TwoSix said:
But isn't the point that we want mechanics that reflect and express our chosen narrative? I can play pretty much anything in a diceless game, too, but I don't find that very satisfying.
No, I don't think it's about mechanics that express our chosen narrative. As you point out, we can do that without mechanics at all. Quite to the contrary, rules are boundaries. Their narrative function is to limit the scope of actions, not to enable them, hopefully to prevent nonsensical or abusive actions and to force the players to work within a certain box.
Otherwise, why not just say "my chosen narrative is 'omnipotence'"?
Also, I find it odd that you talk about a diceless game being unsatisfying when one of the problems with damage on a miss is that it simply allows a character to kill an opponent automatically and without rolling a die if their hp total is low enough.
"Relentlessness" isn't primarily an attitude. It's a capability, and it displays itself through its effects.
That's just false.
:continuing without becoming weaker, less severe, etc.
:remaining strict or determined
:showing or promising no abatement of severity, intensity, strength, or pace
This is
Merriam-Webster's set of definitions, but you won't find anything different elsewhere. Those are all attitudes rather than capacities. To relent is to give up. To be relentless is to avoid giving up. Relentless people can and do fail all the time. If anything, a relentless warrior is not one who never has a six-second spell of ineffectiveness, it's one who keeps fighting despite his failures. The
Relentless trait from Unearthed Arcana models this concept much better ("You don't know the meaning of the word "tired." You go all out until you simply can't continue."); so could other combat-oriented mechanics.
A more appropriate term for a character with damage on a miss would be "unstoppable" or "infallible". However, those are not appropriate things for a character in a game to actually be; characters should be to some extent stoppable and fallible.
bogmad said:
So you don't think that this mechanic has any room for improvement? It's perfect as it is, and any changes would diffuse this "relentlessness" that encapsulates your chosen narrative so perfectly?
It does seem to me that regardless of one's perspective, there's a lot of room for improvement here.
Hussar said:
Additionally, trying to marginalize it by proclaiming that it's only for a small subset of playstyles doesn't reflect the fact that the poll is pretty much split down the middle. Should we ignore half the players so that the game favors what you want? Isn't that what 4e did, and you complain rather bitterly about - ignoring the player base?
No. Ideally, we'd convince them of why they're wrong. That said the people who voted that keeping it was okay wouldn't necessarily be disappointed if it was gone. They might be quite happy, especially if it was replaced with something better (as others have noted; it's pretty mediocre from a pure charop perspective). That attitude really hasn't been assessed.
Are there other ways we could do this? Sure, no problem. Extra attacks, bonuses to hit or damage, rider effects on a hit, that sort of thing. Each has its own pros and cons. This is one way of doing it.
This just isn't a very good way. I could also design a character ability to model relentlessness by granting the character fast healing or making him immune to exhaustion. Those mechanics would also be ways of doing this, and they would also be broken and stupid. I'm just saying that those other methods (and several that have been brought up in this thread) are better.
But, let's not get too carried about building this mountain shall we? We're talking about one fighter type. Not all characters. So, right off the bat, this may or may not be seen in any given campaign. And, in all likelihood, it's one option out of several that can be taken, not an automatic.
And, given that you, Ahnehnois, make such a big point about owning the game as a DM, I would think that removing a pretty minor rule like this, which has virtually no knock on effects, would be a fairly simple choice.
True. I do that all the time. But it raises a few issues. One, it may increase in frequency if we don't come out against it, and two, the existence of the damage on a miss mechanic is symptomatic of the designers apparently not understanding the basic d20 paradigm of hits and misses. I think it's kind of important that the people who write a game that will even under the worst of circumstances be played by a significant number of people who could be part of my potential player base display a basic level of competence.
