D&D 5E "Damage on a miss" poll.

[Ahnehnois]

You must hate magic missile, and despise fireball and other spells that do auto-damage regardless of roll.

People that play fighters often do.

Then again, comparing spells to fighter abilities is an apples to oranges comparison. Spells routinely do things that shouldn't be possible.

 

[Mistwell]

Ahh, dude, you realize that the wizard still rolls dice for fireball damage, then it's halved on a successful save, right?

The agency of the dice is still there.

I know not everyone rolls their ability scores, but it's the default option to do so, and many many people do.

Regardless, magic missile spell does a minimum of 6 hp damage (at first level), which is more than the maximum possible damage that can be done on a miss by a fighter with this ability at first level.

I do think it's interesting that folks are not bringing up the oh so many other spells that also do a minimum amount of damage even on a miss. Like Hail of Thorns (requires an attack roll, but does minimum damage even on a miss). I really think the issue is being handwaived as "magic".

 

[urLordy]

Whatever path they take, however, I think they are going to include something that makes core fighter's attractive to existing 4e players.

I agree, this jives with D&DNext's unifying goals, but this mechanic isn't The One. My presumption is that 4.5E will be best achieved by a tactical module layered upon a "AD&D feel with modern rules" core. This prevents conflicting playstyles from stepping on each others toes.

It's not coincidence or error that exlains why reaping appeared in earlier drafts, and why the ability has now reappeared.

It's no coincidence that it disappeared for a long while either. The amount of complaining about the amount of complaints about this mechanic speaks volumes, and it's been going on for what... 2 years? I think this mechanic needs to martyr itself for the higher goal of unity (and be resurrected in a tactical module) so that everyone can move on with their lives IMO.

 

[Burninator]

You must hate magic missile, and despise fireball and other spells that do auto-damage regardless of roll.

When I play a wizard, I'm fine with it, because it makes sense that not every explosion will kill everyone in the blast radius. This is borne out by real life data on bombs in crowded areas (sadly). Magic missile is akin to a heat-seeking missile, which is tech / magic so again, I'm fine with magic imitating modern tech.

I've never seen any olympic athlete never be able to fail at things they are good at. Even the best in the world. The best fencer in the world will not be able to "touché" their foe each and every time. The best boxer in the world does not land every punch.

The two things are completely different. Magic is the difference. Magic allows impossible things to be possible. That's by definition. Sorry if it sounds like lecturing, I thought it should be obvious.

ps I love playing both fighters and wizards, I just want them to be different. Magic is qualitatively different, and should obey different rules (and does).

 

[Burninator]

I agree, this jives with D&DNext's unifying goals, but this mechanic isn't The One. My presumption is that 4.5E will be best achieved by a tactical module layered upon a "AD&D feel with modern rules" core. This prevents conflicting playstyles from stepping on each others toes.It's no coincidence that it disappeared for a long while either. The amount of complaining about the amount of complaints about this mechanic speaks volumes, and it's been going on for what... 2 years? I think this mechanic needs to martyr itself for the higher goal of unity (and be resurrected in a tactical module) so that everyone can move on with their lives IMO.

I haven't tried the weaponmaster, I have a feeling that as more maneuvers come out, there will be some tactical genius who can treat armies of goblins and orcs like in The Hobbit as their plaything.

 

[Umbran]

Yes. Taking a legitimate point (people have different philosophies of gaming) and using it as an excuse to ignore basic logical arguments that apply equally to anyone playing the game is not a new strategy (people have been defending martial dailies and hit points and various other things this way for years). But it is pretty low.

Consider closely - are you absolutely sure you want to cast your disagreement in this light? That you have irrefutable logic on your side, and anyone who disagrees with you doesn't have a legitimate playstyle issue, but instead is a "scoundrel"?

Because that isn't exactly a new tactic either, you know, and it isn't exactly pristine rhetoric. You may know it by the name, "ad hominem." The name calling is a pretty dead giveaway.

How about we leave room for folks to just not be bothered by some stuff that you feel is logically irrefutable? Remember that gaming isn't all about logic. It is also about aesthetics - taste, for which there is no accounting.

 

[Jester David]

I know not everyone rolls their ability scores, but it's the default option to do so, and many many people do.

Regardless, magic missile spell does a minimum of 6 hp damage (at first level), which is more than the maximum possible damage that can be done on a miss by a fighter with this ability at first level.

I do think it's interesting that folks are not bringing up the oh so many other spells that also do a minimum amount of damage even on a miss. Like Hail of Thorns (requires an attack roll, but does minimum damage even on a miss). I really think the issue is being handwaived as "magic".

Magic is different, both from a narrative and mechanical standpoint. They're held to different standards of realism, different suspension of disbelief.

What's acceptable for magic is not the same because:
a) it's magic
b) it's a limited resource
c) it has abstraction on the defender' send instead

Even then, something like a scorching ray shouldn't deal damage on a miss because you either hit with the ray or miss.

Magic missile is good but the damage is lower per target than other spells. The benefit is that it always hit; you're trading high damage for guarantee damage. Opposed to melee damage on a miss where the highest damage weapon also has guaranteed damage.

 

[Burninator]

Mods, are there expiration dates for polling? I would be good to have a good number of respondents for this to be statistically significant, perhaps Morrus can tweet it or something to get a feeling at large what truer numbers are. I'm weary to thinking this data is significant until several hundred have responded, at least.

At a certain point, polling should end though. Shouldn't it? Perhaps not. Stats isn't really my area.

Morrus, what we should really do is ask Mearls et al to have a singular, simple and CLEAR poll on this topic over at their official site on the front page, with public seeing the results for themselves.

That's the only way I'll trust the data, I simply don't trust vague polls that don't ask the real germane questions that are buried away in a survey that takes an hour to do, as being accurate and transparent enough for something so controversial to be settled. (if it even can be, at which point it's time to go back to the drawing board, Mr Thompson)

If I'm in the actual minority, I will sigh and move on, but I want to know. They cannot put such a stinker in the game over the objections of so many of us, without showing us why it had to be this mechanic and not something else in its stead.

 

[Mistwell]

Magic is different, both from a narrative and mechanical standpoint. They're held to different standards of realism, different suspension of disbelief.

And that is fine. It's all the other excuses which seem to dance around the issue of "it's magic" that bug me. The "It's an area of attack so that makes sense to me" type excuse, even though the people making that excuse know darn well it applies to more things than simply area of attack spells. Or the "a saving throw isn't an attack roll so it's different" even though the mechanics are mathematically identical, or "you still roll damage dice instead of a fixed number so it's different" even though there is a fixed minimum. All of those are just arguments people toss up there to defense a viewpoint which, ultimately, comes down to "because it's magic".

I am OK with saying "because it's magic". But just say that.

 

[Iosue]

Mods, are there expiration dates for polling? I would be good to have a good number of respondents for this to be statistically significant, perhaps Morrus can tweet it or something to get a feeling at large what truer numbers are. I'm weary to thinking this data is significant until several hundred have responded, at least.

At a certain point, polling should end though. Shouldn't it? Perhaps not. Stats isn't really my area.

Morrus, what we should really do is ask Mearls et al to have a singular, simple and CLEAR poll on this topic over at their official site on the front page, with public seeing the results for themselves.

That's the only way I'll trust the data, I simply don't trust vague polls that don't ask the real germane questions that are buried away in a survey that takes an hour to do, as being accurate and transparent enough for something so controversial to be settled. (if it even can be, at which point it's time to go back to the drawing board, Mr Thompson)

If I'm in the actual minority, I will sigh and move on, but I want to know. They cannot put such a stinker in the game over the objections of so many of us, without showing us why it had to be this mechanic and not something else in its stead.

If a statistically significant measure that more people like or dislike this mechanic is what you're after, this poll was screwed from the beginning by the inclusion of the "don't care" option. Just a quick check of the standard deviation shows an SD of 12, which means the 7 person difference between "like" and "don't like" is just random noise, unlikely to pass any significance test.

Further, from a experiment design perspective, these polls are the worst kind. They rely on volunteered self-report, which means selection bias is strong. The results cannot be generalized to the larger RPG-playing population. What this poll tells us is that of the members of EN World who have seen the poll, and cared enough about it to vote in it, 7 more people voted for "don't like". Mearls could put up a poll on the WotC site and it'd have the same problems.

For perspective, U.S. presidential election polls generally go for a sample of 1,000 or more. Those polls go through relatively great lengths to obtain a truly random sampling.

WotC's internal surveys are likely much stronger -- Perkins mentioned a 50% participation rate and there have been 150,000 downloads of the playtest, which suggests they've had something around 75,000 respondents. Go ahead and reduce that number to just 10% -- 7,500, and it's still far more than an EN World poll can hope for. Naturally, WotC's surveys still suffer from a certain amount of selection bias -- only those who care to send in surveys are polled.

In as much as 5e goes, I doubt you're in a minority. But I don't think you have a majority, either. At best, one side or the other has a slight plurality, which means that if the designers want to avoid the gnome problem, they've got to split the baby. So damage on a miss is not as widespread as in 4e, it's not a feature all fighters get, like in early versions of the playtest, it just shows up in one ability of a sub-specialty of a one class.

Unless there's a huge backlash against this mechanic that affects overall satisfaction in the final survey, which I doubt will happen, I think it's here to stay. WotC is not polling on each mechanic and then building up the game on the results. They're looking at satisfaction with the game as whole. Even if a plurality suggests they don't like it, but they like the game overall, WotC is likely to just keep it in, on the basis that those who really don't like it (but like the game as a whole) will ignore or houserule it.