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

[Enrahim]

So you find 4e minions to fit the reality that we inhabit ourselves, but not that they should be destroyed by any amount of damage?

I would rather abandon the narrow minded understanding of "destroyed" than abandon basic structural integrity of humans, yes. I think that seem like the most reasonable interpretation of the rules text. I accept the minion to be "destroyed" in a more gamey-sense, as I have outlined.

Would you apply that to every piece of rules text? So that DMs ought to narrate precisely and only what that text says? I suspect that runs into problems all over the place (such as some warlord powers, things that were never alive "dying", fireballs knocking creatures unconscious, and of course the notorious tripping cube.)

I think that has actually been the opposite that has been my point? That I think "sensible" narration should trump narrow minded interpretation of rules text? What I tried to demonstrate was the ultimate consequence of insisting on the kind of "strict" reading you seem to propose - to highlight the problem with such an approach.

EDIT This does raise an interesting question around the expected linkage between rules text and narration. Here I would likely echo something you said above, e.g. that "destroyed" requires upholding a system state (e.g. of no further actions, for a creature) but that it is narrated taking into consideration other inputs (like what it is, that in this instance is destroyed.)

Yes, I agree this is an interesting take. How strongly linked are the rules language and the in fiction language? I think this is strongly related to the long running conversation of diegetic. If "minions" are diegetic has been talked about to some length, but a similar question can be asked about the "destruction" of the minions.

Seeing as they wrote that is what they intended, I believe them. They want player characters to carve through minions like butter.

Ref the above, they don't write what they mean by "destroy" neither in terms of actual game mechanics, nor in terms of in fiction result. Strictly speaking what they introduce is a "tag" that is hardly ever referenced anywhere.

What is even worse is that if we have your interpretation that this "destroy" overrides the kill/unconcious rule, even the formulation "HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion." make the only defined effect of going to 0 hp to be that the creature get that tag; and the only relevant connection I could find between the tag and more general rules is that that tag causes a creature with that tag to not get a turn in combat. (Edit: Even the duration of the tag doesn't seem to be specified. There are abilities that removes the tag ref Lich, or Wight reanimate. Demons also automatically get the tag erased without it being specified how fast)

I can absolutely believe the designers might have wanted the player characters to carve trough minions like butter. But I still don't accept the claim that they wrote it. The text we are analyzing is far too open for many interpretations, for me to accept that your proposed interpretation is the "one and only" interpretation.

As I stated going into this discussion, I'm willing to investigate this narrow rules point out of curiousity. Perforce we are getting into rules detail. You have (appropriately for this conversation) raised all sorts of nitpicky notions in reply. We're able to analyze rules on more than one level, surely?

I am very interested in engaging in nitpicky detail discussions regarding fine nuances in formulation. What I wanted to bring attention to is that this is what we seem to be doing. I wanted to contrast this with the higher level discussion about the virtues of minions as an abstract concept. Some of your posts seem to have made claims regarding the latter, while the argumentation has seemingly only been applicable to a certain narrow specific implementation (that I am not sure anyone actually has ever been playing by).

Have you ever heard anyone excitingly talking about how they caused ogres to evaporate with their sword arts? I have not.

 

[Enrahim]

Would you apply that to every piece of rules text? So that DMs ought to narrate precisely and only what that text says? I suspect that runs into problems all over the place (such as some warlord powers, things that were never alive "dying", fireballs knocking creatures unconscious, and of course the notorious tripping cube.)

Ah I think I might have misread this point. I think you point toward a slightly different issue than what I had in mind. The tripping cube is an excellent example. Here we have a situation where not only the "language" is inappropriate; but that the mechanical effects involved make no sense in-fiction. At this point I think we are in a situation where we cannot find an outcome that satisfices both the desired properties of the fiction, and any reasonable interpretation of the rules. One have to give.

Fireball knocking unconscious I understand why some find problematic, but it doesn't strain my in-fiction sensibilities too much; so here I would be comfortable with the more straight-forward rules text, and rather accept some flexibility in effect of pain in the fiction. For the "dying" never alive, I think fall into the same category as "destroy" that I would take it as rules text, where the rules effects are fine, but we need to do some legwork ourselves to translate that into appropriate in-fiction narrative terms.

Which identifies 3 categories of "friction", and you raise a highly interesting point in how to identify which is which? I think it boils down to what come to mind.

If someone manage to come up with a way to describe a in-fiction tripped cube that resonate with me, even if a bit contrived that would resolve that situation. If this description is based upon the cube sensibly becoming flat in the fiction, or trough some clever explanation how it might make sense to get the relevant mechanical effects despite the cube still being a cube is sort of irrelevant. If I was presented with both a contrived, but acceptable in-fiction tweak, and a somewhat contrived rules interpretation, I really don't know what I would go for.

I think I illustrated that in my joke some pages back with the tight skinned Ogre. This resolves the fiction of the destroyed minion. Why would I prefer reading "destroyed" widely, over this solution? Objectively I cannot see any strong features making one preferable over the other - so I guess it has to boil down to taste?