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

[Chocolategravy]

Ok, then how does a raging barbarian take half damage from weapons? I'm really angry, so swords become only half as effective?

5e has pretty much taken the idea of HP=Meat out behind the barn and put a gun in its ear. They flat out say that the first half of your HP isn't meat at all. Never minding things like Second Wind or Hit Dice for healing. What I find really funny is that after years of sturm and drang over HP and how 4e was such a radical departure from what came before, 5e is getting a free pass on the whole thing. Several classes flat out make HP=Meat impossible. The healing system is largely abstract and, we do in fact, have DoaM in the system with non-magical attacks.

They are just as inconsistent with HP as 4E was. As you say, there are some things that make HP be meat to be impossible, but simultaneously there are things that make it impossible to not be meat. They've simplified to absurdity in many places and HP are one of them. You keep your DEX to AC while strapped to a table and paralyzed, rogues run 50% faster after a monster decides to fight them etc.

So no, in 5E they aren't meat, and they aren't not meat, HP is just that little red bar over your character's head.

 

[MechaPilot]

I just don't understand why a game would even want to redefine basic terms from the English language like "Hit" and 'Miss".

DM empowerment.

If a hit and damage aren't required to be narrative constructs, then I can narrate things as I please. If a hit and damage can represent a last second deflection/evasion, then I can better describe fights where one combatant is the archetypal "fragile speedster."

If a miss is a game construct instead of a requirement to narrate it as a miss, then I can narrate a punch with a failed attack roll as a weak hit akin to being slapped by a child. It's the visual fight trope of punching someone only to have them smile back at you as if to say "is that all you got little man?"

 

[Consona]

Yea, those abstract entities like HP are about interpretation. HP are meat when it makes sense to you and are not when it doesn't. And as every abstraction, this approach has its problems.

Like being hit with Melf's Acid Arrow when I have 100 HP, what does that mean?

And please, answer this for me:
What does it mean, when I have 100 HP and fall into the molten lava? What happens and how to interpret that?

 

[Balesir]

I disagree. The issue is vitally important.

You are very welcome to disagree - everyone has their own model of the world they carry in their head. Your reasons for disagreeing do not sway me in the slightest, however, and I will try to explain a little bit why not.

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.

The problem here is that hand-to-hand combat with medieval weapons (or even modern weapons, come to that) does not really work with a hit/miss model. Hit with what? If you are talking about a hit with the blade of your sword, then many, many successful attacks will not "hit" - they will result in a pommel strike, an arm lock/break, a throwdown or some other damaging "miss". And this is before even getting into the issue of what "hit points" are, exactly, bearing in mind that the first solid cut or thrust with a sword blade or spiked axe will very likely end the fight. This leads to the conclusion that, to render a plausible movie in our heads, many "hit point" losses must take the form of "damage" to balance, confidence, equipment, will to fight, stamina and all the other assets essential to full effectiveness in a fight to the death.

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?

We would generally assume that only the blade of your sword is poisoned; in fact, poison tends to be expensive and difficult to apply, so it would actually be more plausible still that only the point was really properly coated. As I outlined above, though, not only are many strikes not with the point, many are not even with the blade. Consider the focus of concentration of your opponent in a fight. If they are sane and/or competent, their primary concern will be to make sure your blade does not strike them. This is likely to be redoubled if they know the point of your weapon to be poisoned. So the most likely form of attack to succeed is a blow with the blade that you expect to be parried, with a follow-up knee to the groin, or pommel to the face, or twist into an arm-lock, or...

Take a browse here, especially at some of the seminars (the dagger one is long but great), to see something of how medieval fighters trained. The style is efficient, exceptionally brutal and very effective.

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?

This is a fair point, and it may very well be that the terms "hit" and "miss" (which have wargame roots) are less than ideal. But the fact remains that hand-to-hand combat really does not fit the naive "I swing you swing and we either strike and draw blood or miss and look dumb" model that many of us start out with. The solution to that seems to me not to be to pretend that the simple, mechanistic model has any real currency, but to adapt the way we explain and describe combat in the text and during the play of the games.

Yea, those abstract entities like HP are about interpretation. HP are meat when it makes sense to you and are not when it doesn't. And as every abstraction, this approach has its problems.

Like being hit with Melf's Acid Arrow when I have 100 HP, what does that mean?

And please, answer this for me:
What does it mean, when I have 100 HP and fall into the molten lava? What happens and how to interpret that?

For beginners the GM (or experienced players) probably should draw on their own, rich mental models to describe what they "see", but for experienced players I think part of the beauty of the hit points mechanic is that what everyone imagines need not be the same. Each player needs to build a world-model in their head that is plausible to them and which reflects the rules of the game - but those models do not need to be identical to one another. This is a great mechanism for getting around the fact that different people find different things "believable". One possible, and very effective, route that a rule set can take is to define those things that are essential for the story to be coherent for everyone, while the details of how the situations created by application of the rules arise can be filled in by each player to suit their own tastes.

So, for the Melf's Acid Arrow example, the "hit" on a 100 hp character can be a mere splash as it ricochets off her shield or a full-on soaking that just does little harm because she is just that awesome or a near miss that just saps a little confidence. Pick whichever one works for you, and meanwhile your friend next to you can even pick a different one, provided that you are clear that the character is not dead/down/hors de combat until the HP total goes to 0. The game system defines the structure and boundaries of your world-painting, but the colours and patterns within the lines are yours to define to suit your palate/palette

 

[Rygar]

DM empowerment.

If a hit and damage aren't required to be narrative constructs, then I can narrate things as I please. If a hit and damage can represent a last second deflection/evasion, then I can better describe fights where one combatant is the archetypal "fragile speedster."

If a miss is a game construct instead of a requirement to narrate it as a miss, then I can narrate a punch with a failed attack roll as a weak hit akin to being slapped by a child. It's the visual fight trope of punching someone only to have them smile back at you as if to say "is that all you got little man?"

That isn't the purpose of it in 4th edition or the playtest though. If the goal was to empower DM's to narrate combat any way they liked then the "To Hit" role would be renamed to the "Attack" roll, HP's would be remained "Stamina", and "Damage" would become "Fatigue".

Damage on a Miss has nothing to do with narrative, it retains all of the existing language that forces you to treat terms as undefined in order to justify the events that are transpiring, its purpose is simply to further the "Failing forward" approach. It also exposes all of the weaknesses of "Failing forward" as it introduces contradictions that have to be actively ignored to avoid the game breaking down. Contradictions such as...

-An attack could be either a miss or a hit depending on what the DM wants.
-Unless the weapon is poisoned, flaming, or any other "On contact" weapon which forces the narration of an event to be a miss regardless of how it was narrated at any previous point.

-An attack could be either a miss or a hit depending on what the DM wants.
-Unless the results are that the target is placed in the "Dead" state in which case the only possible way to narrate it is as a hit regardless of how it was narrated at any previous point.

In 5th edition during the playtest...

-If the world's strongest man attacked an opponent with anything but a two handed weapon he could never do damage on a miss.
-But the world's weakest man could so long as his weapon required two hands.
-Worse, the world's strongest man could never do damage on a miss unless his chosen profession was "Fighter", any other choice and he couldn't do damage on a miss under any circumstances.

Which causes endless problems with any narrative since you basically have to ignore all of the issues that basically cause the narrative to be meaningless.

 

[MechaPilot]

-An attack could be either a miss or a hit depending on what the DM wants.
-Unless the weapon is poisoned, flaming, or any other "On contact" weapon which forces the narration of an event to be a miss regardless of how it was narrated at any previous point.

What is luckier, avoiding a knife, or avoiding a poisoned knife? If HPs can be luck, then a weapon bearing a poison that only does HP damage can easily be narrated as consuming more luck than avoiding a non-poisoned blade.

Allowing HPs to be luck also allows me to ignore idiotic things like a PC surviving being immersed in lava (which the 5e DMG actually gives a damage value for that isn't just "you die.") Instead of saying "you fall in the lava, but it's just a quick dip. Take 42 HPs of damage," I can say "you narrowly avoid falling into the pool of lava. Take 42 HPs of damage."

 

[D'karr]

A "hit" or a "miss" are not meant to be descriptions of a physical, in gameworld, thing. A "hit" does not denote actually hitting the PC, NPC, Monster, or thing. It denotes hitting (equalling or surpassing) a mechanical and abstract target number, which in turn depletes "mojo" (the potential to stay in the fight also known as HP). A miss does not denote actually missing the PC, NPC, Monster or thing. It denotes missing a mechanical and abstract target number which can have many different effects, including depleting "mojo" though usually not as much depletion as with a hit on the target number.

AC, HP, Hit, Miss, and a whole myriad of other terms don't describe a one-to-one relationship to an in gameworld event. Nobody in the gameworld is rolling dice and determining if they are able to damage their opponent. These are all metamechanical devices for an abstract combat system.

Because combat is abstract, there is no reason that a "miss" on the target number cannot have a "splash" effect of depleting mojo (decreasing HP). If a portion of HP is thought of as Stamina, even a miss on the target number can deplete your stamina. Time in the ring with an opponent that is trying to kill you is going to tire you (decrease your chance of staying in the fight) even if they don't hit with every jab, swing or upper-cut. In no edition of D&D have HP ever been described as solely a physical thing (meat). They have always been described as a metaphysical combination of a lot of things (luck, stamina, skill, etc.).

Some have internalized the inconsistencies and flaws of the abstract combat system for so long that they might have lost sight of exactly the only thing that makes the HP mechanics work - their abstractness.

 

[RotGrub]

DM empowerment.

If a hit and damage aren't required to be narrative constructs, then I can narrate things as I please. If a hit and damage can represent a last second deflection/evasion, then I can better describe fights where one combatant is the archetypal "fragile speedster."

If a miss is a game construct instead of a requirement to narrate it as a miss, then I can narrate a punch with a failed attack roll as a weak hit akin to being slapped by a child. It's the visual fight trope of punching someone only to have them smile back at you as if to say "is that all you got little man?"

If that's what you want then why not use different terms? Having clear language that everyone can understand is critical. The requirement of a language translator is asinine.

 

[MechaPilot]

If that's what you want then why not use different terms? Having clear language that everyone can understand is critical. The requirement of a language translator is asinine.

You can say that I should just use terms other than "hit" and "miss," and I can point out (as has been pointed out ad nauseum) that "hit" and "miss" don't really mean hit and miss thanks to the AC mechanic.

If we go with the realistic assumption that simply donning a suit of armor doesn't make you better able to dodge stuff, we end up with the following reasonable conclusion: If you roll less than 10 on your attack roll, that probably means that you actually missed the target. Oh, but that can be true even if you roll as high as 15, depending on the AC value of the target and the degree to which the target's Dex mod is allowed to influence it. If you roll more than 10 + the allowed Dex mod but less than the target's AC, then you probably did hit the target, you just hit an armored part and did no damage.

All of that, naturally, depends on the adjusted gross income of the target, as well its filing status, and its federal and state withholdings.


The AC mechanic. by virtue of what comprises it and how it works turns hits into misses and misses into hits. Attempting to parse if a failed attack roll results in a hit or miss based on the base of 10, the allowed Dex mod, the armor mod, and the shield mod is far too complicated. I mean, what order are they applied in? Is it 10, then Dex, then shield, then armor? Is that order reversed? Or does the 10 + Dex mod comprise all the even numerals while the armor and shield make up the odd ones? Must it even remain consistent from attack to attack?

The reason we do not use different terms is that both you and I are making do with what we've been given: the terms used by the text, and the components and workings of AC.

 

[Hussar]

If that's what you want then why not use different terms? Having clear language that everyone can understand is critical. The requirement of a language translator is asinine.

Ok. Say that is true.

What is one hit point?

If the language is clear then that should be an easy question to answer.