What I Like About Nimble 2e (So Far) — A Partial Review

[zakael19]

can't tell you how often I have watched the enthusiasm deflate from my table when "I got a 23: solid hit!" is then followed by "And 4 damage."

This is explicitly what Draw Steel!’s rolls do. The better you roll, the better your tier of outcome is, and the more damage/stronger effect you have. It’s pretty smooth.

 

[GobHag]

It would feel like you're hitting ALL the time.

I mean that feels like complaining that an Ice Cream is cold.

 

[JohnSnow]

This is explicitly what Draw Steel!’s rolls do. The better you roll, the better your tier of outcome is, and the more damage/stronger effect you have. It’s pretty smooth.

DC20 does that too. So does, Daggerheart, I think. And a few others. A lot of them still use damage rolls because...I guess people like slowing their game down? I dunno.

 

[JohnSnow]

I mean that feels like complaining that an Ice Cream is cold.

I get it. People like hitting. But to me, the hit is only satisfying because it doesn't happen all the damn time.

In standard D&D, it's somewhere between a 40 and 75 percent chance to hit, and it varies from combat to combat and opponent to opponent. That's a range of success that feels good to me, and gives a degree of variability.

Now, I get that D&D then adds in this variable range of "'nearly meaningless' hit to 'meaningful hit'," and an argument can be made that Nimble kinda sidesteps that by just having better and worse hits, but I sword fight as a hobby and people don't hit me 90% of the time they take a swing, so it breaks my immersion in the narrative if I just get hit basically all the time.

I also acknowledge that some of this is straight-up personal preference. I find rolling and narrating the outcome of attacks to be fast and fun. I find damage rolls and calculations to be a tedious exercise in watching many people do what feels to me like painfully slow addition.

YMMV.

 

[Zaukrie]

Honestly, I am intrigued by the concept of Nimble and other similar games, but my personal taste would be to eliminate the damage roll rather than the attack one.

I don't like all of the stuff DC20 does, but to my tastes, "Just make one d20-based roll to determine both if you succeed AND how well."

I can't tell you how often I have watched the enthusiasm deflate from my table when "I got a 23: solid hit!" is then followed by "And 4 damage."

And I just can't get excited by "All but 1/Xth of attacks hit." It would feel like you're hitting ALL the time. As Professor DM put it in his rabbit hole video years ago: "Having to roll between a 6 and 13 to hit just FEELS right."

If you roll a one, you miss. If you're rolling multiple dice, if the left most one is a one, you miss.

I get it. People like hitting. But to me, the hit is only satisfying because it doesn't happen all the damn time.

In standard D&D, it's somewhere between a 40 and 75 percent chance to hit, and it varies from combat to combat and opponent to opponent. That's a range of success that feels good to me, and gives a degree of variability.

Now, I get that D&D then adds in this variable range of "'nearly meaningless' hit to 'meaningful hit'," and an argument can be made that Nimble kinda sidesteps that by just having better and worse hits, but I sword fight as a hobby and people don't hit me 90% of the time they take a swing, so it breaks my immersion in the narrative if I just get hit basically all the time.

I also acknowledge that some of this is straight-up personal preference. I find rolling and narrating the outcome of attacks to be fast and fun. I find damage rolls and calculations to be a tedious exercise in watching many people do what feels to me like painfully slow addition.

YMMV.

You don't hit all the time in Nimble.

 

[JohnSnow]

If you roll a one, you miss. If you're rolling multiple dice, if the left most one is a one, you miss.

You don't hit all the time in Nimble.

On a d4, you hit on anything but a 1 - that’s a 75% success rate.

Every other die has more sides. If they also only miss on a “1,” they have a higher than 75% chance of success.

You say it’s “not all the time,” and I concede it’s not 100%, but always having a 75+% chance of success?

Colloquially? I’d call that “basically all the time.” Which is what I said.

 

[zakael19]

DC20 does that too. So does, Daggerheart, I think. And a few others. A lot of them still use damage rolls because...I guess people like slowing their game down? I dunno.

Daggerheart still has damage die after you see if you hit!

 

[HatWearingFool]

On a d4, you hit on anything but a 1 - that’s a 75% success rate.

Every other die has more sides. If they also only miss on a “1,” they have a higher than 75% chance of success.

You say it’s “not all the time,” and I concede it’s not 100%, but always having a 75+% chance of success?

Colloquially? I’d call that “basically all the time.” Which is what I said.

But losing hit points doesn’t mean you actually got wounded/hit right? I thought “we” all agreed a long time ago our characters don’t get stabbed every time they lose hit points. It’s just showing in the story we lost stamina, are wearing down, deflected the blow with our sword or shield in a way that cost us effort, (etc).

If so nimble is just saying that the majority of the time (unless you use defence) you are expending serious effort when someone attacks you.

Edit: This is certainly how I narrate “hits” in both my D&D and nimble games. I guess it’s also why I don’t have issue with games that get rid of the to hit roll entirely like Drawsteel, they just assume you are skilled enough to always be wearing down your opponent in some fashion.

 

[JohnSnow]

Daggerheart still has damage die after you see if you hit!

That it does. And armor as DR.

It all feels unnecessarily complicated, but I’d already written Daggerheart off as not my jam aesthetically, so I’m really only interested in it for swiping mechanics and ideas.

 

[Mannahnin]

I get it. People like hitting. But to me, the hit is only satisfying because it doesn't happen all the damn time.

In standard D&D, it's somewhere between a 40 and 75 percent chance to hit, and it varies from combat to combat and opponent to opponent. That's a range of success that feels good to me, and gives a degree of variability.

Whereas the games that have decided you always/"always" hit are aiming at the folks who find that when they miss it's a feel-bad. That those "wasted" turns feel sufficiently bad to them that it's better to eliminate or cut them down even further. And that this means the average round is more tense, each moving us measurably toward someone going down. No doubt a lot of this is inherently subjective/dependent on mindset, which approach feels better/more verisimilitudinous to a given player.

Now, I get that D&D then adds in this variable range of "'nearly meaningless' hit to 'meaningful hit'," and an argument can be made that Nimble kinda sidesteps that by just having better and worse hits, but I sword fight as a hobby and people don't hit me 90% of the time they take a swing, so it breaks my immersion in the narrative if I just get hit basically all the time.

Right. Rolling a 1 for damage in D&D is similar to rolling a 2 in Nimble or whatever.

The other part, speaking as someone who's sword fought as a hobby as well, is that every time someone attacks me and I need to actively defend myself that saps some of my energy to keep defending myself. In that regard, losing some amount of HP every round just measures how much energy/how hard I had to work that round. And I know part of the point of this in OSR games like Into the Odd is that every round a given combatant gets attacked, basically, is moving them measurably toward a state of "can't defend well enough against that next attack and finally gets cut down". Again speaking as a former fencer and LARPer, this feels kind of right insofar as it means the difference between a superior fighter and an inferior one is more a matter of skill, conditioning and stamina and less a matter of the better one having more "meat points"/being able to take multiple solid shots to his actual body.

But losing hit points doesn’t mean you actually got wounded/hit right? I thought “we” all agreed a long time ago our characters don’t get stabbed every time they lose hit points. It’s just showing in the story we lost stamina, are wearing down, deflected the blow with our sword or shield in a way that cost us effort, (etc).

If so nimble is just saying that the majority of the time (unless you use defence) you are expending serious effort when someone attacks you.

Edit: This is certainly how I narrate “hits” in both my D&D and nimble games. I guess it’s also why I don’t have issue with games that get rid of the to hit roll entirely like Drawsteel, they just assume you are skilled enough to always be wearing down your opponent in some fashion.

Yup. I like the "Hit Protection" explanation for HP. It's less actually being hit with a yard-long piece of steel (or substantially longer, for a giant, say), than the stamina and luck and skill to NOT be hit, and when those points run out, a telling blow gets through. In most games with HP this is the one that knocks you out/disables you, though some games or house rules let you keep acting or make a check to stay conscious or something, though you're extremely vulnerable at that point.