Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6668069" data-attributes="member: 4937">3e at least tried to cover it as an explicit case.D&amp;D in it's hit points does fortune in the middle where we don't know what the fortune means until we apply it.&nbsp; You never get as a result of a fortune roll the explicit, &quot;Axe to the face&quot; outcome.&nbsp; The DM can color the fortune with the outcome, &quot;Axe to the face&quot;, after applying the hit point loss and noticing this implies death, but in general this doesn't happen explicitly in the proposition or fortune step.&nbsp; There have always been examples though where hit point's fortune in the middle works against people's intuition.&nbsp;&nbsp; The two big ones are the case of a helpless or effectively helpless target, and falling damage.&nbsp;&nbsp; The reason both work against peoples intuition is that the outcome seems to be specified before the fortune is checked.&nbsp;&nbsp; Falling is a whole other can of worms, but if you have a bound or otherwise helpless foe, and you make the proposition, &quot;I put my sword on his throat and push down.&quot; there is no miss chance and not even really a partial success chance as is usually specified by an attack.&nbsp; Intuition calls for this situation to not have the result of a normal attack.1e just said, &quot;If you attack a helpless foe, they are dead.&quot;&nbsp; In other words, if you really can specify in D&amp;D, &quot;I hit the target right between the eyes with my axe.&quot;, they are in fact just dead - precisely the result Direhammer expects and proof that there isn't anything so obvious as that wrong with the D&amp;D combat system.3e handled this with a special Coup de Grace maneuver where a saving throw was used to determine, &quot;Is he dead?&quot; as a binary pass/fail, and even the fail case indicated a very serious wound.&nbsp; This is a slight improvement over the 1e version, in that it deals with, &quot;Yes, but what if you are hitting a helpless stone golem right between the eyes?&nbsp; That doesn't necessarily mean instant death, right?&nbsp; Because, stone golem.&quot;.&nbsp; Or replace 'stone golem' with Rasputin.&nbsp;&nbsp; But, otherwise it produces a similar result to 1e.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6668069, member: 4937"] 3e at least tried to cover it as an explicit case. D&D in it's hit points does fortune in the middle where we don't know what the fortune means until we apply it. You never get as a result of a fortune roll the explicit, "Axe to the face" outcome. The DM can color the fortune with the outcome, "Axe to the face", after applying the hit point loss and noticing this implies death, but in general this doesn't happen explicitly in the proposition or fortune step. There have always been examples though where hit point's fortune in the middle works against people's intuition. The two big ones are the case of a helpless or effectively helpless target, and falling damage. The reason both work against peoples intuition is that the outcome seems to be specified before the fortune is checked. Falling is a whole other can of worms, but if you have a bound or otherwise helpless foe, and you make the proposition, "I put my sword on his throat and push down." there is no miss chance and not even really a partial success chance as is usually specified by an attack. Intuition calls for this situation to not have the result of a normal attack. 1e just said, "If you attack a helpless foe, they are dead." In other words, if you really can specify in D&D, "I hit the target right between the eyes with my axe.", they are in fact just dead - precisely the result Direhammer expects and proof that there isn't anything so obvious as that wrong with the D&D combat system. 3e handled this with a special Coup de Grace maneuver where a saving throw was used to determine, "Is he dead?" as a binary pass/fail, and even the fail case indicated a very serious wound. This is a slight improvement over the 1e version, in that it deals with, "Yes, but what if you are hitting a helpless stone golem right between the eyes? That doesn't necessarily mean instant death, right? Because, stone golem.". Or replace 'stone golem' with Rasputin. But, otherwise it produces a similar result to 1e. [/QUOTE]

Verification