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

[Lanefan]

See, again, this is the whole 6 impossible things before breakfast.

HP make zero sense. AC is an abstraction that makes virtually no sense.

I somewhat disagree. Though neither is perfect, hit points make sense to a (pardon the pun) point as a measure of toughness and resilience and AC is as good an abstraction of defense as we're likely to get without it becoming umplayably complex.

Rounds, turns, all make no sense. Stop motion combat makes no sense.

Agreed; but there's ways around these things - again, to a point - via using more fluid game mechanics and narration.

Classes do not exist in the game world.

IMO they very much do, just like professions exist in our world.

Skills do not exist in the game world - one does not train "athletics" so that they are equally good (or bad) at jumping, swimming and climbing - all of which are completely different skill sets.

Skills exist. The clumping of different discrete abilities under the same skill, however, makes little to no sense. That said, other than some very bespoke thieving skills I've never been a fan of D&D's skill systems in any edition.

Space/reach or 5 foot squares make very little sense.

Space-reach makes lots of sense from a sim perspective. 5-foot squares do not, but it's easy enough to ignore them.

Terminology serves the game. Full stop. You accept a shed load of completely non-sensical terms that describe nothing in the game world.

As just shown above, I don't necessarily accept as much of it as being nonsensical as you might think.

 

[AlViking]

Again, you're insisting that I'm stating a preference. I have zero problems with the mechanic. The mechanics are perfectly fine. Good grief, I have and do play D&D for a very, very long time. I obviously don't have a problem with the mechanics.

My problem is this interpretation of the mechanics where people are insisting on deigetics where none exist. HP don't mean anything. Yes, dropping below zero does, but, taking 5 points of damage, 15 points of damage or a 105 points of damage doesn't tell us anything so long as the character still has 1 hp.

You are completely free to interpret these results in any manner you choose. That's why the mechanics have no actual connection to the game world. Any and all interpretations are equally valid so long as they do not violate the "falls unconcious at 0" rule.

But that's what I was talking about - HP and AC do exist in the world, they are diegetic. Turns are just a simple abstract way of representing action that is also diegetic.

You don't have to view them as diegetic as I do, your choice. We just disagree on what diegetic means it has nothing to do with preference.

 

[James Gasik]

To be fair, I just checked the 4e PHB, and it appears that you can choose not to kill things with energy attacks. I stand corrected. Page 295 says you can knock creatures unconscious when you reduce it to 0 or less HP.

Which is the rule that over rules the Minions description, as it is an option for the player. There is nowhere that states that this option is not an option when fighting minions. The "Minions are destroyed at 0" is simply a shortcut description that also means that you shouldn't bother with death saves for minions.

But, again, at no point are the players forced to kill minions.

Obviously, I no longer have the evidence, but I did once ask Cust Serv about knocking out a minion. Now granted, the WotC Cust Serv department was notorious for sometimes contradictory rulings, so take this with a grain of salt, but my group had a Barbarian with the ability to deal thunder damage to nearby enemies when he bloodied one of them. We kept having problems with minions, and I recalled reading somewhere that enemies brought to 0 hit points that aren't killed count as bloodied.

So I asked about knocking out a minion, leaving it at 0 hp, and was told that was perfectly acceptable. My DM at the time was less thrilled when the Barbarian knocked out a minion to then immediately kill it and it's buddies with his thunder shout, however!

 

[Maxperson]

From the DMG "A minion is destroyed when it takes any amount of damage."

Destroyed isn't defined anywhere that I can find. Since it's not defined, and a creature(which a minion 100% is) reduced to 0 can be rendered unconscious instead of killed, destroyed effectively equals dead.

Edit: Language from the DMG also indicates that they are interchangeable.

"However, to destroy a god requires more than merely striking its physical form down with spell or sword. Gods have killed other gods (Asmodeus being the first to do so), and the primordials killed many gods during their great war."

Destroy and kill are being used to mean the same thing in this passage.

 

[Maxperson]

Yikes! Using the word "destroyed" seems a little much in this case. Maybe something like "overcome" or "defeated" would've been better.

Looking at the 4e books, destroy is typically used to indicate objects and not anything alive, however it's used with minions, and again interchangeably with kill when referring to gods. There's no reason for me to think that it's not also used interchangeably with minions which are creatures, and therefore subject to the rules for unconsciousness.

 

[Hussar]

What's the difference between destroyed and killed? I've looked through the first three books and I don't see destroyed defined anywhere.

The difference is, we can twist "destroyed" into some sort of mechanical meaning that suits a specific interpretation that is not supported otherwise. After all, the specific rule is that the player can always choose (in 4e) not to kill something. But, if we insist that "destroyed" is some sort of mechanic, then it bypasses that rule and supports the mental gymnastics required to argue that minions are some sort of colonialist leaning mechanic.