Tony Vargas
Legend
Whether you call it 'versimilitude,' 'realism' (as we did in the olden days), or just say 'the fighter can't have nice things,' it's only messy if you hold fantasy to a RL standard and prioritize it over game balance, fun, and playability.The question as far as I'm concerned is tied up in the messy topic of verisimilitude.
There a wide gap between punched through armor with lethal force and missed completely, but D&D simplifies it down to a an attack roll. It also simplifies a whole round of attacking & parrying down to an attack per round.The problem I have is the wide gap between "isn't going to work as well as the first time" and "can only do it once per encounter".
So a mechanic that gives a character a reasonable chance of succeeding at a marginal combat trick once per encounter, with the timing decided by the player is a perfectly reasonable simplification, on the same order as other abstractions that have long been part of the game. It's just one that gives a little more agency to the player of the fighter-types than has traditionally been the case (which can only be to the good).
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