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

[mlund]

The use of "Hit Points" in D&D was ported over from table-top war games anyway. "Hit Points" simply measured how many wounding hits a model or unit could sustain in a battle. Standard Infantry had 1 Hit Point. It didn't scale into the 10s or 100s. One "hit" in a melee engagement between two units of perhaps dozens of men killed 1 regular solider - assuming you weren't using one of the more detailed systems that used something more akin to Warhammer's system of Roll to Hit, Roll to Wound, Roll Armor / Cover / Magic Save. The further you get towards the massive side, the less likely you are to assign ANY Hit Points to an individual model, rather you simply pool them into the unit. The further you get towards the skirmish or warband-level or personal combat scales the more granular your mechanics for damaging and killing individuals becomes.

Simply making contact with a weapon is not enough to do the kind of damage that was handled in the mass battle scale. You need to overcome the protection of armor to do full damage. The Dex 14 Wizard with no armor is no less likely to be physically struck than the Dex 14 Cleric in mail armor. The difference is when the Wizard gets struck by a sword across the chest with that with an attack roll of 12 he's got nothing between him and the steel edge but some cloth. The Cleric has butted chain links over boiled leather and a padded surcoat. The attack roll of 12 strikes the cleric's armor, and a sword isn't cutting through that. He probably takes some blunt force trauma. Some mechanics simulate that potential secondary injury. Some mechanics don't.

Hit points in D&D have always and will always be an abstraction, pure and simple. They were an abstraction / summary mechanic in the games Hit Points were cribbed from originally. They were an abstraction in OD&D. They've been an abstraction for 30 years. People cope with it.

- Marty Lund

 

[ForeverSlayer]

The use of "Hit Points" in D&D was ported over from table-top war games anyway. "Hit Points" simply measured how many wounding hits a model or unit could sustain in a battle. Standard Infantry had 1 Hit Point. It didn't scale into the 10s or 100s. One "hit" in a melee engagement between two units of perhaps dozens of men killed 1 regular solider - assuming you weren't using one of the more detailed systems that used something more akin to Warhammer's system of Roll to Hit, Roll to Wound, Roll Armor / Cover / Magic Save. The further you get towards the massive side, the less likely you are to assign ANY Hit Points to an individual model, rather you simply pool them into the unit. The further you get towards the skirmish or warband-level or personal combat scales the more granular your mechanics for damaging and killing individuals becomes.

Simply making contact with a weapon is not enough to do the kind of damage that was handled in the mass battle scale. You need to overcome the protection of armor to do full damage. The Dex 14 Wizard with no armor is no less likely to be physically struck than the Dex 14 Cleric in mail armor. The difference is when the Wizard gets struck by a sword across the chest with that with an attack roll of 12 he's got nothing between him and the steel edge but some cloth. The Cleric has butted chain links over boiled leather and a padded surcoat. The attack roll of 12 strikes the cleric's armor, and a sword isn't cutting through that. He probably takes some blunt force trauma. Some mechanics simulate that potential secondary injury. Some mechanics don't.

Hit points in D&D have always and will always be an abstraction, pure and simple. They were an abstraction / summary mechanic in the games Hit Points were cribbed from originally. They were an abstraction in OD&D. They've been an abstraction for 30 years. People cope with it.

- Marty Lund

It's not all about how HP is described. It's alao about consistency which this mechanic breaks down in the face of.

Edit: People keep harping back to the way AD&D did it, but if you look, it never described the percentage of meat vs anything else but I can tell you back then, a miss was a miss and a hit was a hit. You, and a few other posters, are trying to put 4th edition spin on old D&D Hp which doesn't work no matter how much BS gets tossed out there.

 

[mlund]

It's not all about how HP is described. It's alao about consistency which this mechanic breaks down in the face of.

That's something you need to take up with Armor Class. Armor doesn't make you harder to hit. It usually makes you easier to hit. Armor makes you harder to injure when contact is made - creating a distinction between inconsequential contact, contact of minor consequence, and contact of serious consequence. Since the cannon fodder of war games had a binary existence (combat-ready / casualty) "hits" and "hit points" only related to strikes of serious consequence originally.

If we were dealing in system that needed to go the extra mile for detailed simulation in these situations we'd have to invoke either "Touch AC" or "Reflex Defense" to determine a "hit," and then Armor Class and Damage Reduction to assess the state of a "wound." If you don't make Touch AC / Reflex you don't make contact - the attack is blocked, parried, dodged, or fumbled. If you beat Touch AC / Reflex but fail to overcome Armor Class and Damage Reduction then you don't score a significant wound (or any damage at all in the case of Damage Reduction) unless the opponent is already extremely vulnerable (low AC).

Also, I'm just going to point out that you can gain full-use from non-contact poisons applied to bludgeoning weapons in many editions of D&D. You have short-bows doing damage to guys in Full Plate Armor. That stuff makes efforts to demand simulation compliance from Hit Points and Damage on a "Miss" look akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

- Marty Lund

 

[Ahnehnois]

I am going to have to dig up some 3e spells that required an attack roll and also did half damage on a miss. They existed, I just need to remember some examples.

Even if they did, what would it matter? This thread isn't about spells.

 

[herrozerro]

Even if they did, what would it matter? This thread isn't about spells.

Actually this is on topic, this thread isnt about Great Weapon fighting, It's about Damage on a miss mechanic. Which some spells do have.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Actually this is on topic, this thread isnt about Great Weapon fighting, It's about Damage on a miss mechanic. Which some spells do have.

It's also about believability, which doesn't really apply to magic in the same way.

And I'm not even sure what spells you're referring to.

 

[Weather Report]

The only problem I have with damage on a miss is: "Damn, I missed!" "No, you still did 3 points of damage, and hey, its dead!"

 

[Bluenose]

emphasis mine.

It always amused me that this meant that at some point I was hit in my luckiness/divine favour/parrying ability.

The use of "Hit Points" in D&D was ported over from table-top war games anyway. "Hit Points" simply measured how many wounding hits a model or unit could sustain in a battle. Standard Infantry had 1 Hit Point. It didn't scale into the 10s or 100s. One "hit" in a melee engagement between two units of perhaps dozens of men killed 1 regular solider - assuming you weren't using one of the more detailed systems that used something more akin to Warhammer's system of Roll to Hit, Roll to Wound, Roll Armor / Cover / Magic Save. The further you get towards the massive side, the less likely you are to assign ANY Hit Points to an individual model, rather you simply pool them into the unit. The further you get towards the skirmish or warband-level or personal combat scales the more granular your mechanics for damaging and killing individuals becomes.

- Marty Lund

I believe originally it came from a naval war game, which wouldn't surprise me. Ships taking lots of damage and still carrying on effectively is a lot more plausible than people doing the same.

 

[Halivar]

I believe originally it came from a naval war game, which wouldn't surprise me. Ships taking lots of damage and still carrying on effectively is a lot more plausible than people doing the same.

*grasps at sword stuck through chest, weezing heavily*

You sunk.... my battleship.... *thud*

 

[Manbearcat]

I believe originally it came from a naval war game, which wouldn't surprise me. Ships taking lots of damage and still carrying on effectively is a lot more plausible than people doing the same.

It did. I was going to do an elaborate post on this earlier but I realized "why bother." Its origins were an American Civil War Naval Wargame. The HP paradigm got bolted onto Arneson's play to prevent the one failed contest = dead PC paradigm...certainly not to simulate any process of tissue ablation etc. It was a hedge against anti-climax, binary mechanical resolution protection, that mapped the sinking of a warship to the <sinking> of an adventurer.