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

[Lanefan]

Would anyone be having this discussion about the morality of minion mechanics if you didn't also dislike minion mechanics for non-moralistic reasons?

I dislike minion mechanics. However, I also disagree with the moralistic argument being used against them; if for no other reason than I prefer modern morals be left in the real world while our games each have their own.

 

[Lanefan]

If the text of the module has to reduce a thousands of years old dragon to a newbie imbecile in order for the group to even have a chance, then they had no chance to begin with.

Side note: in a module I wrote and ran a few years ago I kinda did just this: a big ol' Blue Dragon that in her prime would have summarily slaughtered the party was, when they found her, falling apart due to what seemed like sheer old age. Blind, decrepit, slow, arthritic - she was a shadow of her former self physically. She still had her brains and guile, however, and still breathed lightning for a rather stupid amount of damage (save for half) thus was still threat enough to drag two PCs down with her.

Later they found her wretched condition was caused by a very magical crystal (which also happened to be what the party was there to find) she had eaten 50-odd ago that had slowly been killing her from the inside out ever since.

 

[Hussar]

I'm cherry picking?! You've reduced dragon power by a huge margin by not doing max hit points when it breathes. The fact is, the group has no idea that dragons breath anything and if it cast sleep nothing happened, then it followed it up t hat nothing with like 6 points of damage from a magic missile. The party wouldn't even know to spread out or run before the breath killed them.

What resources does the party have? Magic missile? One bow? This group is probably missing with most of its attacks and doing very little damage.

If the text of the module has to reduce a thousands of years old dragon to a newbie imbecile in order for the group to even have a chance, then they had no chance to begin with. And as for cherry picking what a dragon does, that's the DM's job! He runs the monsters, especially dragons, as they should be run, not as incompetent boobs.

Also, I pointed out why the group is going to go to the building. Having a single intact building in a large ruins is some of the strongest player bait that there is. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. They're almost always going to investigate that outlier.

Ok, what?

The people in Dragonlance know what dragons are. It wasn't that long ago that dragons left. One bow? This is a fifth and sixth level party at this point that has been through multiple combats with enemies with bows. Raistlin has Web by this point. Good grief, every character that can use one STARTS with a bow. It's not like this is the first encounter of the module. This is 3/4 the way through. And read the encounter again. The PLAZA where the dragon comes out of the WELL is not the undamaged building. They pass by the well and unless they stop and look into it, the encounter doesn't happen.

Oh, and are we going to insist on rules? That means Mr. Dragon doesn't get wingover (that's a later module addition). Means that the dragon can only turn 60 degrees in its round and must move at least half its movement to stay airborn. Mr. Dragon can only attack once every three rounds from the air because he spends two rounds turning around. (Look up Maneuverability Class C)

Can we please let this go? As much fun as this is, it's kinda beside the point.

 

[clearstream]

Where I'm just fine with the alteration to morality. If I want real-world morals, such as they are, all I have to do is look around. But if the game is going to set itself in faux-medieval times with dashes of more ancient cultures e.g. Greek, Roman, etc. then mostly hewing to the morals of those cultures - or changing them in-fiction only after careful thought - would seem to make sense. Trying to overlay modern-day morals en masse onto an otherwise supposedly-medieval setting would seem self-defeating.

I don't believe 4e plausibly hews to the morals of ancient or medieval cultures. That version incorporates alignment -- "A character's alignment (or lack thereof) describes his or her moral stance."

That doesn't matter to parts of your argument, but for me it scotches any worries about incorporating contemporary morals into our imagined worlds. And the latest versions of D&D do that quite openly.

That noted, I can enjoy worlds that alter morality in specific ways: I don't feel bound to make the imagined morality the same as our own. Reenactment morality does appear in some game texts. Dogs in the Vineyard could be one of the better examples.  Bushido another.

 

[Hussar]

I don't believe 4e plausibly hews to the morals of ancient or medieval cultures. That version incorporates alignment -- "A character's alignment (or lack thereof) describes his or her moral stance."

No version of D&D hews to the morals of ancient or medieval cultures. Never has. Look at the definitions of Law and Good in any edition and that is most certainly NOT ancient or medieval morality. Not by a long shot.

But, the argument that we shouldn't have minion mechanics because it's morally wrong? Uhh, no, I'm not buying that one, like at all. Not even a little. Never minding that you can have construct minions or demonic minions or undead minions, all of which you can make a fairly solid argument that there is zero morality involved in destroying any of them, the rabbit hole of "killing is immoral" is not one that is going to be settled by D&D alignment.

Either killing is evil, so, killing ANYTHING is evil, so minion or not minion doesn't really matter, or morality is more nuanced and we cannot make blanket absolutist statements, in which case minion or not minion doesn't really matter since it's going to depend on so many other factors that how many HP a monster has is so far down the list of criteria that it might as well not exist at all.

 

[clearstream]

No version of D&D hews to the morals of ancient or medieval cultures. Never has. Look at the definitions of Law and Good in any edition and that is most certainly NOT ancient or medieval morality. Not by a long shot.

Agreed, that's what I was saying, too.

But, the argument that we shouldn't have minion mechanics because it's morally wrong? Uhh, no, I'm not buying that one, like at all. Not even a little. Never minding that you can have construct minions or demonic minions or undead minions, all of which you can make a fairly solid argument that there is zero morality involved in destroying any of them, the rabbit hole of "killing is immoral" is not one that is going to be settled by D&D alignment.

It looks like you've missed the many posts of discussion that have covered all this.

Either killing is evil, so, killing ANYTHING is evil, so minion or not minion doesn't really matter, or morality is more nuanced and we cannot make blanket absolutist statements, in which case minion or not minion doesn't really matter since it's going to depend on so many other factors that how many HP a monster has is so far down the list of criteria that it might as well not exist at all.

It does seem right to say that I see different game mechanisms and narratives of violence in differing lights. It sounds like you don't. I'd be surprised if we can make any more ground than that.