D&D 5E I Don't Like Damage On A Miss

[Obryn]

But here essentially is the problem. Hit points are meant to track this wearing down.

Right. If you have this feat, you wear them down on a miss.

Or, if all combatants are doing this in combat (such as you suggest),why is the reaper singled out as the only one who gets to have these efforts acknowledged as having an effect?

Because he has that feat.

Essentially:
*If it is inconsequential combat contact that the reaper's ability comes from (and which all combatants are subject to), it should be available to all combatants and not just the reaper.
*If on the other hand it is the "close call", then consistently close calls causing death fails to make sense either.

Whichever way you cut it, the mechanic and the flavour are not quite meshing in my opinion.

(Note: Presumably, anyone can take this feat, so anyone could do this.)

I am not saying that your argument is not self-consistent. It is. I think it relies on arbitrary tastes for its axioms, however, including your definition of HPs and an insistence that a Miss must, of necessity, do absolutely nothing. Neither of which I take as axiomatic. In other words, I don't think this argument is going to get you anywhere unless your first principles are proven (which, IMO, they can't be, being arbitrary) or the person you're arguing with shares them.

To me, the feat is supposed to model two things: (1) You mow down lesser combatants like wheat to the scythe, and (2) You're such a fierce and aggressive warrior that even when you fail to hit solidly, you cause damage.

It does both, so it has the desired narrative effect on gameplay. It's not perfect, and it's probably rather underpowered at high levels, but it works to make your Slayer a force to be reckoned with against kobolds and goblins.

I doubt you find my reasoning convincing, and that's fine - we don't share the same beliefs about HPs (I think they're utterly abstract and that trying to interpret them as anything other than a game mechanic is futile and silly) and Misses (saves and attack rolls are identical to me; I think the distinction between them is arbitrary, based on who rolls, and if it's fine to do half on a save, it's fine to do something on a miss.)

-O

 

[Drowbane]

Dragonborn are back.
"Warlords" are back.
Nonsense suspension-of-disbelief destroying gamist mechanics are back, breaking player assumptions about D&D verisimilitude.

Failing to see a clean break with 4E here.

Remind me to XP you later.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I am not saying that your argument is not self-consistent. It is. I think it relies on arbitrary tastes for its axioms, however, including your definition of HPs and an insistence that a Miss must, of necessity, do absolutely nothing. Neither of which I take as axiomatic. In other words, I don't think this argument is going to get you anywhere unless your first principles are proven (which, IMO, they can't be, being arbitrary) or the person you're arguing with shares them.

I think we're getting somewhere here, distilling the issue down to it's finest essence.

The definition of hit points I used (and obviously cannot quote) is the one provided in the D&DNext playtest documents. While they are still abstract, greater clarity has been provided as to what hit points along the spectrum mean. While many people have used hit points in many ways, I'm trying to tie a 5e feat to a 5e definition of hit points. While this might not be consistent at every table, it is consistent with the rules provided.

As for the miss thing, we are left with an interpretation along a spectrum of what can happen from an "attack" when the words "hit" and "miss" are used. At one end, the attacker can completely miss being completely ineffective. At the other end of the spectrum, the attacker can critical potentially providing the killer blow to the defender. And everything in between. In terms of mapping this to a discrete set of results that are internally consistent, you would say the options are 1) Miss, 2) Hit but no loss of hit points, 3) Hit and loss of hit points.

Now with the playtest, a "miss" combines 1) and 2) but only the 2) part gels with the reaper mechanic. And essentially this is my issue with it in terms of design. I still believe the mechanics are trying to represent "something" and can be judged on how well they do it based upon the definitions we are given to work with.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Tony Vargas]

Please tell me someone has mentioned Magic Missile....

 

[pemerton]

If someone loves the idea of a guy who's good at fighting multiple people, is relentlessly ferocious, etc., then right now someone might recommend the Slayer theme. If someone doesn't like automatic damage on a miss, however, it becomes harder to produce that fiction within the game.

I think the obvious solution to this (and I posted on it in a bit more detail in the "Poll" thread) is to have multiple themes that fill this design and story space.

This does raise one other difficulty, though: the game rules would have to explain the difference between them not in ingame terms (because the whole idea is that, in ingame/story terms, they occupy the same space) but in metagame/mechanical terms. And that sort of rules text - rules text that presents the rules as rules rather than as simple translations into rulespeak of ingame descriptions of abilities - is itself controversial, and generally controversial among much the same group of players as those who don't like damage on a miss (which is to say, their simulationist sensibilities extend beyond rules design to rules presentation).

I'll leave it to WotC to work out how to square this circle!

However, other things that should equally cause such wearing down in combat such as running and charging, jumping and climbing, as well as swinging a chunk of metal do not affect hit points and so perhaps when a character misses, even if it is inconsequential contact, why should this be singled out and registered as hp loss when the others are not? Or, if all combatants are doing this in combat (such as you suggest),why is the reaper singled out as the only one who gets to have these efforts acknowledged as having an effect?

Any sort of special martial ability is always going to give rise to this issue, as soon as it takes a form less abstract then a bonus to hit or damage. I mean, why in 3E can only a *trained* person sacrifice precision for damage (Power Attack - though as [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION] has pointed, it's already problematic to talk about precision in this context)?

That's why many highly simulationist games (eg RQ, RM, HARP) link special combat manoeuvres either to skills that anyone can learn, or to reaching certain threshholds of combat bonus (which, again, any character can achieve).

Whichever way you cut it, the mechanic and the flavour are not quite meshing in my opinion.

In this respect, the feat is in good company with the Sleep spell, which talks about sand but doesn't have it as a requirement, and presumably can be cast while underwater or in a windstorm or nude and unequipped or otherwise unable to scatter sand on one's targets.

The mechanical effect of Reaper is, in effect, this: make your attack roll; whether your roll is a success or not you hit and do STR damage, but if your roll is a success you get a stronger hit and add your weapon dice plus other bonus damage as normal. The flavour text should probably be rewritten to reflect this.

The "close call" stuff can then get subsumed into the standard narration of hit point loss. What I mean by that is that, unless you take the "all hp are meat" approach, then clearly some hits (in the mechanical sense of successful attack rolls) are merely close calls in the fiction (because they neither bloody nor kill). It is (in my view) an obvious mistake to try to import this general narrative feature of hit points, which some people hate and avoid via a "hit points as meat" approach, into the flavour of one particular feat.

 

[Obryn]

The definition of hit points I used (and obviously cannot quote) is the one provided in the D&DNext playtest documents. While they are still abstract, greater clarity has been provided as to what hit points along the spectrum mean. While many people have used hit points in many ways, I'm trying to tie a 5e feat to a 5e definition of hit points. While this might not be consistent at every table, it is consistent with the rules provided.

You're only halfway there. You need the other half - that a miss means that absolutely nothing ever happens, HP-wise - or it's irrelevant.

Personally, I see this as the same abstractions HP have always been.

As for the miss thing, we are left with an interpretation along a spectrum of what can happen from an "attack" when the words "hit" and "miss" are used. At one end, the attacker can completely miss being completely ineffective. At the other end of the spectrum, the attacker can critical potentially providing the killer blow to the defender. And everything in between. In terms of mapping this to a discrete set of results that are internally consistent, you would say the options are 1) Miss, 2) Hit but no loss of hit points, 3) Hit and loss of hit points.

Now with the playtest, a "miss" combines 1) and 2) but only the 2) part gels with the reaper mechanic. And essentially this is my issue with it in terms of design. I still believe the mechanics are trying to represent "something" and can be judged on how well they do it based upon the definitions we are given to work with.

I still disagree with your position here, and even if you can find a general case for misses not causing damage, it would fail to override a specific case where a feat - Reaper - gets you minimal damage even on a miss because of things such as "brutality" or "aggression." Clearly if such a feat exists in the same document as the definition of HPs you've provided, a "miss" cannot be defined as narrowly as you have done, right?

Please tell me someone has mentioned Magic Missile....

Yep. Repeatedly. General answer has been, "but that is MAGIC" which I find unsatisfying. (Not saying that Herreman has said this - just combining my two replies into one post.) Some have alternately said that Magic Missile at-will is a problem, too, or that it should require an attack roll as well.

-O

 

[Fifth Element]

That first half of hit points is meant to represent the contacts among other things that affect the character's capacity to defend.

What the playtest document says is that when you've lost half your hit points, you have sustained some kind of physical injury, however minor.

That does not mean (as I've seen claimed elsewhere, not sure if it was you) that every loss of hit points after that point must be interpreted as physical damage. The halfway point is "first blood", but that doesn't mean you suddenly lose your ability to defend yourself. "Second blood" might only be the blow that kills you.

 

[JamesonCourage]

My group and I really like the Reaper feat as it stands. It is super fast, simple, easy to adjucate, and makes my younger brother smile pretty much every time it came up, both on kobolds and on the ogre. However, I could see replacing it with something that doesn't generate 30+ page threads, as long as that something was just as quick, easy, and fun to us (or more so).

Edit: This question goes back to your point about not including controversial rules elements in the core game, but reserving them for detached modules, because some people don't want certain assumptions to be in the base rules.

I'm glad you're willing to compromise, even if I'm for something that's not quite as quick if it means it scales better.

Curiously, since other game elements such as Vancian magic and save-or-die (and a not insignificant number of other topics) also generate 100s of pages of vitriol and heartache (and no doubt around 30-40% really don't like it), should we alter and parse these other mechanics until 90% of people are satisfied with their final form? This is an honest question. Perhaps, your answer is "tradition", which does sound like a reasonable response to me, but I'll give you a chance to answer.

If we're going by the core rules of the game that everyone shares, then my answer is yes. Just like Reaper should be tweaked in the core so that an overwhelming majority like it, I think SOD should be the same.

Vancian is a harder issue to respond to, admittedly. I think that the majority could get on board with something that really scaled down the number of daily spells you get, but I'm not sure it'd be overwhelming. So far, though, Vancian had the most threads about it before the playtest, not after. Reaper is the reverse. That's why I'm talking about it and not Vancian casting. Thanks for the civil reply (as it always is, when we occasionally do intersect in this big, wide internet). As always, play what you like

I think the obvious solution to this (and I posted on it in a bit more detail in the "Poll" thread) is to have multiple themes that fill this design and story space.

This does raise one other difficulty, though: the game rules would have to explain the difference between them not in ingame terms (because the whole idea is that, in ingame/story terms, they occupy the same space) but in metagame/mechanical terms. And that sort of rules text - rules text that presents the rules as rules rather than as simple translations into rulespeak of ingame descriptions of abilities - is itself controversial, and generally controversial among much the same group of players as those who don't like damage on a miss (which is to say, their simulationist sensibilities extend beyond rules design to rules presentation).

I'll leave it to WotC to work out how to square this circle!

With that in mind, I'd rather them go for something that the overwhelming majority can be fine with (like Advantage seems to be overall, as a mechanic). That's not to say that I need Reaper to use the Advantage mechanic, or anything, just that certain things seem to have a lot of support (flatter math, for another example).

I think they can definitely try to find a way to implement a rule that reflects that fiction in a way that makes most people happy. If the conversation goes "well, the ability you liked is getting changed. Before it was cool and you liked it, but some people objected (some disliked the flavor, others thought it was overpowered; I personally think it was underpowered). So, here's this cool ability instead, which is something that we hope everyone likes!" and it is then something everyone likes, then it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I know that when designing my RPG, I've dramatically swapped how things have worked, and my players -even if initially hesitant to the idea- have come around to liking the implementation better in the long run. Is that because of their personal relationship with me (mostly close friends from 10-13 years)? Perhaps, though not all members of my group are part of that group. Is it just adjusting to it? Perhaps, though many people didn't adjust well to the changes of 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e. Is it because they liked the mechanic after using it for a while? Well, that's what they say, but who knows, really.

No matter the tact they take, as long as the large majority likes the mechanic, I'll be behind it. I personally don't like the focus on HP/damage over attack bonus/AC, and while I like the static DCs of non-combat tasks, I don't like the little-to-no increases to bonuses on those tasks over time. I don't like that someone who trains to be the best and is the most naturally gifted humanoid (ability of 20) might only get +9 to attacks, while a Wizard with a quarterstaff might get +2, so the paragon of humanoid combat is only 35% more likely to hit. Yes, I do fully understand that other abilities are supposed to shore up this fault (in my eyes), such as things like the Reaper feat (though my understanding is that the Wizard could get that, too). I just dislike the implementation, and the implications within the fiction.

But, even with my objections, I'm not advocating changing or compromising on the flatter math. I may voice a concern over non-combat tasks not having a depth mechanic like what HP/damage serves for combat, but I haven't been engaged in a thread for a few pages looking to change it. And that's because the large majority seems to like that. With the Reaper feat, that doesn't seem to be the case. And that's why I'm looking for compromise (not omission). As always, play what you like

 

[Herschel]

Because of the dwarven theme.


A miss should be a &%$#&@ miss. This sort of thing is incredibly detrimental to suspension of disbelief.

You miss!

but you kill the big bad evil guy anyway!



*spit*


If that's their design philosophy permits that kind of idiocy I see little more than failure on the horizon for them.

So you think if a wizard casts fireball there should be no save for half, basically everyone has evasion?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So you think if a wizard casts fireball there should be no save for half, basically everyone has evasion?

Ooh! I can answer this one.

"Nope, because it's MAGIC!"

And we all know, only wizards and clerics get to do cool stuff without playing Mother-May-I with the DM.