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

[AnotherGuy]

I'd say a lot more 40% 50% 10%. Walk into any game store and your sure to find a mix of Bad and Average DMs.....and no Good DM in sight.

I have a feeling @jasper plays in game stores...poor jasper

 

[Micah Sweet]

And another reason is that depending on the game and edition and the number of opponents on each side, combat can take a long time, and be very boring when it's not your turn. Using minions so you don't have to slog your way through multiple hours or even sessions just on the faceless hordes is an incredible time saver. Especially if the game allows you to attack multiple minions in a turn. Like AD&D2e and Daggerheart.

The fact that minions are also a narrative tool to support the idea of a group of badasses is a bonus.

Or my reason about the narrative is the primary, and your reason about ease of use is the bonus? Or maybe both are equal? Who knows?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I assume this in reference to D&D. If WotC made official D&D stuff I liked better than 1e and 2e's work, I'd consider it. But to me they dont, not in aggregate and certainly not at present.

It was tongue-and-cheek, but I strongly suspect Lanefan would actually enjoy our table, despite the differences we have in playstyles.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I addressed that: "I've found it fairly uncommon that people have other reasons than those." I don't see people showing data as to why they don't like a thing. And a lot of the time, when they do show data, they are objectively misunderstanding it, or are doing things like ignoring the fact that their favored game has the same thing or that they play the same way but with a different name.

Why is a new thing worse? Sure, (generic) you can say "Meh, it's not for me" or even "I just prefer the way it used to be done," but then (generic) you wouldn't be making hundreds of posts about why it's not for you, because why would you?

Like, you don't like narrative games for whatever reasons. OK. So why are you still talking about them? Nobody is actually forcing you to play one. Nobody is turning your favored edition of your game of choice into a narrative game. Worst scenario you'll ever have to face in reality is a potentially incompatible game preferences with someone else at your table.

Because I like talking about RPGs, and the kind of games I don't like keep coming up in seemingly every discussion. If I want to discuss the hobby in any significant way I have to address the narrative elephant in the room.

 

[AlViking]

Noooope. Don't need to "heavily, heavily stack the odds".

It's literally just like a hundred, hundred and fifty peasants with slings. That's all you need. "Perfectly positioned"? Not at all. Literally just don't cluster up and don't stand in a straight line.

A semicircular arc is good enough, or a couple arcs, or just scattered around in, say, a 60x60 square.

Dragons should not ever assault anything bigger than a..."hamlet" I think was the official term from the Gygaxian era? They'll straight-up die as long as the villagers are even remotely trying to defend themselves.

And if you think I'm wrong, prove it. Prove the dragon almost always survives. The math is there. You should be able to easily show that this isn't a problem. Presume 150 peasants distributed loosely across a field. Shouldn't be hard at all to show that an adult red dragon can essentially always survive that, as you're claiming.

Let me get this straight

• 150 peasants (why not 1,000? 10,000?)
• armed with slings at the ready
• all have clear shots at the dragon because it's an open field with no cover
• in formation so as to not be taken out by a breath weapon
• ready to attack the moment the dragon appears
• the dragon presumably then flies within 30 feet of all of them (the short range for a sling)

Is not having the odds heavily stacked against them? Wowzers.

What exactly are you trying to prove? That you can create a hypothetical scenario for suicidal dragons?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Like, you don't like narrative games for whatever reasons. OK. So why are you still talking about them? Nobody is actually forcing you to play one. Nobody is turning your favored edition of your game of choice into a narrative game. Worst scenario you'll ever have to face in reality is a potentially incompatible game preferences with someone else at your table.

Well, honestly, its not like complaining about things you don't like, even when you aren't forced to engage with them, is exactly uncommon in the world. Sometimes venting is venting.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ah. That happened in my last game session a week ago, but let me tell you, it would have played out very differently had I been a player and not the GM (and the other players weren't my kids).

Its been an extremely common thing since the start of the hobby, though often in more minor ways. I mean, the truth is, a lot of D&D and other sandboxy game parties are self-formed. If there's a character that's just, well, annoying to most of the group, why are they there? Because its another of your buddies and you don't want to make a big deal about it.

 

[Maxperson]

What criteria do you use to define a good, bad or mediocre GM's?

And why is it always on the shoulders of GM's? In my experience, I've seen more bad players than outright bad GM's

I don't think bad players are any more common per capita than bad DMs. It's just that there are a lot more players than DMs, so you encounter more of them.

 

[Older Beholder]

Being able to justify or rationalise your conservatism (often constantly and at great length), doesn’t make it any less exhausting.

 

[Lanefan]

As others have pointed out, once you get to the level where ogres are actually minions (in the normal sense of the word), they're not only not actually a real threat, but you're doing enough damage regularly that you're going to be wiping them out in one or two rounds anyway.

Like, I just did the math here. My current 5.14 character is a rogue (swashbuckler) 9/fighter 1 with a +1 rapier (with an extra +1 to damage from other sources) who acts as a front-line fighter most of the time. When I get sneak attack (which I can do a lot, since swashbucklers get them in 1v1 as well as the normal ways), I'm doing an average of 27-28 damage. A D&D 5.14 ogre has, on average, 59 hit points. Which means that, if it were just me and that ogre, I'd be killing them in two rounds. The fighter, monk, and casters we have do a lot of damage on their own. Most of the party has much better Dex scores than the ogres and so it's far more likely we go first in initiative, and while a greatclub can do a lot of damage, we can generally soak it if we get hit in the first place.

(According to WotC, 16th level in 4e, which is what that adventure's adventure was apparently for, can be converted to level 10-11 in 5e, so we're about equal, although I have no idea how to convert those ogres' AC of 26~.)

So really, what's the difference between these ogres and minion ogres with 1 hp? They barely last longer in 5e with 59 hp than they would have in 4e as 1 hp minions, and they're going to hit just as hard if they do manage to hit.

I suppose this does point out one difference I hadn't yet considered: non-Fighters hit much more reliably in 5e than in some earlier editions, which means math like this can even be usefully done.