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

[Micah Sweet]

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.


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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This last statement is pretty judgy. "Some people accept that I'm right about this, but some are still wrong". Not a very accepting and open-minded view of the equally valid and equally subjective opinions of other people IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just reread the section and quoted the text of the rules. They're quite clear. There have to be X successes before Y failures and every character has to contribute. The most the DM is allowed to do if running as written is to add a +/-2 or allow a skill they hadn't thought of.

I don't know why 4e fans keep injecting later interpretations and personal opinions about the SC rules into a discussion specifically using the original source as if you're somehow wrong.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This last statement is pretty judgy. "Some people accept that I'm right about this, but some are still wrong". Not a very accepting and open-minded view of the equally valid and equally subjective opinions of other people IMO.

And others of us accept that D&D does simulation well enough.

I took a long time with that last sentence. No judgement was intended but rather an explanation as to where that freedom of design originates from.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The idea behind it wasn't bad and I kind of wish they had spent more effort on them than just using them for chases.

It's difficult to have a non-combat system that flexible enough to cover the wide variety of encounters skill challenges were designed for, I'm not sure what a better system would look like. Then again I'm not a game designer.

Always felt WotC and perhaps even the DMsGuild have dropped the ball on this!