That's just an urban myth. It never actually happened.
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D&D 5E I just don't buy the reasoning behind "damage on a miss".
- Thread starter ForeverSlayer
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So in other words there is no quote.
Sure, and so is THAC0, but no on is arguing that it be re-inserted to the game, but there are other 2e influences that are making it back. No one is arguing nothing from 4e be included -[RECORD SCRATCH]ok well that's a bold face lie, I take that back, some are arguing just that, BUT many of us would like to see some of design philosophy that so strongly informed 4e dialed back a bit to not so strongly define 5e. We're not against anything that reeks of 4e, though.
This whole damage on a miss element just seems to be a lightning rod for people to define exactly what kind of design philosophy they want to guide the game. I think it might be a better to leave such contentious ideas out of the basic core.
Some of what were "advances" with 4e for some were steps back for others. I personally liked them well enough for 4e, but not for a "unifying" edition. Minus a few well tested and approved additions like advantage and bounded accuracy, the whole premise behind 5e was to step back to what (loosely) everyone could say "felt" like D&D and from there you can add "advanced" modules to add what you felt were good for your game.
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I am.
I like 4th edition almost as much as I like my legs being broken in 15 different places.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
I honestly have no clue why you were looking for one. [MENTION=50304]mlund[/MENTION]'s comments were just based on pure reason.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Well, guess what? You're not going to get what you want. If D&D Next is going be a unity edition, it will have elements of 4e in it. And it should from that standpoint, no matter how strident your complaints are.
That said, doing damage on a miss isn't exactly a 4e design element I'd be embracing in D&D Next.
Why are some of you still pretending that we are going to get this 'unification' edition we heard in the beginning?
More wishful thinking?
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
Yea, even as a 4venger, damage on a miss isn't a hill I'm willing to die on. As long as fighters get cool options besides a weapon attack, and are hopefully better in combat than dedicated casters. (I'm fine with a high damage blade warlock, but I'd rather see the wizard be better at exploration and interaction, or combat encounter negation).
Burninator
First Post
I'd be very surprised if the words : hit, miss, or damage are defined game terms. At most, for damage, you'd get a circular definition : damage is what happened to reduce your HP, and HP loss is what happens when you take damage.
To-hit accuracy represents something we are all well aware of in the real world, Marty. I write actual videogame simulations for a living, and I can tell you, I can assign a numerical value to a stat and have it correspond PRECISELY to an on-screen visual effect of a connecting blow (or one that misses), or even the probability of that blow landing at all.
D&D combat is a simulation (at least where human fighters are concerned, with non-magical weapons and abilities and armor), so unless you actually write simulations for a living, I'd suggest you avoid putting air quotes around words which have never been defined game terms. Hit, miss, and damage are the glue that ties the rest of the game stats and mechanics to an interpretation of what's really going on, in the SIMULATION.
D&D does not, and has never, AFAIK, defined hit to require air quotes, nor miss. D&D Next is no exception. Perhaps 4e did, I don't care though because that's another bit of circular logic : if any edition of D&D defined something, it must be so for Next.
Another example is bringing up the definition of HP for AD&D, while ignoring what Mike Mearls wrote on the topic merely a few months ago.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130527
"There's no right answer here, and that's why we're embracing the idea of hit points as something that DMs can customize. That said, we do need to start somewhere. Here's where we are.
You're right that AC is a nonsensical mishmash of two separate elements : dodge + a damage cutoff threshold. However, it's less nonsensical than the casual misuse of the term "miss causes physical damage or wear". How does my sword missing cause your character to even get tired? Because he's dodging it? What if he's unaware of you, and doesn't move at all? You can still miss if you roll poorly. So the target doesn't necesserily expend any energy or receive any wounds at all, yet can still die from the sword not touching him.
D&D IS a simulation : a buggy one. Those bugs can be fixed. Instead of introducing new ones, let us fix old ones. It's how progress is made, going forward : "Next"
Also hit points = hits. I'm never going to let that go. You must hit if you want to cause hit points of damage.
AOEs always hit : the target is either in the area of effect at the time of casting the spell, or isn't. There is no narrative relevance of "damage on a miss" with saving throws. A dex saving throw doesn't mean you actually get out of the area of effect, which means those two things are complete separate, non-overlapping, irrelevant-to-each-other submechanics.
I also model AOEs such as explosions and fireballs in my games. I hope you don't try to suggest it's the same calculation to determine whether two solid bodies intersect as whether an object is wholly or partially within a sphere. The latter is a trivial calculation : I could simulate a fireball in a single line of code : saving throws, random damage modifiers, and everything. Collision detection between two moving objects is something else entirely, and vastly, I mean VASTLY more complex. Yet still do-able with sufficient accuracy to be both believable and result in fun games. If I made a demo where the sword swing misses, like in those old MMOs, yet still delivers damage, QA would flag it as a bug. As engines progress over time (see EQ Next), they don't even need to be satisfied with that. It's called evolution / improvement / iteration. Something D&D Next should do : improve the state of the art.
This is a flagship model : doing more with less (better simulation while still keeping it simple) is a tricky, multi-objective design optimisation problem, and they've done very well so far. The proof is in the pudding : combat is fast and effective.
Why does no one argue about TWF style? Because it doesn't force the flaws of the system into the foreground. GWF does. It puts everything buggy about D&D definitions and rules right up there, front and center, impossible to ignore. One often puts hacks into games to hide flaws, the physics equations aren't actually real either (e.g. gravity is suspended once an object settles on the ground, to reduce CPU cost for useless work that won't affect anything visually). So, it's all about the tricks of the trade. AC never made perfect sense, but it made some sense. This makes no sense at all, unless you're willing to admit you're playing a game with no connection to reality, one which is completely arbitrary because the bridge words can no longer have the same meaning they do in english.
Hit, damage, and miss, mean exactly what they mean in english. What happens as a result of those things, are what you write down on your character sheet. But the words are what allows you to imagine the action. If those words are meaningless jargon, because a hit is no longer the opposite of a miss, and a miss doesn't mean a miss, or a hit a hit, or damage results in harm done, then we're just playing a game with no independent reality.
We can discuss D&D rules minutiae all day long, but unless you actually make simulations for a living, don't make statements about what a simulation is or isn't. D&D is both a game and a simulation, the two concepts don't have to be incompatible or add design odds with one another.
This mechanic further makes D&D a game and impossible to be a simulation, or even a game with coherent rules, since the words used to describe events, regardless of their physical interpretation, are contradictions.
We should aim to reduce contradictions, not increase them. If D&D isn't going to improve over time, it might as well die, because VR is coming and this game will have a hard time keeping up if you can't even narratively distinguish a sword hit from a miss while playing it. That's complete lunacy. That's how games calcify into their own extinction, by not evolving. They tried a totally disconnected from realism tack in 4e, and it failed miserably, D&D is now 3rd in sales and Pathfinder is #1. That's not a coincidence. People rejected stuff like marks, surges, damage on a miss (Reaping Strike), and left the game in droves. This is them making the same mistake twice : they didn't support the simulationist crowd. It's reflected in how spells effects are described, with a physical reality and not self-referential to only other game terms, connections happen to the surroundings in the game. A 4e fireball didn't even set matches on fire, since it couldn't damage objects with fire damage. 5e is much better, BECAUSE they reverted to their old effects which did precisely that.
To-hit accuracy represents something we are all well aware of in the real world, Marty. I write actual videogame simulations for a living, and I can tell you, I can assign a numerical value to a stat and have it correspond PRECISELY to an on-screen visual effect of a connecting blow (or one that misses), or even the probability of that blow landing at all.
D&D combat is a simulation (at least where human fighters are concerned, with non-magical weapons and abilities and armor), so unless you actually write simulations for a living, I'd suggest you avoid putting air quotes around words which have never been defined game terms. Hit, miss, and damage are the glue that ties the rest of the game stats and mechanics to an interpretation of what's really going on, in the SIMULATION.
D&D does not, and has never, AFAIK, defined hit to require air quotes, nor miss. D&D Next is no exception. Perhaps 4e did, I don't care though because that's another bit of circular logic : if any edition of D&D defined something, it must be so for Next.
Another example is bringing up the definition of HP for AD&D, while ignoring what Mike Mearls wrote on the topic merely a few months ago.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130527
"There's no right answer here, and that's why we're embracing the idea of hit points as something that DMs can customize. That said, we do need to start somewhere. Here's where we are.
- Hit points represent an element of physical wear that involves a combination of fatigue and physical injury. As you take more damage, you have more evident wounds.
- To regain hit points, you need to do things that would logically heal those wounds, such as receive a healing spell, drink a potion, or rest for a long while. Right now, we're thinking that a rest in a dungeon or the outdoors can return you to half your maximum hit points. You need to take refuge in a comfortable place, like a tavern or other point of civilization, to rest for a few days and return to your maximum hit points.
- We also like the idea of taking refuge because it makes interaction more prominent by encouraging DMs and players to think about what happens between visits to the dungeon. While resting in town, do you start a business, mingle with nobles, or apprentice yourself to a weaponsmith? That sort of narrative padding can make interaction and relationships in the campaign a more prominent part of the game. By placing interesting things to do in town within the core system, we can create a game that embraces the entirety of an adventurer's life. Urban adventuring can still feature stuff like delving into sewers or battling a wererat infestation, but it can also become the signature form of an interaction-heavy adventure."
You're right that AC is a nonsensical mishmash of two separate elements : dodge + a damage cutoff threshold. However, it's less nonsensical than the casual misuse of the term "miss causes physical damage or wear". How does my sword missing cause your character to even get tired? Because he's dodging it? What if he's unaware of you, and doesn't move at all? You can still miss if you roll poorly. So the target doesn't necesserily expend any energy or receive any wounds at all, yet can still die from the sword not touching him.
D&D IS a simulation : a buggy one. Those bugs can be fixed. Instead of introducing new ones, let us fix old ones. It's how progress is made, going forward : "Next"
Also hit points = hits. I'm never going to let that go. You must hit if you want to cause hit points of damage.
AOEs always hit : the target is either in the area of effect at the time of casting the spell, or isn't. There is no narrative relevance of "damage on a miss" with saving throws. A dex saving throw doesn't mean you actually get out of the area of effect, which means those two things are complete separate, non-overlapping, irrelevant-to-each-other submechanics.
I also model AOEs such as explosions and fireballs in my games. I hope you don't try to suggest it's the same calculation to determine whether two solid bodies intersect as whether an object is wholly or partially within a sphere. The latter is a trivial calculation : I could simulate a fireball in a single line of code : saving throws, random damage modifiers, and everything. Collision detection between two moving objects is something else entirely, and vastly, I mean VASTLY more complex. Yet still do-able with sufficient accuracy to be both believable and result in fun games. If I made a demo where the sword swing misses, like in those old MMOs, yet still delivers damage, QA would flag it as a bug. As engines progress over time (see EQ Next), they don't even need to be satisfied with that. It's called evolution / improvement / iteration. Something D&D Next should do : improve the state of the art.
This is a flagship model : doing more with less (better simulation while still keeping it simple) is a tricky, multi-objective design optimisation problem, and they've done very well so far. The proof is in the pudding : combat is fast and effective.
Why does no one argue about TWF style? Because it doesn't force the flaws of the system into the foreground. GWF does. It puts everything buggy about D&D definitions and rules right up there, front and center, impossible to ignore. One often puts hacks into games to hide flaws, the physics equations aren't actually real either (e.g. gravity is suspended once an object settles on the ground, to reduce CPU cost for useless work that won't affect anything visually). So, it's all about the tricks of the trade. AC never made perfect sense, but it made some sense. This makes no sense at all, unless you're willing to admit you're playing a game with no connection to reality, one which is completely arbitrary because the bridge words can no longer have the same meaning they do in english.
Hit, damage, and miss, mean exactly what they mean in english. What happens as a result of those things, are what you write down on your character sheet. But the words are what allows you to imagine the action. If those words are meaningless jargon, because a hit is no longer the opposite of a miss, and a miss doesn't mean a miss, or a hit a hit, or damage results in harm done, then we're just playing a game with no independent reality.
We can discuss D&D rules minutiae all day long, but unless you actually make simulations for a living, don't make statements about what a simulation is or isn't. D&D is both a game and a simulation, the two concepts don't have to be incompatible or add design odds with one another.
This mechanic further makes D&D a game and impossible to be a simulation, or even a game with coherent rules, since the words used to describe events, regardless of their physical interpretation, are contradictions.
We should aim to reduce contradictions, not increase them. If D&D isn't going to improve over time, it might as well die, because VR is coming and this game will have a hard time keeping up if you can't even narratively distinguish a sword hit from a miss while playing it. That's complete lunacy. That's how games calcify into their own extinction, by not evolving. They tried a totally disconnected from realism tack in 4e, and it failed miserably, D&D is now 3rd in sales and Pathfinder is #1. That's not a coincidence. People rejected stuff like marks, surges, damage on a miss (Reaping Strike), and left the game in droves. This is them making the same mistake twice : they didn't support the simulationist crowd. It's reflected in how spells effects are described, with a physical reality and not self-referential to only other game terms, connections happen to the surroundings in the game. A 4e fireball didn't even set matches on fire, since it couldn't damage objects with fire damage. 5e is much better, BECAUSE they reverted to their old effects which did precisely that.
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No, we just have very different ideas of what "unification" means. So far I'm getting a lot of the game I want.
You can't please everyone, of course. As is well evident.
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