D&D 5E Damage on a Miss: Because otherwise Armour Class makes no sense

[Umbran]

Sorry but there really is only one thing to say:

Don't think about AC.

Just enjoy the game for what it is

Adding damage on a miss makes the game worse, even if it makes more logical sense. Don't do it. Trust me.

Meh, that approach works for everything. F'rex:

Don't think about DoaM. Just enjoy the game for what it is.

Adding angst over DoaM just makes the game worse, even if it makes logical sense to you. Don't do it. Trust me.

 

[Jester David]

Holy thread necromancy, Batman!

I thought this issue died in a fire long ago.

No. It *should* have, but no.

I want to make some joke here about it not dying in a fire due to hitpoints being an abstraction, but I don't want to really engage on this issue. Too much negativity.

 

[Balesir]

The damage could be caused by any number of factors. The basic premise of success = damage and failure = no damage is what is important here.

Taking a moment to think about this I realise how much I totally disagree with it.

Choosing to (try to) do damage or do something else is important in a roleplaying game. Choosing a high probability of doing small damage vs. a low probability of doing big damage might also qualify. Choosing who to damage is definitely relevant. But the minutiae of whether there is "damage on a miss" or what the notional or imagined source and nature of the damage is? I can see some places it might be of margial interest, but, in general, I would view it as almost totally irrelevant. Important? Hardly ever (because never say never...)

 

[MechaPilot]

In my eyes, more important than "Damage on a Miss" (dealing damage when you fail your attack/to hit roll) is "Miss on Damage" (the concept that damage dealt doesn't have to be narrated as a physical impact when describing the in-world results). Miss on Damage provides the DM with a greater range of narrative freedom that can be used to enhance the mood of the game, and I think that's a great thing.



That's not to say that I think "Damage on a Miss" doesn't have a place at the table. One place where I feel that it definitely belongs is in the case of resource fueled maneuvers. For example, if you have to spend a resource to perform a maneuver, and that resource must be spent before the outcome is determined, then Damage on a Miss is justified as much as saving for half damage.

 

[guachi]

The people who say HP are fully meat are going to run into issues with D&D, just as the people who insist they are wholly abstract will run into issues with non-4E D&D.

Hit points are hit points. There are no issues when you realize it's just a game mechanic. If you started off as a wargamer before you played D&D you likely encountered many (perhaps dozens) of abstract mechanisms designed for play reasons. I don't believe the people who played with Gygax had any issues with the way HP were presented. And the general reason given is that they were wargamers before they were roleplayers.

I don't run into issues with HP because I generally don't care. It's only from a standpoint of how can I present HP in a narratively interesting way, which doesn't happen all the time, do I care what HP represent.

 

[Rygar]

Taking a moment to think about this I realise how much I totally disagree with it.

Choosing to (try to) do damage or do something else is important in a roleplaying game. Choosing a high probability of doing small damage vs. a low probability of doing big damage might also qualify. Choosing who to damage is definitely relevant. But the minutiae of whether there is "damage on a miss" or what the notional or imagined source and nature of the damage is? I can see some places it might be of margial interest, but, in general, I would view it as almost totally irrelevant. Important? Hardly ever (because never say never...)

I disagree. The issue is vitally important.

What we have here is, at face value...

-I attack the creature with my sword
-I roll a To Hit roll
-If I succeed To Hit then the creature takes damage
-If I fail To Hit, which is logically and by definition a miss, then I do damage
-If I fail To Hit, and I still do damage even though I failed To Hit, I can cause a creature to be dead.

We further compound these statements with...

-If my sword is poisoned and I succeed To Hit the creature is poisoned
-If I fail To Hit and the creature still takes damage it is not poisoned.
-But I can still cause the creature to be dead so I must have hit it, so why isn't it poisoned?

The issue is, what does the Average Person think when he sees these statements? Is he going to accept an abstract explanation of combat and the words "Hit" and "Miss", and just accept that "something happened" but no one can actually explain what it was? Will he accept that the words "Hit" and "Miss" have no meaning and no correlation to what they've described for him since toddlerhood?

The answer to this question is vitally important. Because if the average person is going to shake their head and walk away, then this mechanic is a killing blow to a product. It means it is a niche product that is purchased only by those who are ok with the words being undefined and meaningless for the sake of the mechanical effect.

Honestly, I really doubt that the average person is going to accept these things. First because they run away from Quantum Physics as fast as they can, the average person doesn't understand completely abstract thinking. So Schrodinger's Combat, where most of the terms are undefined and no one can actually explain what is happening, is likely as big a turn off as an in depth discussion of Schrodinger's Cat.

Second, poking around the internet reveals some very common criticisms of RPG's. "Why does my guy just stand there and let someone hit him?" in reference to turn based games, "Why is that Wolf carrying gold?" in reference to incidental treasure. If we're 40 years into turn based combat in RPG's and incidental treasure and that many people still haven't "Got" those fairly minimal abstractions what is the probability that they're suddenly going to be ok with complete abstractions?

If I'm right and the average person wouldn't "Get" abstracting combat out completely then the issue is the difference between a product that sells well and a product that fails rapidly.

 

[BryonD]

Hit points are hit points. There are no issues when you realize it's just a game mechanic. If you started off as a wargamer before you played D&D you likely encountered many (perhaps dozens) of abstract mechanisms designed for play reasons. I don't believe the people who played with Gygax had any issues with the way HP were presented. And the general reason given is that they were wargamers before they were roleplayers.

I don't run into issues with HP because I generally don't care. It's only from a standpoint of how can I present HP in a narratively interesting way, which doesn't happen all the time, do I care what HP represent.

Obviously a lot of people do care.

And not caring about an issue doesn't mean you don't run into it. You just don't care when it does happen. So you have not really challenged or changed my point.

And while it is completely cool that you enjoy a radically different game experience than I do, not caring caring tends to disqualify you from having helpful insights for those who do care, regardless of which way they prefer.

 

[Azzy]

Obviously a lot of people do care.

A lot of people care about what the Kardashians do, too. That, however, doesn't make caring about it any less ridiculous. It's a bloody game.

 

[BryonD]

A lot of people care about what the Kardashians do, too. That, however, doesn't make caring about it any less ridiculous. It's a bloody game.

Noted.

For the record, I find caring about ways to make my bloody game more fun to be a good thing. But to each their own.

 

[RotGrub]

For me a game is fun when rules are intuitive and simple to understand. When a hit isn't a hit and a miss isn't a miss something has seriously went wrong with the game design.

I think you can have a perfectly fun game without concepts like DoaM. I just don't understand why a game would even want to redefine basic terms from the English language like "Hit" and 'Miss".