D&D 5E The "everyone at full fighting ability at 1 hp" conundrum

[DND_Reborn]

Ironically I think Death Saves are probably the most realistic mechanic in D&D human response to wounds is all over the board.

I don't mind the death save mechanic, but we add CON bonus to the roll. Trust me, if you compare a CON 20 to a CON 5, the CON 20 is much more likely to self-stabilize. Just to be clear, this is not a CON check or CON save, we just add the CON bonus (don't want things like Remarkable Athlete also affecting it).

 

[Garthanos]

I don't mind the death save mechanic, but we add CON bonus to the roll. Trust me, if you compare a CON 20 to a CON 5, the CON 20 is much more likely to self-stabilize. Just to be clear, this is not a CON check or CON save, we just add the CON bonus (don't want things like Remarkable Athlete also affecting it).

It fits the tropes though you could make that Wis(Discipline) or Cha(Strong Spirit).= For the Will to Live angle not being entirely about the physical too.

 

[Umbran]

If you follow the encounters per day and design blah blah blah suggested in 5E, the game is a like a video game... you just have to keep plugging along and you'll win.

Let me try another tack...

So?

I am not sure that "the baseline presented in the book is not exactly to my liking" is a particularly valuable critique of a game that is designed, intended, and presented to be rather malleable. This is not like saying. "Chess (or Settlers fo Catan) is too easy." The game is specifically intended to be played as you like it.

Now, if you found the baseline too easy, and found that it was very difficult to produce the experience you want, then I think you'd have a point. But, when the answer is,"make the encounters more frequent and/or more tough," which requires no actual rules changes whatsoever, I don't see why this is a point to make.

 

[snickersnax]

Stats can be incredibly deceptive the to hit rate by military in police has been measured at 16 percent ... now the problem with that statistic is that most gun fire both by police and military are meant for intimidation and battlefield control. Not to kill.
And most stats from a hospital are also not war zone nor do they involve someone trained in the use of the tools. The stats are interesting but interpreting what they mean is as usual very tricky.

Hmm the stats that I saw on hit rates for gun fire by police was 35% success vs humans, 50% vs dogs. I think intimidation shots were not included.

I don't think stats are that tricky to interpret. Instead they paint a remarkably consistent picture. LD50 Falling damage and average # of gunshots to drop someone are roughly equivalent to D&D damage of 5d6, and seem consistent with the knife stats I shared.

A number of people seem to share your view that getting hit with a knife is instant death, but its just not true. Heck I know someone whose throat was cut while they were sleeping and they survived...

 

[5ekyu]

Let me try another tack...

So?

I am not sure that "the baseline presented in the book is not exactly to my liking" is a particularly valuable critique of a game that is designed, intended, and presented to be rather malleable. This is not like saying. "Chess (or Settlers fo Catan) is too easy." The game is specifically intended to be played as you like it.

Now, if you found the baseline too easy, and found that it was very difficult to produce the experience you want, then I think you'd have a point. But, when the answer is,"make the encounters more frequent and/or more tough," which requires no actual rules changes whatsoever, I don't see why this is a point to make.

Agreed. To me, I read those baseline statements sndcfie not see it saying "this is how the game should be played" at all.

I saw it as "if you do this, this is the expected results." They then even mentioned how it will vary by group.


I look at it this way, if I buy a watch, I expect to have to set it. I also expect to have to reset it from time to time, especially if I move around a lot.

Wondering if this is a digital vs analog thing? When I started with watches, the idea of them auto-updating time by the world clock and GPS was never a thing. Similarly, when I started GMing, there was little to no CR so it was expected you would vary and adjust from group to group.

To mr, the slower healing just alters time scale of the campaign, not difficulty.

 

[Garthanos]

Unless you are also restricting magical healing its a faux fix.... if you are talking functionality instead of philosophy.

Edit missed the word magical... probably made no sense to anyone not in my head

In 4e this is real easy to do.

 

[Oofta]

You know, whenever someone begins a post with "With respect," it never sounds good to me. It sounds basically like "I am going to disagree with you because I think your view point is totally wrong." It is obviously fine to disagree, so anyway...

If you follow the encounters per day and design blah blah blah suggested in 5E, the game is a like a video game... you just have to keep plugging along and you'll win. There is always the freak encounter where things just don't go your way, but otherwise the game is hardly lethal once you get to a certain point. Even when it is, with so much healing (you can buy potions of healing for crying out loud!), recovery on short rests, and things like Revivify, deaths rarely happen at all IME.

If, like our DM, you break away from the design of 5E, you can make the game harder--which is what we do (hence the bolded reference in my other post).

Short version: the game is as difficult as you want it to be.

Longer version:
Two thoughts on this. First, I use alternate rules for long rests because it makes more sense to me and fits my style better. But I've already said that so my real point is that in all editions of D&D I've had to make adjustments to encounters based on the group.

A while back I was running simultaneous games. Different campaign arcs but otherwise party level, rewards, options all the same so that I could have cross-over events with both groups. One group I used base guidelines or a little below. The other group base guidelines plus fifty percent was about right. Both groups were equally challenged.

As far as death (and okay three thoughts), I would say 5E is as deadly as you and your group want it to be. Keep hitting guys that are down. Target the healer. Drain resources so that rejuvenate is not available. Do like I do and ban resurrection and make raise dead more than just casting a spell. See my second observation about threat level and crank it up to 11. Have the dragon eat the wizard and fly off. I've run campaigns for group that wanted a real challenge and I never had a problem killing PCs if I wanted to do so.

 

[Garthanos]

Hmm the stats that I saw on hit rates for gun fire by police was 35% success vs humans, 50% vs dogs. I think intimidation shots were not included.

I don't think stats are that tricky to interpret. Instead they paint a remarkably consistent picture. LD50 Falling damage and average # of gunshots to drop someone are roughly equivalent to D&D damage of 5d6, and seem consistent with the knife stats I shared.

A number of people seem to share your view that getting hit with a knife

I used the word dagger which is approximately 1 foot long ... not exactly a pocket knife (something you can actually reach under the ribs and hit a vital organ with) and no not every hit is death. That's not what I am saying though I can see how it could be interpreted that way.
It must must be reasonably possible to kill someone outright with that deadly weapon ( when that is the goal and you know how to use the weapon etc ) and because a
normal hit only delivers a trivial amount of hit points only a really small percentage of high en hp can be wounds (its actually Gygaxes claim LOL)

 

[GMMichael]

So, a dagger wound has about a 1 in 8 chance to end up in mortality for a commoner. The rest of the time the injury didn't take the commoner to 0 hp or it did and the common stabilized.

It seems the commoner forgot to make a Con save for the disease resulting from unsanitary conditions. It also seems the DM forgot this from the Player's Basic Rules, ". . . the DM determines the results of the adventurers' actions and narrates what they experience." Note the subject there is DM, not "rules."

So it seems like a paradox of sorts. HP are not just meat or fighting capability, but if you don't act like they are meat in the game, it has a negative affect to game play.

I might agree in some ways however I think however I want to see bad guys like an ogre actually knocking the characters around and pinning them under a knee without losing attack options while doing it and inducing interesting conditions to make fights difficult at a different level. I am not interested in character death perse... but I want fights to more often be puzzle like with situational and team combos , you can do tricks with McGuffins so the puzzle is finding the tool to kill an enemy but that is pre-fight.

By all means, don't quit your 5e games. Buuuuuut I recognized similar problems when writing Modos RPG, so you might suggest these tweaks to your DMs:

HP Paradox: Players and GMs narrate the outcome of attacks. So even if one side is being lazy, someone is narrating something. This prevents focus on numbers, and keeps the story alive during combat. Like what a "hit" means.

Realistic Ogres: See above. Narrating everything keeps the action going, even if you Miss, so you can get pinned under the ogre's knee and still have options. You can use the Advantage system to your advantage here: just throw out Pinned and Prone and Grappled and What-Have-You, a player can narrate an interesting situation from down there, or ignore it and suffer some Disadvantage instead.

 

[Garthanos]

Hmm the stats that I saw on hit rates for gun fire by police was 35% success vs humans, 50% vs dogs. I think intimidation shots were not included.

The police do have to report for every bullet fired and while the full report probably did have all the information about why the bullet was fired. That 16 percent I mentioned I think even included some numbers from the bad guys shooting but no intent was included....if your 35 percent to hit was included "the results of he other study" still excludes the fact that many gunshots are also (not aimed to kill) My father in Korea in the fired his weapon to strafe the ground and "Warn" some looters but they dived into the bullets... with deadly results.