Does D&D combat break the fantasy?

[hong]

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.

In nearly all practical situations, this is a non-issue. By 20th level, said fighter will have 25+ Str at minimum, do 4 attacks per round, and typically dish out 100+ points of damage with a full attack. The base damage dice of the sword is irrelevant; what counts is the bottom line, namely full damage potential.

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.

Which is a Good Thing. Notice how instakill spells like disintegrate, PWK and h*rm are also the spells that cause some of the most angst.

I'll agree that killing monsters in one hit is fun. However, dying in one hit is typically _not_ fun.

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?

Iterative attacks already do this, and by spreading the damage over multiple die rolls, are much more conducive to the kill-the-monsters-and-take-their-treasure atmosphere that D&D seeks to create.

Which doesn't stop malcontents from bringing up the topic on a semi-regular basis, of course.

 

[hong]

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.

That's not a bad idea. In fact, if you wanted to model the standard D&D paradigm where people aren't automatically struck dead by an ambush, all that you and your DM have to do is assume a default answer of "yes, you can avoid the attack". Although I suspect that rather than doing that, some people would rather nurse their grievance.


Hong "because grievances are IMPORTANT THINGS, dammit" Ooi

 

[scarymonkey]

Which doesn't stop malcontents from bringing up the topic on a semi-regular basis, of course.

It looks like you are a malcontent as well, seeing how you have devoted an entire page on your own website to using the Star Wars Vitality/Wound Points for D&D -

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/vpwp_dnd.htm


I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning....

 

[hong]

It looks like you are a malcontent as well, seeing how you have devoted an entire page on your own website to using the Star Wars Vitality/Wound Points for D&D -

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/vpwp_dnd.htm


I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning....

Hey d00d, if you want to pimp my stuff, I'm not going to stop you.

Notice that the fundamental change I make to VP/WP is to convert crits (and some other things) from doing direct-to-WP damage, back to multiplied VP damage, D&D-style. Once you do that, VP/WP is functionally identical to hit points, but with the big advantage that they regenerate faster. Good for keeping the pace of the session up, instead of having people retreat to heal up.

 

[Geoff Watson]

It looks like you are a malcontent as well, seeing how you have devoted an entire page on your own website to using the Star Wars Vitality/Wound Points for D&D -

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/vpwp_dnd.htm


I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning....

Did you read Hong's rules?

Obviously not; they don't have the stupid 'one hit can kill you regardless of skill' problem that standard VP/WP rules have.

Geoff.

 

[Desdichado]

Obviously not; they don't have the stupid 'one hit can kill you regardless of skill' problem that standard VP/WP rules have.

How is that stupid? Isn't that the whole point? That's not a problem, pal, that's a feature.

I agree with Fenes 2 that the dagger to the throat situation is best solved by assuming that the PC is helpless. Sure, he's not literally helpless according the the mechanical d20 definition of helpless, but he's fundamentally helpless in that there's really no way he can avoid the attack if it comes. As a DM, I'd rule in that situation that attacks treat you as if you were helpless and you are subject to a coup de grace if your enemy decides to cut your throat or put an arrow into you at point blank range.

 

[hong]

How is that stupid? Isn't that the whole point?

Not for a genre like Star Wars, where swashbuckling, "damn the torpedoes" action is the order of the day. Much the same holds for D&D. If you want players to get into regular combats with orcs, stormtroopers, or whatever adversaries you have, you do not want to create a fear that the next sword hit/blaster shot could do you in. Doing that just results in Counterstrike tactics.

Furthermore, a mechanic where you can bypass the process of wearing down someone's VP/hit points with one lucky shot kinda makes that process rather irrelevant. If you _wanted_ that possibility of an instakill shot, you're better off dumping ablative points altogether and using a simple dodge mechanic: the higher level/more skilled you are, the harder it is to hit you. But that has its own problems, which have been hashed out too many times already.

 

[Psion]

Obviously not; they don't have the stupid 'one hit can kill you regardless of skill' problem that standard VP/WP rules have.

Just what makes the possibility of an intstant kill stupid or a problem? The same thing that makes HP stupid or a problem, really: the user who uses the wrong tool or expects it to do what it is not designed to do.

VP/WP as written are designed to have a bypassable heroic buffer.

HP are designed to have a (usually) bypassable heroic buffer.


Calling the feature that VP/WP allows threat of death even to high level characters stupid is like calling a hammer stupid because it makes a mess when you put in screws with it. If you wanted a screwdriver in the first place, you should have used a screwdriver.

Sheesh...

 

[Desdichado]

Well, in that case you come down to the fundamental question: not how well do the systems work, but how well do they emulate the genre you're trying to emulate? IMO, Star Wars, while certainly a bit over-the-top heroic in many ways, isn't as fundamentally so as D&D, so the slightly increased chance of being taken down in one blow isn't a bad thing. Besides, without magical healing, HPs keep you down and out for way too long to be heroic in Star Wars. Heck, some heroic games, like Mutants and Masterminds are always one-blow takedowns: combat is a bit binary, you either shrug off hits or you go down.

But the "problems" with any system aren't really problems, as near as I can tell from condensing all this discussion (and the many previous discussions we've had) they are merely questions of taste and of making the game play out the way each individual group wants it to play out.

 

[kenjib]

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?

Power attack has a very similar net effect in practice. Is there benefit to having two different mechanics to convert attack bonus to damage?

If you try something like this out, I would recommend using it to replace power attack rather than having both co-exist. This is much more powerful than power attack though, because you don't sacrifice accuracy to increase damage. In most cases you just increase damage outright by a significant factor. I think power attack works better and achieves the same goal.