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

[Micah Sweet]

I quite like having the freedom to treat monsters as standard, environment and minion - even within the same combat - which can challenge the PCs in a variety of ways allowing for a richer tapestry of story-telling I feel.

None of the things you mention in this paragraph are a priority in my play.

We really do game for very different reasons huh?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Setting aside the mechanics, I worry about the trope of dozens of lives of our demonized enemies being worth less than one of ours. So I'm not generally aiming to support the play envisioned in the 4e text on minions. The game plays perfectly well without them.

Eh. I'm simply not going to get worked up in a game that's already focused on killing people in droves making it a little mechanically easier to do that. There's a discussion you can have about how most action-adventure fiction based RPGs have an overly casual view of killing, but suddenly having it here seems, frankly, pretty silly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This might be. But the issue is that entering this gap is not so easy as this has been a very polarizing issue. The entire rulings over rules vs RAW vs RAI + system matters debate has been present for a long time, and as such most games have been pushed to make a stance.

FATE is the only major game I can think of off the bat that seem to actively have positioned itself into a hybrid position of strongly enforced core with a large body of "toolkit"/"tuning" options on top.

You can make at least an argument for GURPS.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

D&D sure as heck does not need minion rules to be D&D. Remember the person you responded to provided two options.

 

[Maxperson]

Except that your Ogre Bludgeoneer (which is the stat for an Ogre Minion) has a 28 AC, which your townsfolk straight up cannot hit. You'd need 20:1 against each ogre minion to kill one, and there should be 4 or 5 minions for each normal monster you're switching out for the encounter. Meanwhile, we've pulled 2 out of the 5 for a standard encounter as minions, meaning there's 8-10 minions, each automatically killing one townsperson on a roll of a 2 or higher. So, your 20 townsfolk might kill 1 ogre minion (which is actually fairly reasonable) before all being killed.

It's almost like 4e D&D was designed by people who understood game design.... But, hey, like I said, this is just bog standard edition warring stuff that's been hashed out for over a decade. Why bother letting things like facts interrupt now?

Your math is off. It wouldn't take 20 townsfolk to kill a single ogre before all being killed. They'd take it out in 1 round on average, and if they won initiative they'd lose no one. 10 townsfolk would probably kill the ogre before being killed, with a 50% chance on average of doing it in 1 round, possibly losing no one. 1 on 1, 20 townsfolks vs. 20 ogres and probably 1 of those ogres will be killed.

There's a 5% chance that a 10 year old with a hurled rock would take one out.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't have the books at the moment but I remember it being presented as "This is the way."

"I have spoken."

 

[Enrahim]

You can make at least an argument for GURPS.

My impression is that GURPS is so toolset-y that I put it in the quite flexible corner. I had GURPS in mind when writing that.

 

[Enrahim]

Your math is off. It wouldn't take 20 townsfolk to kill a single ogre before all being killed. They'd take it out in 1 round on average, and if they won initiative they'd lose no one. 10 townsfolk would probably kill the ogre before being killed, with a 50% chance on average of doing it in 1 round, possibly losing no one. 1 on 1, 20 townsfolks vs. 20 ogres and probably 1 of those ogres will be killed.

There's a 5% chance that a 10 year old with a hurled rock would take one out.

Is the name of that boy David by chance?

 

[Umbran]

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.

Mod Note:
Hey, dial it back, please.

Positions of the form, "You must somehow have cognitive impairment to disagree with me," are themselves a problem.

Please engage your own critical thinking skills, and realize that on the internet, your own approach, statements like the above, will tend to make folks dig in and state things as being more important or absolute than they are. This is the fast route to polarized discussions lacking nuance.

If you chill out, you can likely have a reasonable discussion. When you get hyperbolic, reason goes out the window.

 

[AnotherGuy]

None of the things you mention in this paragraph are a priority in my play.

I never used the word priority.
However my table is currently 15th level, so it is pretty important to me that when there is combat it doesn't devolve into a boring slog-fest. Which means I'm always looking at ways to make it interesting.
TBH minions is a concept I had forgotten until this discussion.

We really do game for very different reasons huh?

I tend to think we all game to have fun.
For all my sins, I'm the 4everDM, and I host practically all the time.
Having my mates come over, enjoy a good meal, share some laughs and live out some memorable scenes with the eagerness to play again is what it is all about for me.

If there are tools that can help me do that in a way that works with the fiction and that can harmonise with the mechanics of 5e, I'm not going to say no.

Next session sees the PCs with their allies face off dozens of gargoyles as part of a welcoming force for a dragon's lair. Now the published adventure has around 30 or so, but I can make it much more if I use minions/mooks (adjusted with Damage Threshold).
And then use the 5e mob rules for damage dealt to the PCs and their allies.
There will also be a storm giant quintessent that uses her Legendary Action Become One with the Storm that is essentially monster-as-environment in 5e.

I don't think we game for different reasons, I think some of us accept that D&D does simulation less well than what we believed it to be back in the day and for that reason have a greater degree of freedom.
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