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I wouldn't assign HP damage for being bitten by a squirrel or going through a snowstorm or burning their fingers (with the fingers thing I would probably make that hand unusable for a certain period of time). A pocketknife can kill someone and D&D attacks are specific enough to say that the knife just nicked smeone. A hit could be a slashing of the wrist or throat.

You could probably find things that would cause HP damage but wouldn't kill someone (but such situations would also apply to normal monsters that start with 50 HP and have 1 HP left).

Bottomline, people can have problems with minions, but being more unrealistic than regular monsters just doesn't hold water IMO (assuming we exclude large sized monsters).

Hit points are an abstraction, representing all of the little things accumulating and eventually bringing someone down - getting tired, getting a few small bruises and cuts, getting nonlethal wounds, etc. In some ways, they're a measure of plot immunity.
They have to be, otherwise they don't make any sense.

In previous editions, and sometimes in 4e, small inconveniences still do hit point damage - so if you only have one to start with, you're going to die pretty quickly to almost anything. If you want to use an actual, in-game example, when you're on fire, you take ongoing damage. Player characters will survive being on fire over a long time, not because it's realistic, but because they're cool. Minions, on the other hand, are meant to be throwaway characters, and die really quickly, to make the PCs seem cool in comparison (and to speed up combat and make area attacks more worthwhile.) If they were set on fire, you wouldn't even have to resolve it, or keep track of the damage, because you know they either got burned to a crisp or jumped out a window or died some other way.

The moment you take this out of the coolness vs. simulation in-combat context, it falls apart and looks completely ridiculous, which is where the people who don't like 4e are coming from when they criticize minions. If you were to have a fire in say, a skill challenge, and you ported over the combat-driven NPCs into a non-combat encounter, any minions opposing you or even helping you in the challenge would die instantaneously after touching flame, or after having a plank of wood fall down, or after inhaling a little smoke.

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If you're having hull problems, I feel bad for you son. I've got 99 problems, and a breach aint one.

You are correct that HP have always been (at least in part) an abstraction. That is why having 1 HP is no less realistic than having 100 HP. That is why the minion argument doesn't hold up. Any situation you can conceive of where a minion is killed by something they shouldn't have then the same would apply to an PC that has been reduced to 1 HP (from say 50). At 1 HP the PC is a fully functional individual (just like a minion).

But then you're just saying that hit points are unrealistic to begin with, something that everyone agrees on.

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If you're having hull problems, I feel bad for you son. I've got 99 problems, and a breach aint one.

So then arguing against minions on the basis of realism doesn't make any sense.

I said minions were more realistic since (for example) a fifth level fighter with 40 hp is ambushed by a goblin with a bow. It is impossible to kill that fighter with a single shot ( assuming a normal goblin with a normal bow). That is unrealistic. If said tighter had been a minion then the situation would be more realistic (i.e. the goblin could kill with a single arrow).

Now there are good game reasons to give that fighter 40 hp and make him only mildly threatened by the goblin.

You misunderstand me. Minions are not realistic, just like anything to do with hit points is usually unrealistic and an abstraction. However, 4th edition is not meant to simulate real life. It's meant to simulate heroic fantasy. So while it is "realistic" within the context of the fantasy genre, it doesn't make sense if you use minions for something non fictional.

I'm not arguing that minions are a bad idea; they're a great idea. I'm just explaining why some people have problems with them. I agree that their arguments don't prove anything, because minions aren't supposed to be realistic.

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If you're having hull problems, I feel bad for you son. I've got 99 problems, and a breach aint one.

Given that hp are an abstraction and nothing in D&D is completely realistic I still hold my position that minions are closer to reality than many (maybe most?) D&D monsters. I guess on this point we can agree to disagree.

You can be damaged by things that aren't player characters, you know.

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If you're having hull problems, I feel bad for you son. I've got 99 problems, and a breach aint one.

I understand the concept of the minions, and how they work... I just think when I played 4E, it had lost its flavor to me.

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DM Vincent
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