Quote from: LibraryLass;725670Granted, you'll see HP, Armor Class, and most saving throw models right there next to them. Complaints about dissociated mechanics are pretty rich coming from any D&D player.

It helps to know the definition of the term you're discussing.

Seriously, abstracted mechanics are not dissociated mechanics.  Even the most highly abstracted of all the D&D mechanics, Hit Points, only becomes dissociated without GM common sense, of course that era of game stressed GM common sense instead of RAW.

Hit Points became disassociated the first time they were applied to falling damage

Quote from: TristramEvans;725698Hit Points became disassociated the first time they were applied to falling damage

Yep, which is why if you don't like it back then you use Gary's alternate damage rules or just use common sense and give them a saving throw.

Now do that with dissociated mechanics in 4e - see you when you finish making your own game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;725662A Fire Giant Minion is antithetical to the very idea of a Fire Giant.  When you look in the dictionary under Dissociated Mechanics, you see Minion as a Prime Example.

Any Mook rules, by definition, are metagame mechanics.  No thanks.

Funny.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;725678I never cease to be amazed by the apparent epidemic of referees who, if the number of times this comes up on the intrewebs is in any way correlated with actual gamers playing actual games, killed characters with house cats.

'cause, without that epidemic of actual play instances, this is nothing more than third-degree system wankery.

That's your response? Really? Please remove your infernal Gygaxian tunnel vision, and admit that numbers have an actual meaning. According to the numbers for the actual game mechanics of fucking cats, they're a legitimate match for many normal humans, demi-humans, and humanoids. Even smaller critters....such as rats, squirrels, and crows are a slight problem for zero-level guys, via their game mechanics. Stats don't lie.

You know this. Don't pretend to be dumber than you really are, out of some sense of misguided Gygaxian loyalty and grognardian dogma. Hit points in D&D have never scaled well.

This is not a deal-breaker for me, as I can just work around it, but it certainly is an annoyance. It can create comically stupid situations, making the reader wonder if Gygax was just trying to be funny. I mean, he didn't intentionally scale the hit point system this way, did he? For the sake of sanity, I certainly hope not.

Quote from: One Horse Town;725492Yeah, and it got real old, real fast.

Also, paper vampires!

Vampires should not be minions.  Not even the three "brides" in Dracula.

JG

Quote from: Black Vulmea;725678I never cease to be amazed by the apparent epidemic of referees who, if the number of times this comes up on the intrewebs is in any way correlated with actual gamers playing actual games, killed characters with house cats.

'cause, without that epidemic of actual play instances, this is nothing more than third-degree system wankery.

I think it has to do with the fact that the HP and (non-spell) damage potential of a cat and a 1st level Magic-User are fairly close together.

JG

Quote from: CRKrueger;725662A Fire Giant Minion is antithetical to the very idea of a Fire Giant.  When you look in the dictionary under Dissociated Mechanics, you see Minion as a Prime Example.

For me it depends on the scale. If the deity-level PCs are facing the Primordials of Creation, and regular fire giants are badly outclassed mooks, then I'm ok with representing them as simplified minions - though I always, always give my minions a Damage Threshold of Level+2 to kill (half that to bloody), which solves all the weirdness of the 1 hit point but doesn't require book-keeping since we already use red paperclips to signify bloodied status. So 18th level fire giants become 26th level minions, damage 28+ kills them and 14+ Bloodies.
Among WoTC's other mistakes was to use 18th level fire giant minions alongside regular fire giants as encounter-padding. I always change those to lesser races, eg the 18th level minions become 'fire ogres' that would be 10th level ogres vs lower level PCs.

Quote from: Imp;725665Also, like, say you're running an AD&D campaign where a mid-to-high level party is attacking a goblin lair. Then, if you're like me, you might start ticking off goblins instead of counting out every one's hit points. But that's because there isn't that much difference between a 4 hp goblin and one that goes down in one hit. In 4e as I understand it you have the minions that go down instantly and the non-minions who last rounds and rounds, so it's really obvious and more gamey.

Yeah, the implementation was often very poor, and as usual WoTC did little to show how to do it right. I reduce regular monster hp anyway, so the gulf between minion (with damage threshold) and regular monster IMC isn't as yawning. When my PCs are fighting 8th level standard ogres with ca 55 hp alongside 8th level orc minions with DT 10/5, it doesn't feel particularly gamey or 'off'.

Cats, that's one thing.

Badgers, now. Badgers is special hell. A berserk badger with a bit of luck could beat a whole 2nd level party.

:jaw-dropping:

For the minion thing. I agree it's silly. "Here's a normal orc, it's got 50 hp. Here's OHK orc minions". It's too gamey.

Sure though 1 HD humanoids in particular are mooks to high level characters, hell in OD&D and AD&D1e a high level fighter could slaughter a bunch of them every round. And as characters level more stuff becomes mookey. In an old one player campaign I ran 15 years ago a single high level (11th or thereabouts) fighter took out an entire band of hill giants and all their ogre buddies. Sure he had weapon mastery and a magic longsword but...

And that's how I like it. To a 2nd level party a single ogre is a really scary opponent (well unless someone's got a Sleep spell handy, then it's free XP), to a mid level party it's no big deal, to a high level party they're mooks.

Quote from: jeff37923;725686I had a Druid 1 encounter a kobold in D&D3 and get her ass kicked by it. Not because of any stupidity on the Druid's part, the dice just hated her that night. I have never seen so many low rolls in one evening.

That is the closest I can come to the killer housecat model.

We've had several Kobold and Goblin knockouts(we played until -10 for death) in our games, and at least one death due to a crit. Figure those dudes did 1-6 damage. All it takes is a solid roll and a 6 to put down a good portion of first-levels out there. (You could equip them with daggers instead for 1-4 damage but that could still potentially knock the M-U unconsious, even if you gave max HP per hit die, which we usually did for the first 3 levels.) 3x gave the little bastards shortspears which did x3 damage on a crit.

No housecats, though. I've reserved them as well more for the number exercises, but yes, small monsters can definitely wreak their own havoc. Of course they often come in groups, so that's a lot of rolls they get to make. Eventually a player's luck can run out and they take a hit.

Quote from: Daztur;725674The main problem with fire giant minions is that the game mechanics assume that you'll only meet fire giant minions when you're high enough level for fire giants to not really be a threat. This means that either:
-The DM sets up the campaign in such a way that you'll only meet fire giants at such and such levels, only meet kobolds at such and such levels, etc. etc.
-The DM stats up fire giants as solos if you're low level, as elites if you're a bit higher level, as normal monsters if you're pretty high and as minions if you're really high level.

Both don't sound like much fun for me.

The first assumes that the DM is the one controlling what sorts of things the players get in fights with while the PCs are just along for the ride. The second sounds very cumbersome unless, again, the DM is able to plan out what the PCs are doing and going to fight ahead of time.

Hard to make either approach work for a more sand box style of play.

I normally do it in semi-sandbox session where I might plan stuff out 1 session in advance, based on the events of the previous session. I find 4e doesn't work well for pure sandboxing where the GM has no idea what monsters the PCs will fight in advance of play. Apart from the stats issue, I need to bring along minis for the monsters the PCs might meet. When I tried to do sandbox 4e I went with pre-rolled wandering/random encounters, usually three for a session, plus the likely static encounters. It still didn't work great as the PCs would often encounter statics too high or low level for them, and neither worked well in the combat system.

What 4e really shines at IME is a Superhero Team type model, which is more reactive than sandboxing. Lots of interpersonal stuff and drama alongside occasional big multi-page battles that use the XP budget system.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;725703That's your response? Really? Please remove your infernal Gygaxian tunnel vision, and admit that numbers have an actual meaning. According to the numbers for the actual game mechanics of fucking cats, they're a legitimate match for many normal humans, demi-humans, and humanoids. Even smaller critters....such as rats, squirrels, and crows are a slight problem for zero-level guys, via their game mechanics. Stats don't lie.

You know this. Don't pretend to be dumber than you really are, out of some sense of misguided Gygaxian loyalty and grognardian dogma. Hit points in D&D have never scaled well.

Most of these animals were not originally statted by Gygax - there is none of this in the 1e Monster Manual. Killer housecats is a 3e thing, due to AIR three attacks/round doing 1 hp each - no housecat entry to 1e as far as I can find. But yes Gygax does stat ravens, squirrels, and ordinary rats in the MM2 as doing 1 hp damage per attack. Stupid, and arguably marking a degenerate phase of the game (MM2 monsters in general look to be on steroids compared to the MM originals). But not 3e-level stupid.

Edit: Just found the Cat, Domestic entry in MM2. OK, there is a lot of shit in that book! Having been bitten badly by a cat I was trying to put in a cat box, I suppose that in 3e you could say a cat bite does 1 hp non-lethal damage, but can only attack if you are grappling it at the time...

Quote from: James Gillen;725709Vampires should not be minions.  Not even the three "brides" in Dracula.

JG

It works for Hellsing and other anime; vampire spawn as hordes of disposable ghouls.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;725703That's your response? Really? Please remove your infernal Gygaxian tunnel vision, and admit that numbers have an actual meaning. According to the numbers for the actual game mechanics of fucking cats, they're a legitimate match for many normal humans, demi-humans, and humanoids. Even smaller critters....such as rats, squirrels, and crows are a slight problem for zero-level guys, via their game mechanics. Stats don't lie.

You know this. Don't pretend to be dumber than you really are, out of some sense of misguided Gygaxian loyalty and grognardian dogma. Hit points in D&D have never scaled well.

This is not a deal-breaker for me, as I can just work around it, but it certainly is an annoyance. It can create comically stupid situations, making the reader wonder if Gygax was just trying to be funny. I mean, he didn't intentionally scale the hit point system this way, did he? For the sake of sanity, I certainly hope not.

I have killed 1st level folks with my wizard's familiar, a crow, does it count?

I have seen 1st level PCs die to pin traps in locks - the trap does 1 point of damage and a save v poison, and I have seen them through being hit by small rocks thrown by little kids.