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

[Mistwell]

Double post

 

[Mistwell]

Double post

 

[billd91]

I understand what it means in D&D terms. I'm saying I don't like those terms because they give rise to arguments like this. You can't be damaged on a miss, everyone says; but a miss in D&D can mean that you were still hit (in the English definition, not the D&D definition) by an attack. It is therefore narratively appropriate that you can still take damage.

IOW, there is no cognitive dissonance in "damage on a miss" if we take the D&D definition of "miss".

I don't think there used to be significant disputes about whether a hit or a miss did damage - at least not until mechanics like this came along that redefined missing as hitting but just a little less hitty.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

I don't think there used to be significant disputes about whether a hit or a miss did damage - at least not until mechanics like this came along that redefined missing as hitting but just a little less hitty.

Exactly.

You either hit or you didn't. How hard was usually reflected in how much damage you did and how much HP the other person lost.

 

[billd91]

The "hit" and "miss" paradigm is rife with incoherency and I'm certain everyone knows this. If you throw in the implication rider of "hit <such that you roll damage + modifiers>" or "miss <such that you do not roll damage + modifiers but may deploy any effects that apply on a miss>" then the fiction makes sense.

Otherwise, if a miss is a miss is a miss is a miss then every single attack against the high AC, gigantic, notoriously lumbering, dex-deficient tarrasque renders the fiction utterly incoherent as its morphed into a swashbuckling mythical monster deftly sidestepping a blow in the same way that Errol Flynn might do. A miss on these giant, slow, heavily armored creatures means the same thing as a miss against an Air Elemental. If anything is at tension, it is that binary interpretation of the D&D hit/miss paradigm.

There are dozens of these examples. Glancing blows occur all over the place in real life. Collateral damage occurs all over the place in real life. You intend a takedown but in the fog of the melee your head smashes into their nose.

If you have to have HP as meat, then damage on a miss might be a lucern hammer "hitting" the plate mail (which absorbs much of the blow, thus denying standard damage resolution) and the pierced edge poking through enough to abrade the flesh and the force of the impact still being absorbed by the soft tissue as the plate mail doesn't cause the kinetic energy to fully dissipate (Str damage). Or any number of renderings such as the one I outlined above where the Great White Shark "missing" the bite attack on the fur seal but his size, ferocity, and velocity causing "damage on a miss" as his girth barrels into the seal at 25 MPH despite missing the bite attack. Etc, etc. I'm pretty sure the fur seal doesn't agree with the Great White Shark that it was a "miss!"

Frankly, I can't see this post as anything but disingenuous - or possible rhetorical just to score points in the argument. The hit and miss paradigm isn't really rife with incoherency. If you hit - you roll damage. If you miss, you don't. Once you've got that single important element determined on an attack, you have tons of narrative space to determine why and how you damaged the target or why and how you failed to do so. And yes, a miss on a giant, heavily armored creature means exactly the same thing, from a game mechanic standpoint, as a miss against an air elemental - you failed to ablate any of its hit points. Narratively, however, it can be a whole lot of other things (and always has). That's not incoherent. It takes a lot of strawman pedantry declaring a miss must conform to the English usage of the term miss to even reach that point. Some players may take it that far, but the game does not nor has it ever done so.

But now, even your shark/seal example shows where things are muddied or at least not ideal because of the way mechanics like this change the narrative space. They narrow it because now the target cannot escape harm. The attacker cannot utterly fail.

 

[mlund]

The hit and miss paradigm isn't really rife with incoherency. If you hit - you roll damage. If you miss, you don't.

Yes, a binary, pass:do something/fail:do nothing paradigm is perfectly coherent. It's mechanical construct for a game. It has to be.

That doesn't mean it is the only mechanical construct that is coherent.

The game's history is rife with checks that are more than "pass: do something / fail: do nothing." Granularity of success and failure are incorporate into critical hits, fumbles, contest mechanics, climb, balance, and jump checks, diplomacy / persuade checks, and some catastrophic saving throw failures.

Creating a "damage floor" for attacks that ignores success / failure results of the check, or kicks in if you hit touch AC, or kicked in if you miss by less than 5 or whatever isn't alien to any of those other checks. The only semantic distinction is that use of the word "hit" and "miss" as keywords for the pass / fail of an attack roll, which is really a bone of contention as it relates to the narrative.

Once you've got that single important element determined on an attack, you have tons of narrative space to determine why and how you damaged the target or why and how you failed to do so. And yes, a miss on a giant, heavily armored creature means exactly the same thing, from a game mechanic standpoint, as a miss against an air elemental - you failed to ablate any of its hit points.

Why? It only means you don't use the standard effect of hitting (your standard roll for damage). There's nothing preventing the application of effects that modify the outcome of a failed attack roll from "nothing" to something - for good or for ill.

- Marty Lund

 

[billd91]

Why? It only means you don't use the standard effect of hitting (your standard roll for damage). There's nothing preventing the application of effects that modify the outcome of a failed attack roll from "nothing" to something - for good or for ill.

But, with this particular mechanic (doing damage on any miss), "nothing" vanishes from the narrative space. Personally, I consider that an ill rather than a good. If the mechanic found some other way to extend the range of a successful hit or a second chance for achieving the hit, I'd find the idea more acceptable. The effective redefinition of miss into hit is what I bristle at.

 

[Wicht]

But, with this particular mechanic (doing damage on any miss), "nothing" vanishes from the narrative space. Personally, I consider that an ill rather than a good. If the mechanic found some other way to extend the range of a successful hit or a second chance for achieving the hit, I'd find the idea more acceptable. The effective redefinition of miss into hit is what I bristle at.

Another way to put it, this power (and any like it) make it impossible for the character to have an unproductive round of combat.

For some that is a good thing. For those of us that don't like the power, the possibility of absolute failure in any given round is a feature, not a detriment.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Gygax never explained what the ratio is so what you have posted is irrelevant. (...)

Might we agree that this exchange is and continues to be fruitless?

 

[Hussar]

But, with this particular mechanic (doing damage on any miss), "nothing" vanishes from the narrative space. Personally, I consider that an ill rather than a good. If the mechanic found some other way to extend the range of a successful hit or a second chance for achieving the hit, I'd find the idea more acceptable. The effective redefinition of miss into hit is what I bristle at.

But, rolling it back around, do you apply the same logic to magic? After all, it is impossible to not be damaged on a Save Half spell (barring special abilities of course). No matter what, you will be damaged by a Save Half spell. Is that a unacceptable limitation on narrative space?

And, if it's not, why is it unacceptable when a certain kind of fighter does it?

How much narrative space are we actually losing? I guess that's my question with this line of reasoning. Yup, with this specific kind of fighter (note it's only one kind of fighter - there's no reason this fighter has to appear in your game), we cannot narrate a complete miss on attacks. Is this really such a huge loss of narrative space? Haven't we also gained a lot of narrative space to narrate near, but also damaging, attacks?