D&D 5E I just don't buy the reasoning behind "damage on a miss".

[MJS]

In classic D&D it is an auto-miss, but nothing says it is a fumble. Likewise in 4e. I don't remember any fumble rules in the 3E core rulebooks - were they introduced in a supplement? And when I played AD&D 2nd ed a 1 was an auto-miss but I don't remember any fumble rules.

I have played a lot of Rolemaster, which does have fumbles. It is a very different game from D&D.

Nearly every RPG with a d20 attack roll, D&D included, has a 20 being awesome, a 1 is balls. Near misses are usually described as parries or armor absorption, bad misses usually not connecting at all. Now tell me that doesn't sound at all familiar. How to narrate the d20 results has thankfully not been in the RAW, but are you to tell me practice, especially so ubiquitous, has no bearing? I guess you've never heard players lament, or laugh, at a 1 or 2 then.

We might say, that with a heavy weapon, the strength needed to bring it to bear caused a couple points of damage even though the blow didn't connect, if we want this wankery in our games. In either case a 1 should still miss.

But the WOTC developer said it was an extra well placed blow when he rolled badly. That simply doesn't jive, cat. Hence, the OP doesn't buy the reasoning behind "damage on a miss".

I get the point. It would have been a 19, but the parry turned it into a 3, so to speak. STR damage still results, because big hammer is big. There's any number of ways to narrate the numbers, fortunately.

But this does screw with the internal consistency of d20 results as it's practiced, and there are better rules variants for heavy weapons than this one, that don't cause a major WTF amongst a large number of players.

 

[pemerton]

Nearly every RPG with a d20 attack roll, D&D included, has a 20 being awesome, a 1 is balls.

1 is auto-miss. Neither more nor less.

20 as a crit was not part of classic D&D - I gather it was introduced sometime during 2nd ed AD&D.

Near misses are usually described as parries or armor absorption, bad misses usually not connecting at all. Now tell me that doesn't sound at all familiar.

<snip>

But this does screw with the internal consistency of d20 results as it's practiced, and there are better rules variants for heavy weapons than this one, that don't cause a major WTF amongst a large number of players.

I don't know if I understand this "not connecting at all". That makes sense of archery. It doesn't really correlate to the melee combat I'm used to from movies, comics etc. (I don't know real life so well, other than the occasional bit of boxing footage.)

In melee as I envisage it - and as Gygax described it in his DMG - the two enemies are in close physical proximity, testing, feinting, blocking and parrying, trading blows - and some of those blows connect. When misses "don't connect at all", that's not because the attacker was hopeless. It's because the defender avoided. And my (limited) understanding of hand-to-hand fighting is that part of what an attacker does is force an enemy into avoidance manoeuvres that open him/her up to a devastating attack. The notion that, in the course of doing this an attacker would inevitably wear his or her opponent down doesn't strike me as particularly absurd, especially once I put my "cinematic" lens on my mind's eye.

 

[Wicht]

1's are fumble threats in our games and 20's are so awesomely placed they are always critical threats. The creation of critical threats was one of the innovations of 3e that just struck me as an "of course," sort of intuitive thing. The creation of fumble threats (we now also use the Pathfinder Crit/Fumble decks) seems like the next logical progression in development.

I've also, ever since I was wee, used the amount by which the roll missed the target number to influence the narration of the attack. It just seems like the natural thing to do. As has been commented already, I just always assumed that was how most people rolled with their game narration.

Gygax's game assumed a 1 minute or so attack round with lots going on. The change of the combat round's length to a shorter time period of necessity changes the narration of the combat round. You just don't have enough time for all the action in 6 seconds that you would have in 1 minute and its a bit silly to try to read the 1 minute assumptions into the narration of a 6 second attack round.

 

[MJS]

1 is auto-miss. Neither more nor less.

20 as a crit was not part of classic D&D - I gather it was introduced sometime during 2nd ed AD&D.

I don't know if I understand this "not connecting at all". That makes sense of archery. It doesn't really correlate to the melee combat I'm used to from movies, comics etc. (I don't know real life so well, other than the occasional bit of boxing footage.)

In melee as I envisage it - and as Gygax described it in his DMG - the two enemies are in close physical proximity, testing, feinting, blocking and parrying, trading blows - and some of those blows connect. When misses "don't connect at all", that's not because the attacker was hopeless. It's because the defender avoided. And my (limited) understanding of hand-to-hand fighting is that part of what an attacker does is force an enemy into avoidance manoeuvres that open him/her up to a devastating attack. The notion that, in the course of doing this an attacker would inevitably wear his or her opponent down doesn't strike me as particularly absurd, especially once I put my "cinematic" lens on my mind's eye.

You would understand if you played with more people, I guess. Certainly your style isn't more, or less, cinematic. You just appear to be ignoring how attack rolls are generally interpreted, and quoting Gary, who probably played it more the way I'm describing anyway. A roll of 2 with your halberd, one minute round or 10 second, probably amounts to the blade swooshing by the target - not connecting at all. And not dealing STR damage - which is why damage on miss = WTF, over?

 

[Jester David]

Funny thing, nowhere in the rules of Great Weapon Fighting does it say the attack needs to be a melee attack. It just says that the weapon has to be two-handed or versatile. So you could throw your weapon, miss, and deal damage. It's very legal according to the RAW.
It's not even that absurd. The trident and spear both have the versatile and thrown properties. A fighter with 16 strength can carry dozens of tridents. You can hurl them using your Strength and always deal damage. Which is advantageous as you have disadvantage at long range (21 to 59 feet away). Cover? Doesn't matter. Concealment? Doesn't matter. Find a place you can't be reached and just snipe until your enemy is dead.

As it doesn't that you need to be adjacent to the target, you just need to miss with a melee weapon, you could theoretically from across the battlefield, miss because you're out of range, and deal damage. While flimsier in terms of the rules it doesn't seem to be against the RAW.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Tangent: is the spear still a two-handed weapon?

 

[Tovec]

Funny thing, nowhere in the rules of Great Weapon Fighting does it say the attack needs to be a melee attack. It just says that the weapon has to be two-handed or versatile. So you could throw your weapon, miss, and deal damage. It's very legal according to the RAW.
It's not even that absurd. The trident and spear both have the versatile and thrown properties. A fighter with 16 strength can carry dozens of tridents. You can hurl them using your Strength and always deal damage. Which is advantageous as you have disadvantage at long range (21 to 59 feet away). Cover? Doesn't matter. Concealment? Doesn't matter. Find a place you can't be reached and just snipe until your enemy is dead.

As it doesn't that you need to be adjacent to the target, you just need to miss with a melee weapon, you could theoretically from across the battlefield, miss because you're out of range, and deal damage. While flimsier in terms of the rules it doesn't seem to be against the RAW.

Tangent: is the spear still a two-handed weapon?

THAT is what you took away form his post?

But I agree with Jester's crazy example. It is an absurd example of what is perfectly reasonable reading of the ability. A specific "auto" in this case is far more damaging in circumstances people never envisioned when they wrote it up.

If it is meant to be a major bonus to hit, write it up that way.
If it is meant to do EXTRA damage, or minimum damage, write that up.

Auto-hit on a miss and dealing a flat damage which can kill a creature on a roll of a 1 is a TERRIBLE mechanic.

 

[bogmad]

1 is auto-miss. Neither more nor less.

So why not auto-miss on a 5 or a 12? Was auto miss on a 1 picked totally arbitrarily, or because it was... intuitive? I'd argue the reason why the narrative difference between a miss on a 2 and a miss on a 15 isn't spelled out in the rules is because it seems like a no-brainer that would just seem kind of silly, redundant, and take up unnecessary space in a rulebook.

The difference between a fumble and auto-miss is really negligible in terms of this discussion.

 

[pemerton]

1's are fumble threats in our games and 20's are so awesomely placed they are always critical threats. The creation of critical threats was one of the innovations of 3e that just struck me as an "of course," sort of intuitive thing. The creation of fumble threats (we now also use the Pathfinder Crit/Fumble decks) seems like the next logical progression in development.

Critical hits in D&D aren't really criticals, though - they're just a device for manipulating the damage roll. (Eg an uninjured dragon has some hundreds of hp and my PC hits it with a crit for 50 hp of damage - in what way is that a critical hit?)

This is also another example where words - like "hit", "miss", "damage" and now "critical hit" - do not bear their natural language meaning when used as technical game terms.

Given that critical hits aren't really that at all, I'm not that keen on process-sim fumbles in D&D. At a minimum, before I went to process sim fumbles I would want active defence.

Gygax's game assumed a 1 minute or so attack round with lots going on. The change of the combat round's length to a shorter time period of necessity changes the narration of the combat round. You just don't have enough time for all the action in 6 seconds that you would have in 1 minute and its a bit silly to try to read the 1 minute assumptions into the narration of a 6 second attack round.

On another of these threads (or maybe this one?) someone asserted that the attack roll maps the action of the round exactly, so that the attacker really only makes one thrust or swing of the weapon per 6 seconds. That's too bizarre an image for me to seriously entertain, in my game at least.

But once I recognise that the combatants are behaving like real combatants in real close-quarters fights (or, at least, the movie variants thereof) it's pretty easy to recognise that whatever exactly the attack roll represents, it's not just the outcome of a single unopposed swing.

A roll of 2 with your halberd, one minute round or 10 second, probably amounts to the blade swooshing by the target - not connecting at all.

Why does the blade "swoosh by"? Because I suck? Because they dodged? In dodging did I wrongfoot them, force them into a dangerous position, cause them to twist their ankle? that'll be -3 hp, thank you very much!

 

[Paraxis]

Funny thing, nowhere in the rules of Great Weapon Fighting does it say the attack needs to be a melee attack. It just says that the weapon has to be two-handed or versatile. So you could throw your weapon, miss, and deal damage. It's very legal according to the RAW.
It's not even that absurd. The trident and spear both have the versatile and thrown properties. A fighter with 16 strength can carry dozens of tridents. You can hurl them using your Strength and always deal damage. Which is advantageous as you have disadvantage at long range (21 to 59 feet away). Cover? Doesn't matter. Concealment? Doesn't matter. Find a place you can't be reached and just snipe until your enemy is dead.

As it doesn't that you need to be adjacent to the target, you just need to miss with a melee weapon, you could theoretically from across the battlefield, miss because you're out of range, and deal damage. While flimsier in terms of the rules it doesn't seem to be against the RAW.

No because you would not be able to make the attack in the first place, same thing if the target is invisible and you don't know where he is at. If you can't make the attack in the first place, there is no roll to miss on.

As far as it working with spears and tridents I think that is cool, and something I hadn't thought of so thanks for pointing it out, will make my ranger build even more deadly.