D&D (2024) Graze on a miss questions

[billd91]

You don’t really need to reimagine how hit points work. Hit points are a combination of physical damage and nonphysical (emotional/mental) damage. Graze causing damage on a miss can be interpreted as a swing coming so close to hitting that the target loses morale or gets scared *^%#less.

But in that case, why is it a function of a few, select weapons and not a function of the fighter? Is it really something more than giving the weapon master (whether fighter or something else) "kewl powerz" as opposed to adding something specific that was actually lacking? Is it really doing something worth doing when it effectively means the character can't actually miss (miss meaning fail to make progress in defeating the enemy by doing damage)? And does removing the ability to miss mess up anything else?

 

[billd91]

I totally agree with that and I would like to rule that grace damage can not reduce someone to 0 hp.

If we have to add little caveats to it, then it's already way more of a headache than it's worth.

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

But in that case, why is it a function of a few, select weapons and not a function of the fighter? Is it really something more than giving the weapon master (whether fighter or something else) "kewl powerz" as opposed to adding something specific that was actually lacking? Is it really doing something worth doing when it effectively means the character can't actually miss (miss meaning fail to make progress in defeating the enemy by doing damage)? And does removing the ability to miss mess up anything else?

By tying it to the new Weapon Mastery mechanic, any player character class can opt into that functionality for a varied cost/investment. This means it is optional for more characters, and not stuck to only 1 Weapon Master class.

 

[billd91]

By tying it to the new Weapon Mastery mechanic, any player character class can opt into that functionality for a varied cost/investment. This means it is optional for more characters, and not stuck to only 1 Weapon Master class.

But again, why the glaive and greatsword and not a greataxe? Surely a greataxe nearly hitting would cause the same stress as a greatsword (historically speaking, maybe more). Or if intended to capture the idea that a weapon could hit hard enough to still hurt someone despite their armor, why not the mace, a weapon reputed to be able to actually do so? Or if the target is expending more energy (luck, building more fatigue, overextending their ACL, whatever) to avoid the blow, why wouldn't any weapon be able to achieve that?
Or is this just kind of half-assing a set of properties for weapons that might seem attractive to players to take without really meaning anything?

And does a power like this make sense if I'm fighting in some adverse conditions like swinging a greatsword underwater? Or in the dark? Or if the target is displaced or invisible?

 

[CleverNickName]

But if this is a bump you just can’t get over, there’s no shame in that! We all have our own gotchas. My only recommendation in that case is to not neuter it down to just one point…that’s just so worthless as to be insulting. A better idea I think would be to just replace it with one of the other heavy weapon masteries (push, cleave, etc). Otherwise I’d guess your players would just gravitate to those weapons instead of the Graze ones.

Yeah, I agree. From what I've seen of the playtest material, I'd probably replace Graze with Cleave and be done with it.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Yeah, I agree. From what I've seen of the playtest material, I'd probably replace Graze with Cleave and be done with it.

I dunno, I kind of like how the two interact with Barbarian's Reckless Attack. Graze ain't so good, Cleave works real well.

On the flip side, if you're fighting in deep fog, well, that graze ability is looking pretty good.

 

[Reef]

I dunno, I kind of like how the two interact with Barbarian's Reckless Attack. Graze ain't so good, Cleave works real well.

On the flip side, if you're fighting in deep fog, well, that graze ability is looking pretty good.

I’d agree, but if they don’t like Graze for whatever reason, that a fair substitution.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If we have to add little caveats to it, then it's already way more of a headache than it's worth.

No. I don't think that is a logical conclusion.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Not gonna lie, I actually kinda liked Touch AC. But I get why they got rid of it.

We still implement it for ethereal-like creatures (wraiths, ghosts, shadows, spectres...etc).

 

[codo]

Yeah, I know. And I agree--having it as a rider on a small number of cases is a good way to introduce it and let people test it out. (It also makes it easy to remove, for folks who don't want it. If pressed, I'd just swap it out with a different weapon property and move on.)

I'm curious what problem the devs are trying to solve, though. If a dev is reading this: what is Graze adding that was missing?

Why does there need to be a problem that graze is intended to solve. Its fun. Lots of people like it. They can add something just because they want to.