D&D General If you could put D&D into any other non middle ages genre, what would it be?

Laurefindel · Jun 17, 2019

Saelorn said:
I do, and it's the primary reason why I can't play 5E unless something has been done to address the healing rules.

When a goblin stabs you for 5 damage out of your 80hp, that's perfectly fine with me, because you're a mighty hero and you're wearing armor. Most armor is pretty good about dulling the impact of a sword. I can buy that it takes 16 hits before you've been battered into submission.

The issue is when you wake up in the morning, and the wounds which would have killed a lesser mortal have vanished entirely. That is making a mockery of the weapon.

Alternatively, instead of altering the resting/healing rules, alter the conception of damage.

If a goblin stabbing for 5 points of damage would have killed a normal human(oid) being, or at least leave a wound that would take weeks to heal, but yet can be shrugged by a good night sleep, then it comes to reason that, logically, the character didn’t take that[/] wound. The character took damage which, IMO, must be seen as something else than wounds if one wants to spare their own willing suspension of disbelief (not gonna use the word “realism” here).

The character took damage and lost resources associate to its survival. Personally, I find it easier on my brain to see this resource - the character’s hit points - as anything but wounds that wouldn’t heal overnight.

i admit that this is easier to visualise in melee combat, whereas opponent slowly lose their edge as they exchange blows and parries, than with guns where the assumption is that either the bullet hit you, or it didn’t. In extremis dodges, quick parries, armour protection, magic charms; these work well in typical sword fight. You can make it work with guns too, but in my experience people have a harder time conceiving that a point blank “hit” with a 12-gauge gun can result in anything else but a very big (and probably very lethal) hole in your body.

so no, D&D doesn’t do high-noon western duels very well, but it does enable gun-blazing saloon shootouts without drastically reducing the probability of a hit to make the PC survive more than 1 round.

77IM · Jun 17, 2019

CapnZapp said:
This discussion, though, started when someone yelled "mockery".

My entire point is that unless you do *something*, whether to change the damage model (ie not use D&D) or the expectations, that's pretty much what you're gonna hear...

This. Some people find that attrition-based damage doesn't jive with their expectations of how firearms should work. (Which people? It doesn't matter. But there's enough of them that this debate keeps happening.) So you can either get rid of attrition-based damage (e.g. hit points) or try to set the tone/genre to one in which firearms aren't insta-kill.

The Crimson Binome · Jun 17, 2019

Laurefindel said:
Alternatively, instead of altering the resting/healing rules, alter the conception of damage.
[...]
Personally, I find it easier on my brain to see this resource - the character’s hit points - as anything but wounds that wouldn’t heal overnight.

I'm not going to jump through any hoops to try and explain why a "hit" isn't really a hit, or why "cure wounds" isn't actually curing wounds. Nobody has time for that. If the game isn't doing what it says it's doing, according to its own terminology, then I'm going to fix the game so that it does.

Laurefindel · Jun 17, 2019

Saelorn said:
I'm not going to jump through any hoops to try and explain why a "hit" isn't really a hit, or why "cure wounds" isn't actually curing wounds. Nobody has time for that. If the game isn't doing what it says it's doing, according to its own terminology, then I'm going to fix the game so that it does.

Fair enough! I agree about the terminology

some people do have time to do otherwise however

Fenris-77 · Jun 17, 2019

MarkB said:
It's important in the sense that, if you want to adapt 5e to a genre where minions are expected, it has the tools for the job - and those tools aren't even crude or rudimentary.

Yeah, we agreed on that part, which is the important part. The part I wasn't sure we'd agree on is how often that tool gets used, or the degree to which people realize it's even a thing the system can manage (and manage well).

i guess what I was saying above is that when you color inside the lines of the CR system you don't get a picture of one-hit minions, or at least a lot of people overlook the possibility.

Eltab · Jun 17, 2019

Myths and legends: Greek/Roman myths of the mortal heroes (because gods are overrated and have too much plot armor), Biblical history and semi-history.
I'm not familiar enough with India- and China- based myths, but there are likely some good stories to build a plot around.

Derren · Jun 18, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
If that's the standard you're using (kill the enemy quickly before they close in), then D&D sucks at melee combat and can't capture historical melee combat as well. Heck, even heroic movie melee combat. Look at something like LotR with how fast they mow through orcs. That's not possible in D&D. Or historical combat where a single weapon strike took out an enemy soldier.

Goes back to my double standard. Implying D&D works good for melee but not ranged when you're holding a different set of standards to each. D&D works the same for melee and ranged. It's just that with one, you're willing to have suspense of disbelief, but not the other.

Because the entire point of ranged weapons is to kill the enemy before he can get close. But in D&D this is not possible and thus it creates very different combat scenarios than those in the real world which are also associated with more modern settings like westerns.
In D&D western most combats would devolve into melee fights with axes and knifes or close range gun-fu. But that is not how "western" worked both in real life and in fiction.

D&D combat also do not capture how medieval fights worked because of HP pools, but the fights were still melee, both in D&D, other medieval media and history, so there is much less of a disconnect there.

Tony Vargas · Jun 18, 2019

Derren said:
Because the entire point of ranged weapons is to kill the enemy before he can get close. But in D&D this is not possible

… well, it's not easy to kill PCs and PC-level enemies before they close (though, in some eds, certainly quite possible, just not with mere weapons).
But it's quite easy to kill under-level enemies (or, in 4e, minions) before they close.

Beleriphon · Jun 18, 2019

Derren said:
High Noon. They meet at the middle of the road, draw and shoot. And shoot. Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, reload, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, reload, shoot, shoot and shoot and the loser drops dead has his 60 HP are out....

The D&D combat and HP system favors melee so much that any setting with primarily ranged weapons will look very strange, no classes or not.

Most westerns usually went with hero goes out at High Noon, and gets ambushed by the bad guy's gang who are hiding on roofs. Hero High Tails it to a handy barrel, and they proceed to have a ranged version of D&D Combat.

MarkB · Jun 18, 2019

Derren said:
Because the entire point of ranged weapons is to kill the enemy before he can get close. But in D&D this is not possible and thus it creates very different combat scenarios than those in the real world which are also associated with more modern settings like westerns.
In D&D western most combats would devolve into melee fights with axes and knifes or close range gun-fu. But that is not how "western" worked both in real life and in fiction.

If both sides are using ranged weapons, then neither side is trying to get close. Instead, they're firing at each other from positions of cover in an extended ranged battle. Which is exactly like any typical Western movie.