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

[Micah Sweet]

The point remains. "This is bad because it means you're killing a lot of sapient lives really fast!" is a criticism that applies just as much to "oh, you scale past goblins really fast, those are just trash mobs".

If valuing the sanctity of each sapient life is supposed to be a criticism of minion rules, it is identically a criticism of D&D--every version.

For goodness' sake, the 1e Fighter specifically got a bunch of attacks so they could lay low a bunch of weak targets in a single turn. Like that was the whole point of that class feature, to mow through a whole bunch of targets really fast. This is something baked into D&D's DNA. To complain about it now, when it was never a problem before--to want to go back to what was already there? No dice. It's special pleading, plain and simple. We must make an exception to excise a thing that D&D has already been doing and which the current edition explicitly made as one of its design goals.

Well, you know how I feel. If you want to pursue different design goals, don't make a new edition. Make a new game.

 

[Lanefan]

For the opening of the door I prefer a consistent DC. It reminds me of the skill tables provided in 3.x with set DCs for checks.

Ok, we're good on that one.

For a monster though, given how
abstract hit points are, +
how the design behind encounters is ever changing because it is not an exact science, + the intricacies of high level play, +
the tediousness of tracking hit points in large complex fights, +
the ability to emulate certain fantasy tropes

The latter two points there are not really considerations of mine. If I'm throwing a horde of high-hit-point monsters at the party then I-as-DM an willingly taking on the task of tracking all those hit points. And I'm not much for emulating fantasy tropes unless it happens by chance.

Now lets explore when you say "the challenge is what it is"
To who, to what? The PCs.

To the setting at large including the PCs. If a monster takes just one hit point to knock down when a PC strikes it then IMO that should be true for any and every NPC who strikes it as well, whether there's PCs around at the time or not.

In broader terms, the setting shouldn't be modifying itself on the fly just because some PCs walked in.

Why is this consistency important?
(A) Simulation?

Yes.

Ok but what if I don't value D&D's version of simulation given how so much of it feels metagame-y or abstract anyways?

Some parts of it are not metagamey or abstract, though, and this is one such place. Simulation says the mechanics of a monster - including its hit points which reflect its toughness and resilience - should be consistent at a given point in time without regard for what that monster is doing or who it is facing.

(B) So players know the boardgame state? Well there are two options here.
1. The DM informs the PCs of the minions on the board. For 3 reasons I can think of:
(i) The DM would determine that that information would be known based on the character's experience.
(ii) That information need not be secret when elevating gamism and combat by in large is testing the players in a tactical mini-game.
(iii) The players would be aware at high levels at least who is a minion and who would not be. The boardgame state would not remain the same from 1st to 15th level. Thus the players would adapt.

In a full-on gamist milieu I can see this. However, I'm not after that full-on gamist situation. I want fog of war, with resulting info gaps leading to not-always-perfect decision-making - just like it'd be in reality.

2. The DM doesn't inform the PCs of the minions on the board. For 1 reason I can think of.
(i) To trick players into using more resources unnecessarily. IMO it works like a bad gotcha. Lose more than you gain at the table and in the fiction with such a policy.

So? If the PCs can't tell the difference between a minion Orc and a "real" Orc then the players shouldn't know which is which either; and as (if memory serves) part of the point of minions is that you can't tell them apart until they start going down easy, this would seem to match the intent. They have to learn the "boardgame state" as they go, and by the time they do it's too late anyway as the combat's over.

 

[Lanefan]

But my simulationism!

I'm simulating physics, not history.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

"Take a different approach" in this case has to mean not being what D&D has been--either in thematics, or in mathematics.

People want small numbers. People want it to be guaranteed that you outscale weak creatures. And people want absolute diegetic processes and never ever ever ever ever simplifying things with game mechanics when they deem it an unnecessary simplification.

These three things cannot all be true at the same time.

You must choose one of them you wish to break. The combination of the three cannot all happen; even getting both of the first two is already an extremely difficult thing and possibly not achievable!

Choose which one you want to break; but you must choose one. There literally is no other option--unless we abandon the core thematic and structural processes that make it "D&D" (e.g. removing combat would obviously get rid of this problem but I don't think that would be acceptable!)

 

[Aldarc]

I'm simulating physics, not history.

That is a bug and not a feature due to my dogmatic sense of OneTrueWayism which does not permit me to fairly assess other people's play preferences.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A somewhat hyperbolic take, that.

The rules are malleable but once that process is done, they're still rules; only (ideally) better ones. Nobody worth their salt is changing things on a whim.

Then you assert there are a lot of GMs not worth their salt.

WotC doesn't need to send out the Pinkerton's. Why? Because the underlying designs of all three of their editions makes them much more difficult to kitbash than were the TSR editions, and my gut hunch is that this was-is a deliberate choice either at the design level or (less likely) the corporate level.

"Kitbashing" 99.99% of the time means "the rules are merely suggestions".

You are extremely unusual in this regard. You are literally the only person I've ever met who treats their new rules as actual rules, and not as provisional suggestions that can, and frequently will, get overridden (indeed, overwritten) at the drop of a hat.

Subsystem based design (TSR) vs unified design (WotC).

With unified design, pretty much all one can do is complain about it; because it's nearly impossible to fix anything significant without causing enough knock-on effects that after one thing finally finishes leading to another you've almost rewritten the whole game from scratch.

Nah. It's not that hard. You're just used to working with things where it's a dozen broken piecemeal systems rather than a single clearinghouse with a few busted windows.

Besides, isn't this what "exception-based design" is precisely supposed to capture? Specific beats general. Write your specific thing. The general rule still always applies when the specific exception isn't relevant. How does that not do precisely what you want, while also giving all the benefits of an otherwise-general system?

With subsystem based design, changes made within one subsystem don't often have many if any knock-on effects in other subsystems; meaning you can rewrite or change or add or drop something safe in the knowledge you're probably not shattering the overall design by so doing.

And yes, part of the point is that each table ends up with its own houserules binder and thus its own more or less unique game.

In other words, there is no game. Only the suggestions this group will adhere to or ignore whenever their lord and master GM feels like today.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, you know how I feel. If you want to pursue different design goals, don't make a new edition. Make a new game.

Sure. I don't think I said anything that disagrees with that.

I was responding to a criticism that claimed minions were specially worthy of exclusion, because they have the consequence of devaluing sapient lives by pretending that a large number of "demonized" enemies slaughtered without a single death of our beloved allies is a fair exchange (or the like).

I called this argument out as BS, because that's something that's been intentionally hard-coded into D&D's rules since at least 1e, possibly earlier (I don't know when the "extra attacks" thing got written, perhaps OD&D?) If rules inducing this belief are a problem, then D&D has always had it. Minions aren't special--the whole game is at fault.

If someone wants to avert this particular aspect of D&D, they're going to have to take a stand against a hell of a lot more than just minion rules, and--as you say--they're probably going to need to create a new game rather different from D&D.

As it stands, minions are just another example of a long-running D&D trope that it derived from its inspirations (like swashbuckling/fencing in film).

 

[Lanefan]

Out of interest how much of 2e's Handbooks, 3e, 4e's Rituals, or 5e has found its way into your table's game?

Relatively little. A fair bit of what became core 2e was in our games before 2e came out as we'd had the same ideas on our own. Didn't follow all the later splats very closely but I did steal a fair number of spells from later 2e.

From 3e, the main thing I swiped was the Sorcerer's casting mechanics - all my casters work that way now. Didn't like 4e's rituals, and they don't fit in with a hard-limit slot system in any case. Haven't taken anything from 5e really - thought about doing something with BIFTs then gave up on it.

One thing I've given lots of thought to but haven't ever got around to doing anything concrete with is pulling 4e's bloodied mechanic across. It has gobs of potential; even more so as we already use a body-fatigue hit point system.

And how do you incorporate new rules - the table voted, the DMs (as I know it's more than just you) or you alone?

Depends on the rule and how far-reaching it is.

For things like spell tweaks, it's usually the DMs' doing after (sometimes very!) long discussion. For other things it's often an outcome of ideas and informal discussion over the long term that I or we then crystallize into something solid. And for other things (especially things that haven't entered or impacted play yet) or trivial stuff it's DM prerogative.

An example: over the last few years some of us DMs, players, and interested others have been loosely booting around the idea of what a Swashbuckler class might look like in our games. A month or two back one of my players (who has also done some DMing) threw together some actual mechanics for a Swash which got discussed some; I took this and built from there, and now have the class fully written up.

When or if I'll get to introduce it and-or run it out for playtest, however, is a very open question. I don't like making big changes like this in mid-flight, and the current campaign shows no signs of running out of steam anytime soon. That said, there's various other long-discussed and pretty big changes also waiting in the wings which also really can't be introduced without a full reboot, so who knows?

 

[Lanefan]

"Take a different approach" in this case has to mean not being what D&D has been--either in thematics, or in mathematics.

People want small numbers. People want it to be guaranteed that you outscale weak creatures. And people want absolute diegetic processes and never ever ever ever ever simplifying things with game mechanics when they deem it an unnecessary simplification.

I think it's the second point here that's the outlier: I don't think people want it to be guaranteed that you outscale weak creatures, they just want it to be more likely. It's the whole flatter power curve piece I keep banging on about.

Given that, small(ish) numbers and diegetic processes can have the field.

These three things cannot all be true at the same time.

You must choose one of them you wish to break. The combination of the three cannot all happen; even getting both of the first two is already an extremely difficult thing and possibly not achievable!

Choose which one you want to break; but you must choose one. There literally is no other option--unless we abandon the core thematic and structural processes that make it "D&D" (e.g. removing combat would obviously get rid of this problem but I don't think that would be acceptable!)

Easy. Break the second one by dropping the expectation that PCs are demigods at high level (or, I suppose, abandon high-level design entirely and have the game soft-cap at about 10th; but there has to be a better way than that).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it's the second point here that's the outlier: I don't think people want it to be guaranteed that you outscale weak creatures, they just want it to be more likely. It's the whole flatter power curve piece I keep banging on about.

That is what AlViking had demanded, though. That if something "becomes a minion", it is only and exclusively because things have been outscaled.

Hence: anything strong early on MUST eventually scale down to minion status--killable in a single hit, if you can hit them.

Given that, small(ish) numbers and diegetic processes can have the field.

You've broken the trilemma by simply choosing to ignore one of the three prongs. Not exactly solving the problem.

Easy. Break the second one by dropping the expectation that PCs are demigods at high level (or, I suppose, abandon high-level design entirely and have the game soft-cap at about 10th; but there has to be a better way than that).

Then nothing becomes a minion because only the absolute weakest enemies--CR <1--are weak enough to be outscaled.

The scaling is required. The small numbers are required. And the other considerations are required. You are embarked; you can't have a system that accomplishes all three things. You're wanting a system that rejects something most players specifically desire it to have.