Why I think you should try 4e (renamed)

[Pbartender]

What are the cat statistics for - if it can't kill the Commoner, who can it use these attacks on?

...

Some designer thought it would be could to have some statistics for a cat, doesn't mean the system is flawed. It's just that the specific way he chose to model it with the system is flawed. That happens all the time.

They included cats for the sole purpose of being Wizards' familiars, of course. They needed the stats because the cat will be following the wizard around and will potentially be involved in the same combats the wizard is.

Had the cat been rendered unable to kill a commoner, inevitably someone would have complained, "A cat can't kill rats and birds, either... how's it going to eat?"

 

[jgbrowning]

I have to admit I've never understood "The rules must properly simulate activities for DM solo-play".

I would guess that's because no one's really advocating such. Well, that is not in the way that I believe you're stating.

There's more play in role-playing games than what just occurs between the players and the GM. For those who prefer playing in a pretend world that exists independently of the PCs, there's the game the GM (and the player) plays alone. In this aspect of roleplay the rules function not only as directions on what widgets can do what while at the table, but as guidelines to how to create a "pretend reality" wherein those (player or GM) who prefer to role-play as if the world exists independent of the PCs find help in creating that independent world based upon the rules expectations.

If there aren't characters in a scene, it fundamentally never happened.

As I said, one type of roleplaying is "The world exists to interact with the PCs" type, and what you've posted is the calling-card of that type. That isn't the only type of roleplaying, however.

I do understand that some people prefer symmetric/PC-neutral game designs, where you could run all that stuff without any players present and it'd work out the way you'd want it to. I'm not denigrating that preference. I just don't see that not fulfilling that preference is a design flaw.

IMO, the design flaw is that minions do not fulfill any other role except to exist to interact with the PCs. This leaves those who enjoy role-playing in worlds that pretend exist outside of the PCs dissatisfied, be those people GMs or players.

Minions are attritting mechanical-devices. They increase the difficulty in making the optimal powers choice to use harder (Damn! I used my daily on a minion!) while filling space based upon a preference for multiple opponent combat coupled with the focus on mobility found in 4e. They perform this function admirably, but they do such in a way that alienates other styles of play.

joe b.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Could be worse.

Now, if the commoner is a minion, he can be taken out by the first feebleblow butterfly that flutters on past.


RC

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

They included cats for the sole purpose of being Wizards' familiars, of course. They needed the stats because the cat will be following the wizard around and will potentially be involved in the same combats the wizard is.

Had the cat been rendered unable to kill a commoner, inevitably someone would have complained, "A cat can't kill rats and birds, either... how's it going to eat?"

Dang, I just noticed that I invented the Minion as Skill Challenge concept far earlier!

At some point, I said when a Troll is hunting humans, he is not rolling attack rolls and dealing damage, he rolls Wilderness Lore.

Different model for different scales...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Could be worse.

Now, if the commoner is a minion, he can be taken out by the first feebleblow butterfly that flutters on past.


RC

If can do that, it can also kill a human. Or how are you expressing a Butterfly killing a Minion if not by using some monster statistics for him, or any other way of dealing 1 point of damage?

I think Minions work well as a "world design" tool, too.

Just like 3E had most people being Commoners, 4E has most people being Minions. You hit them, you knock them out. A great human army is fighting another great human army? Most people on the battlefield are minions. Aim your Catapult in the mass of people - most of them die.

Anyone with real training and experience is not a minion. But in a typical pseudo-medieval army, that aren't a lot.

 

[ExploderWizard]

IIRC, the core rules give you the rules for the level 1 Commoner and the DMG contains the cat statistics? What are the cat statistics for - if it can't kill the Commoner, who can it use these attacks on?
Aside from this, I seem to remember that the rule on ineffective attacks mostly applies to attacking objects, not creatures?

Deciding that level 10 parties don't fight level 1 Kobold Skirmishers but Level 10 Kobold Minions is similar, but with another goal - instead of being concerned with believability, you think about the gameplay experience.

But the rules do not make any assumptions regarding this. They don't tell you have to switch a Kobold Skirmisher to a Kobold Minion or anything. If you find this unrealistic or inconsistent, you ignore this option. The rules give you the guidelines to tell you that a level 1 monster against a level 10 party is not a good challenge. But that doesn't mean the system makes it impossible to do it. It is just not a good challenge. It doesn't force you to adopt a new playstyle where everything is "level appropriate". The naive assumption put forth by the guidelines is more that you don't send Kobolds against a level 10 party by default, not that you come up with Kobold Minion stats - if you want to keep it challenging.

This entire level of challenge thing is a product of bonus bloat based game systems. The reason a level 1 kobold isn't a challenge of any kind to a level 10 character is because of the built-in scaling of the math for the underlying system. When there are assumptions for bonuses and defenses of a given range based on level there will be enough of a disconnect after so many levels that two things cannot meaningfully interact with each other. When bonuses start piling up to the point where the d20 roll acts more like a kicker to the attack bonus this problem becomes even worse.

The scaling issue reminds me of something we discovered soon after we got the Babylon 5 tabletop ship combat game. The game was point based with more powerful ships costing more points and the assumption was that even points would produce a good contest (in theory). Looking carefully at the ship statistics we noticed that the pirate raider fighters could not inflict a single point of damage against any Mimbari vessel (including the fighter) therefore rendering the whole point concept meaningless. If a single Mimbari fighter could not lose against an infinity of raider fighters there was no point in rolling the dice.

This is the same kind of situation that we have in level scaling D&D. It's the reason that ridiculous rules constructions such as minions are needed to provide "challenge" while not being too tough.

Take a look at the monster statistics and "to hit" tables from 1E AD&D. There were no rules or guidelines saying that a monster or a PC had to have AC X at a given level. Defenses didn't rise through the roof requiring a slew of bonuses stacking just to get the privelege of a 50% chance to hit. Defenses didn't "scale" so much. The end result was that, as levels were gained your character actually improved and hit things more often.
The higher hit points of tougher monsters gave them staying power and provided for tougher fights. Before the layering of bonuses there was no need to scale defenses higher and higher. Why keep jacking up the hit points of monsters in addition to making them harder to hit based on level?

The overall effect of this was that lower level monsters were not rendered totally irrelevant at higher levels. If the DM handed out too much magic then the party might be too well protected for the lowest level creatures to provide much of a threat. The difference is that it is not the system telling the DM that the PC's should have all these goodies.

 

[jgbrowning]

I think Minions work well as a "world design" tool, too.

Just like 3E had most people being Commoners, 4E has most people being Minions. You hit them, you knock them out.

I don't think that's the assumption of the game. People have no statistics unless they are expected to interact with the PC in some type of conflict. Also, note from the DMG "A minion is destroyed when it takes any amount of damage."

joe b.

 

[Hussar]

I would guess that's because no one's really advocating such. Well, that is not in the way that I believe you're stating.

There's more play in role-playing games than what just occurs between the players and the GM. For those who prefer playing in a pretend world that exists independently of the PCs, there's the game the GM (and the player) plays alone. In this aspect of roleplay the rules function not only as directions on what widgets can do what while at the table, but as guidelines to how to create a "pretend reality" wherein those (player or GM) who prefer to role-play as if the world exists independent of the PCs find help in creating that independent world based upon the rules expectations.



As I said, one type of roleplaying is "The world exists to interact with the PCs" type, and what you've posted is the calling-card of that type. That isn't the only type of roleplaying, however.

Really? Are you honestly going to say that there are DM's out there who do not simply decide who won the Battle of Emredy fields but actually play out, according to the rules of the game, the interactions of NPC's when no PC's are involved?

Are there actually people who do this? I'm sorry, but I do not for a moment believe that there is a single DM IN THE WORLD who scraps his entire adventure because his bad guy failed a saving throw at level six and died, thus meaning he never actually became a lich.

Every DM in the world simply designs through fiat. We all do. There is not a DM anywhere who actually follows the rules when designing adventures. There never has been and never will be.

IMO, the design flaw is that minions do not fulfill any other role except to exist to interact with the PCs. This leaves those who enjoy role-playing in worlds that pretend exist outside of the PCs dissatisfied, be those people GMs or players.

Minions are attritting mechanical-devices. They increase the difficulty in making the optimal powers choice to use harder (Damn! I used my daily on a minion!) while filling space based upon a preference for multiple opponent combat coupled with the focus on mobility found in 4e. They perform this function admirably, but they do such in a way that alienates other styles of play.

joe b.

Those who pretend to enjoy their world's apart from the PC's should stop doing that before they go blind. Again, no DM in the world ever designs the way you are talking about. Not one.

This is a total myth that has been brought up to fuel edition fights. "We must protect those poor DM's who enjoy playing with themselves." No one does this. No one follows leveling rules when creating NPC's, they simply slap on X levels onto whatever they need and away they go. How did the King get to be a 14th level fighter? Who cares? He's a king. He fought in some wars. He did some training. Poof, he survived and now he's 14th level. End of story.

The funny thing is so many games HAVE minion rules already. Savage Worlds, for example, makes everyone a minion other than the PC's and a few important NPC's. Everyone else drops after one hit.

4e just finally caught up with the pack.

 

[Mallus]

For those who prefer playing in a pretend world that exists independently of the PCs, there's the game the GM (and the player) plays alone.

Oh absolutely. I play that game all the time, to the chagrin of my wife and employers. But that game's an act of writing fiction. I don't need game mechanics for it.

In this aspect of roleplay the rules function not only as directions on what widgets can do what while at the table, but as guidelines to how to create a "pretend reality" wherein those (player or GM) who prefer to role-play as if the world exists independent of the PCs find help in creating that independent world based upon the rules expectations.

But the rules for the game make lousy rules for the world, even when treated as mere guidelines. Worlds that conform (closely) to rules expectations tend to defy all common sense.

Quick example, 3e. Aging never results in senility, getting hit with an axe never results in limb loss (or an infected wound), an armored horse and rider have no inertia, economics doesn't exist, and so on.

This is what happens when you extrapolate how a world works from a set of rules designed to facilitate the acting out of adventure stories. Better to see the game rules as a set of interface protocols, between the the players and the fictional world the game takes place in.

This leaves those who enjoy role-playing in worlds that pretend exist outside of the PCs dissatisfied, be those people GMs or players.

I don't see why this is neccessarily true.

Our 4e homebrew setting 'pretend exists' outside of the PC's, because the various co-creators and DM's (and players) involved are engaged in the act of imagining it into continued existence. The campaign uses Minions. The two things look wholly unrelated to me.

 

[Barastrondo]

I would guess that's because no one's really advocating such. Well, that is not in the way that I believe you're stating.

There's more play in role-playing games than what just occurs between the players and the GM. For those who prefer playing in a pretend world that exists independently of the PCs, there's the game the GM (and the player) plays alone. In this aspect of roleplay the rules function not only as directions on what widgets can do what while at the table, but as guidelines to how to create a "pretend reality" wherein those (player or GM) who prefer to role-play as if the world exists independent of the PCs find help in creating that independent world based upon the rules expectations.

I don't think that's entirely true. A pretend world that exists independently of the PCs is still subject to the GM's narrative control whenever he wants things to happen. To some, that's a major advantage. If Crescentia declares war on Akklorash, the GM doesn't have to play through the overtures, making NPC Diplomacy checks to see whether the war is averted or not. He can if he likes: but he's deliberately making extra work for himself, and not everyone enjoys that extra work.

I believe that the split here isn't between "whether you think the world should exist independent of the PCs," it's the question of whether the rules are the foundation for what happens in the world, or whether what happens in the world is the foundation for the rules. If a sudden plague sweeps across a given country, one approach is to come up with mechanical effects for the plague and then apply them to each NPC by the rules; another is to determine how lethal it is, what NPCs die, and then figure out rules for the plague that reflect that. It's a top-down vs. bottom-up decision.

IMO, the design flaw is that minions do not fulfill any other role except to exist to interact with the PCs. This leaves those who enjoy role-playing in worlds that pretend exist outside of the PCs dissatisfied, be those people GMs or players.

Again, I think you're not necessarily representing the group you're talking about. I like worlds that exist outside of the PCs. I run worlds that exist outside of the PCs. But I don't require them to be mechanical outside of the PCs' interaction. This no doubt comes from the way I played back in college, where dice would come out only every other session or so and half the people we interacted with were never statted, but the concept of a world that exists and does things just isn't married to mechanical presence in my mind.

Minions are attritting mechanical-devices. They increase the difficulty in making the optimal powers choice to use harder (Damn! I used my daily on a minion!) while filling space based upon a preference for multiple opponent combat coupled with the focus on mobility found in 4e. They perform this function admirably, but they do such in a way that alienates other styles of play.

Generally speaking, I've found that if you're using your daily on a minion, the DM isn't describing things in much detail, or the players are naturally twitchy. Most players I've dealt with take their dailies fairly seriously, and save them for clear and obvious threats — discerning between rank-and-file orcs and the big badass with the bow who's filling Boromir full of arrows. The only times I've seen dailies used against minions in-game is when a PC throws an area-effect daily against a distinctly tough enemy and catches some minions in the burst. (I have seen some encounter powers wasted on minions, to variable definitions of "waste," but not more than once for any given player. After that they pay more attention to description.)

I absolutely agree that they alienate other styles of play, but I'd have to say they don't really make things harder to strategize outside one of those incompatible styles of play. They add more challenge (do I move through the minion cluster to try and nail their boss with my encounter?), but in a fairly positive way.

Of course, my various groups took very well to 4e. Use that as whatever disclaimer you see fit.

Edit: Gah, with those other two posts, this looks like a dogpile. Hope you take this post in the spirit in which it was intended!