D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[Voadam]

My main issue with that is that the fighter should be the class least impacted by the fog of war. Not the only class that gets lost in the chaotic fog of war.

Fighters rogues and monks should be great at combat maneuver capitalizing on the fog of war and its random fleeting opportunities and openings. (I would add in 4e rangers).

One feat or a class option to give an option every attack to do a randomly determined better than normal maneuver or a maneuver in addition to their attack would seem a decent way to mechanically give it to them. Not one thing they can count on and spam/video game button mash, but lots of different rare things so that they can take advantage of the constantly shifting opportunities.

It would be a decent fit for a drunken master/chaos/fluid monk type of concept.

 

[James Gasik]

I played World of Darkness games like Vampire for many years, where you can only sustain 7 points of damage, and taking damage penalized your movement speed and die rolls. Basically, combat all became about going first. If you got to ambush your opponent, attack them from range, or use your cool powers before they could, even centuries old vampires would go down without much fuss.

You could attempt to become tanky, of course, but the best defense was simply not to be anywhere near people who wanted to cut/slash/burn you.

It's a great system for attempting to reinforce the idea that an immortal vampire should be completely averse to risking their unlife in a brawl (despite the constant attempts of players to pretend it was a combat game), but it would be absolutely terrible for dungeon crawling adventures.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Studies on combat injuries also show that short-term (i.e. within the context of one combat) its not as realistic as people think it is, because of the effects of adrenaline on people (i.e., first thing adrenaline does is make you less effective at a lot of things out of the gate, but then papers over the effects of a lot of injuries until it wears off--including some you'd think were beyond its scope.

Definitely not a doctor. I certainly believe you. In my extremely limited experience, though there is a point where you go from

1. "being in a fight" to
2. "getting your ass kicked" to
3. "the fight is over and you lost

And its not often for that order to reverse once you get to 2.

Adrenaline output as "HP" makes a kind of sense though as long as you aren't getting limbs and heads chopped off I suppose...

 

[Fanaelialae]

Fighters rogues and monks should be great at combat maneuver capitalizing on the fog of war and its random fleeting opportunities and openings. (I would add in 4e rangers).

One feat or a class option to give an option every attack to do a randomly determined better than normal maneuver or a maneuver in addition to their attack would seem a decent way to mechanically give it to them. Not one thing they can count on and spam/video game button mash, but lots of different rare things so that they can take advantage of the constantly shifting opportunities.

It would be a decent fit for a drunken master/chaos/fluid monk type of concept.

I think that would be fine if it were in addition to manuevers that you can just declare you are using, but not in lieu of.

 

[Garthanos]

1. Conditional Requirements
   • User With Advantage
   • Use a bonus action
   • Enemy Bloodied
   • Triggers enemy retaliation (aka opportunity attack)
   • Uses more than one attack
   • User Bloodied (when the going gets tough)
   • Reveals Deception (first time use benefit)
   • Exertion (2 points or 1 die)
   • Enemy has just hit User with a melee attack
   • One or both of Enemy or User are hit by missile fire or AoE damage
   • Enemy and User have been fighting for more than four continuous rounds (i.e. gaining familiarity with the foe's moves etc.)
   • A third party joins the Enemy-User fight (i.e. a distraction)
     
2. Difficulties
   • Standard Maneuver (penalty of -5 if nothing applies)
   • Harder Maneuver (penalty of -5 if less than 2 applies and -10 if none does)

Added several from @Lanefan

I have a house rule that steals from PF2 where beating a DC by 10 is a critical. This makes higher skill automatically buff criting. It rather makes Precision attack even more frequently useful.

Basically this could mean that Harder Maneuver can be seen as a critical effect as your chosen maneuver (or it could be tweaked so they line up)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Definitely not a doctor. I certainly believe you. In my extremely limited experience, though there is a point where you go from

1. "being in a fight" to
2. "getting your ass kicked" to
3. "the fight is over and you lost

And its not often for that order to reverse once you get to 2.

Adrenaline output as "HP" makes a kind of sense though as long as you aren't getting limbs and heads chopped off I suppose...

Well, the same studies pretty much say that fundamentally there are a sharply limited number of effect-cases in real combat:

1. Adrenaline and general tolerance paves over the injury until the fight is over at least and it sets in;
2. You bleed out.
3. You shock out (either physically or mentally--some people after a certain degree of injury just shut down as they realize on some level it happens).
4. A very small number of critical injuries either disable or outright kill you (though note most lethal injuries are not actually lethal instantly; a lot land in bleeding out, either immediately, short term or long term (and in fact, a lot of these can be prevented with a trained medic immediately on-scene), cause infection, or otherwise produce cascade effects that lead to mortality over time but won't do so instantly). This is actually uncommon when using most man-portable weapons, past or present; the more useful ones trigger case 2 or 3 above.

Most of these are not cumulative in any particularly meaningful way (though you can get some special cases with bleeding); while there are some complicating issues involving fatigue, especially in melee combat, people take multiple, sometimes serious injuries and keep fighting until the fight is over, and people take one half-way serious one and fold up. Very few game systems make even a gesture at representing this; D&D has never been one of them.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, the same studies pretty much say that fundamentally there are a sharply limited number of effect-cases in real combat:

1. Adrenaline and general tolerance paves over the injury until the fight is over at least and it sets in;
2. You bleed out.
3. You shock out (either physically or mentally--some people after a certain degree of injury just shut down as they realize on some level it happens).
4. A very small number of critical injuries either disable or outright kill you (though note most lethal injuries are not actually lethal instantly; a lot land in bleeding out, either immediately, short term or long term (and in fact, a lot of these can be prevented with a trained medic immediately on-scene), cause infection, or otherwise produce cascade effects that lead to mortality over time but won't do so instantly). This is actually uncommon when using most man-portable weapons, past or present; the more useful ones trigger case 2 or 3 above.

Most of these are not cumulative in any particularly meaningful way (though you can get some special cases with bleeding); while there are some complicating issues involving fatigue, especially in melee combat, people take multiple, sometimes serious injuries and keep fighting until the fight is over, and people take one half-way serious one and fold up. Very few game systems make even a gesture at representing this; D&D has never been one of them.

A saving throw system a la "mutants and masterminds" could be a rare example which could be the foundation for the eratic response people have on wounds

 

[James Gasik]

I am reminded of one game that had a wounds system I didn't mind at all- Earthdawn. Characters had a "wound threshold", mostly based on their Con score (or the equivalent, I can't recall if they called it Constitution or Vitality).

If you took damage in excess of this, you suffered a wound. Wounds made it harder to heal hit point damage until you spent resources to remove them.

Of course, since anyone could heal themselves in the system (it didn't really have Clerics as they exist in D&D), this was a lot less odious.

Also, the game also had active defenses characters could use to avoid being struck (but you took minor damage to use them, called strain) so combat was pretty exciting, where you had to gamble on whether or not you could take a hit, or if you could manage to avoid it.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Well, the same studies pretty much say that fundamentally there are a sharply limited number of effect-cases in real combat:

1. Adrenaline and general tolerance paves over the injury until the fight is over at least and it sets in;
2. You bleed out.
3. You shock out (either physically or mentally--some people after a certain degree of injury just shut down as they realize on some level it happens).
4. A very small number of critical injuries either disable or outright kill you (though note most lethal injuries are not actually lethal instantly; a lot land in bleeding out, either immediately, short term or long term (and in fact, a lot of these can be prevented with a trained medic immediately on-scene), cause infection, or otherwise produce cascade effects that lead to mortality over time but won't do so instantly). This is actually uncommon when using most man-portable weapons, past or present; the more useful ones trigger case 2 or 3 above.

Most of these are not cumulative in any particularly meaningful way (though you can get some special cases with bleeding); while there are some complicating issues involving fatigue, especially in melee combat, people take multiple, sometimes serious injuries and keep fighting until the fight is over, and people take one half-way serious one and fold up. Very few game systems make even a gesture at representing this; D&D has never been one of them.

I think that another important consideration is that realism isn't necessarily always going to be the top priority for someone playing a fantasy game like D&D.

Some people prefer a more cinematic approach. I mean, imagine how much less awesome Boromir's last stand would have been if he got shot and the orcs just started laughing at him because he could no longer hit them. Instead, he gets shot and momentarily turns into an orcish killing machine. For a brief time there, right before the arrow that takes him to his knees, it feels like he might actually turn it around (despite Sean Bean doing a great job of acting like he's been seriously injured).

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who play D&D are looking for that kind of a feeling, and you simply aren't likely to see that if you're using gritty death spiral mechanics. Realism be damned.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not like you can prevent taking hit point damage while adventuring, especially if you're a melee character.

There's ways of reducing it, the most obvious of which is to find non-combat solutions (and melee tanks can participate in this just as well as can anyone else). Or get better armour. Or take defensive feats and abilities rather than just those that add to your DPR.

You kind of sort of need to be standing next to bad guys to do your work. If there were penalties for taking hit point damage, who would want to be a melee character?

I would; and if the melee characters are the only ones taking damage then the DM is really doing something wrong.