D&D 5E (2014) I Don't Like Damage On A Miss

[DEFCON 1]

You know... for an edition whose primary edict is putting more power back into the DM's hands... there's an awful lot of DMs who apparently don't want to take that power and just choose to swap out the Reaper feat they don't like for another feat that they do.

If the feat exists, you either choose to use it or you don't. And if its mere existence is enough for you to decide you aren't going to play the game... then there's no real reason to follow along with its development, because if its not Reaper, there will definitely something else that'll make you declare the game dead and buried for you somewhere along the way. Save yourself the time and just play whichever game you're currently playing. Either that, or accept that there will be the occasional rule you'll have to adapt/change when the game gets released.

 

[herrozerro]

Some of us don't care for automatic damage. At my playtest, the player felt like her choices didn't matter in combat. She wondered why she was even making attack rolls, if she was always going to hit the creature anyway. During the battle scenes, she was sitting with her chin propped up on her elbow, rolling dice without looking at them, announcing "I kill another kobold," in a deadpan tone of voice when I asked her to call her action. She wasn't enjoying the game. She really enjoyed the rogue, however, and she absolutely loved playing the Cleric of Moradin in other playtests.

Im not sure how this would have been better for your player. Without auto damage it would have been either kill a kobold or miss. I dont see how that is worse than always kill a kobold.

Perhaps the issue lies with the encounter not presenting enemies worth hitting, or the player not going for a larger target. Maybe the issue lies in 3hp kobolds? Maybe this is one of those moments where the fighter doesnt shine like a aoe player? Isnt that one of the pros of this system everybody isnt awesome all the time?

Either way i think the issue is not just autodamage.

 

[CleverNickName]

I understand you don't like 4e. I do. Let me turn this around - what parts of 4e would you keep?

I know you weren't asking me this directly, but I wanted to chime in anyway.

My favorite part of 4E was the simplified and condensed skill system. 3.x was a nightmare when it came to skills...the character sheet was more complicated than my income tax forms, for crying out loud. So I was very, very happy when I saw that D&DNext had simplified them even further.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled broadcast.

 

[Klaus]

Because of the dwarven theme.


A miss should be a &%$#&@ miss. This sort of thing is incredibly detrimental to suspension of disbelief.

You miss!

but you kill the big bad evil guy anyway!



*spit*


If that's their design philosophy permits that kind of idiocy I see little more than failure on the horizon for them.

Some players simply have a rotten luck with dice and always look for ways to prepare for the worse. This is one of those ways. Don't think of this as "dealing damage on a miss". Think of it as "turning a miss into a near-miss": the Slayer is so well-trained and efficient, he can still connect with his target (with the haft of the greataxe, with a well-placed shoulder or with the flat of the blade).

 

[CleverNickName]

Im not sure how this would have been better for your player. Without auto damage it would have been either kill a kobold or miss. I dont see how that is worse than always kill a kobold.

I think the part that bothered her the most was that it didn't matter if she rolled or not. She felt like she only had one action, and it was always going to have the same result. At least with the standard attack rules, she would have the anticipation of "will this work?" every time she threw the dice, and hits would be more rare (and therefore, more exciting.)

I dunno. Maybe at our playtest tonight, I will let her choose a different theme for the fighter. She really liked playing the Dwarf Cleric; maybe we will swap out the Defender theme for it, give him some different equipment, and try again.

But Slayer? Yeah, that thing's broken. Nobody likes it at our table.

 

[Fifth Element]

As written, the ability can be the deciding factor in a battle in some (IMO) really unreasonable scenarios, regardless of how one gets to the scenario.

Is is true of many abilities, if you craft a scenario *just so*. There are many abilities that can be the deciding factors in a battle in some strange situations, because of the fact that it's an abstract system.

The slayer ability comes with a price: you have to choose the slayer theme instead of another theme, which provides other benefits. You give up other benefits in order to get this benefit. The fighter thinking "I wish I were a slayer" is forgetting about the other benefits he has from not being a slayer, which probably helped in gotting the big baddie down to 3 hp in the first place.

Which is because kobolds are weak and pathetic and sniveling, and a fighter should be able to kill them in droves without breaking a sweat.

Indeed. Death to kobolds!

 

[herrozerro]

I think the part that bothered her the most was that it didn't matter if she rolled or not. She felt like she only had one action, and it was always going to have the same result. At least with the standard attack rules, she would have the anticipation of "will this work?" every time she threw the dice, and hits would be more rare (and therefore, more exciting.)

I dunno. Maybe at our playtest tonight, I will let her choose a different theme for the fighter. She really liked playing the Dwarf Cleric; maybe we will swap out the Defender theme for it, give him some different equipment, and try again.

But Slayer? Yeah, that thing's broken. Nobody likes it at our table.

Ah, im glad your table is the arbitrary metric of broken and no broken. JK...

More seriously, like i said perhaps the issue is the encounter? With only kobolds to swing at sure all you can do is kill a kobold or kill a kobold. But toss in some kind a big baddie then its do little damage on a miss or big damage on a hit.

 

[Umbran]

If you're prone to irrational anger...

You can't make any sense, so you attack the opponent...

Okay, so BOTH of you are getting personal. So, both of you lose.

Please allow me to repeat the mantra: Address the logic of the post, not the person of the poster.

Anyone who wants to continue trying to make this personal, or into an argument along edition lines, or who otherwise isn't interested in a civil and reasoned exchange of ideas, should probably walk away and find something else to do with their weekend. Thanks.

Any questions, please take 'em to e-mail or PM with the moderator of your choice.

 

[herrozerro]

Furthermore, how did the wizard feel about MM being at will and un missable for even more damage than the slayer miss?

Talk about meaningless choices...

 

[Obryn]

Of course they are arbitrary; we are talking about a role-playing game here. Nobody is actually throwing fireballs. Or at least I hope not. It is the style of arbitration that we are discussing here. And we can discuss it all day long, but nobody is going to change anyone's mind.

Yep, that's basically my point. It's a matter of taste, here, and there's no absolute answer, fancy narrative explanations and post-hoc justifications be damned.

As for polarizing part ... From my perspective, WotC needs to give me something new and innovative if I'm going to care about it more than 1e or 4e. If the assumptions of the game are identical to those in 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e, I won't care - I'll just play one of those games instead.

Now, as I mentioned before, I agree that the Reaping thing is a cruddy mechanic purely from a mechanical point of view. It's boring, and it gets less and less important as hit points and damage inflate around it. I have no qualms about a Fighter auto-killing a kobold. But in a few levels, that ability will be less and less good.

I don't know if I like your Advantage solutions or not, though the "give disadvantage on a miss" could work, maybe. I don't like a solution which doesn't give the Fighter an immediate result; against stuff that Reaping Strike is meant for, I don't think it's a good benefit.

Reaping is basically modeled as, "you rock against lesser combatants" as far as I can see it. Why not give Reapers automatic Advantage against things below a certain HP threshhold? It would keep lesser foes super-squishy against them without being dull. (That is, if you don't find advantage dull to begin with. I am playtesting tomorrow night; I'm skeptical about such a one-size-fits-all modifier.)

-O