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

[AnotherGuy]

I've played all editions of D&D. 4e was by far the most restraining on what a character could do.

I'm of the opinion this came down to the understanding of the game.
Those that ran it for me and even when I started running it battled because of our lack of understanding, I feel.

 

[AlViking]

I think that is exactly the argument. It was the people that told you "you cannot do that" that was restrictive, not necessarily the game itself.

I don't have the books at the moment but I remember it being presented as "This is the way." Obviously the WOTC police aren't going to bust down your door if you ignore the rules. But if consistently ignoring the rules is the answer for rules I don't like (and I don't recall anything encouraging house rules in 4e), then it's still an issue with the rules.

 

[AlViking]

Problem:
You are asking for a mathematical result that cannot be made to happen.

That's the issue. You're asking for a mathematical impossibility. There simply isn't a mathematical scaling that ensures this consistently happens, all the time, every time, while still being a D&D-like game.

Something has to give.

I agree that something has to give. Like either tske a completely different approach to the entire game or get rid of minions.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I want more consistency of the world than that.

Me to, but since we chose D&D we got the mystery that is hit points.

If my character can take out an ogre in one hit, make it so I do enough damage to make that happen.

That is why I feel the 5e's Damage Threshold works well with the concept of the 4e minion.

If my character could take out an ogre by kicking them in the shin, then Joe the Barber should be able to do the same.

I do not believe that was the intention.
Crushing their shin with a mallet thus rendering them prone, and practically immobile and victims for a Coup De Grace - hell yes.

 

[Enrahim]

If the layout makes (generic) you think (generic) you can't change the rules, that is no one's fault but (generic) your own.

Frankly, I find it utterly ridiculous that someone could see something with well-kerned fonts or whatever and think "this prevents me from making changes." That's...I literally cannot believe anyone ever actually thought that.

I do not have well-kerneled fonts in mind (that is typesetting, not layout). Pages upon pages of strongly colored pieces of rules text however I think could trigger some psychological associations to these rules somehow being important for the game.

And I just think that position is...well. I don't have a good opinion of that perspective. At all. I think it is not only harmful to game design, it is harmful to the people holding it.

Because that means that ignorance is strength and knowledge is weakness. That being informed is actually more harmful to you than being willfully kept in ignorance. That it is better to get manipulated by the designers than to make decisions for yourself. That scattershot, actively slipshod game design is better than careful, considered, tested game design.

That idea is literally antagonistic to the very idea that games can be designed at all--and it is infantilizing to GMs and players alike. I will never accept it, and I will never understand how anyone else can.

I think I agree to the overall sentiment. However I still think ignoring irrational crowd psychology is likely a mistake if you are aiming for large scale commercial success. It also seem like a weird thing to reject outright if trying to understand why people are attributing qualities to a game, that is not strongly matching the actual contents of the game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree that something has to give. Like either tske a completely different approach to the entire game or get rid of minions.

So you're saying it needs to stop being D&D...?

Because that's what I was talking about about "something has to give".

The thing you asked for is mathematically not possible unless we have an outright exponential growth of both HP and damage. D&D has never has this, and is never going to have this. That's the only way to guarantee that something three half-lives ago has been so thoroughly outclassed that it WILL be minion-like: growth such that your damage floor has become the target's HP ceiling.

I assumed you didn't want that. I might be wrong about that, but I'm pretty confident you don't want exponential scaling. I doubt you even want linearithmic scaling of damage vs HP (which is faster than linear scaling, but not much.)

The only way to achieve the mathematical result you have requested is either to fundamentally change what kinds of challenge and response are used, such that the kind of scaling you describe is feasible--and thus it stops being D&D. Or, you can give up on achieving this scaling and accept that it is simply impossible to consistently outscale opponents in the way you describe, but that's not really acceptable to the player base as far as I can tell.

Hence, as with a frustrating number of things, we're stuck. We can't change D&D to be something other than what it has been, so that people can have the scaling they want in a naturalistic way. We can't give up on the "you will outscale your opponents" thing, because the players require it. And--as you are now showing--we can't use minions that actually solve the problem because that's an unacceptable path.

This is an insoluble situation. Something has to give.

I don't have the books at the moment but I remember it being presented as "This is the way." Obviously the WOTC police aren't going to bust down your door if you ignore the rules. But if consistently ignoring the rules is the answer for rules I don't like (and I don't recall anything encouraging house rules in 4e), then it's still an issue with the rules.

I can assure you, you are literally the opposite of correct on this. The system literally does recommend NOT doing this, and explicitly--and repeatedly--says you should NOT use perfect lockstep stuff because that would be boring. I will dig up quotes later, I'm tired and really should've been asleep two hours ago.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I do not have well-kerneled fonts in mind (that is typesetting, not layout). Pages upon pages of strongly colored pieces of rules text however I think could trigger some psychological associations to these rules somehow being important for the game.

I find that idea precisely as baffling as the fonts. Something being on a colored background has literally nothing to do with whether you can employ creativity in your interpretation and application of the rules.

I think I agree to the overall sentiment. However I still think ignoring irrational crowd psychology is likely a mistake if you are aiming for large scale commercial success. It also seem like a weird thing to reject outright if trying to understand why people are attributing qualities to a game, that is not strongly matching the actual contents of the game.

It's not a matter of ignoring irrational crowd psychology. It's a matter of I literally cannot understand how anyone thinks like this. It is not merely irrational, it is scary to me that anyone could think this way. I am not joking when I say it makes me think of loaded phrases like "ignorance is strength". It terrifies me that there might actually be people who somehow believe this.

I take solace in the fact that I am dead certain no one on this board thinks this way, and that if anyone does think this, it's not anyone I've ever run into. So...yeah. I'm not going to be accepting this argument. It requires me to believe that people are dangerously anti-rational, and I simply don't believe that.

 

[Enrahim]

I don't have the books at the moment but I remember it being presented as "This is the way." Obviously the WOTC police aren't going to bust down your door if you ignore the rules. But if consistently ignoring the rules is the answer for rules I don't like (and I don't recall anything encouraging house rules in 4e), then it's still an issue with the rules.

I am pretty certain the books are not spelling out "If you do not have the ability, you cannot do the thing". I think this was a hotly debated topic with regard to the appropriate interpretation/implementation. You clearly ended up with the hard liners on one side. Draw Steel for instance is explicitly calling out this issue presenting another valid interpretation - that the abilities allow things to be done automatically, while if you are going to do it without the ability you must resort to the more general base rules for doing so.

Indeed this schism I believe can be traced back all the way to the introduction of the thief skills.

That is this is not about ignoring rules, it is about how the players decide to interpret the rules. And flexibility of interpretation might in some cases (not necessarily in this) be desirable as a feature to allow players to tailor the experience to their tastes.

 

[AlViking]

Me to, but since we chose D&D we got the mystery that is hit points.

Whether or not you like them hit points are consistent. Unless its a minion of course.

That is why I feel the 5e's Damage Threshold works well with the concept of the 4e minion.


I do not believe that was the intention.
Crushing their shin with a mallet thus rendering them prone, and practically immobile and victims for a Coup De Grace - hell yes.

The design goal was to have enemies the characters could easily take out. The implementation meant that I could take them out by slapping them with a rubber chicken.

 

[AlViking]

So you're saying it needs to stop being D&D...?

Because that's what I was talking about about "something has to give".

The thing you asked for is mathematically not possible unless we have an outright exponential growth of both HP and damage. D&D has never has this, and is never going to have this. That's the only way to guarantee that something three half-lives ago has been so thoroughly outclassed that it WILL be minion-like: growth such that your damage floor has become the target's HP ceiling.

I assumed you didn't want that. I might be wrong about that, but I'm pretty confident you don't want exponential scaling. I doubt you even want linearithmic scaling of damage vs HP (which is faster than linear scaling, but not much.)

The only way to achieve the mathematical result you have requested is either to fundamentally change what kinds of challenge and response are used, such that the kind of scaling you describe is feasible--and thus it stops being D&D. Or, you can give up on achieving this scaling and accept that it is simply impossible to consistently outscale opponents in the way you describe, but that's not really acceptable to the player base as far as I can tell.

Hence, as with a frustrating number of things, we're stuck. We can't change D&D to be something other than what it has been, so that people can have the scaling they want in a naturalistic way. We can't give up on the "you will outscale your opponents" thing, because the players require it. And--as you are now showing--we can't use minions that actually solve the problem because that's an unacceptable path.

This is an insoluble situation. Something has to give.


I can assure you, you are literally the opposite of correct on this. The system literally does recommend NOT doing this, and explicitly--and repeatedly--says you should NOT use perfect lockstep stuff because that would be boring. I will dig up quotes later, I'm tired and really should've been asleep two hours ago.

I'm saying I don't want things like minions that are designed to fulfill a narrative trope while ignoring the rest of the design of the game. Either fully lean into narrative game or better support the sim side like every other version of the game.

As far as skill challenges they were very black and white. Set number of successes before a set number of failures.