels).

 

[Faolyn]

If cinematics happen, they happen, but I'm not going to try to force them.

Who said force? They come up naturally in my experience.

In either case their choices are to a) carry on and hope for the best or b) renew their info-gathering efforts and find out why things have changed.

Or just go on in, knowing that between their own creativity and the GM not being antagonistic, it will likely be interesting and fun.

Ah. I see hit points as an intrinsic property of the creature: if a pirate has ten hit points max when his buddy attacks him he also has ten hit points max when a PC attacks him or when a kitten attacks him or when nobody's attacking him.

4e had foes' mechanical properties change based on who-what was attacking them, which completely blows up internal setting consistency when it comes to game mechanics. The same Ogre (let's call him Bob) would be an Elite if facing a level-1 party and a Minion if facing a level-15 group, where to me Bob is Bob and always has 45 hit points (unless he's taken damage) no matter what and has the same combat capabilties against any foe because that's just who he is.

I don't see a huge problem. To a level 1 party, an ogre is a terrible threat. To a level 15 party, that exact same ogre isn't worth rolling initiative for. 5e gets around that, somewhat, with bounded accuracy and attribute limits and the like, but that hadn't been used yet when 4e was produced.

As we know, hit points aren't supposed to be meat points. They were always supposed to represent something like luck and skill, your ability to dodge oncoming attacks, that what would be a deadly wound to a lesser folk is but a mere scratch to you, that sort of thing. Yes, this kinda falls apart when it comes to things like falling damage, but I view it as your luck running out because you can't dodge the ground (even though in real life, ordinary humans have survived falling out of flying airplanes). By the time you're 15th level, no standard-issue ogre is going to be a threat in combat. That ogre will not be able to dodge out of the way of your blows. They would have to be very lucky not to die.

Thus, hit points are purely a game mechanic and can safely be ignored when judging how tough someone is. They simply represent how long or difficult it is to kill someone. Something with 100 hit points takes longer or requires harder blows to kill than something with 20 hp. Bob the ogre isn't suddenly weaker when facing a 15th-level party; he just can't stand up to them the same way he can stand up to a 1st-level party.

If it makes you feel better, though, in Daggerheart a minion is a minion is a minion. Adversaries don't change their stats or creature type depending on the level. An ogre remains a Tier 1 Solo no matter what level you are; they'll never become a minion (unless you create a new statblock, at least).

Going in I thought the trap might knock out one or two and-or maaaybe kill one, but a crit-20 is a crit-20 (and crits in our system can get real nasty!) and I don't pull my punches. I seem to recall they'd had chances to notice the trap but either didn't due to bad luck or didn't because they didn't even try; that party were often more concerned with keeping eyes on each other than on anything around them - it was a very knife-in-the-back sort of crew.

Where I'd not trust my own honesty if, having sprung the trap, I then pulled my punch such that less damage was done and fewer or none of them died.

But you wrote the trap in the first place and gave it that much damage (or didn't alter it from a pre-gen module), knowing it could kill the PCs, and that it had a chance to kill more than one, because you also created, or approved, the nasty critical system. Thus, you went in being "unfair." Just like bringing in reinforcements is "unfair."

(And I still can't imagine traveling with someone who I don't trust not to backstab me, shared goals notwithstanding--that sounds absolutely hellish. And as a GM, I wouldn't allow such a thing--create a character who will work with the party, not against them, or go home.)

 

[Enrahim]

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.

Fair. Looking at MM1 now, and there are certanly more suspects there, like the Grimlock follower, Abysal Ghoul Myrmidon, Angel of Valor, Ogre, Tryglodyte and Orc warrior. However more minions folow the pattern of being weaker versions of similarly leveled creatures.

This might make it seem like maybe someone used the design strategy sketched out here, but that this wasn't universally adapted. However closer inspection reveal a different story - I think simply math came and bate them. There is a sequence of reasonable design choices that togetter give the unfortunate result we see here.

The orc I think is an exelent example. We start out with a first level orc at 50 xp, a second level orc at 100 xp, a third level orc at 150 xp and a 4 level orc at 200 xp. Nice and dandy. Then we introduce the minion concept into the mix. It make sense that the weaker versions be minions. However someone decided that our xp calculation budget should includes HP. And someone(else?) decided the minion has only 1 hp. Someone (else again?) have of course made the formulaes for how xp should be calculated. And the result is that in order to get to 100xp with one hp the orc need to be buffed up in other places. And then of course someone (else yet again?) has made an improved calculator matching stats rather than xp with level, and now the resulting level for the 100xp minion orc come out as level 9 (taking into account there are supposed to be 4 of them). (And somehow the 50 xp orc wasn't really feasible any more, so it had to be changed to 44 xp).

Hobgoblin follow almost the exact same pattern, leaving the second level 88 xp hobgoblin on level 8. However that did not get into my list of "sucpicious" monsters as there is a high level non-minion hobgoblin.

Indeed the only one I cannot find matching this pattern is the ogre with both a minion and a normal variant at 350 xp.

So to take the only example that is hard to explain as minions being meant to be weaker, and argue that there has been a deliberate design idea to use the minion system as a way to make "high level" versions of the same monster just doesn't seem to check out with me. It really seem like the monster design indeed was to make the weaker monsters minions - this design was locked down for the most iconic creatures early in the process - and subsequent development of the minion system made the math break down for these with no time for full redesign.

Monster vault came in and allowed for the fixes to make the monsters better harmonise with the intended vision.

 

[Enrahim]

Sure. No problem with this.

My problem is that even the spindliest Ogre is going to have considerably more than one hit point; meaning that even from a highly experienced (i.e. very high level) warrior it might take more than one or even two hits to take it down if the damage roll is poor.

This is one area where a Body-Fatigue or Wound-Vitality system helps: everything has Body (or Wound) points as an intrinsic feature and the concept is completely diegetic even if the actual numbers are not, and if the creature has any Fatigue (Vitality) points they sit on top of the BP (WP).

Agreed. I think the minion concept is good, but the one hp implementation has some issues. As I mentioned earlier I think Draw Steel has found a nice approach that I believe provides the core value of minion while avoiding the 1 hp issues.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

The ASI should be tied to - and forced to go on - the prime stat for the class. A Fighter should only be able to ASI Strength (or maybe Constitution), for example, as an abstraction of the idea that she's been pumping iron and so forth in any downtime she's had while adventuring. That at least makes it somewhat diegetic, thouugh it's still pretty gamist.

 

[Lanefan]

wait why is the minion ogre the 'harder' ogre and the normal one 'easier'?

but regardless, you shouldn't ever be putting the cat up against the ogre with the minion template unless it's some sort of divinely empowered super cat or something, because this minion/elite system works off relativity of power,

So if a 20th-level group of PCs meet a minion Ogre and one of the 20th-level PCs has a pet cat on her shoulder, what then?

More relevant, perhaps: if that 20th-level group of PCs has a couple of 8th-level henchmen with it, what then?

 

[Lanefan]

Except in 4e, that isn't true.

So it would seem. Still doesn't make it right.

You can't automatically extract the meaning out of any one game mechanic and apply it more broadly to a larger subset of games. A game mechanic only has meaning in the context of the game system itself.

But I can - and will - take a game mechanic that doesn't make any in-fiction sense and call it out on that basis. Minions are one such.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except in 4e, that isn't true.

You can't automatically extract the meaning out of any one game mechanic and apply it more broadly to a larger subset of games. A game mechanic only has meaning in the context of the game system itself.

I think people introduced to 4e (but with knowledge of other editions) had a reasonable expectation that it was still D&D as they understood it.

 

[Lanefan]

Or just go on in, knowing that between their own creativity and the GM not being antagonistic, it will likely be interesting and fun.

The bolded is far too deep in metagame-side thinking for my liking.

But you wrote the trap in the first place and gave it that much damage (or didn't alter it from a pre-gen module), knowing it could kill the PCs, and that it had a chance to kill more than one, because you also created, or approved, the nasty critical system. Thus, you went in being "unfair." Just like bringing in reinforcements is "unfair."

If memory serves (this was 17 years ago!) the trap did something like 3d6 damage to anyone caught beneath it when the rocks came down. Most 1st-level characters in our game have between 5-12 hit points; and death is at -10 (at 0 or below you might be unconscious). The simple math there says death is unlikely but possible while getting knocked below 0 is fairly likely - if you get hit.

Then the dice took over. Natural 20 for the Ogre's "aim" with the trap; crit roll gave 4x damage, and the charaacters were bunched together. 11 points damage became 44 (I remember those numbers clearly!) and at 1st level there ain't nobody gonna survive that. Of a party of (I think) 9 at the time, 4 died on the spot and the rest fled. (after doing some recruiting they went right back there and took out that Ogre)

Same thing could have happened had the Ogre got a 4x crit on an attack, except it would only kill one character at a time.

Unfair? I don't think so. Unlucky? All day long.

(And I still can't imagine traveling with someone who I don't trust not to backstab me, shared goals notwithstanding--that sounds absolutely hellish. And as a GM, I wouldn't allow such a thing--create a character who will work with the party, not against them, or go home.)

To the bolded: it's not my place to tell people how to play their characters. Full stop.

Never mind that the infighting is where all the good stories came from, still told and laughed about today.