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Damage on a Miss: Because otherwise Armour Class makes no sense
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6460979" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>You do realise that solution is available for DoaM options also!</p><p></p><p>Agreed.</p><p></p><p>"Partial hit" introduces a new piece of technical jargon into the game. "Automatic hit" means that you can' distinguish between STR damage on a miss and W+STR damage on a hit.</p><p></p><p>Others have pointed out that it doesn't narrow options, because you can choose whether or not to build a DoaM character.</p><p></p><p>Another point is that, if the abstract combat system is resolving the outcome of two skilled fighters having at it for some moderately extended period of time, why <em>should</em> there be such periods in which no significant effect occurs? Are the two fighters actually not that skilled after all?</p><p></p><p>I think you have this backwards. Given that in <em>any </em>edition the fighter can recover from his "wounds" without any medical intervention, I think we can infer that they are not all that serious. Given that in 4e and 5e he can recover overnight, I think we can infer that they are sufficiently non-serious that he can push on in spite of them.</p><p></p><p>That's not "farcically fast" recovery. It's very typical adventure fiction. What is farcical is narrating the wounds as (say) a broken limb or serious organ damage, and then having the fighter moving and fighting at full ability after resting for a day and recovering a hit point or three.</p><p></p><p>The thing about guts is that, if you have your stomach sliced open, you are not going to recover without medical/surgical intervention, just by sleeping for a few days or weeks. Hence, hit point loss in AD&D doesn't represent "blood or guts" until you are dead. An optional rule in Gygax's DMG allows that if you get to -6 or below the GM can narrate maiming, blindness etc as a consequnce - but that's still not guts.</p><p></p><p>As for blood - no one in AD&D ever received a blood transfusion, so we're hardly talking about a litre of blood being lost. We're talking about amounts of blood loss which are recovered by drinking some water, eating some food and having a rest. Whether you narrate your "pushing on after rest" as taking hours or days is a matter of taste and genre, not a matter of physiological plausibility or implausibility.</p><p></p><p>But after 1 day to 1 week's healing (depending on whether or not the character fell below 0 hp) that character can run, fight, climb etc at full strength, and is no more vulnerable in combat than the typical farm labourer. So the injury actually isn't very significant at all.</p><p></p><p>Or, conversely, if you narrate the injury as significant but treat the ability to run, jump, fight etc as "narrative licence", then I'm puzzled as to why the recovery of hit points can't be treated with the same "narrative licence" also: ie the injury is still there, but not impeding the character's performance.</p><p></p><p>There is room here for differences of taste around pacing, gonzo-ness etc, but in the absence of any non-fatal yet debiltating injuries in any edition of D&D, the idea that some options encompass physiological reality and others don't is very implausible to me.</p><p></p><p>I don't regard hit points as a terrible system. They're a <em>different /I] system from other, more injury-focused systems (eg Rolemaster), but they're not terrible at all.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>I play a game with a lot of DoaM - 4e - and narrating it doesn't cause any problems: the attacker, via force of arms, puissance of magic, etc, has gone some way towards cowing/defeating/killing his/her opponent. There is no "opposite expected result", because when a player rolls an attack using a DoaM ability s/he is expecting to do at least some damage!</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>That's not true. Character-build resources have been expened in choosing the DoaM option.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Says who? For many players, having no effect on the ingame situation is boring. And needlessly so. [MENTION=63508]Minigiant[/MENTION] has elaborated this, with reference to the actual design and play parameters of the game, in fine detail.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>But the general point is that there is no rule laid up in RPG heaven that says that a player's choice on how to spend his/her action <em>must</em> have a chance of having no effect. That's not the case when the wizard player choose to fireball or magic-missile, and that has hardly ruined the game, nor spoilded generations of caster players.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6460979, member: 42582"] You do realise that solution is available for DoaM options also! Agreed. "Partial hit" introduces a new piece of technical jargon into the game. "Automatic hit" means that you can' distinguish between STR damage on a miss and W+STR damage on a hit. Others have pointed out that it doesn't narrow options, because you can choose whether or not to build a DoaM character. Another point is that, if the abstract combat system is resolving the outcome of two skilled fighters having at it for some moderately extended period of time, why [I]should[/I] there be such periods in which no significant effect occurs? Are the two fighters actually not that skilled after all? I think you have this backwards. Given that in [I]any [/I]edition the fighter can recover from his "wounds" without any medical intervention, I think we can infer that they are not all that serious. Given that in 4e and 5e he can recover overnight, I think we can infer that they are sufficiently non-serious that he can push on in spite of them. That's not "farcically fast" recovery. It's very typical adventure fiction. What is farcical is narrating the wounds as (say) a broken limb or serious organ damage, and then having the fighter moving and fighting at full ability after resting for a day and recovering a hit point or three. The thing about guts is that, if you have your stomach sliced open, you are not going to recover without medical/surgical intervention, just by sleeping for a few days or weeks. Hence, hit point loss in AD&D doesn't represent "blood or guts" until you are dead. An optional rule in Gygax's DMG allows that if you get to -6 or below the GM can narrate maiming, blindness etc as a consequnce - but that's still not guts. As for blood - no one in AD&D ever received a blood transfusion, so we're hardly talking about a litre of blood being lost. We're talking about amounts of blood loss which are recovered by drinking some water, eating some food and having a rest. Whether you narrate your "pushing on after rest" as taking hours or days is a matter of taste and genre, not a matter of physiological plausibility or implausibility. But after 1 day to 1 week's healing (depending on whether or not the character fell below 0 hp) that character can run, fight, climb etc at full strength, and is no more vulnerable in combat than the typical farm labourer. So the injury actually isn't very significant at all. Or, conversely, if you narrate the injury as significant but treat the ability to run, jump, fight etc as "narrative licence", then I'm puzzled as to why the recovery of hit points can't be treated with the same "narrative licence" also: ie the injury is still there, but not impeding the character's performance. There is room here for differences of taste around pacing, gonzo-ness etc, but in the absence of any non-fatal yet debiltating injuries in any edition of D&D, the idea that some options encompass physiological reality and others don't is very implausible to me. I don't regard hit points as a terrible system. They're a [I]different /I] system from other, more injury-focused systems (eg Rolemaster), but they're not terrible at all. I play a game with a lot of DoaM - 4e - and narrating it doesn't cause any problems: the attacker, via force of arms, puissance of magic, etc, has gone some way towards cowing/defeating/killing his/her opponent. There is no "opposite expected result", because when a player rolls an attack using a DoaM ability s/he is expecting to do at least some damage! That's not true. Character-build resources have been expened in choosing the DoaM option. Says who? For many players, having no effect on the ingame situation is boring. And needlessly so. [MENTION=63508]Minigiant[/MENTION] has elaborated this, with reference to the actual design and play parameters of the game, in fine detail. But the general point is that there is no rule laid up in RPG heaven that says that a player's choice on how to spend his/her action [I]must[/I] have a chance of having no effect. That's not the case when the wizard player choose to fireball or magic-missile, and that has hardly ruined the game, nor spoilded generations of caster players.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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