D&D 5E Q&A 10/17/13 - Crits, Damage on Miss, Wildshape

[urLordy]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], what you describes matches my gaming experience. Thanks for elucidating that much better than I did!

 

[pemerton]

I think I understand your point better. That could be divine agency. The healer wants to heal (organic behavior). The result is up to the gods (how much healing occurs). And/or since the healing is subjective and abstract, the healer doesn't necessarily know much the commoner or hero is healed. That's why in my games, the recipient of the healing implicitly or explicitly asks for healing. All of the above can lead to naturalistic behavior. Therefore, still not comparable to damage on a miss for me.

On the "knowing how much the target is healed", this is why I initially invited [MENTION=95493]Tovec[/MENTION] to tell me how each target looks after receiving healing. Presumably the difference between 1 hp of dying and 99 hp out of 100 is visible to the trained eye?

If not, then what exactly is going on when someone "hits" and causes a (say) 50 hp critter to take 15 hp of damage?

On the divine agency thing, so the gods have mandated that high level characters shall take longer to heal, or require more clerical juice, than lower level characters? Because?

(I should add, there is a simple solution to all this, which 4e implements. Proportionate healing.)

the primary playstyle that has problems with damage-on-a-miss is not the one that's popping out for the entire duration of combat.

But you only have to "pop out" for the resolution of the attack. Then you re-immerse for things like resolving your movement, your conversation with allies, your observation of the battlefield, etc.

if fictional cohesiveness is maintained like blinking, then blinking only occasionally is ideal if you prefer to be in-character such that you only go into metagame mode between those half-second blinks.

OK, so the difference from healing is that it only comes up intermittently?

I care only about the believability (and other problems) of damage-on-a-miss when combat is not 'popped out' for the entire duration. If that's not the conversation we're having, then let's not continue.

<snip>

you've read all the people who described that it was not believable. If a person doesn't feel that GWF leads to believable behavior, then it's not empowering the player in that context. No matter what you state about it.

<snip>

I know you didn't call this partner unreasonable or anything like that, but now you're saying you don't understand her preferences?

I understand the preferences, in the sense that I know they are there, and I believe that they are grounded mostly in habit and familiarity. I find it frustrating when they are presented as if they were some sort of last word on what counts as good or bad in RPG play.

On that, preumably you've read all the people saying that my game doesn't make sense, and I don't care about believability/sensibleness/cohesion/verismilitude. Also that I hate D&D. This is primarily what I'm objecting to.

I don't care what people do or don't like. I do care about them taking potshots at my playstyle, and telling me that it is "only commonsense" that I should have my preference relegated to a quarantined module. My point is that damage-on-a-miss can be part of a believable, verisimilitudinous, D&D-loving RPG experience. And that those who dislike it don't have some sort of monopoly on being "genuine" D&D players.

I also find it somewhat ironic that I, who am supposedly the hater and the one departing from tradition, am the one who doesn't actually hate (or at best tolerate) the mechanics, and who therefore doesn't have to "pop in" and "pop out" of immersion in order to play the game (at least, 4e) in accordance with its rules.

 

[urLordy]

the primary playstyle that has problems with damage-on-a-miss is not the one that's popping out for the entire duration of combat.

But you only have to "pop out" for the resolution of the attack. Then you re-immerse for things like resolving your movement, your conversation with allies, your observation of the battlefield, etc.

What do you mean by "but" and "have to"? Are you saying that this playstyle (which I continue to believe that you don't quite understand) doesn't "have to" a be certain way (in order to accomodate acceptance of the rule)? Does your playstyle "have to" be a certain way? Isn't that kind of statement a bit... mmm... ineffective?

OK, so the difference from healing is that it only comes up intermittently?

I find this difficult to answer. I'm not sure how to describe differences when I don't agree with the premise of the similarity in the first place.

I understand the preferences, in the sense that I know they are there, and I believe that they are grounded mostly in habit and familiarity. I find it frustrating when they are presented as if they were some sort of last word on what counts as good or bad in RPG play.

First, of all "habit and familiarity" remains your perception. The art example I gave is a lot more complicated than that. Appreciation of art or lack therefore is not just habit. In fact, if someone said "that's just habit", then I consider it dismissive, because it implies the behavior is rational only because of habituation and there cannot be any rational reason for the origin of and continuation of the habit. BTW, habits can be very productive and positive, because you don't have to consciously remind yourself to do important tasks, which would be mental clutter, you just do it. Whereas, if you think it's a bad habit, just say so). So, for what it's worth, I would find it equally frustrating if "it's just habit" is presented as if it were some sort of last word against what counts as good or bad in RPG play.

On that, preumably you've read all the people saying that my game doesn't make sense, and I don't care about believability/sensibleness/cohesion/verismilitude. Also that I hate D&D. This is primarily what I'm objecting to.

I don't care what people do or don't like. I do care about them taking potshots at my playstyle, and telling me that it is "only commonsense" that I should have my preference relegated to a quarantined module. My point is that damage-on-a-miss can be part of a believable, verisimilitudinous, D&D-loving RPG experience. And that those who dislike it don't have some sort of monopoly on being "genuine" D&D players

I don't remember reading about all the people saying your game doesn't make sense, and you should probably focus that kind of argument against those who have actually claimed that against your game. Or suss out whether they are talking about your game.

I also find it somewhat ironic that I, who am supposedly the hater and the one departing from tradition, am the one who doesn't actually hate (or at best tolerate) the mechanics, and who therefore doesn't have to "pop in" and "pop out" of immersion in order to play the game (at least, 4e) in accordance with its rules.

I don't understand. You remained popped in immersion for the entire combat if you wanted to?

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand. You remained popped in immersion for the entire combat if you wanted to?

Yes. The presence of damage on a miss is not an obstacle to my immersion in the game. It supports it, by reinforcing the key fiction around the PC in question - namely, a relentless dreadnought.

More generally, the claim that metagame mechanics are, of necessity, obstacles to immersion I know to be false from my own experience as a player and an observer of other players.

 

[urLordy]

Yes. The presence of damage on a miss is not an obstacle to my immersion in the game. It supports it, by reinforcing the key fiction around the PC in question - namely, a relentless dreadnought.]

Huh. I gotta be honest. Nothing I've ever read from your posts would give me any indication of that. Are you immersed in 1st person / in-character, or immersed in the story in author/director stance?

EDIT: I miswrote that. I meant to write that nothing I've ever read from your posts would give me any indication you don't have to "pop in" and "pop out" of immersion in order to play the game, esp. during combat.

 

[herrozerro]

Huh. I gotta be honest. Nothing I've ever read from your posts would give me any indication of that. Are you immersed in 1st person / in-character, or immersed in the story in author/director stance?

Does it have to be one or the other?

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], what you describes matches my gaming experience. Thanks for elucidating that much better than I did!

Celebrim's Second Law of RPG's sooooo much applies to this thread: "How you think about playing a system is more important than the rules system itself." It couldn't be more clear that even where the rules are congruent and we agree on them, that the participants of this thread are playing entirely different games. Let me be frank and hopefully not offensive:

Health bars?!?? WTH??? Pop-ups? Gamists overlays? This is this a PnP game you are playing or a cRPG? I don't recognize the game being described at all. What do you need all that meta-contextualization for if you have a DM? I mean, there isn't anything wrong with that game any more than there is anything wrong with a cRPG (I loved the original Mass Effect, for instance) but I don't get it. What I am saying is that the game being described is absolutely alien to me. I can't imagine what my examples of play must sound like to them, and while I concede that my examples of play are somewhat idealized - in that PC on PC interaction is often purely meta (that being a decision of these particular players, but not a universal truth, as I've had strict thespians in prior groups) with the player declaring only, "I'm performing first aid on Rex." or "Who needs healing?... I'm down 18. Ok, cure serious wounds", I think I'm being fairly representative of how I'd play a scene between a newly encountered NPC and a PC. Do scenes between newly encountered NPC's in need of healing (do these even occur in such games, or is it hypothetical?) normally involve explicit meta-contextualization with somewhere in the narration appearing:

DM: "She looks like she's lost 38 hit points."
PC: "Wow, she is in a bad way. I'll cast cure critical wounds on her."

I don't know. Hits aren't apparently usually narrated in the other game. Combat apparently drops into a sub-game to a very high degree (I try to avoid ever pulling out a battlemap and miniatures unless the fight is clearly so complex that my players will be confused, just to avoid ever shifting imaginative perspective). Damage occurs on a miss. It's D&D, but it's not any D&D I'm particularly familiar with.

Bottom line, if my player's come on to the scene of the death of some Boromir like captain, and he's surrounded by dead and dying allies and enemies, I don't think I need health bars to convey that he's grievously injured, nor do I find it breaks emersion with the source material if this Boromir like 10th level fighter has survived with 10 arrows when some of his comrades died with one. Nor has it been overly burdensome to the fiction if 'Boromir' requires greater healing than his wounded page, whose just got one error in him. But for reasons I've outlined abundantly in this already lengthy thread, there are just some situations where the absolute 'damage on a miss mechanic' (as opposed to 'damage on a glancing blow' or something of the sort) can't be narrated consistently AND is also not fair to the common fictional positioning/character trait, "I'm hard to hit." Rather than doing back flips to fit 'damage on a miss' into the fiction, it's a lot easier to just say, "Change the mechanic to represent 'damage on a glancing blow', define 'glancing blow' consistently within the fiction at it no longer causes problems."

 

[urLordy]

Does it have to be one or the other?

Huh? I'm just asking him. It's called Asking Someone Something in Order to Understand Them Better. You should try it sometime.

 

[herrozerro]

Huh? I'm just asking him. It's called Asking Someone Something in Order to Understand Them Better. You should try it sometime.

I thought I just did. I was unsure what you were getting at so I asked the question.

 

[urLordy]

[MENTION=86211]herrozerro[/MENTION] , are you trying to understand me better or pemerton? If me, the answer is I don't know if it's possible to be in-character and director/author stance at the same time because I was asking pemerton about his method of immersion and I wasn't even thinking about it as either/or.

Let me be frank and hopefully not offensive:

No offense taken.

Health bars?!?? WTH??? Pop-ups? Gamists overlays? This is this a PnP game you are playing or a cRPG? I don't recognize the game being described at all.

Consider this the messy nature of a forum. Gamist overlay is analogous, not a homologous.