Does D&D combat break the fantasy?

[LostSoul]

I suggest you look at Ken Hood's Grim-n-Gritty d20 system. It should give you the effect you want.

d20 is flexible enough to support a lot of changes. If you don't like how D&D is running, alter it. Your concerns are valid, so that's probably your best way of resolving them.

 

[Victim]

But many enemies do have a chance of killing you. Trolls or Girallons can rend characters to pieces, and the damage potential of a raging Orc Barbarian with a great axe is pretty high too. Besides, just because something can't kill you instantly doesn't mean it can't you.

 

[Paradoxish]

No, I believe it is you that is not getting my point. I don't feel very heroic going into battles where I know that there is almost no chance of being killed. Who is more heroic - The warrior who fights with no fear of death or the one who knows he can be killed at any moment but fights anyway?

If this were real life, I guess it'd be more heroic for me to run at a guy with a gun knowing that I might die. I don't find it particularly heroic, exciting, or interesting when that guy guns me down instantly, though. D&D is supposed to allow for epic, heroic, fantasy style combats. That means wading into a sea of Orcs, cutting through them like butter, and coming out bloody and beaten, but victorious.

D&D is about standing toe-to-toe with that massive dragon and somehow surviving when he belches out a huge cone of flame at you, only to charge him and keep on fighitng.

D&D does what it's supposed to do just fine. If this combats aren't your style, then you really are missing the point, because D&D obviously isn't for you. Either alter the system so it works the way you want it to or find a different system. Personally, D&D allows for my kind of heroism.

EDIT: By the way, if you have no chance of dying you really shouldn't blame the system - blame your DM. Like I said, one of my players died to a bunch of unlevelled kobolds while his PC was 3rd level. He died by rushing in to attack them.

Find a better DM.

 

[mmadsen]

The idea is to be heroic. It's hard to be heroic when you know every combat is going to kill you.

There's a difference between knowing combat will kill you and knowing that combat may kill you.

With a Hit Point system, there's often no incentive to avoid combat with someone weaker than you. You will win, and you will heal. It's only an issue if you're within the confines of a dungeon (literal or figurative), and know you have to conserve healing resources.

Further, there's no tension when your hero is surrounded by a dozen archers. This is a common complaint about the game, not something scarymonkey just made up. Even Conan drops his sword and lets the enemy bind him under such conditions, but no D&D character would.

A non-Hit Point system with a Fate Point system on the side might fit scarymonkey's tastes better. It's no less heroic or epic, but it may feel more plausible.

 

[Paradoxish]

Further, there's no tension when your hero is surrounded by a dozen archers. This is a common complaint about the game, not something scarymonkey just made up. Even Conan drops his sword and lets the enemy bind him under such conditions, but no D&D character would.

Just thought I'd point out that a dozen archers, all flanking at close range, could easily kill a level 10 hero.

 

[BeholderBurger]

I have been pondering over the hit point system myself for some time now and I have come to several conclusions.

Firstly, The idea of increasing hit points through level gain is I think highly realistic. More experienced warriors and Fighters (Adventurers in general) should be harder to kill because they would be. Also, just because the numbers look high doesnt mean they are. It is highly unlikely that a 1st level guard will encounter a 20th level fighter let alone actually fight him. I think this reflects an element of reality. Whereas it is more likely that people of closer levels will encounter each other and this makes for fairer although not necessarily equal fight.

Secondly, Because D&D has an optional rule for Instant Kill i.e 20/20/death there should be no problem for anybody requiring an insta-death situation. This is of course the great leveller and is an additional weapon in the arsenal of low level Characters and NPC`s. Instant Kills can and do happen. In my games they occur more frequently than they statistically should.

Thirdly, The only aspect of Hit Points I have a problem with is the ability to describe damage taken in terms that are realistic. I have adapted a system where every fourth damage point taken is actual damage and the rest represents outmanouvering and advantage taking. The higher the actual damage is the grimmer the description of damage taken. This helps in situations were somebody with 50 hp takes 25 damage which sounds a lot and expects a much more severe description of their damage than that of a 1st Level magic user with 4 hp who takes 2 damage.( Exactly the same amount of physical damage.)

 

[Forrester]

The problem is that even if it were Robin Hood holding the bow, he still wouldn't threaten you enough to make you hesitate in your attack. No matter how good the archer is, he still couldn't kill you before you got to him.

scarymonkey has clawed his way towards a good point ;P.

Let's say Joe Warrior sneaks up behind our Hero and manages to put a knife to the back of his neck. He doesn't attack . . . he just puts the knife there and says to the Hero "Move, and you're dead!"

Using typical 3E rules, our Hero laughs and laughs and laughs. He may still be flat-footed, but he's certainly not helpless. The warrior can saw away all he wants, but he's not going to do more than d4 damage plus his strength bonus. Ha ha ha! No reason whatsoever to not turn, let the warrior have his fun, and then smush him.

You can easily imagine a similar situation with a bunch of archers surrounding a surprised party (think about the scene in FoTR, near Galadriel's place) or Robin Hood staring you down with his bow from 5' away.

I think that it *may* call for defining a new term -- pseudo-helpless. Robin Hood's arrow or Joe Warrior's knife cut SHOULD have some chance of significantly hurting Our Hero. Maybe if our Hero moves there's a chance for a CDG? Maybe the Warrior should get sneak-attack damage, even though he's not a rogue?

I dunno. But I can see the need for a rules tweak in there.

 

[francisca]

You know, I've been in half a dozen D&D groups over the last 20 years, and this discussion about the lack of realism in combat has cropped up at least once in all of them.

Some of the groups went out and evaluated other systems, and in the end, each group has dedcided that we like D&D, and we'll take the good with the bad and move on. As long as everyone gets the same dose of "lack of realism", we have seemed happy.

Look at it this way, at least you don't have to worry (too much) about a Kobold sniper sneaking up on your PC and killing him with a single crossbow bolt.

 

[Fenes 2]

Common Sense should be enough for most "Hah, a dagger to the throat does not make me helpless" scenes. I know that when my PC is threatened in that way (or with a couple archers aiming) I just ask the DM if it looks like I could get out of this cinema-like ("Is there a boulder near where I could jump into cover? / Does it look like there is a chance to duck away from the knife before it slits my PC's throat") and if the answer is negative, then I consider my PC helpless and subject to coup de grace. Easy.

 

[s/LaSH]

Hit points certainly are a little odd. But it's not hit points that are my qualm with the system, because in their representative state they do what they're supposed to do.

What gets me is weapons. Sure, you have the opportunity to extend threat ranges, and use Power Attacks, and buff strength... but really, under the basic rules a hit from a first-level fighter isn't going to do much less than a 20th-level fighter with the same sword. (The hit chances are greater, but for thousands of times the experience, you'd think there'd be a little more damage.) That is the real problem.

User skill isn't going to account for much in such a paradigm; endurance becomes the measure of the hero. It's still possible to kill them in their sleep at high levels, but not probable unless you do massive damage yourself in a coup-de-grace. And as has been stated, it's practically impossible to die in one hit.

What you really want to do is increase damage by a heavier margin with experience. Here's one idea that (while probably completely unbalanced and clunky) might give people a way to work around this:

Instead of rolling for damage, just subtract the enemy's AC from your attack roll, multiply by the size of the die you're using, divide by (say) five, and do that much damage. If you roll a threat, roll again and add the new roll (this can continue ad infinitum).

I won't pretend that it's perfect. But does anyone like the idea?