WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Micah Sweet]

When it comes to armor as DR, I disagree. It make the game more complex and screws around with balance. Let's take two different monsters, a hydra and a frost giant.

A hydra starts with 5 heads and can grow more. It's average damage is 10 points but it compensates by getting a lot of attacks. Compare that to a frost giant which does 25 point of damage on a hit but only gets 2 hits. Both are CR 8.

In the current system, ignoring crits, both do a maximum 50 points of damage turn. With DR? If you have a DR 10, the hydra will do 0 damage, the frost giant is getting 30. DR 5? Hydra does 25, the giant 40. I don't see how to fix that without completely changing how we handle attacks and damage.

Look at it from the PC side of things. While it varies significantly rogues and fighters in my game average out to about the same amount of damage. The rogue does it in 1 hit, the fighter across multiple. I don't see any way of fixing that.

But DR is also not particularly realistic. The best way to take someone out with high quality plate armor if you didn't have a cannon (or high-powered rifle at close range) handy? Grapple them to the ground and stab them in the face with a dagger. Finding a chink in the armor, a gap that your weapon could penetrate, was typically how you took out someone in armor. Not a bigger hammer.

I just don't see how accurately modeling armor, lighter armor but dexterity based, or monsters that rely on scales, dex, sheer size for defense, is ever going to work. Much like HP, AC is the worst possible system created but probably about as good as we're ever going to get for a game with the simplicity of D&D.

Again, I don't want to give up on making the system into something more sensible. DR can absolutely work, you just need to accept that there are sources of damage that will simply be less effective or ineffective against high DR targets (outside of special circumstances like being grappled as you describe). And talk about describing fiction. How many stories have an enemy who needs something special to any hurt them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

D&D should adopt the health system from Dwarf Fortress. Not nearly enough tracking spleen damage at the table

I just started playing Dwarf Fortress. That game is practically targeted to me.

 

[Oofta]

Again, I don't want to give up on making the system into something more sensible. DR can absolutely work, you just need to accept that there are sources of damage that will simply be less effective or ineffective against high DR targets (outside of special circumstances like being grappled as you describe). And talk about describing fiction. How many stories have an enemy who needs something special to any hurt them?

So a hydra can't touch a guy in heavy armor and the frost giant actually becomes more deadly? No thanks.

Specific monsters needing specific weapons or attacks is a separate issue.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just don't find other systems any more accurate. There are too many complexities with real world wounds, all simulations that would work in a game we can run at the table fall apart if you look at them too closely. Unless of course you want the option for anyone no matter how experienced or how much plot armor to be taken out by 1 lucky blow while some other novice can escape with minimal injuries out of sheer luck.

Should we also throw in cholera and dysentery? Because those were major killers. How about sepsis? Internal bleeding that lets you finish the fight and then keel over dead a minute later? Location based damage?

We are always going to simplify because we have to. In my opinion, none of the other systems do a significantly better job. I'd rather just keep it simple because it's easier to track and keeps the game moving.

I get it. I just don't see it as necessary to simplify as far as you think is "necessary".

 

[Bohandas]

Why does some have to be meat-based?

There are a lot of situations where what's happening simply can't be dodged and it's implausible that the person wouldn;t be injured, but which can be not only survived but completely shrugged off with enough hitpoints. The classic examples are falling off a cliff or being pushed into a deep pool of lava or strong acid.

EDIT:
Additionally, in regard to regular attacks, since glancing blows and dodging are already built into AC and dex saves, a hit or a failed save can explicitly mean that you failed to dodge the attack or turn it into a glancing blow

 

[Maxperson]

When it comes to armor as DR, I disagree. It make the game more complex and screws around with balance. Let's take two different monsters, a hydra and a frost giant.

A hydra starts with 5 heads and can grow more. It's average damage is 10 points but it compensates by getting a lot of attacks. Compare that to a frost giant which does 25 point of damage on a hit but only gets 2 hits. Both are CR 8.

In the current system, ignoring crits, both do a maximum 50 points of damage turn. With DR? If you have a DR 10, the hydra will do 0 damage, the frost giant is getting 30. DR 5? Hydra does 25, the giant 40. I don't see how to fix that without completely changing how we handle attacks and damage.

Depends on how you run hit points. A friend of mine designed his own system back in the late 70's and still tweaks it, but this is how he runs hit points, armor and armor class.

Armor class is a function of your size, agility, dexterity and experience. So a big guy is going to be easier to hit than a halfling, and your dex and agility(he split dex) will add to that, as will a small increase in percentage when you level. So if you start with 32%, your AC is 7(still uses 1e low is better). If you gain a few levels and hit 40%, AC drops to 6.

Now let's assume you are hit. First you have stamina, which function like non-meat hit points. You can lose stamina from staying up 3 days since tired = low stamina, or from being hit, or from a bumpy fall down a hill. He also has PBP(Personal Body Points) which are based on constitution and size. Big guys are easier to hit, but have more physicality so more personal body points.

If a hit reduces your stamina to 0 or lower, it has now impacted your body and is doing physical damage. He rolls on a chart and lets say it hits you in the arm. He did 10 damage and you had 7 stamina left, so 3 went into the arm. If you had 8 PBP in the arm, you are now at 5 and your arm is bleeding and will take time to heal. Stamina comes back fairly quickly with rest. Critical hits not only do increased damage, but they bypass stamina, so you don't want to get hit by one.

Another function of PBP is that they are painful and hamper you, reducing stamina. So a first level fighter with 13 hit points that took those 3 PBP in the arm would be down 6 stamina until healing starts and they get some points back. Each PBP point of damage reduces stamina by 2 until healed. If your body area, let's say arm is reduced to 0, it's useless. If it is reduced to minus it's full value, it has been cut off, crushed to the point where amputation is necessary, dead if it's your head, etc.

Armor is DR in his game. Starting with clothing with provides 1. It doesn't do much, but it does more than bare skin. Full plate is 16, but very, very, very rare and expensive. Armor also doesn't always cover all of your arms and legs, as a lot of leather and chain armors stop about halfway down both, so his charts differentiate between upper and lower extremities. Get hit in the lower armor or leg and your armor isn't going to help you.

 

[Maxperson]

So a hydra can't touch a guy in heavy armor and the frost giant actually becomes more deadly? No thanks.

I'm not sure why you think they'd leave a hydra impotent under that system. Damage for something like a hydra should be higher than it is, but is artificially low in order to keep it's CR down. Just increase the damage.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

There are a lot of situations where what's happening simply can't be dodged and it's implausible that the person wouldn;t be injured, but which can be not only survived but completely shrugged off with enough hitpoints. The classic examples are falling off a cliff or being pushed into a deep pool of lava or strong acid.

EDIT:
Additionally, in regard to regular attacks, since glancing blows and dodging are already built into AC and dex saves, a hit or a failed save can explicitly mean that you failed to dodge the attack or turn it into a glancing blow

Like I keep saying, a secondary system for handling physical damage might handle that. But that's beside the point. I don't even like hit points as a 'dodging due to skill/luck' keeping me alive. Doesn't account for random blows i.e. you have to drain through all the hit points before there is a chance for physical, career ending damage. So everyone please stop responding to me like I am 'hit points guy'!

I like what True20 did better. But that is not going to happen in OneD&D.

 

[glass]

I don't see how to fix that without completely changing how we handle attacks and damage.

You couldn't, which is why it is not something that you can really introduce in a minor revision or mid-edition variant (which is why the Armour as DR variant in UA EDIT: for 3.5 was pretty terrible). But you could do it in a full new edition. I remember arguing in the run-up to 4e, before we knew what it would actually look like, that it would be a good idea for it to use an armour-as-soak model. I have mostly changed my mind, but I can hardly begrudge other making the same arguments.

I do rather like the idea someone (possibly @dave2008) posted here that does not reduce generic damage but does reduce the extra damage from crits - in their case I think it was specirfically mitigating the crits go to wounds thing discussed upthread, but I think it generalises beyond that.

 

[Umbran]

Then there are things like scorpions and giant spiders that hit you and do poison damage, except if nothing is meat until 0, it would be impossible for them to poison you.

I think even "nothing is meat until zero" is trying to assign some specific physical interpretation to Hit Points that gets you into trouble.

In 5e, if you are Poisoned, you have disadvantage on ability checks. The status has nothing to do with hit points! If the attack that poisons you also does hit point damage, you lose Hit Points. This is, again, game abstraction. The narration of what that physically means for the character is a matter of color and immersion, not mechanics.

It doesn't have to be a high percentage, but some percentage of hit points must be meat in order for those things to function properly.

No, they really don't. At least not "meat, which we damage, and it will take weeks to heal."

For example - some poisons cause sensations - nausea, chills, dizziness, pain, or the like. These are things that come from interaction of substances with the meat, but we can reasonably say that, once the poison is gone and you have a night's rest, they are no longer effectively a problem for the PC.

So, for example, the character is poisoned - they have Disandvantage, and the attack says they take 1d6 damage every round until they make a Con save. Our narrative description may be that they are racked with cramps and vertigo - the distraction of these sensations and the inhibition of muscular control accounts for the Disadvantage. If the save is made before the character drops to zero hit points, then that's all it was - cramps and dizziness, and with a good night's rest, they feel better, and regain hit points.

If the attack damage drops them to Zero, we watch those Death Saves - If they pass, again, the cramps and dizziness got so bad they were overwhelmed for a bit, but they will clear. If they fail, that means the poison finally got to the point where those cramps inhibited cardiac action, and the character died.