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

[Faolyn]

I wouldn't know, as I didn't buy any 3.5 stuff (I already had 3e).

I'm pretty sure there's something similar in 3e, but I can't find my copy and I can't find the 3e books online to check. I did, however, manage to find the 4e DMG and that also had a section on house rules.

Interesting to see that, though. I'll have to borrow a friend's book and see what it has to say.

And then in another part of the book he'd exhort DMs to change rules as desired to make the game their own.

He wasn't exactly a paragon of consistency, ol' EGG.

He's right about firearms, though: including them really does butcher the romanticized medieval or early-Renaissance feel the original game is-was going for.

But it would still be D&D. Just not his personal vision of D&D, and why should anyone be limited to that? It's great to have that as an option, but dull if that's your only option.

Besides, if you want your game to be Tolkienesque and/or Medieval/Renaissance, then you need to ditch most of the magic ("Gandalf was a 5th-level wizard"), and most of the monsters as well, or make massive changes to them.

 

[AlViking]

No. They aren't a threat. That's the problem. The 50 peasants (or 100 peasants, or whatever it was) are functionally guaranteed to kill the dragon.

That's the problem with this alleged "solution". It makes the "minions" too powerful.

The dragon will likely die if you heavily, heavily stack the odds in favor of the peasants. Assuming commoner stats, make it a young black dragon, arm them with longbows. Perfectly positioned to all get shots off without losing a significant percentage each round. It could hypothetically happen.

Yes, a sufficiently large mob of CR 0 monsters/NPCs with the appropriate weapons, setup and opportunity can be a threat to high CR monsters or higher level characters for that matter. That was a conscious design choice.

But what does that have to do with minions?

 

[Faolyn]

To answer the OP. People have certain preferences, and like to stick with them.

Maybe they aren't necessarily resistant to change, but genuinely don't like the changes.

People don't like changes because:

(1) they're new, and new is scary
(2) because change implies that the way you've been playing is old-fashioned or out-of-date or even just plain wrong and how dare you say that
(3) because many changes are designed to make things simpler, which makes some people unhappy because they had to walk uphill both ways with no shoes in order to kill orcs, and if it was good enough for them it should be good enough for you.
(4) they got used to the old ways and don't want to learn new things.

I've found it fairly uncommon that people have other reasons than those.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You don’t need to use any term to say that you dislike minion mechanics.

Well I'm sorry my misuse of your favored jargon offended you. I have noticed minion mechanics are often appreciated (or at least better tolerated) by those who also tend to favor Narrativist-leaning games. Coincidence?

 

[Cadence]

RE: Minions

D&D stat blocks and combat mechanics provide a probabilistic model of combat. Like every model, there are strengths and weaknesses. And like almost every model it only extends so far. Even Newtonian physics breaks down at cases where you close in on relativistic and quantum settings. In terms of tests about reading ability, a method called vertical scaling allows reading tests at adjacent grade levels to be very comparable -- but what constitutes reading ability changes a lot if one wants to look at all of 1st through 12th grade and having 1st and 12th graders take the same test would be silly. Two dimensional maps work great for small patches of the eartj, but have obvious problems when one wants the entire surface of the planet in one go. Is there any reason a sports rating system that works very well predicting expected point spreads and standard errors for top division teams should still work if you start mixing in teams several divisions down, say from pros to JV high school teams, and then see how they work when they play each other?

I'm not sure why D&D should be different. Even if low CR monsters and the rules work well for combat with players levels 1-5, another batch of CR monsters are great for 6-10, still higher CR work great for 11-15, and the highest are great for levels 16-20, is there any reason one stat block and set of rules should accurately model it when things at the two extremes are being compared? It strikes me as entirely reasonable that when the extremes are reached that a single model should break down.

Is having separate minion and standard not-minion stat blocks for the same monster just another way of modeling creatures - the minion one good at capturing what's happening when the player level is much much above the standard CR for the monster? And should mixing vastly different power levels in combat cause strange things?

Random notes I didn't fit in:

• Swarms?
• Is the difficulty in modeling vast differences in power levels and getting them to play nicely a much bigger thing in some super hero games?
• Is the problem viewed differently by folks who cut their teeth on D&D a long time ago when parties might have characters of vastly different levels (oops, dead, make a new level-one) vs. one where the replacement characters drop in at the same level they left?
• Is the need for rules that work differently in different situations obvious in cases like falling damage rules that don't have a maximum height for damage or don't account for cases where the person is dropped from orbit onto a stony plateau?

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is entirely aside from Micah's kind of kneejerk reaction to anything smacking of non-simulationist reasons.

For the record I fully admit and am unashamed of my personal bias in this area.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I really do have to question how ongoing PvP approaches to things would work barring "PC Glow". And why I'd bother to keep playing with someone who habitually did this, even if I didn't know about it in-character.

What is "PC glow"?

 

[Cadence]

People don't like changes because:

(1) they're new, and new is scary
(2) because change implies that the way you've been playing is old-fashioned or out-of-date or even just plain wrong and how dare you say that
(3) because many changes are designed to make things simpler, which makes some people unhappy because they had to walk uphill both ways with no shoes in order to kill orcs, and if it was good enough for them it should be good enough for you.
(4) they got used to the old ways and don't want to learn new things.

I've found it fairly uncommon that people have other reasons than those.

"Most people who've had the same favorite movie, book, actor, cuisine, restaurant, ttrpg, character class, type of pet, sandwich, style of beer, theory of games, subject in school, vacation place, or etc... for any extended period of time, have likely only stuck with it because they're scared, lazy, and/or have sunk-costs." ?

 

[Faolyn]

If by "interpretation" you mean, doing what the text of the rules said to do, I agree. The other argument I see is that you don't use the rules provided. There is text about using skills the DM hadn't considered or other benefits not connected to the skill challenge and, of course, not everything is a skill challenge. But for the challenge itself? It was X successes before Y failures and every character must contribute. I'm sure some tables did alternatives, I know I did after a while. I don't remember is the later DMGs or Essentials changed things or not, it's been too long.

From the 4e DMG, I just don't see any wiggle room.
The Basics
To deal with a skill challenge, the player characters make skill checks to accumulate a number of successful skill uses before they rack up too many failures and end the encounter.
Example: The PCs seek a temple in dense jungle.
Achieving six successes means they find their way. Accruing three failures before achieving the successes, however, indicates that they get themselves hopelessly lost in the wilderness.

I'm seeing an example, which is very different from a hard rule. Is there anything in there that says that you must have six successes before three failures; that you can't change it to five successes before four failures, or best out of three? Or that failure must mean becoming helplessly lost instead of circling back to their starting position?

Heck, is there anything that says you must do the goal of seeking a temple in a jungle as a skill challenge? That you can't let the players do a hexcrawl or just turn the whole thing into a montage and say "three days and many bug bites later, you're at the temple"?

It seems like there's plenty of wiggle room here.

The reason for everyone contributing is so that every player can do something, so that none of them feel left out. Is that a bad rule? There are times when it can be bad, such as when that one player truly has no skills they can contribute or their contributions would be unhelpful (which makes for great roleplay!), but that doesn't mean the rule itself is bad. Nor does it mean you can't let someone sit out once in a while.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People don't like changes because:

(1) they're new, and new is scary
(2) because change implies that the way you've been playing is old-fashioned or out-of-date or even just plain wrong and how dare you say that
(3) because many changes are designed to make things simpler, which makes some people unhappy because they had to walk uphill both ways with no shoes in order to kill orcs, and if it was good enough for them it should be good enough for you.
(4) they got used to the old ways and don't want to learn new things.

I've found it fairly uncommon that people have other reasons than those.

So you've ruled out the possibility that a person may prefer their way of doing things because it is better for them, or they believe the newer way is worse? That is an extremely bleak and uncharitable way to look at other human beings, as it assumes that right-thinking people would look at the situation "rationally" and of course agree with you that the newer method is superior, and if they don't, it must be because of one of your four very petty and fearful reasons, right?