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

[TwoSix]

There has to be some reason why these same people just shrug over alchemist fire, but rage against the machine over great weapon fighting. If they're simulationists, they should hate both with roughly equal passion. If their gamists, they should shrug with roughly equal dispassion. But, they don't - they have dispassionate reaction to one and deeply passionate reaction to the other. This makes no sense to me - why does one get a "meh, simulationist pass" in their minds, and the other gets a "violates all sense of simulation and reason must be banished!" declaration?

This is the heart of the discussion to me. Once you've accepted you have to narrate a miss on the armored knight differently than a miss on the agile rogue, you're already at that point where the mechanics aren't feeding you the results. And once that door is open, what does it matter if the mechanics are built more to provide tactical options than to model something?

 

[TwoSix]

Yup, pretty much. At 4 HP, their chances of survival even on a successful save are negligible; you'd have to roll a 7 or less on 5d6. Generally, the way kobolds survive is to combine a top-end roll for hit points with a successful save and a low-ish damage roll.

Right. Whereas a kobold with 8 HP can survive a 15 damage fireball on a successful save, or 17 damage if they're alive but disabled. At that threshold, you're near the average of 5d6, so at least a ~45% chance of a survivable damage roll.

 

[Wicht]

This is the heart of the discussion to me. Once you've accepted you have to narrate a miss on the armored knight differently than a miss on the agile rogue, you're already at that point where the mechanics aren't feeding you the results. And once that door is open, what does it matter if the mechanics are built more to provide tactical options than to model something?

Narration aside, maybe we don't like the mechanical option of a fighter who never, ever, ever misses.

Just a thought.

Edit: I say, "narration aside," but it really does get back, in part to the mechanics forcing the narration. A fighter who never, ever (even when he is blind, crippled, and hogtied) misses steps all over the narration and forces it into a very tight corner.

 

[Ahnehnois]

There has to be some reason why these same people just shrug over alchemist fire, but rage against the machine over great weapon fighting. If they're simulationists, they should hate both with roughly equal passion. If their gamists, they should shrug with roughly equal dispassion. But, they don't - they have dispassionate reaction to one and deeply passionate reaction to the other. This makes no sense to me - why does one get a "meh, simulationist pass" in their minds, and the other gets a "violates all sense of simulation and reason must be banished!" declaration?

If they're gamists, they should hate both, as gamism relies on a strong differentiation between success and failure and the involvement of skill and luck in determining those outcomes. "Player fiat" goes against the notion of creating this kind of experience.

From a simulation perspective, these are two different things. There's no reason a six-second flurry of weapon strikes and an instantaneous explosion of some combustible flask would be simulated in the same way.

 

[Celebrim]

My counter-argument would be that detailed monster building rules already exist in the game, especially in 3e...they're the character building rules! The problem (to my mind) for 3e is that those rules are considered the default, and no simplified model is presented.

I don't understand. Why do you need a simplified model? You are allowed to do whatever you want. You are the DM. Why do you need a set of rules to tell you what rules you can ignore and how to do it? Why can't you just go, "50 h.p., +10 BAB, 3d6 damage, AC 23... and go!" That's what DM's basically did in earlier editions.

And to the extent that you need a simplified model, don't the simplified models - no skills, no feats, assign AC rather than derive it, etc. - just suggest themselves?

 

[TwoSix]

Narration aside, maybe we don't like the mechanical option of a fighter who never, ever, ever misses.

Just a thought.

One of our many differences, of course. The fighter misses all the time, in my view. After all, the enemy is still up and fighting. I don't feel the need to narrate lost hit points as actual contact. The pixie (agile dodger with 30 hit points) who decides to go toe-to-toe with the halberd fighter might dodge (miss, but Str mod damage) 9 straight times, and then be swatted down on the 10th attack.

 

[Ahnehnois]

This is the heart of the discussion to me. Once you've accepted you have to narrate a miss on the armored knight differently than a miss on the agile rogue, you're already at that point where the mechanics aren't feeding you the results.

I don't see how that's the case. If you roll a 1, or get a low enough result to miss the target's touch AC (regardless of whether this term appears in 5e or not), than you miss. If you roll high enough to contact the target but still miss, the blow is absorbed or deflected in some way. The mechanics are feeding you the results, as far as I can tell.

Narration aside, maybe we don't like the mechanical option of a fighter who never, ever, ever misses.

There's also that.

 

[Dausuul]

For me, like I said- what, 30 pages ago?- it starts (but does not end) with the terminology. Hit and miss have plain language meanings, and when I try to explain a "hit on a miss" mechanic to new players, it simply causes confusion.* Mechanics that cause confusion are a speedbump in the path of the player's learning curve.

Yup, this nails it.

Or, as I said waaaaay back in the start of the thread: Verisimilitude--or immersion, which is really the issue here--isn't about carefully explaining the relation of the mechanics to the fiction. It's about whether, in the heat of the game, people are questioning the narrative. Whether you've got a convincing answer is irrelevant. As soon as the question is asked, immersion breaks.

You can get away with all sorts of kludges behind the scenes (hit points being Exhibit A), as long as you present a smooth facade that doesn't jolt people out of the fictional world. One thing that's sure to wreck that facade is when the Player's Handbook gets in a fight with the dictionary. A miss should be a miss, and a hit should be a hit.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Whether you've got a convincing answer is irrelevant.

...and, as this 80 page thread illustrates, "a convincing answer" may be harder to generate than some might think.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't understand. Why do you need a simplified model? You are allowed to do whatever you want. You are the DM. Why do you need a set of rules to tell you what rules you can ignore and how to do it? Why can't you just go, "50 h.p., +10 BAB, 3d6 damage, AC 23... and go!" That's what DM's basically did in earlier editions.

Because I don't want to guess as to how hard the fight is going to be? Sure, I can eyeball it, but I've been DMing 3e since 2000, and I've been involved in these game design discussions on messageboards for that long as well. My eyeball is pretty tuned. And I still mess it up from time to time, even using the extremely helpful Monster Manual stat spine from Trailblazer. I'm a firm believer that the core rules should be presented in a way as to make for novices, and that DMing should be no more a chore than playing a character.

Additionally, I like having simplified monster blocks when I need to bring out the monsters for combat. To me, it's easier to add relevant skill modifiers for monsters the 10% of the time I need them, rather than parse through them to find the relevant information I need the other 90% of the time.

Now, I have no problem if the simplified rules and the complex rules are compatible and can stack with each other. But I need rules that tell me "Use these numbers, and this monster will be a challenging but not overwhelming fight for a standard 8th level party".