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

[Burninator]

How would we go about creating such a truly random push-poll? (not self-selecting and avoiding biases)

I just can't believe there's nothing we can do about this, I want to campaign for a better mechanic to take its place. I was really looking forward to playing a fighter with a big axe, but I can't stomach this for his fighting style, and I was about to start up a campaign but I don't know if I can swallow the prospect of giving a company that believes they are acting as "custodians of D&D" and allowing such controversial new stuff into it which 1/2 of us find unbelievable. I don't want to play a D&D where 1st level fighters can't not do damage to any target they pick, at will. It's just a bridge too far for me.

I'm a strong simulationist and I built my career around it, I might create an OGL 5e- variant that's realism-based but still compatible with the core rules, might as well throw in armor as DR too, and perhaps a sensible HP definition and scaling, with a healing module that's akin to regeneration (slow) while I'm at it. It will be very hard to re-balance vs the MM, and probably need community support to tune. Maybe Kickstarter could help.

At least this product wouldn't be trying to be everything to everyone and think that a good compromise between peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ham & mustard is peanut butter and mustard sandwiches. (that's not my metaphor, it's from someone over at Wotc forums, a place with awful moderation)

 

[pemerton]

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.

Now that just oozes fantasy flavour: better get the guards hunting down all those rats, cats, dogs, horses, goats, etc, etc which haven't been vetted or anti-magiced!

In other words, if this is the corner-case that is meant to get me to abandon my like for the ability, it's not going to work. (Not to mention that the druid can simply fly into the castle grounds out of reach of the guard. We're talking theatre-of-the-mind in D&Dnext, aren't we?)

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.

It's a part of 4e (Reaping Strike; Hammer Rhythm) and hasn't broken the game to date.

It's a part of 13th Age, too, and while you're no doubt a terrific game designer, Jonathan Tween and Rob Heinsoo know a thing or two also about RPG design.

Magic obeys different rules than fighters who should obey the laws of physics, or a reasonable approximation thereof. They always did, AFAIK.

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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.

<snip>

I don't want fake stuff in the core PHB fighter

This seems to me to be the real issue. It's a process-sim thing.

Non-process sim mechanics have to be magic, so the lack of process-sim can be sublimated into some generic handwave about "magic being able to do the impossible", or else they're "fake stuff" - not like the real stuff of resolving actions by rolling d20s and marking of damage from hit point totals!

D&D has never been a proces-sim game - not even 3E - and for some (perhaps many) D&D players that's not a flaw.

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.

I see this asserted a lot, but what's the evidence? I'm going to dislike such a game, for instance: I have zero interest in process-sim D&D. If I want pure process sim I've got Rolemaster or Runequest. If I want process-sim mechanics turned to non-process sim ends I've got Burning Wheel. I like D&D because it's not a process-sim game, and therefore can offer play experiences (such as, say, playing a dreadnought great weapon fighter) that those other games can't.

 

[Jester David]

I see this asserted a lot, but what's the evidence? I'm going to dislike such a game, for instance: I have zero interest in process-sim D&D. If I want pure process sim I've got Rolemaster or Runequest. If I want process-sim mechanics turned to non-process sim ends I've got Burning Wheel. I like D&D because it's not a process-sim game, and therefore can offer play experiences (such as, say, playing a dreadnought great weapon fighter) that those other games can't.

Evidence? It's just logic really.
If you and a friend want pizza and you love mushrooms and they hate mushrooms then you find a topping you both like and order that. The absence of mushrooms is not going to make the pizza unpalatable while it's inclusion would for your friend. Yes, the pizza might no longer be your favourite pizza ever but it's a compromise that means the difference between sharing a pie with a friend rather than eating alone.

Just choosing alternate mechanics that don't offend won't make a game a firm reality simulator.
The fighter's Second Wind is a good example. Martial healing is another mechanic that really break's people's suspension of disbelief. But, as seen in the latest playtest, if actual healing is swapped for temporary hitpoints it's less offensive to scream healing haters, while still providing extra durability to the fighter allowing them to take more hits. The end result is functionally the same, but the mechanic is less offensive.

 

[pemerton]

I agree, this jives with D&DNext's unifying goals, but this mechanic isn't The One. My presumption is that 4.5E will be best achieved by a tactical module layered upon a "AD&D feel with modern rules" core. This prevents conflicting playstyles from stepping on each others toes.

<snip>

I think this mechanic needs to martyr itself for the higher goal of unity (and be resurrected in a tactical module) so that everyone can move on with their lives IMO.

This doesn't answer my question - why can't your preferred mechanic martyr itself, to be resurrected in an optional module?

 

[Kavon]

Some saying that "the people who like it probably won't mind it's exclusion, while the people that don't like it will abhor its inclusion, so let's just get rid of it", is basically another example of "I don't like this thing you like so (if it were up to me) you can't have it". It just adds an "I'm sure you won't mind" after it.
Just as if its inclusion, while completely ignorable, somehow taints the experience of those opposed to it, because in the back of their mind it gnaws at them, because they KNOW it's there, somewhere, taunting them - even if they don't ever have to use it. It's purely psychological.

There are many things I dislike about D&D, but I still like the game.. Because I can get over it, and ignore the things I dislike (even if other players use them), or just alter them if I run the game.
The only thing that really gets on my nerve sometimes is the attitude of some people, where they aren't accepting of any other playstyle but their own (and keep going on and on about something they don't like). It's not productive.. Figuring out a way for everyone to get their slice is much more helpful, in my opinion (and in this case, already solved, because it's one build of Fighter that can be completely ignored).

 

[Jan van Leyden]

As long as HP are an abstract combination of health, stamina, and whatever, growing when increasing a level, damage on a miss makes sense.

D&D uses HP as some sort of Danger Indicator, not as a measureable real-world quantity. Avoiding a (fictionally) deadly blow by exerting yourself surely reduces your stamina, increasing the danger you're in by exertion.

 

[delericho]

I voted "scrap it", though my preference isn't really anything to do with 'believability' - after all, this is a game with fireballs and dragons, and such things. But it's not a mechanic I like, at all, so I'd rather it was gone.

This is especially true if it is a mechanic that only appears in a single place in the rules. In that case, removing it is easy, and allows WotC to dodge a controversy that's been dogging the game for years now. If it were something that appeared all over the place, and so was difficult to remove, then that would be different, but for the sake of one power... it's just not worth the hassle.

 

[urLordy]

This doesn't answer my question - why can't your preferred mechanic martyr itself, to be resurrected in an optional module?

I fear that discussion between 2 very obstinate positions will pollute the tone of this thread at worst or go nowhere at best. My point was how modularity could help with this conundrum. You didn't enjoy my take on it, fine. You seem to now want to take it in the direction of getting me to argue about where to put the onus, which I shall not oblige.

 

[pemerton]

I fear that discussion between 2 very obstinate positions will pollute the tone of this thread at worst or go nowhere at best. My point was how modularity could help with this conundrum. You didn't enjoy my take on it, fine. You seem to now want to take it in the direction of getting me to argue about where to put the onus, which I shall not oblige.

I may not have been clear.

My point is that I don't think it counts as a consensus solution to tell one group that they're simply not getting what they want. And I was trying to drive that home by asking you why you don't just martyr your position - hoping that you would see that that suggestion entirely mirrors the suggestion that others martyr their position. (It was much the same point as [MENTION=9822]Kavon[/MENTION] makes.)

The key to a consensus solution, presumably, is to find some other way forward. For instance, a second ability that great weapon fighters can take (at the moment they can take defence, but another more aggressive option could probably be thought up) - then this one remains as an option for those who want it but can be ignored by those who don't.

The fighter's Second Wind is a good example. Martial healing is another mechanic that really break's people's suspension of disbelief. But, as seen in the latest playtest, if actual healing is swapped for temporary hitpoints it's less offensive to scream healing haters, while still providing extra durability to the fighter allowing them to take more hits. The end result is functionally the same, but the mechanic is less offensive.

It's not functionally the same for all of us - I prefer healing, for instance, because of it's contribution to pacing. From WotC's point of view, every change that reduces the appeal of the game to me reduces the likelihood of me buying and playing it.

Evidence? It's just logic really.
If you and a friend want pizza and you love mushrooms and they hate mushrooms then you find a topping you both like and order that. The absence of mushrooms is not going to make the pizza unpalatable while it's inclusion would for your friend. Yes, the pizza might no longer be your favourite pizza ever but it's a compromise that means the difference between sharing a pie with a friend rather than eating alone.

I can't say I'm an expert on these food analogies, but this one seems misplaced.

I don't have to share my game with you. I only have to share my game with my group, who one the whole prefer "damage on a miss" and comparable mechanics. So if WotC doesn't make a game that caters to our tastes, we'll play a different game.

Now WotC may be prepared to gamble on not getting our business - that's it's prerogative, obviously - but it would be a mistake for WotC to think that we'll buy in simply because someone else wouldn't buy the game that we might prefer.

 

[airwalkrr]

I voted "scrap it," but not because I have trouble believing it. The reason is because it adds yet another degree of granularity to a game with lots of granularity already. It's just unnecessary in my opinion. It's one more thing for players and DMs to track.

Now if the purpose here is to give fighters more depth in their combat abilities, well, that's something to think about. Fighters and their ilk have always been relatively simple characters compared to spellcasters and skill-based characters like rogues and partial casters like bards. But truth be told, with some of the most popular iterations of D&D such as 3.5 and Pathfinder, fighting classes have a great degree of options available to them such as such as bull rush, trip, overrun, and so on. These combat maneuvers are just so often overlooked when they are actually excellent tactical ways for fighting classes to have an edge, especially when the DM includes terrain on his maps. Boring flat dungeons aren't always that fun for such characters, although lazy or busy DMs will often use them nonetheless. But even in the situation of the "flat plane battlefield" there are still many uses for tactical abilities. Their inclusion and delineation in 3e is one of the things that made playing fighters more interesting in D&D. They just happen to get overlooked so often that people don't think about them much. I have seen the occasional fighter or two which makes full use of these options and become true combat monsters because of it. They can control the battlefield almost as well as a wizard under the right situations.

In summary, no, I don't think it is necessary, so scrap it, believable or not.