Nope. Never called anyone a BSer. I said the logic is BS. Not the same thing.
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D&D 5E "Damage on a miss" poll.
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Nope. Never called anyone a BSer. I said the logic is BS. Not the same thing.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
Ah, here we go:
Ice Knife
Spell Compendium Page 119 (3.5e)
Sorc/Wizard 2
You must succeed on a normal ranged attack to hit (with a +2 bonus on the attack roll for every two caster levels). If it hits, an ice knife deals 2d8 points of cold damage and 2 points of Dexterity damage (a successful Fortitude save negates the Dexterity damage). Creatures that have immunity to cold also take no Dexterity damage automatically. A knife that misses creates a shower of ice crystals in a 10- foot-radius burst (see Missing with a Thrown Weapon, PH 158, to determine where the shard hits). The icy burst deals 1d8 points of cold damage to all creatures within the area (Reflex half).
So, it requires an attack roll, but still deals damage even on a miss.
There are others, but I think that is sufficient to refute this "It's just spells like fireball or the one magic missile exception" argument we've seen.
So I wonder - if they described the Great Weapon Fighter ability differently, as magical, would people be more willing to accept it?
Storm Aura: You are endowed with the ancient magical power of the storm giants. When you miss with an attack while wielding a weapon in both hands, the force of your strike radiates out from the spot where you tried to attack, dealing your strength bonus in damage the creature you tried to strike.
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Because it's a feckin explosion.
I don't want you to be under any illusion that you are comparing like for like.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
I didn't say I was comparing like for like. You can follow that thread of the conversation, or not. But, if you're not willing to go back and read why I am bringing that up, then don't make assumptions about it.
Your own bolded emphasis kinda defeats your own point, doesn't it?
You said earlier that you voted against damage on a miss because your players didn't like it. I think your defense of damage on a miss is actually overstating. Isn't more useful to argue for or against something in proportion to its importance to you?
wingsandsword
Legend
Here's why I don't like it.
It breaks a central concept of both the d20 system, and other D&D editions predating it. You roll to hit. If you rolled high enough, you do damage. If not, you miss. It stops being a "roll to hit" and becomes a roll to see how much damage you do before you roll to see how much damage you do.
The way I see it, and I've always narrated it, a hit does damage, but it's not always a direct hit. In fact, until a character is pretty low on HP, those "hits" are glancing blows, grazing hits, near misses that cut clothing but missed flesh, bruising, little bit of singed hair or a relatively harmless shock, nothing serious. If it missed, it was a clean miss though.
Area of effect? I can understand that being save-for-half, because you're still in the middle of the fireball/explosion/dragon breath/whatever. Somebody swinging a sword or shooting an arrow where it's clearly a hit-or-miss? Unless your sword or arrow has some kind of quantum uncertainty where it's simultaneously both in your foe and not at the same time, to-hit attacks shouldn't work like that.
It breaks a central concept of both the d20 system, and other D&D editions predating it. You roll to hit. If you rolled high enough, you do damage. If not, you miss. It stops being a "roll to hit" and becomes a roll to see how much damage you do before you roll to see how much damage you do.
The way I see it, and I've always narrated it, a hit does damage, but it's not always a direct hit. In fact, until a character is pretty low on HP, those "hits" are glancing blows, grazing hits, near misses that cut clothing but missed flesh, bruising, little bit of singed hair or a relatively harmless shock, nothing serious. If it missed, it was a clean miss though.
Area of effect? I can understand that being save-for-half, because you're still in the middle of the fireball/explosion/dragon breath/whatever. Somebody swinging a sword or shooting an arrow where it's clearly a hit-or-miss? Unless your sword or arrow has some kind of quantum uncertainty where it's simultaneously both in your foe and not at the same time, to-hit attacks shouldn't work like that.
Burninator
First Post
Of course you're correct that linear-by-level HP scaling is unrealistic, but it is certainly possible to toughen up one's body considerably through training. Don't tell me the huge bouncer isn't ten times tougher than poor old lil grandma with the weak bones. I mean, come on. There can be easily an order of magnitude of toughness differential in real life. I've seen thai kickboxers break baseball bats with their shins. Repeatedly. On command. Try that yourself, you'll be in the hospital. Yes, humans can become tougher, MUCH tougher through intense conditioning and training.
That's what we use for levels. And if we still wanted swords to be able to single-shot kill a tenth-level fighter (which we don't, because that would suck. I agree, a gamist concern at the expense of realism), what we accept is that higher HP means toughness, greater ability to withstand injury.
Look, I didn't invent this game, but HP is a convention that means health in EVERY videogame. The entire 80+ billion dollar a year industry has co-opted HP, and it's now bigger than D&D. D&D needs to get with the program. Just because HP scaling is out of whack with weapon damage range, doesn't mean every other thing in the game needs to be also.
They could easily make it harder and harder to hit higher level foes by increasing their AC by level, but they didn't due to a gameplay consideration that missing and hitting rates have a finite range of what makes the game fun.
Which this GWF, by the way, also circumvents. When you can't miss, your accuracy is 100%. A far cry from the 55-70 ideal. If you look at it from the POV of the rate of failure, the most accurate circumstance for an attack is 95%, meaning 5% error is the minimum. If another fighter has 0% chance of failure, the relative difference between that and 5% is actually infinite. Over time, that ratio will make itself felt, both in the narration of the game, and the number of kills. Because it's always the kill round that is impacted by this the most.
A huge dragon with 5 HP should be harder to kill than a naked human with 5 HP. That expectation is violated by this mechanic. It robs the game of far more plausibility than the fact that HP scaling isn't linear, which, when you look at the sizes of dragons vs humans, is also huge. So, really, the bug with HP being meat is only for PCs, it's not a bug for monsters so much. And since monsters are usually the ones dying, it matters less. The realism bug is less apparent.
Perceptions of realism matter just as much as the actual accuracy of the simulation. Trust me on this one, most of the cool looking physics you see in games is not real physics, (but it's carefully tailored to look like it, much like special effects in movies other than ones directed by Michael Bay).
I see 4e-style abilities in the same way that I see Michael Bay over-the-top in-your-face unrealism : they take you out of the movie, and make you roll your eyes. Even in a movie with Transformers or Elves or whatever, it's those special moments that stick out that you will remember most. For some, that's a good thing, but for others, who don't want to see Legolas-style exploits every single round (or every day), it becomes an active hindrance.
Libramarian
Adventurer
OK so the problem is that you think of a miss as a complete whiff. This doesn't make any sense because why would armor make you harder to touch? The fact that armor raises your AC implies that some misses are blows blocked by the armor and not complete whiffs.
It's not true that the word miss necessarily implies a lack of contact. Missing a shot in basketball does not necessarily mean you shot an air ball. It just means it didn't go through the hoop. It might have bounced off the rim. This is the sense of the word miss used in D&D attack rolls.
When a fighter in D&D does damage on a miss, it means that although the attack was not well-placed enough to bypass their opponent's defenses and do full weapon damage, the blow was so powerful that their opponent still sustained some damage, based on the fighter's strength alone.
Case closed.
Burninator
First Post
Show me the page # where the rules have talked about "complete whiffs" I'd love to pass that on to Jon Stewart so he can add it to his next segment about the Mayor of Toronto smoking crack, because that's about how relevant it is.
A miss is no different from a near miss from a complete, drop-your-crack-pipe-and-broke it fumble, where the rules are concerned. There is only one kind of miss : that which happens EVERY time you attack and roll lower than the AC of your opponent.
Not Touch AC, which doesn't exist in Next. AC, period. That's what the rules state. Effectively, the current rules say, using english terms (with no caveats), that a hit occurs when you roll at or above AC. A miss is when you roll below. A natural 1 is always a miss, the same kind of miss, which is still...just a miss.
Got that?
I can make up stuff the rules don't state too, if you'd like. I can do that all day long.
A miss is no different from a near miss from a complete, drop-your-crack-pipe-and-broke it fumble, where the rules are concerned. There is only one kind of miss : that which happens EVERY time you attack and roll lower than the AC of your opponent.
Not Touch AC, which doesn't exist in Next. AC, period. That's what the rules state. Effectively, the current rules say, using english terms (with no caveats), that a hit occurs when you roll at or above AC. A miss is when you roll below. A natural 1 is always a miss, the same kind of miss, which is still...just a miss.
Got that?
I can make up stuff the rules don't state too, if you'd like. I can do that all day long.
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