D&D 5E "Damage on a miss" poll.

[Burninator]

No, you asserted that removing the dice from the equation makes the game lame. Spells fall right into that category. If a creature has less than the minimum damage on a miss of a spell (not just aoe mind you) then there is no need to roll any dice. Making the game lame as you put it.

Ahh, dude, you realize that the wizard still rolls dice for fireball damage, then it's halved on a successful save, right?

The agency of the dice is still there.

This mechanic doesn't even allow damage to be variable. It's hard-coded to your str mod. I'm not sure any wizard spell allows this. Even magic missile, the closest comparable thing to GWF, is 1d4 + 1 per spell level, and those are daily slot damage spells, which should be doing more damage than a single swing of a fighter's sword. Especially one that missed. Ugh. The more I think about this mechanic, the more awful it is. A fighter missing with his sword shouldn't do the same or more damage as a wizard with his iconic damage spell that can't miss. At a certain point, it's all rhetorical sludge and the game has lost all meaning.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You mean like the rogue's "Ace in the Hole" ability?

Yes, like that. It wasn't what this thread is about, but that ability is poorly designed for similar reasons.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Scoundrels?

Yes. Taking a legitimate point (people have different philosophies of gaming) and using it as an excuse to ignore basic logical arguments that apply equally to anyone playing the game is not a new strategy (people have been defending martial dailies and hit points and various other things this way for years). But it is pretty low.

Mod Note: Please see my post a bit farther on... ~Umbran

 

[Burninator]

I don't think it's a 1st level character power.
I also don't think a flat "if you miss you still deal damage" works, as it allows for damage on natural 1s and the like.

If damage on a miss is included, I'd prefer it to be a specialized ability at higher level.
And I'd only like it to apply to near misses. "If you miss by less than 5" or something.

If they re-introduced Touch AC, that'd work.

I'd rather it went : if you miss with your attack, but still beat their touch AC (10 + dex + magic), then that miss becomes a hit that deals 1d6 damage (no str mod). Simple, clean, balanced. Still keeps the agency of the dice, but allows that 2 HP kobold a chance, however slim, to escape and alert his buddies.

Think about this power on opportunity attacks. You're a druid in bird form. You have only a handful of HP. You wanna fly by the guard into the castle. He takes a swing at you as you dive bomb...and guess what? He NEVER lets you through. You always turn into a human since his OA never fails to deal 5 HP of damage. The ultimate laser-guided guard robot. All you need is a few down the hallway and there is 0 chance of anyone escaping, ever. Even the luckiest guy, when the guards roll natural 1s, is stopped dead in his tracks.

I think that's my #19 (attacks of opportunity always kill fleeing /rushing foes). Specific examples matter to me. They talk about having druids in funny shapes with low HP, this ability will certainly come into play with NPCs built as fighters and used as guards.

All kinds of cool, classic D&D gameplay scenarios become impossible / not even worth trying. It completely removes the dice from play from lots of corner cases. I make games for a living and think about this all the time. Specific examples of fun scenarios being supported or prevented by the engine, are what drive me in my career.

 

[Burninator]

This is not true and you're missing a key component to the issue here (2 below).

Abstractions, generally, are not meant to reduce complexity. Their primary concern is to be concerned with the broadness of ideas rather than the specificity of an event. That certainly is the primary, most apparent application with respect to its function in the D&D engine. This is why D&D, specifically the architecture and its varying components, is such a horrible process simulator.

1 - HPs are concerned with the broadness of ideas rather than the specificity of an event.

2 - The resolution mechanics of a combat round (action economy, attack rolls, saving throws, et al) are concerned with the broadness of ideas rather than the specificity of an event.

Layer them on top of one another and expecting it to spit out a functional simulation of process, and then going a step further and expecting derivative knock-on effects (such as "damage on a miss") to adhere to some sought coherency (that isn't to be found in its progenitor), is asking for trouble. Expecting universal or majority buy-in from others is asking for further trouble.

Its like measuring data without accounting for error, smoothing the time series data and then using that as an input to other analysis. What comes out of that analysis is a spurious signal with no confident, predictive power. Same thing happens with D&D combat and ablation mechanics. That is why fortune in the middle is the most functional route in dealing with D&D combat resolution.

I'm a coder, and I use abstraction every day of my professional life. I know what I'm talking about:

abstraction


The process of picking out (abstracting) common features of objects and procedures. A programmer would use abstraction, for example, to note that two functions perform almost the same task and can be combined into a single function. Abstraction is one of the most important techniques in software engineering and is closely related to two other important techniques -- encapsulation and information hiding. All three techniques are used to reduce complexity.



D&D might be a horrible simulator, but it is one. I write simulators of physical processes -- including, incidentally, collision detection for things like axes hitting people in the head, impacts, explosions, etc -- for a living. I doubt there is probably a single person who posts regularly on these forums who is more qualified than I am to discuss this particular topic. Well, perhaps not, some of my colleagues also play D&D

EDIT : To be more specific : if abstraction didn't reduce complexity, it would be useless in my field. Reducing complexity is what makes designing complex systems with simpler rules manageable. HP isn't abstract in that sense : it's a kind of semantic sludge that currently doesn't mean anything, since it isn't even consistent with itself, let alone the rest of the game. You can't say that HP models luck, but losing it doesn't alter your odds at any contest. You also can't say it models stamina, since you don't lose HP when you exert yourself. The only thing left is health, and while it doesn't make much sense for it to scale up by level, linearly, that makes more sense than rolling unrelated concepts, treating them as a single numeric value. It would be like IQ measuring intelligence and shoe size. Kind of silly, right? Right.

Abstraction is a word that's so often abused in D&D it's not even funny. An abstraction is ONLY ever useful insomuch as it allows you to reduce complexity : otherwise it's not merely useless, but actively a bad idea. Why spend more time modelling something simpler with something more complex? It makes no sense. Trust me on this one : abstraction must reduce complexity for it to be useful, and HP is not an abstraction : it's a meaningless soup of disjoint concepts, none of which have any relation, linear or otherwise, with each other. Luck, stamina, health : these things are unrelated and have no business being modelled in a single number.

Gygax was not a god you know, he was human. He made mistakes. This is one of them.

 

[pemerton]

You're a druid in bird form. You have only a handful of HP. You wanna fly by the guard into the castle. He takes a swing at you as you dive bomb...and guess what? He NEVER lets you through. You always turn into a human since his OA never fails to deal 5 HP of damage.

Why is the guard taking an OA against a bird? (Also - why is the guard statted up as a PC? But that is a seconday question for this particular scenario.)

Let's look at "Damage on a miss" from 4th edition.

You could damage creatures on a miss but for some reason you couldn't kill Minions with it. Why?

Because minions are one-hit kills, the mechanical balance of which is based on a 40% survival chance per attack faced.

Assuming that the D&Dnext designers are doing their jobs well, their mechanical design of kobolds, goblins etc factors in the posibility that, if attacked by a great weapon fighter, they have a 0% chance of survival.

If used against PCs, they will not appreciate the DM being able to kill them without any input or agency from either D20s or damage dice

Isn't this part of the retro feel of D&Dnext? It takes me back to the days of classic D&D dragon breath ("Save for half of 88 hp of damage? Only max 33 hp? Sorry, I guess you're dead then without any input from either d20s or damage dice!").

Falling damage is another common example of this. 1st level thief with 2 hp who falls 30' down a pit? Oops - no dice roll required!

Ahh, dude, you realize that the wizard still rolls dice for fireball damage, then it's halved on a successful save, right?

The agency of the dice is still there.

If the opponents have 3 hp (like goblins) then the dice roll (6d6 in the current playtest) is irrelvant.

I don't want any monster to be killed by auto-damage, it's lame

<snip>

Dice rolls should matter. Dice rolls should dictate when you die, or when you kill.

So am I to gather you are also campaigning for the removal of magic missile and AoE spells in their current forms?

I don't think it's a 1st level character power.

<snip>

If damage on a miss is included, I'd prefer it to be a specialized ability at higher level.

Great weapon fighter is a specialised ability. And what difference does level make? The OP concedes the ability is balanced.

I also don't think a flat "if you miss you still deal damage" works, as it allows for damage on natural 1s and the like.

And?

A fireball can do damage even on natural 1s on the damage dice, and agaist natural 20s on the saving throw.

These are choices about how to allocate prospects of success, that's all. In the case of the great weapon fighter they have gone for increased DPR in the form of steady output rather than spike damage. It gives the great weapon fighter a "dreadnought" vibe, quite different from (for instance) the rogue's sneak attack.

The definition of HP is irrelevant to the phrase "When I miss you with my sword my sword damages you"

<snip>

You can't kill or even hurt or damage a foe with your weapon, unless that weapon is making contact. If it isn't, then it's just tiring them, and you can't easily kill someone by tiring them, especially not if they would otherwise have no trouble running all day long.

So you would be OK with the ability if it was rewritten "When you miss a target with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, the target still takes damage"?

In any event, a "miss" in D&D has never been equivalent to a miss in natural language, as has been clear at least since Gygax's DMG. "Misses" include attacks that are blocked, parried, etc.

Furthermore, there is the broader point that this is a player fiat ability. It is an ability that ensures that every attack is, in some limited sense at least, a hit. The character has only partial success (STR damage) or full success (W + STR damage). The reason that it is described as "damage on a miss" rather than "your misses become partial hits" is because there currently is no defined mechanical state of "partial hit", and there is no need to define such a state for this ability to be set out.

What is the criteria you feel is required to keep a controversial mechanic in the core rules instead of an optional tactical module?

It's not up to me. It's up to WotC, and I assume that their criteria will be commercial ones.

They will therefore recognise that some of their current customer base (eg those paying for 4e DDI subscriptions) probalby want abilities like the one under discussion in their game. And that by removing them they risk losing those customers. They will likewise recognise that some of their desired customer base (eg a certain style of 3E/PF player) do not want abilities like the one under discussion in their game. Assuming they have reliable market research, they will be able to crunch the numbers. Assuming they have imaginative desingers, they may also try and come up with options that satisfy both groups. An example of that might be their current variant on Vancian casting.

For instance, let's assume that the hit rate is 60% (as in 4e). And lets assume a 5 round combat is the norm. (Both these assumptions are stipulated by me based on general familiarity with D&D, not on detailed mathematical analysis of the playtest.) The current great weapon fighter therefore, in a round, does 3W+3STR by hitting, and 2STR on misses.

Let's say STR = 4. And W = 7.

Then you would get close to the current expected damage by saying that, once between short rests, the great weapon fighter can declare a miss is a hit. (Not unlike Ace in the Hole.)

Obviously more maths would have to be done. And I haven't even tried to consider whether this will break down at higher levels.

Of course, at this point you no longer have anything that seems very distinctive to the great weapon fighter, but then that is equally true of the existing Archery ability, which is simply +1 to hit.

Whatever path they take, however, I think they are going to include something that makes core fighter's attractive to existing 4e players. It's not coincidence or error that exlains why reaping appeared in earlier drafts, and why the ability has now reappeared.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Why is the guard taking an OA against a bird? (Also - why is the guard statted up as a PC? But that is a seconday question for this particular scenario.)

Because minions are one-hit kills, the mechanical balance of which is based on a 40% survival chance per attack faced.

Assuming that the D&Dnext designers are doing their jobs well, their mechanical design of kobolds, goblins etc factors in the posibility that, if attacked by a great weapon fighter, they have a 0% chance of survival.

Well I hate to break it to you but if that is their intent then they aren't doing their job well.

 

[Burninator]

Why is the guard taking an OA against a bird? (Also - why is the guard statted up as a PC? But that is a seconday question for this particular scenario.)

In a game world with illusion spells, polymorph, and druids, it stands to reason that a king jealously guarding state secrets would tell his guards to not even let animals through the gates.

Also, NPCs and even monsters like ogres, gaining fighter levels is something Mearls said was something that can and should be used to beef them up. In Return of the King, how do you think they got that plate armor on those trolls? Or did you think they were born with plate proficiency, and knowing how to wield those huge warhammers.

This is the only question I will respond to, the rest is kind of blah, I don't want to talk about magic here. Magic obeys different rules than fighters who should obey the laws of physics, or a reasonable approximation thereof. They always did, AFAIK. If this mechanic is meant to be supernatural, call it such, be honest about it, and put it in a class that has supernatural or magical abilities. There are plenty more. Fighter is not it.

Actually, if a Paladin had an ability that let them never miss attacks, for a short period, that would be both cool and believable. Gods can allow all sorts of normally-impossible things to happen. This is D&D, after all.

I like playing Fighters because it's like Indiana Jones, just a regular guy with a whip and a machete trying to steal that idol. There's some whacky magic in the world, sure, and he can also do some cool feats with his whip, but that doesn't mean he can never miss with it. Never missing attack rolls (every attack is a natural 20) is something only 2e deities had. And maybe some 4e stuff, but I don't really care about that.

I don't want fake stuff in the core PHB fighter, and I don't really care if it bothers some people. There will be other classes and mechanics that let you do all sorts of cool stuff. But you have to call those things magical, or supernatural if you want them. You can't slide in "I can't miss, ever" through the backdoor of "abstraction". No, the word abstract doesn't allow you to un-tag the magic descriptor from obviously magical effects such as this.

It's Magic Missile-as-a-cantrip++ for fighters. Actually, better, since it can potentially do more damage too (i.e. it stacks with your current attack routine, and doesn't cost you any additional actions).

A No Action Magic Missile++ on a miss, that's what this is. Imagine we were playing 4e, and 1st level fighters could pick this as their at-will. I mean, the wizard would feel petty lame, doing his 1 HP of damage with his unerring missiles, wouldn't he. A fighter would give nothing up to have it. In fact, it's more like "At-will : No Action : On a miss, do Str mod damage, using 2H", so it would still be triggerable using any other attack combo the fighter did.

I want it gone for many reasons, not just believability. The ability to never not do damage will create a monster the size of Pun Pun. I look out for exploits like this in the games I write, and this is a glaringly obvious one that no QA person or manager would approve. The QA person would ask : hey, the animation here shows the sword swung wide, so how come the enemy HP went down anyway and you killed him? I'm flagging it as a bug. No QA person would let a mechanic like this ship. You're asking us to ignore that we just "saw" the fighter miss the enemy with his sword, and yet the enemy died anyway, despite the sword not connecting with them.

Note that the term hit, miss, and damage are not defined in the rules, so they use the english definition.

The english meaning of "I hit a foe with my sword and the sword damages them" is clear, for the same reason "I miss a foe with my sword and the sword damages them" is complete, unadulterated, hogwash. This mechanic forces everyone at the game table, who wants coherent use of english descriptions of game events, to accept contradictions on a round-by-round basis. More egregious than already exist with the fact that AC should be two stats instead of one (dodge + DR), and HP should be defined as pure health, and not scale linearly by character level but very slowly (people can get tougher).

 

[Mistwell]

I don't want any monster to be killed by auto-damage, it's lame and removed that "kill shot" which is what I love about playing fighters. It's very satisfying and dramatic. Auto-win is not.

You must hate magic missile, and despise fireball and other spells that do auto-damage regardless of roll.

 

[Jester David]

At the end of the day, people who are okay with damage on a miss aren't going to dislike a game that doesn't feature damage on a miss.
However, people who dislike damage on a miss are going to be unhappy with such a game.

So it's a good idea to use the mechanic sparingly.