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

[Maxperson]

Weren't people telling me earlier that minion mechanics weren't about narrative, but were instead Gamist in nature? Or were you not in that camp?

Oh, right. People were fighting tooth and nail for it not to be narrative and instead gamist. I didn't see @Umbran in that group, though.

 

[Cadence]

@Maxperson on the other hand, it would be fun to work out the economy and culture of a place where most people (commoners) only used clubs as weapons, and ditto for all other NPC classes only using the weapon listed in the MM.

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson on the other hand, it would be fun to work out the economy and culture of a place where most people (commoners) only used clubs as weapons, and ditto for all other NPC classes only using the weapon listed in the MM.

How would such a culture even come about, and why would the PCs be an exception to a cultural practice that widespread? It might be fun for you, but that doesn't sound like my idea of fun.

 

[Cadence]

How would such a culture even come about, and why would the PCs be an exception to a cultural practice that widespread? It might be fun for you, but that doesn't sound like my idea of fun.

I think I meant "could" and had a wrong letter and missing quotes!

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Question: what's the functional difference between giving minions a damage threshold and just leaving them with the hit points they would have had were they not minions?

Again, though, what's the functional difference between this and just leaving them their normal hit points?

I don't have to track them on my scrap sheet behind the GM screen. They get hit ..they die. No tracking conditions and any other kind of overhead....they get hit ..they die. Or they don't die and get knocked out. Or they run away. Or they cower in the corner because they are scared of big bad hero character.

Once again....the rules exist to serve the narrative. 0HP doesn't have to mean they were literally slaughtered if the fiction works better otherwise.

I have been in this board a long long time and I know that you and I have almost polar opposite views of how RPGs "work" for us. I never let a rule bar me from telling the story I want to tell.

No 10 year old with a handheld rock is going to kill an ogre....unless the narrative presents an opportunity for them to do so. I don't hem and haw about the rules behind minions....because I just view those files as an additional color in my paint set.

I usually used minions to represent distant does that weren't directly engaged in a battle....like archers on a castle wall. If a player wanted to give up an important combat round to deal with that threat....then they can. I don't need to track 40 archers on a walls I dividual HP anymore than I need to actually roll 40 attacks against the players because they are there.

Instead an Infinitely more interesting and dynamic battlefield can be had by having those archers provide "damaging zones" on the map akin to trap damage when moved through or forcing attacks at disadvantage as the players are constantly keeping their head on a swivel to avoid getting pincushioned.

Everyone has different play styles and you are arguing strictly from a sumulationist standpoint against the idea of minions when you have never used them in (my sole opinion) the context in which they were designed to be used.