D&D 5E Poll on the Reaper: is damage on missed melee attack roll believable and balanced?

[herrozerro]

Yes, the ability can be explained and narrated, but it is jarring, because it really needs to be narrated on a case-by-case basis, it needs to be justified in the narrative, over and over again, far behind other, more consistent abilities. And thus I take issues with it.

I guess this is the crux of it, I feel that the ability has a great default narration and it can be narrated in any way it needs to be for the corner cases.

I guess I am a narritivist or whatever you call them.

 

[CleverNickName]

Since you asked, no not to me it doesn't. 1/2 damage on a miss was one of those things about 4e I disliked.

If 5e is just 4e+ then I am not likely to purchase it. Sadly, WotC already split the players. I do not see how they can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I know, right? Pleas for unity and inclusion are kind of getting lost in the fog of war.

 

[Drowbane]

Apples and oranges mate.

an explosion involving a 20ft wide swath of fire is a far cry from a warrior swinging wide and still managed to hurt you somehow.

On the other hand, a module that said something like "If you are missed by an attack due solely to Armor, you still take 1/4th as non-lethal dmg" would be something I wouldn't mind so much.

Such a thing would probably be too much the general rules, but would be cool for a small subset of players (perhaps including myself, perhaps not).

 

[herrozerro]

Apples and oranges mate.

an explosion involving a 20ft wide swath of fire is a far cry from a warrior swinging wide and still managed to hurt you somehow.

On the other hand, a module that said something like "If you are missed by an attack due solely to Armor, you still take 1/4th as non-lethal dmg" would be something I wouldn't mind so much.

Such a thing would probably be too much the general rules, but would be cool for a small subset of players (perhaps including myself, perhaps not).

See I dont see apples and oranges, I see two instances of damage that no matter what you are going to take some kind of damage either by physical, luck or other mystic means.

Unless we get back to MAGIC! It`s better then not MAGIC!

 

[Herremann the Wise]

the issue is, I dont believe it's possible to have some kind of neutral core rules.

Why not? I think in the main they have done a pretty good job of this. I feel like I could take what I've seen and play my preferred style with my regular group as well as take them and DM my 4e guys who love cinematic or what I call "wahoo" stuff. There's a few anomalies here with the Reaper one being one that would get up my regular group's noses while being fully embraced by the 4e guys.

In either way, from what I thought I heard that modules are going to be included in the core rule book. so its not like these things are not going to be in the core rule book.

And that's cool that they are. But both our styles of play will have the same foundation despite the options we allow into our games. I can go one way with my regular group and the other with the other.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Drowbane]

Why not? I think in the main they have done a pretty good job of this. I feel like I could take what I've seen and play my preferred style with my regular group as well as take them and DM my 4e guys who love cinematic or what I call "wahoo" stuff. There's a few anomalies here with the Reaper one being one that would get up my regular group's noses while being fully embraced by the 4e guys.

And that's cool that they are. But both our styles of play will have the same foundation despite the options we allow into our games. I can go one way with my regular group and the other with the other.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

My faith in WotC's ability to find that middle ground is weak. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the one trying to find it.

 

[pemerton]

the designers can either dispense with narrative and make an abstract board game, or they can write better narrative.

Those aren't the only two options. For example, 4e has very minimal narrative, but is not a boardgame. Rather, it uses keywords to anchor the mechanics in the fiction (eg why does a fireball set things on fire? because it has the [fire] keyword); how do I know that the push from a wight's "horrific visage" attack represents the victim running away? becaus the power has the [fear] keyword; etc).

If the designers decide to do things via narrative rather than some other fashion, such as keywords, then they had better think through what that implies for designing and using the mechanics.

For example, once you make the narrative count, players will always be pointing to the narrative to try and get advantage. At a minimum, then, you want to think about how encounters can be designed so that this doesn't just degenerate into every player rolling twice every time for every ability - eg by designing encounters with multidimensional stakes (even if that just be manifested in complex geography) which makes playing the fiction for advantage a more nuanced choice with more subtle implications.

Magic missile

<snip>

Fireball

<snip>

we have had some classes be able to auto-kill kobolds if they want since the very early days of D&D.

<snip>

The slayer background allows a PC to do a small amount of damage even on a miss. I have no problems with this personally - careful description can make this believeable, providing the concept of abstract hp is accepted.

As this background is available to spellcasters and non-spellcasters alike it goes a small way to allowing non-spellcasters the sort of reliability spellcasters have traditionally had available to them in affecting their environment.

But that's magic! Everyone knows magic gets to do cool things!

Although Dannager is responding ironically, and I tend to agree with the ironic response, I think the response is also probably correct taken literally - that is, there seems to be a large cohort of D&D players who will give magic that allows players to exercise narrative control a free pass - because "it's magic" - whereas they will hold martial/mundane abilities to a process simulation standard.

Given this, it is no good for WotC to design just so as to provide satisfactory pacing and narrative control (which is what is obviously going on with Reaper, with the thief's knacks, with at-will cantrips, etc). They also need to think about how these can be resolved with a process simulation outlook of many of their (potential) customers, without thereby just cutting off their customers who aren't particularly interested in process simulation but do want the cool pacing and narrative control.

I don't see how this can be achieved just by tweaking individual ability descriptions. But then, I'm not a professional game designer.

Huh? Does 4e not count?

Since you asked, no not to me it doesn't. 1/2 damage on a miss was one of those things about 4e I disliked.

If 5e is just 4e+ then I am not likely to purchase it.

Well, let's flip that around - if 5e is just AD&D, or 3E, then I'm not likely to purchase it.

Or to take a bigger perspective - it's one thing to say that you don't like damage on a miss. It's another thing, in discussing the "unity edition" of D&D, to say that such a thing has not been part of the game since 1974, when in fact it has been, and (it turns out) you know that it has been.

Contrary to what you posted upthread, it's not the case that by including damage on a miss WotC is adding something to the game that has never been there before. Rather, it's continuing something that's been in 4e from the beginning of that edition.

There's a difference between "just being 4e+" and having game elements that are recognisable as drawing up on 4e. And there's a difference between a unity edition, and an edition that is attractive to non-4e players simply in virtue of repudiating everything that was distinctive about 4e.

 

[Gold Roger]

I guess this is the crux of it, I feel that the ability has a great default narration and it can be narrated in any way it needs to be for the corner cases.

I guess I am a narritivist or whatever you call them.

Well, if we managed to find the crux of a problem, we've hit a high point in the grand history of internet discussion

I see why people like abilities like this one. I once thought I did when 4th was released and very exited for how abstract it was. But in the end, it didn't work out in the long run for my D&D. There's certain styles where I can see the approach exelling. 4th edition would be still my "go-to" game for a high action secret service eberron campaign based on the likes of James Bond or the latest Mission Impossible movie.

But there are styles I feel belong to D&D (dare I call it oldschool?) where such abilities are completelyx misplaced. I feel enough people exclusively or primarily play such styles that they should be well supported and just stating "leave out what doesn't belong" is not support.

I like the slayer as concept for theme. I guess if I get an alternative for the, I and many others might already be happy.

 

[Dannager]

But you described the situation as a complete miss. I would find such consistently competent "missing" unbelievable. You have to remember that this is what the abstraction of hit points is supposed to represent and take on. To have it bleeding out into the "missing" attack category fails to make much sense to me on an ongoing and consistency-wise basis. If an attack is competent enough to deal hit point damage to a defender, it should not be described as a "miss".

So call it a "sort-of hit" or a "almost missed" or a "minor time-space occupation discrepancy". I don't care. But you're at the point where you're trying to argue that something that is nothing more than a personal semantic hang-up should influence the design direction of a game directed at millions.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

The question is - how often do these corner cases arise? And what is the proper measure of "the long run"?

Someone upthread canvassed 6 misses in a row. On a 50% to hit chance the odds of that are 1 in 64. If a typical combat is 6 rounds, and the number of combats per level is 10 or so (as in the past 2 editions), then that will happen one in 6 levels. Not all that often.

It happens any time you miss a combatant but it still kills them. How often this happens depends upon the game, combatants and so on and so cannot be neatly clipped down to an x every y units. It would be nice though if we could use the "dials" mentioned previously so that they can be set if wished so that the probability of it happening can become zero.

Rather than tinkering with the odd character ability, it might be better if WotC thought about how, if at all, it wants the rules to be related to process simulation, and then designed (and wrote guidelines) accordingly. Sticking in flavour text but then expecting it to be ignored during resolution is not "inclusive" or "big tent" - in my view, it's just bad design!

I honestly don't know how difficult it is to properly design something like this. Surely it is achievable though?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise