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

[Ahnehnois]

That makes no sense.

True.

That's kind of what we object to. They're doing something that we don't think makes sense. To go back to your last post:

Is he secretly holding a grudge against you, FS and a few others?

I say, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

 

[Herschel]

But again, why say it's testing well if it's not? Just drop it and move on like any number of other elements we've seen so far.

 

[dmgorgon]

But again, why say it's testing well if it's not? Just drop it and move on like any number of other elements we've seen so far.

You have to look at when he said that. The last playtest package had just been released and it's doubtful that many even noticed GWF at that time. After all, the chances of a particular playtest group having a GWF isn't high, even the pre-gens don't have a GWF.

 

[Lwaxy]

At this point all I can do is ignore people like Herschel

In this case, please use the ignore button, don't go baiting.

Generally, everyone can, of course, post here, no matter their intentions regarding 5e - but if this goes any more downhill the topic will be closed before it erupts into total chaos.

 

[Bobbum Man]

If I walk into a restaurant and ask for a cheeseburger, and they say it comes with mushrooms, I say can I have a tomato instead, they say no, but you can order the steak if you don't like mushrooms on your burger, would you eat there?

People who want to have characters who are good at wielding big swords offensively is not supported by saying "take Defensive or Protector instead"

That's not being generous or inclusive, that's a slap in the face. I don't go to restaurants that won't let me put my own toppings. A selection of 1 option offers no choice at all.

If I want to play the guy who is great with a two-handed sword, I have to take defensive fighting style? Seriously?

Damage-on-a-miss has NOTHING evocative about using two-hands on your sword. You could easily make apply it to anything else, just like you could give a +1 to attack rolls to any combat style. I.e. there is no good reason to not easily offer something like a +1 or 2x str mod on a hit, or a cleave effect, or something. I don't want to become a better fighter and use his style less and less often as I get better.

The mechanic is back-*wards in every single way.

This topic has obviously become a crusade for you, to the point where the fight is becoming more important to the cause.

Look...damage on a miss is in. It's a done deal. It's going to happen whether you like it or not.

I think what you need to do is calm down, accept that D&D Next isn't your type of game, and go back to posting on Dragonsfoot about 1E.

 

[Mistwell]

Only if those "listening" aren't very good at data analysis. What you don't realize is you're in what's called the margin. Your views aren't "mainstream" or moderate. Message boards are a bit larger group but still within the margin also, and the unscientific polls on them mean nothing. That's why Mearls specifically says they're going by the surveys and makes nod to message boards. You're in a subset of a subset and showing likely to be too fickle to consider. Eliminating the extreme outliers is how to get the best data.

The margins are very important in things like elections, especially primary (qualifying) elections where races are otherwise close because a small percentage can swing the results. In marketing a product, it's less important. Sure, you can still spam review sites and such, but companies are also combating that more and more now also.

Look, I agree with your general view that this is an OK thing to have in the game.

That said, I am OK catering to the minority on things that I don't much care about one way or the other, and I don't really care about this one. And I suspect a lot of people who are OK with the ability are pretty soft on that opinion, while a lot of those who are against it are very hard on that opinion.

didn't they also have data when they wrote 4e?

Nope. It had no open playtest or open surveys.

Because some designers are so proud of what they come up with that they will keep it in the game just to satisfy their ego.

To me, this sounds like a conspiracy theory. It's based on nothing but pure speculation, and it can change in case any contrary facts come in.

Naw, occam's razor. Baring evidence to the contrary, the simplest answer is he's telling the truth, because it's in his own best interest to put out a game that people like.

 

[pemerton]

take the argument about the "hit" and "miss" being meaningless or mostly meaningless. Firstly, it's not objectively meaningless when some people do see meaning. And I don't think the argument is as clean-cut as they want to make out to be. Anyway, to those that hit and miss are meaningless terms, damage-on-a-miss fits just fine into their core game -- it costs them nothing to embrace it. To those hit and miss are meaningful terms, damage-on-a-miss does not fit just fine into the core rules

I don't regard "hit" and "miss" as meaningless. They are mechanical states. They trigger mechanical consequences. For the reasons that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and others have given, there is no simple or uniform correspondence of those mechanical states and consequences to in-fiction events.

Simple example to show that this is so:

A goblin attacks a high-level fighter with a dagger. The GM, playing the goblin, rolls a 20. This is a so-called "critical". The fighter takes 8 hp of damage, and therefore has (let's say) only 90 hp left. What has happened in the fiction? At best, a scratch to that fighter. It is in no sense of the ordinary English words a "critical hit".

Now the fighter attacks the goblin with his magic dagger. The player of the fighter rolls a 3 on the d20. +4 (say) for level, +5 for STR, +1 for magic and that's a 13, hitting the goblin. The player then rolls a 1 on the damage die. The goblin falls dead at the fighter's feat. What happened in the fiction? That roll of 3 (which in this thread, or others like it, has been described as a poor attack roll) plus the roll of minimum damage was, in the ordinary English sense of the phrase, a "critical hit".​

This is why I take the view that there is, and can be, no straightforward correlation of mechanical results to fictional results. Damage on miss does not change this state of affairs; it just further changes the mechanical parameters within which the fiction is established.

The wizard may think his powerful spell can protect him, but the player playing him will be well aware that the spell is always useless in that situation, which creates a disconnect than can be a bit jarring. Especially if you're a player who favors an immersive versus gamist style.

This is part and parcel of a hit point system, isn't it? The player knows that a 20' drop can't break his/her PC's neck, and knows that the manticore's spike can't possibly go through his/her eye to fatally pierce the brain, although the PC couldn't possibly know that.

The player also knows that no matter how many fights the PC is in, s/he will never be maimed or crippled or blinded or even lose a finger joint. But the PC can't possibly know that.

I don't think there used to be significant disputes about whether a hit or a miss did damage

The hit and miss paradigm isn't really rife with incoherency. If you hit - you roll damage. If you miss, you don't.

These are just reiterations of mechanical conventions. You can change the mechanics with the stroke of a pen - as 4e did. (And as 3E did for saving throws, changing them from FitM - which favoured the mid-to-high level fighter - to simulation - which hosed the mid-to-high level fighter.)

That is, "hit" and "miss" are just mechanical states with mechanical consequences. There is no "platonic ideal" of a D&D hit or a D&D miss. If D&Dnext is rolled out as per the current playtest there won't be any disputes either. Everyone who plays the game will know that as a general rule a miss does not deal damage, but under certain circumstances it might.

I can believe in a vial of fire exploding like a grenade. I cannot believe in a fighter that never, ever, ever, even with his eyes gouged out, misses.

that is acceptable in the game's fiction because it is modeling an explosion which is impossible to escape.

I don't really get this. Why is it so easy to believe in the (utterly unrealistic) inescapable explosion which one can never escape; but so hard to believe in the (far more realistic, I think) fighter who always wears down opponents in 6 seconds of clashing with them?

The alchemists fire also sets things on fire - can this fighter ability? No, of course not. However the property of grenade/splash weapons is that they cause a burst of damage to all targets in the squares they hit. It is the same as a fireball, but it is alchemical instead of a purely magical effect. You can't simply call it 'inconsequential' when it is the defining feature of the weapon.

When you say it is "the defining feature of the weapon", you can't mean that in any but a mechanical sense. In which case, I reply that it is part of the defining feature of a GWF's weapon that it does damage even on a miss.

Because you certainly can't mean that, as a matter of physics (either real or imagined) it is a defining feature of grenade-like missile that they hurt everyone in a 7.5' R about the point where they shatter. As [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] has pointed out, that is obviously not true.

Other than reaping strike, the large majority of damage on a miss powers in 4e are restricted to limited use or daily abilities

Hammer Rhythm gives miss damage on all attacks.

Every pro-damage on a miss user has yet to give us a logic consistent reason as to why it's a good mechanic for a game that is based on imagination. They have also not given us a reason for why it makes sense that you can kill creatures with a miss which in turn equals a success.

Let's look at this:

1: Hit - target is hit and takes loads of damage. The mighty swing from the orc went through some of the hero's armour and left a large gash across the ribs.

2: Hit - target is hit but loses very little HP and has loads left. The heroes armour deflected most of the hit but the force from the impact caused a little pain.

Those two descriptions leaves damage on a miss with nothing. Everything you try and describe with damage on a miss sounds exactly like being hit but losing very little HP while still retaining a lot .

I don't understand what you mean by "leaves damage on a miss with nothing". Damage on a miss is like your 2. That is, a player whose PC has damage on a miss has a fiat ability - that player has the ability to dictate that, every round of combat, his/her PC to some extent wears down the enemy.

For the player whose PC has damage on a miss, there is little to no difference, in the fiction, between rolling a hit and then rolling a 1 for damage, and rolling a miss. That's the whole point of the ability! (I say "little to no difference" rather than "no difference" because other considerations may be in play, such as the minimum size of and weapon dice rolls, the presence of other effects that trigger only on a hit, etc.)

Damage on a miss isn't a playstyle though. It's a mechanic. And not one that creates any distinctive and meaningful play experience that any of its defenders have been able to articulate thusfar.

I don't have to persuade you that my playstyle is "distinct and meaningful" in order to experience it as such.

We've established in other threads that there are a range of differences that are very important to me that you don't care about, and mostly don't even notice (such as the difference between (i) backstory and (ii) the outcomes of action resolution, as two elements of the shared fiction). Why would I be surprised that this is another one?

But your lack of interest in the difference doesn't have any relevance for me.

the target cannot escape harm. The attacker cannot utterly fail.

Another way to put it, this power (and any like it) make it impossible for the character to have an unproductive round of combat.

That's the point. The player who spends PC build resources on this ability is purchasing this capability for his/her PC.

You may or may not like it, but I can't see how there is any denying that this is a real choice, with real playstyle implications.

Putting things like this into 5e is going to mean that a certain segment of our gaming population is going to be unable to utilize the rules in a truly satisfactory manner

And vice versa.

Though frankly, I don't see why you can't just ignore it. I mean, suppose the rules were published without this ability, and you went about using them in a truly satisfactory manner. How does it change all the other rules, and their truly satisfactory nature, to also include this as an optional ability?

Groovy, I'm hoping hit-on-a-miss is not default for GWF, they could turn it into some type of Feat.

Huh? It is some sort of feat - it's an option you choose when building your PC. It's not default for anyone.

 

[Manbearcat]

I don't regard "hit" and "miss" as meaningless. They are mechanical states. They trigger mechanical consequences. For the reasons that @Manbearcat and others have given, there is no simple or uniform correspondence of those mechanical states and consequences to in-fiction events.

Precisely.

When you have:

A - Dodge chance + damage reduction from armor + battle acumen (parry, block, riposte) + magical enhancement - Folded into AC

B - Physcial meat + luck + battle acumen + manifest destiny (plot protection) + mental resolve (will to fight on) + physical endurance + magical protection - Folded into Hit Points

C - Multiple exchanges/contests abstracted into 1 or 2 singular checks to facilitate functional play at the table - The Gamist D&D Action Economy

how is it possible that the (in-fiction) binary hit/miss paradigm advocated for here isn't rife with incoherency?

If, you had

1 - Hit points as strictly meat.
2 - Armor as strictly damage reduction.
3 - Each exchange/contest modeled 1:1

then you could perform a contest that dictates binary interpretation of the hit/mis condition advocated for here. Dodge + battle acumen + magical enhancement et al could either prorduce a target DC number for the aggressor to hit or adjust a percentage (Blur or Displacement) that is rolled against. I'll get behind that binary interpretation of hit/miss within the fiction.

As is, I'm left wondering if my practice of narrating misses in the Elder Air Elemental versus Tarrasque as leveraging the dodge portion of AC for the Elder Air Elemental and the magically enhanced thick hide portion of AC for the Tarrasque as mitigating the blow is somehow a deviant practice?

But I guess that analysis and that question is just me being disingenuous.

 

[urLordy]

I don't regard "hit" and "miss" as meaningless. They are mechanical states. They trigger mechanical consequences.

Yes, I do know that. There was no prevailing argument at that time AFAIR about hit and miss being meaningless or meaningful as a mechanical state, so I didn't feel I needed to be careful about the semantics. Given that at the time there was a long argument about the simulation/story meaning of "hit" and "miss", I trusted and felt safe that people would understand what I meant by "meaningless".

For the reasons that @Manbearcat and others have given, there is no simple or uniform correspondence of those mechanical states and consequences to in-fiction events.

Again I do know that, and your reply is really late to the party (that on went for very long and became too much), so I'll just maintain that the thrust of my point still stands.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't have to persuade you that my playstyle is "distinct and meaningful" in order to experience it as such.

Of course not.

We've established in other threads that there are a range of differences that are very important to me that you don't care about, and mostly don't even notice (such as the difference between (i) backstory and (ii) the outcomes of action resolution, as two elements of the shared fiction). Why would I be surprised that this is another one?

But your lack of interest in the difference doesn't have any relevance for me.

At the moment what we have here is a sort of flying spaghetti monster. Damage on a miss is apparently important to some people, because of their playstyle. But what that style is, or why this one small-niche mechanic is essential to it, is at the moment a mystery.

If someone says that their playstyle requires a gritty tone and that actions have consequences, therefore they need a wound system, that argument has some legs. If someone says that their playstyle requires players to accumulate rewards for playing and thus they need level-based character advancement, that's a legitimate case. If someone says their playstyle requires damage on a miss because someone took that ability and liked it, that doesn't mean much of anything.

I just think people should stop throwing the playstyle argument around any time they have no rational case to make. My playstyle requires that they not do that, and if anyone says otherwise, they're a badwrongfun edition warrior troll*.

*Not really, but you get the point.