D&D 5E 2024 D&D is 2014 D&D with 4E sprinkled on top

[EzekielRaiden]

"Not hit" and "missed" are synonyms by most people's standards. And I'm not saying that this is the sole problem with the concept for everybody. I'm not a huge fan of any ability that can't fail to have an effect, for example.

Sure. But there are things that are not synonymous within the rules of D&D that are synonymous outside it, and vice-versa. For example, a "save" has....nothing whatsoever to do with "saving" anything. It doesn't mean anything even remotely like the uses of the word "save", unless you use an openly and explicitly gamist stance (where it is the player "saving" their character).

"Cure" spells don't "cure" anything--and wounds cannot be "cured" in the first place, unless you're salting them on the carcass of an animal. "Necromancy" doesn't mean spells that create undead things; it means divination by means of calling upon the dead to speak to you, or by using the remains of a dead creature (usually not a human, as that would instead be called by the more specific term anthropomancy). "Barbarians" are not people who get too angry to die. "Druids" are not people who can turn into animal shapes. Etc., etc., etc.

D&D redefines terms all the time. "Hit" and "miss" are just as much game-terms as any other term. After all, you don't need to be hit to lose Hit Points, you can lose those from all sorts of things that don't involve even the slightest amount of something impacting your physical body. So "hit" is already not in 1:1 correspondence with its colloquial meaning to begin with.

If the spell doesn't work or detonates outside of range of the target, sure. But I will walk back my statement in regards to blasts, which almost always do something.

Ah.

So it's totally fine for an action to always have an effect (even if lesser)...so long as the action is a spell. But anything that isn't a spell, well, God forbid that it have any guaranteed effects!

Doubtless, you already know how that comes across.

Vibes are definitely part of design, and a huge part of why we play one game or a different one.

But are we talking about the same kind of "vibes" here?

Because there is a huge, huge, HUGE difference between "vibes" in the sense of "this game should evoke a fantasy feel, rather than a sci-fi feel", and "this game has a vague air of being similar to 2nd edition even though I couldn't tell you any part of why and actually looking at the rules they really aren't much the same at all".

The former is a specific, intentional goal that can be tested and refined. The latter is basically just someone distilling "I have a weird intuition that I couldn't possibly explain" into a single word. I won't accept an argument that tries to pass off those two things as being the same thing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And so do some abilities in 4E.

Yup. One of my issues with it, and far from the most important. But it's not like there aren't plenty of non-4e games out there to play, so it doesn't matter personally.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I don't really get the negative reaction towards Damage On A Miss. If we can accept that Hit Points are a weird amalgamation of luck, stamina, and actual physicality, than grazing attacks make perfect sense. Luck can't last forever, successfully dodging is still draining on your stamina, etc.

unfortunately, there are those who do not accept that idea.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure. But there are things that are not synonymous within the rules of D&D that are synonymous outside it, and vice-versa. For example, a "save" has....nothing whatsoever to do with "saving" anything. It doesn't mean anything even remotely like the uses of the word "save", unless you use an openly and explicitly gamist stance (where it is the player "saving" their character).

"Cure" spells don't "cure" anything--and wounds cannot be "cured" in the first place, unless you're salting them on the carcass of an animal. "Necromancy" doesn't mean spells that create undead things; it means divination by means of calling upon the dead to speak to you, or by using the remains of a dead creature (usually not a human, as that would instead be called by the more specific term anthropomancy). "Barbarians" are not people who get too angry to die. "Druids" are not people who can turn into animal shapes. Etc., etc., etc.

D&D redefines terms all the time. "Hit" and "miss" are just as much game-terms as any other term. After all, you don't need to be hit to lose Hit Points, you can lose those from all sorts of things that don't involve even the slightest amount of something impacting your physical body. So "hit" is already not in 1:1 correspondence with its colloquial meaning to begin with.


Ah.

So it's totally fine for an action to always have an effect (even if lesser)...so long as the action is a spell. But anything that isn't a spell, well, God forbid that it have any guaranteed effects!

Doubtless, you already know how that comes across.


But are we talking about the same kind of "vibes" here?

Because there is a huge, huge, HUGE difference between "vibes" in the sense of "this game should evoke a fantasy feel, rather than a sci-fi feel", and "this game has a vague air of being similar to 2nd edition even though I couldn't tell you any part of why and actually looking at the rules they really aren't much the same at all".

The former is a specific, intentional goal that can be tested and refined. The latter is basically just someone distilling "I have a weird intuition that I couldn't possibly explain" into a single word. I won't accept an argument that tries to pass off those two things as being the same thing.

Non-magical blasts always do something too. I'm not the one who asked about fireballs. Give me a hand grenade or an RPG (there's a term with multiple meanings in gaming!) over wiggling my fingers any day in a game.

 

[Reynard]

I kind of like the idea that there shouldn't be a "to hit" roll at all, and just a "how good you did" roll. And sometimes it isn't good enough, because armor or whatever.

Is that what MCDM is doing? I have a vague tingle in the back of my overworked, under caffeinated brain....

 

[Pedantic]

That, unfortunately, is the thing some people cannot accept.

While a rare few people really do have a convince-able position on this...I find that the vast majority of people fall into two camps. "HP must be physically-rooted", often (semi-derogatorily) called "Meat Points" fans, and "HP cannot be solely physically-rooted", sometimes called "Luck Points" or various other things. For a less prejudicial term for each, I'll say Physicalists and Amalgamists; the Physicalist position is that every single point of HP is a physical something in a given entity, while Amalgamists see it as a non-specific mix of physical and non-physical things, where no individual hit point can be said to be any particular thing in absolute.

Yeah, I don't think we're ever resolving that one. Personally I think what you're calling the Physicalist position has less to do with the hit point rules than it does assigning primacy to the attack rules; HP as meat is a necessary consequence of a "hit" being literally that.

That, and I think the whole fantasy media landscape is changing as a result of hit points prominence in video games. The portrayal of weaponry in general in fantasy is getting less and less lethal over time, outside of specifically "gritty" works.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, I don't think we're ever resolving that one. Personally I think what you're calling the Physicalist position has less to do with the hit point rules than it does assigning primacy to the attack rules; HP as meat is a necessary consequence of a "hit" being literally that.

Whichever way the causation swings, it is vexing to me, because if (what I have called) the Physicalist position were even remotely amenable to compromise or moderation, a very significant amount of game design space would open up to us, allowing a whole spectrum of things.

It also doesn't help that, y'know, the books themselves have always been clear, going all the way back to Gygax, that "hits" in combat are much, much, much more complicated than just "did your sword(/other weapon) ever, at any point, make physical contact with the flesh of your opponent?"

That, and I think the whole fantasy media landscape is changing as a result of hit points prominence in video games. The portrayal of weaponry in general in fantasy is getting less and less lethal over time, outside of specifically "gritty" works.

Well, conversely, that's actually a lot more like how real life works? Like yes, if you live in 1066 and literally take a longsword to the gut up to the hilt, you're gonna die, there's really no meaningful chance that "medicine" of the day could save you. But in actual, living melee battle between real soldiers? People don't just take a couple hits and then fold over. It takes a lot to kill a man. "Gritty" games and media are, at this point, simply preserving a fictitious perspective because it's what people came to expect.

It's like people hearing actual horse hooves clopping on actual cobblestone and thinking "well that's not what horses sound like" because they've been raised watching media that replaced real hoof-clopping sounds (which were difficult for microphones to pick up) with the artificial sound of coconut shells banging together. Reality is unrealistic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Non-magical blasts always do something too. I'm not the one who asked about fireballs. Give me a hand grenade or an RPG (there's a term with multiple meanings in gaming!) over wiggling my fingers any day in a game.

Okay.

You are still openly and directly expressing an anti-martial, pro-caster bias. Because that's what that is. No martial is going to be an "alchemist", and any "alchemist" is going to be some kind of caster in the D&D milieu. No martial is ever going to benefit from this, but every martial is now cut off from something that no caster is cut off from.

I dislike game design that is openly prejudicial against certain player preferences and not others solely for the reason that certain people get annoyed by effects that have a baseline effect even if the full effect failed to happen unless it fits their preferences.

 

[Minigiant]

That, unfortunately, is the thing some people cannot accept.

While a rare few people really do have a convince-able position on this...I find that the vast majority of people fall into two camps. "HP must be physically-rooted", often (semi-derogatorily) called "Meat Points" fans, and "HP cannot be solely physically-rooted", sometimes called "Luck Points" or various other things. For a less prejudicial term for each, I'll say Physicalists and Amalgamists; the Physicalist position is that every single point of HP is a physical something in a given entity, while Amalgamists see it as a non-specific mix of physical and non-physical things, where no individual hit point can be said to be any particular thing in absolute

Well there is a physical concept of a miss that is draining.

Parrying

There's never been a core rule for parrying in D&D. It's amalgamated into HP.

For some reason, a group of fans see warriors as standing still getting wacked at. Much like the myth that full plate makes you an immobile slow slug.

5e kept that part of 2e and mixed it with 4e.
Like 2e, there is a best armor.
And like 4e, special material counts as magic armor.

 

[Pedantic]

Whichever way the causation swings, it is vexing to me, because if (what I have called) the Physicalist position were even remotely amenable to compromise or moderation, a very significant amount of game design space would open up to us, allowing a whole spectrum of things.

It also doesn't help that, y'know, the books themselves have always been clear, going all the way back to Gygax, that "hits" in combat are much, much, much more complicated than just "did your sword(/other weapon) ever, at any point, make physical contact with the flesh of your opponent?"

I think you'd need to do a more fundamental redesign to get to compromise. Dusk City Outlaws did a solid job. Luck is both a resource to modify rolls and effectively your HP pool, but the game is quite clear that while you have Luck to spend, you are absolutely not getting hit and avoid the attack entirely. Once you're out, each hit deals a wound, and it's 3 of those before you're out.

That kind of reframing would be necessary. I just don't think there's any other way to break the hit/miss loop, but who knows, maybe Graze will soften up the audience enough given a few years to become normal.