D&D 5E Open Letter to Mike Mearls from a pro game dev

[Gorgoroth]

One of the HUGE problems with the DoaM debate is that everyone knows their lines. I think half the posters here just saw this thread was about DoaM, skipped reading the rest of the thread, and jumped right into their usual rebuttal.

Despite problems with the tone of the OP, he does list a staggering number of examples and problems with DoaM in the first post and not a single poster here has replied to them or tried to address them. There are almost not quotes of the first post. It's actually an impressively comprehensive summary.

No one is actually debating any more because no one is actually listening or responding, we're all just launching into pre-programmed responses. It's become a dance rather than a discourse. We might as well all just stop typing and begin cut-and-pasting past conversations.

Most of the attacks I see are ad hominem, but I'm fine with that, I don't expect unbiased moderation, in fact I don't really care.

The only use I have for people posting in this thread (and indeed, I invite them to do so, it helps explain why their thinking is so off), is so that I can eviscerate their deflections (with trivial ease, because I am in the right. It's kind of sad that I have to argue in a D&D forum that hitting with your sword should result in a different outcome than missing), and in the process, make it clear how absurd this is.

It's really simple. HP is said to be "abstract", meaning it's some kind of ectoplasmic goo that has no meaning when above 0 HP, but when at 0 HP, it ceases to be abstract, and has a concrete, unequivocal meaning : the foe is dead or knocked out, injured, bleeding on the ground or completely chopped in half. All of which were the result of a weapon attack, which some how missed the target and yet is also simultaneously a "direct strike".

People can ONLY use ad hominem arguments against me (and frankly I do not care, I only posted this to make D&D make sense again, because I intend to purchase and play it if it does), because they have no arguments.

There is no logical argument that can equate a weapon attack that missed but yet was a "direct strike". And no referring to what HP means (or rather doesn't mean), above 0 HP, because at 0 HP it has a clear, direct, blunt meaning, which GWF violates.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Sorry, but the idea of damage-on-a-miss doesn't fly with me; I'd houserule it out in a hearbeat.

That said, one thought that occurred to me while reading this is that if d-o-a-m is used it could lead to some rather ridiculous situations in games that are played absolutely by the book (of which I've seen one or two) unless the rule is a lot tighter than shown here.

Silly example number one: I declare my action to be that I swing my 2-handed sword at the guard on the wall. I miss. She takes damage. I'm at the bottom of the wall, she's on top of it, it's 30' high thus she's about 20' out of my reach...

Silly example number two: for whatever reason I can't see what I'm doing but am surrounded by foes, and I don't have blind-fighting ability. I swing my 2-handed sword in hopes of hitting anyone nearby. I miss. Do they all take damage? Does a random one?

As far as feedback goes, if 5e goes anything like all the previous e's the public feedback loop will be endless; that's where errata come from.

Lan-"Mommy, Bobby missed me! It hurts!"-efan

They invited us to participate in this public playtest and give feedback. I did precisely that. When I posted this list on the Wotc forums, it was IMMEDIATELY attacked ferociously and the thread was shut TWENTY MINUTES LATER. I did not attack anyone, I posted a list of bugs, and the forum rats swarmed in and spammed the report button. It's pure gangland censorship and bullying thuggery. Attack until each discussion gets closed, no matter how polite I was, it was ENDLESS personal attacks, just as we see here in this thread, we have people dredging up stuff written in other unrelated threads ages ago, and yet no moderation is happening to keep them polite, civil, on topic, whatsoever. It's disgusting.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I only posted this to make D&D make sense again, because I intend to purchase and play it if it does

What is stopping you from simply house-ruling this in your 5E games?

 

[Gorgoroth]

What is stopping you from simply house-ruling this in your 5E games?

I take pride in my work and try to ship games that are as bug-free as possible. This is a serious, yet trivially resolvable one, which I cannot in good conscience correct myself, because that only works when I'm the DM. As a player, I will be unable to join another table where this isn't also houseruled away, and in pick up games, Encounters, and so on, I will be forced to endure it, and that I cannot stomach.

So, "houserule it away" is only a trivial non-solution that works if and when you're the DM. I plan on being both a player AND a DM of this edition, however if I'm deprived the ability of being a player at most tables which ostensibly might not have the basic common sense to realize that 1st level fighters should not have 100% success rate on every attack, then I will be excluded from playing this game.

Why should I support a game which excludes me? I refuse to do Mikes work for him. As someone who takes professional offence at such a glaring bug not being rectified in my own work (which I assure, you and everyone here benefits from many times a year, I bet there is not a single person here who hasn't played a game I've worked on and loved it), I demand it in that of others as well.

Don't expect my money if you ship a game with glaring bugs in it, especially when they are so easily fixed (Damage Advantage or Cleave would be my pref, but even a +2 to damage would work. Brutal 2 is also fun, but they need to make greatswords deal 1d12 same as greataxes anyway).

 

[Gorgoroth]

Actually, I disagree. The whole thing is just an appeal to authority, so should be ignored. Either the arguments made are good ones and should be considered, or they are not and should not.

(And, FWIW, I would much rather see "damage on a miss" removed from the game. Though my argument is much simpler that the OP's: I just don't like it.)

I am appealing to authority : Mike's.

He's the only one who can save Christmass and bring the children home happily from the never never land of confusing game rules that make no sense.

Your argument that you don't like it is probably because deep down you must realize that it's logically impossible, and you're having a visceral response to the affront towards the intellect that it represents.

Killing something when you miss it with your sword is a piece of doublethink. It's Orwellian, like BlackWhite : HitMiss

Suddenly hits are the same thing as misses, black is the same as white, the dice erase and contradict each other, and the real victim are sane player's sanity. I thought this was D&D, not Call of Cthulhu

 

[Gorgoroth]

There is one point that keeps getting ignored by the OP, D&D is an exception based game. Specific rules override general rules. If rules did not contradict each other then most of the game would not work.

In addition to this simple line in attach basics.

Resolve the attack.
After the DM has determined the situational modifiers that might apply, you make your attack roll as described below. If you hit, you roll damage, unless your attack specifies otherwise.

I don't know, having your attack deal damage on a miss would seem to specify otherwise.

So, TL;DR: Specific rules contradict general rules, nothing wrong with that.

So first level fighters should have a specific rule that allows them to override the default rules for fighting?

The rule for how to interpret HP is activated SPECIFICALLY when a foe's HP level changes, including the express directive that any attack which reduces that foe to 0 HP was a DIRECT STRIKE. The specific rule overrides the general one, but which is which? They are at odds with one another. Are you saying HP mean something different for fighter attacks than other fighter's attacks? That's kind of odd.

Besides, at 0 HP, you cannot ignore the definition of Hp even if you wanted to, it's the only rule that states that the foe is killed or rendered unconscious, if you ignore that your GWeefer can just keep attacking forever and the foe never drops, his HP keep descending into the negatives.

You clearly haven't thought this through. Get back to me when someone is willing to pay you for your game design skills, instead of attacking mine, or using canards like that rule of thumb which you don't understand.

 

[Minigiant]

Again I see people appealing for a change of GWF's DoaM but not understanding the purpose of it.

The reason why it appeared in multiple playtests is that it is not easy or simple to fix.

 

[Hussar]

I don't have the rules in front of me, so I don't know. Do the rules specifically state that 0HP means that you are incapacitated? Or do they simply state you are out of the fight?

If it's the latter, then there is no contradiction inherent on DoaM. Now, if it's that you are actually physically incapacitated, then sure, it doesn't make sense that you have DoaM.

Of course, this also presumes a level of narrative being based on the mechanics that isn't actually there. What does missing actually mean? If I need to score 15 to hit, and I score 14, what happened in the narrative? D&D doesn't actually tell us. Did I cleanly miss, bounce off of armour, bounce off of a shield, what? We don't know.

And we don't know because D&D combat has never, ever been simulationist. It's been pretty much purely gamist from the get go. Sim mechanics tell us what happens in the game world. The only thing we know is that my attack was unsuccessful. Why was it unsuccessful? Because I failed to achieve a fairly arbitrary number that represents a target's "defence", which is, in itself, a completely arbitrary number that has little meaning in the game world.

So, to me, Gorgoroth's arguments do fall flat because they start with a presumption that simply isn't true. That the mechanics of D&D combat define the narrative at the table. They don't and never have. There's nothing there to define a narrative with. Any narration of a miss is based entirely on free form play that represents nothing in the mechanics.

Thus, having DoaM doesn't particularly bother me. It's just another aspect of the gamist play that D&D combat has always favoured. Is it hard to narrate? No harder than anything else, since the narration is freeform anyway. It might be informed, somewhat, by the mechanics, but it certainly isn't defined by them.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Again I see people appealing for a change of GWF's DoaM but not understanding the purpose of it.

The reason why it appeared in multiple playtests is that it is not easy or simple to fix.

I rejoiced when they removed it when it was called Reaper originally (a clear copy-paste job from Reaping Strike, once again), then the entire rest of the playtests they didn't have it, because they wanted feedback on other stuff.

So they just muted the obvious mounting criticism for it and kept people from abandoning the playtests who otherwise would have had they kept it, then re-introduced it right at the end.

It's quite fishy that they didn't keep it in. And it's not like anyone ever said, "you know what's missing from this game? Fighters with 100% accuracy on every attack at level 1"

 

[fjw70]

The thought of something like this appearing as a petition on whitehouse.gov just came to me and refuses to leave without being typed out. (Sorry).

Now THAT would be amusing. Good call.