D&D 5E Adjudicating Melee

[The Grassy Gnoll]

It's not an issue of maths, but an issue of parity and play style for me. I have no working to show other than this:
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Any rule you make must work for the monsters as well as the PCs. In the long run, they will suffer.
There may be, say, 4 PCs but they're fighting large numbers of enemies - in LMOP the 1st level characters in their second or third encounter are likely to be up against a total force of ten-twelve goblins, plus a bugbear and a wolf, and each creature would potentially get the same ability to deliver damage on what would otherwise be a miss. And it scales with higher levels.
If you only let the PCs get the benefit of this rule and not the monsters, you're effectively nerfing the monsters, so you may as well just drop their AC or HP and get the same effect with less fiddly bits.

 

[DaveDash]

The game isn't broken. No need to fix it.

I'm not a fan of this rule but whatever floats your boat, as long as you telegraphed that you were going to do this kind of stuff first.

From a pacing perspective adding in this will slow your game down with more reaction attacks.

 

[Beleriphon]

If this is the only way monsters attack sure, what the heck. If not it seems like an unnecessary step, unless the "reaction" is just narrating the orc's attack on its own turn.

 

[Kikuras]

I would go for the miss, if for no other reason than the orc is about to get two attacks in a row, and on a hit (about 45% chance), 25% of damage rolls will drop the player outright. If both attacks hit, any roll within the top 75% (3+) of both rolls will drop the fighter. I would want to minimize the opportunity for the orc to attack, and maximize the AC advantage. The fighter is going to hit 60%, but is going need two hits to kill the orc except on rolling 12, or a crit (both unlikely). Using a near-miss-is-still-a-hit, it increases the likelihood that the orc will obliterate the fighter before the fighter gets another attack.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Who is good at math? (I'm not.)

Fighter: 1st-level. Defense or GWF Fighting Style. AC 16 (or 17 with Defense and chainmail). HP 12. Greatsword +5 to hit for 2d6+3 (rerolls 1-2 if GWF).

Orc: AC 13. HP 15. Greataxe +5 to hit for 1d12+3 (9 average damage).

Is the DM's adjudication (or offer, if it's a choice to make for the player) a good deal for the fighter? Please show your work.

The answer to the question depends on how risk averse your fighter is. Just looking at GWF (Defense makes too little difference with these criteria).

The GWF Fighter is given (or offered) 2d6 (re-roll 1's and 2's - or 8.3 avg dmg, max of 12), in exchange for letting the Orc attack him (50% chance to hit, d12+3 dmg, 9.5 avg, 15 max).
He has no chance to kill the Orc, but will greatly increase the chances of killing the Orc with his next attack (65% chance to hit, 11.3 avg dmg or 7.3 dmg/attack).

In exchange, the Orc does 4.75 dmg/attack. The kicker is, that each hit the Orc gets, has a 33% chance of taking the Fighter out of the fight (he needs to roll 9+ on 1d12). So, the Orc has a 16.5% chance of knocking the Fighter out of the fight with just that one free swing. if we assume that the Orc will also get the next attack, the Fighter's odds of surviving the fight drop to around 50%.

Does your Fighter feel lucky, punk?

More importantly, iserith - since I think I know a little bit about how you like to run your games - do you really want your players to have to make decisions based on situational math? Also, the math only matters if the player would have all the information needed to make a fair decision - and I'm guessing that the player in this scenario would have no idea how many Hit Points the Orc has.

 

[Rune]

Who is good at math? (I'm not.)

Fighter: 1st-level. Defense or GWF Fighting Style. AC 16 (or 17 with Defense and chainmail). HP 12. Greatsword +5 to hit for 2d6+3 (rerolls 1-2 if GWF).

Orc: AC 13. HP 15. Greataxe +5 to hit for 1d12+3 (9 average damage).

Is the DM's adjudication (or offer, if it's a choice to make for the player) a good deal for the fighter? Please show your work.

I think the answer to this is more situational than math-based (although math plays it's part). If the damage would mean the Orc drops now, it may well be a huge benefit, even if the Orc gets a simultaneous attack as it dies, because it eliminates the possibility of the Orc getting missed by an opportunity attack and running off to hit a softer target (or attacking an adjacent one). In this way, the front-liners are made just a little more sticky.

 

[iserith]

The answer to the question depends on how risk averse your fighter is. Just looking at GWF (Defense makes too little difference with these criteria).

The GWF Fighter is given (or offered) 2d6 (re-roll 1's and 2's - or 8.3 avg dmg, max of 12), in exchange for letting the Orc attack him (50% chance to hit, d12+3 dmg, 9.5 avg, 15 max).
He has no chance to kill the Orc, but will greatly increase the chances of killing the Orc with his next attack (65% chance to hit, 11.3 avg dmg or 7.3 dmg/attack).

In exchange, the Orc does 4.75 dmg/attack. The kicker is, that each hit the Orc gets, has a 33% chance of taking the Fighter out of the fight (he needs to roll 9+ on 1d12). So, the Orc has a 16.5% chance of knocking the Fighter out of the fight with just that one free swing. if we assume that the Orc will also get the next attack, the Fighter's odds of surviving the fight drop to around 50%.

Does your Fighter feel lucky, punk?

My gut says it's a good deal for the fighter when you factor in the damage on a miss that happened after the fighter's first attack. But my gut is full of you-know-what so who can say whether it's right or not. Another poster has indicated it's a good trade for the fighter on average. Who is correct?

More importantly, iserith - since I think I know a little bit about how you like to run your games - do you really want your players to have to make decisions based on situational math? Also, the math only matters if the player would have all the information needed to make a fair decision - and I'm guessing that the player in this scenario would have no idea how many Hit Points the Orc has.

The assumption being made in your inquiry is that I have or will be making such a ruling in my game. I've made no statement to that effect. I'm posing a hypothetical and asking whether it's in line with the rules and how someone in the position of the fighter would receive it. (I avoided saying "Well, actually..." here. Yay!) My inquiry on math was just to see how it broke down statistically.

As for how many hit points a creature has, I don't mind sharing that provided the player describes an action for the character that might enable him or her to learn that information e.g. "I try to quickly size up the enemy to determine what kind of punishment it can take."

 

[Kikuras]

My gut says it's a good deal for the fighter when you factor in the damage on a miss that happened after the fighter's first attack. But my gut is full of you-know-what so who can say whether it's right or not. Another poster has indicated it's a good trade for the fighter on average. Who is correct?

That poster's math uses a formula that does not apply to the situation as described, but rather for calculating estimated damage over long periods of time. The cannot actually do 4.4 dmg, but rather can do 0 or 4 - 15 (average 9.5). And when taking into account the fact that the orc gets two attacks in a row, it does not look good for the fighter. But it wouldn't be unreasonable for the fighter to win either.

Edit: This combat is not expected to last more than two full rounds.

 

[LostSoul]

1. What do you think of this DM's ruling? 2. Do the rules support such a ruling? 3. How would you take it if you were playing the fighter? 4. Would you prefer to be given a choice of missing outright or doing damage but opening yourself up to a reaction attack? 5. What if the fighter missed by more than two?

I numbered the questions.

1. I think it's fun, it flows out of what the characters are doing in the game world.

2. Looks like it.

3. I would be worried that it would be difficult to make choices in the future. I wouldn't know if the DM was going to make rulings like this or rely on the standard abstract combat system. If the DM is only making decisions like this, I'd be unsure how the PC build choices and monster stat blocks would interact with this system, since they weren't designed to be used in this way.

4. If action resolution follows from what the characters are doing in the game world, I think I already have this choice, I just decided not to take it in this example. I could have said, "I make a quick slice at the orc, using the greater reach of my greatsword to keep him at bay." I assume that would resolve differently. Again, since I don't know the details of the system I'd be worried that this assumption isn't correct, though I'd be willing to figure it out through game play.

5. I'd feel that the greater degree of failure should carry additional complications. I'd prefer if those complications led into the way the next round is set up, e.g. stumbling or leaving an opening for the orc, instead of something that happens during this round, e.g. max damage or an auto-hit on the reaction in this round.

 

[iserith]

D&D is not Dungeon World.

I don't agree or support such a ruling, unless said monster has a special ability in it's stat block that says if missed by a melee attack, the creature can opt to take just the weapon damage die as damage to use it's reaction to make an attack in retaliation. If the DM homebrewed up all his monsters to have such an ability or made this a general house rule, I would suggest he runs Dungeon World.

I'm not a fan of this ruling. The "How to Play" supports that the DM can do this, but it is in conflict with the combat rules, which I take to serve as strong guidelines on how the DM should narrate the results of certain common actions (in this case, by calling for a specific sequence of checks against established DCs).

Consider also DMG, page 242, "Success at a Cost."

"Failure can be tough, but the agony is compounded when a character fails by the barest margin. When a character fails a roll by only 1 or 2, you can allow the character to succeed at the cost of a complication or hindrance. Such complications can run along any of the following lines:

• A character manages to get her sword past a hobgoblin's defenses and turn a near miss into a hit, but the hobgoblin twists its shield and disarms her.
• A character narrowly escapes the full brunt of a fireball but ends up prone.
• A character fails to intimidate a kobold prisoner, but the kobold reveals its secrets anyway while shrieking at the top of its lungs, alerting other nearby monsters.
• A character manages to finish an arduous climb to the top of a cliff despite slipping, only to realize that the rope on which his companions dangle below him is close to breaking.

When you introduce costs such as these, try to make them obstacles and setbacks that change the nature of the adventuring situation. In exchange for success, players must consider new ways of facing the challenge.

You can also use this technique when a character succeeds on a roll by hitting the DC exactly, complicating marginal success in interesting ways."

Thoughts?

I couldn't make that choice, in the moment. I would need at least ten minutes to ponder the ramifications of my uncertainty in the rules. I would have to question everything I thought I knew about how the world works.

Haha!