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

[Mistwell]

In the absence of specific definitions, we aren't talking about anything.

It says right there in the thread title "damage on a miss", and the discussion keeps going to how it isn't really a miss or it isn't really damage, which is beyond moving goalposts, it's redefining the entire field. We're discussing a damage on a miss ability, not a never miss ability or a fatigue your opponent ability. It's damage, and it happens on a miss.

I don't think I'd have any trouble explaining any of the character abilities I like to anyone in this thread without going off on lengthy tangents about trying to redefine simple common language words. But then again, I don't really like any that are particularly controversial in this arena, that I'm aware of.

You've already declared you're not willing to change your way of thinking to try and understand.

The reason you'd have no trouble explaining something to the rest of us, is that we're all willing to change how we think about things to try and understand it. We might not like it, we might not continue thinking like that beyond understanding it, but we'll do what's necessary to first understand it. And what's necessary is frequently to change how you think about things, so you can see someone else's perspective.

To me, changing how you think to try and understand something, is the very definition of open mindedness.

Assuming you have a significant other in your life, I am willing to bet you routinely change how you think about things, to try and understand that significant others perspective on things. You might not agree with them, but the ability and willingness to alter your way of looking at things to try and understand them is a critical skill in all close interpersonal relationships like that.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure what the above has to do with whatever dmgorgon was saying.

[MENTION=6750373]dmgorgon[/MENTION], in post 748 upthread, posited a contrast between two approaches to play: in reply to [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION], dmgorgon said

I guess you are used of the mechanic-first narrative-second approach to gaming. It might be ok for you to reflavour another mechanic, but that doesn't work for my playstyle. I expect the mechanic to support the narrative, not the other way around.

My reply was that, in no edition of D&D can I narrate the result of an attack, or (to use Hussar's example) the climbing of a wall, without rolling the dice first. Hence I was not sure what was meant by this contrast. It seems that in these cases, at least, mechanics come first.

In D&D, in any edition, you can never, ever narrate the results of any mechanically determined action without first going through the mechanics. You simply can't.

Agreed, but as you go on to note there are some cases where narration is possible via fiat. As you note, I can narrate "I walk down the street." And to give another example, if I'm playing a mage I can narrate "I cast Spider Climb and climb the wall of the building" or "I cast Levitate and float up to peer through the upper-story window."

In these cases, it is traditional for the GM to adjudicate the relevant fictional positioning (eg as I try to walk down the street I fall into a pit; as I try to levitate up to the window I become ensnared in an invisible force web), but absent any defeating fictional positioniong of that sort these are cases of player fiat.

To me, declaring intent IS narration. An important part of narration in fact.

But as I and Hussar have both noted upthread, at the time you declare intention nothing has changed in the gameworld except for the PC's state of mind. As a narration of the shared fiction, that's pretty minimal. What's often more significant, in terms of understanding and appreciating the shared fiction, is knowing whether or not the PC's intention was achieved. And in the case of combat (or non-Spider Climb climbing), that can't be known and narrated until the mechanics are applied.

 

[Ahnehnois]

To me, changing how you think to try and understand something, is the very definition of open mindedness.

To me, changing how you think is not something to be done lightly. I'm a scientist. I hear arguments all the time about how I can't understand a pseudoscientific claim (say, something in the realm of homeopathy or energy medicine) because I'm unwilling to change the way I think to understand it. Which is, in some sense, true. The way I think about these things is based on our current scientifically derived understanding of reality. I'm rather loathe to abandon that.

However, I'd say it's hardly a vice. What you call an open mind could also be the trademark of an amorphous politician who will say anything, a gullible person who falls for every scam, or a schizophrenic. As the saying goes, if you open your mind too much, your brain falls out.

When it comes to rpgs, my mind is pretty open. If something is outside of my conception of what the rules mean, I don't see that it's incumbent on me to abandon those notions.

Assuming you have a significant other in your life

Whoa there with the personal (and false) assumptions. Not appropriate. Moving on...

I am willing to bet you routinely change how you think about things, to try and understand that significant others perspective on things. You might not agree with them, but the ability and willingness to alter your way of looking at things to try and understand them is a critical skill in all close interpersonal relationships like that.

I do that in other arenas all the time. For example, I'm quite used to paradigm switching between biological and several different psychological theories for explaining human behavior.

However, simply because there are multiple viewpoints does not make all of them equally valid.

The reason you'd have no trouble explaining something to the rest of us, is that we're all willing to change how we think about things to try and understand it.

Either that, or you wouldn't have to.

That being said, I'd stick to speaking for yourself. This is a forum full of iconoclasts. The "rest of us" is far less open-minded that you're implying.

Conversely, I learned a lot in my early days on these forums when people actually did radical things like discuss the topic.

You've already declared you're not willing to change your way of thinking to try and understand.

And I shouldn't have to. If one fighter ability in the core book of the "unification edition" requires me to change the way I see the entire rules system in order to understand it, that's not a good sign.

 

[Hussar]

But, Ahn, your understanding has never actually been based on anything other than your own specific, idiosyncratic definition that isn't actually found in any rule book. A miss=any roll under the target number. That's all it means. It doesn't mean you clang off its armor, it doesn't mean you whiff, it doesn't mean anything. All it means is that you failed to deal damage.

You've added in all sorts of interpretations and then tried to claim authority that those interpretations are what's intended by the rules, without any actual support for that interpretation.

Look, it's pretty simple. You need to roll a 15 to hit a target. You roll a 9. What happened in the game world?

Now prove it using D&D mechanics.

 

[urLordy]

But as I and Hussar have both noted upthread, at the time you declare intention nothing has changed in the gameworld except for the PC's state of mind. As a narration of the shared fiction, that's pretty minimal.

To quibble, it's not minimal when people get in-character esp in exploration or social interactions and mechanics are applied with a very light touch or not at all. This is where I feel I can have a strong impact on the shared narrative, so it doesn't feel minimal to me. But again, that's a quibble because that's outside of combat and other heavy system arbitration.

What's often more significant, in terms of understanding and appreciating the shared fiction, is knowing whether or not the PC's intention was achieved. And in the case of combat (or non-Spider Climb climbing), that can't be known and narrated until the mechanics are applied.

Sure make sense. The mechanics act as a proxy for the uncertainty of intent vs results (although I'm not sure you see it that way so much with player fiat rules).

 

[Mistwell]

However, I'd say it's hardly a vice. What you call an open mind could also be the trademark of an amorphous politician who will say anything, a gullible person who falls for every scam, or a schizophrenic. As the saying goes, if you open your mind too much, your brain falls out.

Keeping an open mind to try and understand something, is not the same as keeping an open mind to BELIEVE in that something. I've never found that understanding forces one to accept and believe in that thing.

When it comes to rpgs, my mind is pretty open.

This statement is incompatible with you declaring that you will not change your way of thinking to attempt to understand something. That's a declaration that your mind is not pretty open.

If something is outside of my conception of what the rules mean, I don't see that it's incumbent on me to abandon those notions.

Again with the confusion between changing your way of thinking to seek understanding, and changing your way of thinking to believe in that thing. I can put myself in the mindset of a thief to understand why they steal, without believing that stealing is an accepting thing to do.

Whoa there with the personal (and false) assumptions. Not appropriate. Moving on...

I do that in other arenas all the time. For example, I'm quite used to paradigm switching between biological and several different psychological theories for explaining human behavior.

However, simply because there are multiple viewpoints does not make all of them equally valid.

Third time now you've confused understanding with adopting a belief. I didn't say that you need to change your way of thinking so that you can declare a different perspective as equally valid. I simply said you need to change your way of thinking simply to understand that other perspective - not to adopt it.

Either that, or you wouldn't have to.

That being said, I'd stick to speaking for yourself. This is a forum full of iconoclasts. The "rest of us" is far less open-minded that you're implying.

You first. You said you wouldn't have to explain it to anyone - that was you speaking for everyone. Once you opened the door to speaking on behalf of everyone, it's fair for me to reply in like manner.

Conversely, I learned a lot in my early days on these forums when people actually did radical things like discuss the topic.

Not sure why you said this, but as you can see from even a glance at my username information, I've been here a long, long time. Longer than you, in fact.

And I shouldn't have to. If one fighter ability in the core book of the "unification edition" requires me to change the way I see the entire rules system in order to understand it, that's not a good sign.

IF you want to understand, then yes you should have to change your way of thinking if that's what's necessary to reach understanding. That's not the same as you agreeing, or adopting that viewpoint. But I've found any new rules system will require, at some point, me to change my way of thinking about the game to understand something about some new kind of rule. I don't see any harm in that, or why it would be a negative thing to "have to" change ones way of thinking about the game to understand a new rule.

 

[pemerton]

You seem to be equating "cogent explanation" with "explanation that persuades you".

Lacking an independent and unbiased arbiter, I struggle to see what distinction between the two could exist.

Huh?

Someone can explain to me why they like something, without persuading me to like it. For instance, if you tell me that you liked Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", and I ask why, and you explain features of the production that impressed you, then I can understand that even though I personally am not a big fan. (And I choose this example because I've actually had this experience with a friend who really liked the film, and especially the visual and audio aspects of the sequences where the boy is moving around the corridors in his pedal car.)

You asked why some people like the GWF option, or damage on a miss more generally, and you've been given answers. No one is expecting to persuade you to like it. But they have given genuine explanations of their like for it.

this ability ensures that a fighter, in any given 6 seconds of engaging a foe, will wear that foe down.

Unless, of course, he hits, in which case this extra damage disappears.

Huh? If the player rolls a hit, then the PC wears his/her foe down even more than had the player rolled a miss, because the damage done will be greater (W + STR rather than STR alone).

So, they want a character who is infallible.

<snip>

Again, both of those rationales would apply equally well to an ability that made the character invincible. "Guarantee of effectiveness" and "infallibility" simply aren't within the scope of appropriate character abilities.

First, it's actually not true that "guarantee of effectivenss" is not within the scope of PC abilituies. A pre-3E wizard, for instance, has a guarantee of effectiveness in putting creatures weaker than ogres to sleep, at least 1x/day. And the latest iteration of Next also bring back Sleep without a saving throw.

But "infallability" is not a relevant concept here. Being able to do STR damage minimum per round is not infallability. Many 4e wizard builds have Magic Missile as an at-will auto-hit, and that does not make them infallible. It is simply a minimum floor of damage: a guarantee that a foe who is opposed by the PC will be worn down somewhat in 6 seconds of engagement.

They can see it however they like. That's not the point.

The point is that if I ask you why Chinese people like tofu, and you tell me to go live in China for a year, you haven't answered my question.

But I haven't told you to go an play a game with me or [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] or [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] or anyone else. I've told you that some people like the mechanical effect of being guaranteed a mininum amount of damage per round of engaging a foe. And I've told you that some people like the story image of being a fighter who, in 6 seconds of engaging an enemy, will wear that enemy down to at least some extent.

Those are real preferences that some - perhaps many, if Mearls is to be believed - actually existing D&D players have, and those preferences give them a reason to like the GWF ability. That you don't share those preferences should have no bearing on your ability to recognise that, for those who do have those preferences, the ability satisfies them.

So damage on a miss is good, because it gives one permutation of the fighter class a paradigm shift from the notion of how an attack roll works to grant this guarantee, whilst leaving it unattainable for everyone else?

It is a paradigm shift only for those who don't like the ability. For those who do like the ability there is no shift of paradigm. That's become somewhat the point of this whole thread.

In the absence of specific definitions, we aren't talking about anything.

It says right there in the thread title "damage on a miss", and the discussion keeps going to how it isn't really a miss or it isn't really damage, which is beyond moving goalposts, it's redefining the entire field. We're discussing a damage on a miss ability, not a never miss ability or a fatigue your opponent ability. It's damage, and it happens on a miss.

You've asked, you've been answered. You claim not to understand the answer, and then further claim the exclusive right to define the terms used in the answer (a miss must mean X, a hit must mean Y). When explanations cannot be made because of your insistence on specific definitions, there's simply no way forward.

Hussar is correct.

I am a party to an online playtest agreement, and am therefore contractually precluded from posting any of WotC's text. So I'll have to paraphrase:

From "How to Play", pp 2, 17 and 19:

If you attack, you make an attack roll with a d20. If the total of the roll plus modifiers is greater than or equal to the target's AC, the attack is a hit. Otherwise, the attack is a miss. On a hit, your attack deals damage, thereby reducing the target's hit points.​

From "How to Play", p 22:

If a creature takes damage, subtract the damage from the creature's hit points.​

So the question about "damage on a miss" means, within the framework of D&Dnext: are you happy with there being occasions in the game in which a creatures' hit points are reduced as a result of being attacked, even though the result of the player's attack roll was less than the creature's AC? If some people answer "yes" because (i) they don't regard making an attack roll that equals or exceeds a target's AC as exhaustive of the ways to inflict damage on a target), and/or (ii) because they don't regard the subtraction of hit points of damage from a creature's hit point total as indicative of the creature taking serious physical punishment, you have no basis for saying that they have moved the goalposts. They're explaining their preferences within their approach to, and interpretation of, the game system.

(Why might someone believe (i)? Perhaps because they've read the spell rules, or the trap rules, or the falling rules, or the myriad other ways to deal damage withou rolling an attack roll that equals or exceeds a target's AC. Why might someon believe (ii)? Perhaps because they're aware of spells that cause hit point loss but don't do physical damage, such as Phantasmal Force; or because they're aware that the game rules permit a "critical hit" to be dealt which has no adverse effects upon the physical integrity or capabilities of a creature, and therefore regard "damage" and "critical hit" as terms of art rather than ordinary langauge terms when used within the context of the game; or because they're aware that it's significantly harder to restore a given proportion of the hit points lost by a high level character than a lower level one, and - on the assumption that gaining levels doesn't have a multiplicative effect on a character's meat - therefore infer that whatever hit points are, they're not meat.)

In other words, someone playing the game differently from you isn't "moving the goalposts." It's playing the game differently from how you do, and as a result of that liking different mechanics from the ones that you like.

the D&Dnext rules in their current iteration say that hit point loss does not manifest as visible physical injury until a target drops below half hit points.

That would be odd.

Huh! So bloodied is literal?

For the reasons given I have to paraphrase (from "How to Play" p 22):

If you have not fallen below half your hit point total, then usually you show no signs of injury. If you drop below this level, then you show signs of physical injury, such as bruises and/or cuts. If you are dropped below 0 hp by an attack then you have been directly struck, suffering physical trauma such as a bleeding wound.​

That is the default. The relevant part of the rules also notes that different GMs describe hp loss in different ways. But it doesn't give any examples of what those other ways might be.

 

[pemerton]

I learned a lot in my early days on these forums when people actually did radical things like discuss the topic.

Not sure why you said this

I believe that Ahnehnois is asserting that those in this thread who are explaining why they like the GWF option, or similar sorts of options, or who (even if they don't like them) are explaining why they think there is mechanical room for them in the game, are not discussing the topic. And his reason for asserting this, as I understand it, is because in framing "hit" and "miss" in mechanical terms - ie as the result of comparing a certain modified die roll to the AC stat - and in framing "damage" in mechanical terms - ie as a mechanically-mandated numerical reduction in a creature's hit points - they are redefining the terms used in the thread topic.

In other words, Ahnehnois - as far as I can tell - is asserting that the only discussion that is on topic is whether one thinks it is desirable, in the game, for a fighter to be able to inflict physical injury with a sword without that sword having to make contact with the target of the attack.

(I think Ahnehnois also thinks that the answer to this question, self-evidently, is "no", although he has not explained how, under such constraints, the game makes room for possibilities like an enemy falling over, and suffering injury from the fall, as a result of being pressed to avoid an assailant's attacks.)

 

[urLordy]

For the reasons given I have to paraphrase (from "How to Play" p 22):

If you have not fallen below half your hit point total, then usually you show no signs of injury. If you drop below this level, then you show signs of physical injury, such as bruises and/or cuts. If you are dropped below 0 hp by an attack then you have been directly struck, suffering physical trauma such as a bleeding wound.​

That is the default. The relevant part of the rules also notes that different GMs describe hp loss in different ways. But it doesn't give any examples of what those other ways might be.

Very interesting! Thanks for paraphrasing for this.

My first impression is that this rule sucks. If hit points is seen primarily as plot protection, this default rule restricts the full spectrum of narrative options. If hit points is seen as sim-friendly, then why is every creature in the game have exactly half plot protection and half physical vitality. The rule seems to be one of those compromises that satisfies neither side.

 

[pemerton]

at the time you declare intention nothing has changed in the gameworld except for the PC's state of mind. As a narration of the shared fiction, that's pretty minimal.

To quibble, it's not minimal when people get in-character esp in exploration or social interactions and mechanics are applied with a very light touch or not at all. This is where I feel I can have a strong impact on the shared narrative, so it doesn't feel minimal to me. But again, that's a quibble because that's outside of combat and other heavy system arbitration.

I know that you framed this as a quibble, and so I don't want to push, but I'm not sure I've followed you. Even in these cases isn't there an important gap between (say) wanting to befriend the ogre, and actually doing so. Whether the mechanics used are reaction rolls or "free roleplaying", don't you have to actually play your PC's interaction with the ogre before you can find out whether or not your intention has been realised?

Or are you saying that these are like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s example of walking across the street - ie that everything else being equal, to declare the intention is to do it. So in forming the intention to have my PC say "Hello there, my good ogre!" I have also said that thing, and now we know that the gameworld fiction has changed (ie it includes the event which is my PC's saying of those words) and we can therefore learn how the gameworld changes further as a result of that.

Sure make sense. The mechanics act as a proxy for the uncertainty of intent vs results (although I'm not sure you see it that way so much with player fiat rules).

What I'm particularly interested in this thread is on what basis is it decided that uncertainty, via dice rolls, is needed? As opposed to when can a player fiat that an intention succeeds. And also, what are the boundaries of those intentions.

For instance, in the ogre example a player can fiat that his/her PC says certain words; but can't fiat that the ogre becomes his/her friend. Whereas in the Sleep spell example, the player can fiat not just that the PC says certain words and performs certain gestures, but also can fiat that certain NPCs/monsters fall asleep as a result. In my view there is nothing inherent to any of this: in 3E, for instance, Sleep granted a save, and in 4e it requires a successful attack vs Will. In plenty of systems other than D&D casting a spell can require a skill check or some other form of check to determine whether or not the spell goes off properly or the PC suffers some sort of auto-failure or even magical backfire.

I think this is also relevant to damage on a miss. In many systems a player has to make a successful die roll to wear down an opponent of his/her PC. But there is no in-principle reason why this can't be made into the domain of player fiat, just like a Sleep spell. (Or say Cure Wounds spells compared to healing checks. Or Invisibiity compared to stealth checks.)