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

[clearstream]

There is a difference between "meaningless" and "redundant". The claim has been that the text in question is the latter.

It sounds like you agree at the very least that what would be significant as rules text would be redundant as an observation. Here is the full paragraph.

A minion is destroyed when it takes any amount of damage. Damage from an attack or from a source that doesn’t require an attack roll (such as the paladin’s divine challenge or the fighter’s cleave) destroys a minion. If a minion is missed by an attack that normally deals damage on a miss, however, it takes no damage.​

Of the three sentences, one is chosen to be observation. How is this putative observation identified as such rather than picking some text to be rules and choosing other to be redundant observation? Or are none of the three sentences in that paragraph rules?

 

[Enrahim]

It sounds like you agree at the very least that what would be significant as rules text would be redundant as an observation. Here is the full paragraph.

A minion is destroyed when it takes any amount of damage. Damage from an attack or from a source that doesn’t require an attack roll (such as the paladin’s divine challenge or the fighter’s cleave) destroys a minion. If a minion is missed by an attack that normally deals damage on a miss, however, it takes no damage.​

Of the three sentences, one is chosen to be observation. How is this putative observation identified as such rather than picking some text to be rules and choosing other to be redundant observation? Or are none of the three sentences in that paragraph rules?

All the sentences would be redundant? The first 2 sentences describe in other words that it has 1 hp (what that means), while the third is a reformulation of the sentence written after the hp of every minion in the book (which clearly is spesific to the monster, and hence overrides the damage on miss entries with less sepecificity)

 

[Maxperson]

That sort of argument came up upthread. Essentially, the relevant game text is taken to be a meaningless observation whereas I am taking it to be a meaningful rule.

One principle that I apply to rules interpretation is that, given a choice between two interpretations, one of which voids the text of meaning, the interpretation that retains meaning in the text is preferable. That's not my only reason for interpreting as I do of course.

No text is being voided of meaning with what I'm saying. The text in the DMG simply means what the 1 hit point in the stat block means. D&D, and other games, quite often repeat information in multiple areas of the game.

What is happening is that we have two different meanings being attached to the statement in the 4e DMG. One which works along side the other rules of the game and sticks to the same meaning of destroyed as is used everywhere else when a monster is reduced to 0 by PC attacks. And one which treats this one use of destroyed the same as very explicitly well defined exceptions such as vampires being destroyed by sunlight.

You seem dead set on treating a vague use of destroyed, as is used when monsters such as undead, constructs, etc. are reduced to 0, like the few very specifically defined exceptions.

 

[clearstream]

All the sentences would be redundant? The first 2 sentences describe in other words that it has 1 hp (what that means), while the third is a reformulation of the sentence written after the hp of every minion in the book (which clearly is spesific to the monster, and hence overrides the damage on miss entries with less sepecificity)

Yes, and the whole paragraph is repeated in in the MM Glossary. Therefore to call out just one sentence as "redundant" isn't right: it's all redundant.

The third sentence is confirmed as a rule, seeing as it is repeated on every minion. So that text while redundant, is not just an observation. Clearly it doesn't cease to be a rule just because it's repeated.

It is therefore right to say that this paragraph containing three sentences contains at least one rule. To assert that the first two are observations becomes picking and choosing as there's nothing about those sentences that differentiates them from the third that the designers packaged them with.

I see why @Maxperson entertains it in support of their argument, but it continues to appear arbitrary. With no explanation for how text supposed to amount to needless observations is distinguished from rules. And giving "destroyed" a special meaning here when it is everywhere else used with consistency.