To defend the 3e camp here: I identify with 3e and still agree with you 100% on this one.
I apologize for the broad brush. I've heard peanut butter is effective for removing unwarranted tar stains.
I think the key issue here is the insistence that a missed attack roll must mean a blow that missed the body. Given everything that affects AC, (and for that matter things that affect hitpoints - such as level) that's clearly an interpretation that's clearly not necessarily true.
Well, honestly, there's no difference between a failed attack roll and a successful saving throw-- so the insistence that Fighters aren't allowed to deal damage on the former, but Wizards can
expect to do so on the latter is maddeningly inconsistent and the 'but it's magic' argument is borderline infuriating because every inch of the combat rules is an abstraction. The number of variables that are being narrowed down to a single die roll and a one-digit number is incomprehensible.
People are arguing over what die rolls can or can not 'realistically' inflict hit point damage when there is no satisfactorily 'realistic' definition for what hit points even are or how they function. They are not capacity for injury, because a character with any positive number of hit points is not injured. They are not capacity to prevent injury, because the majority of injuries are neither completely incapacitating nor potentially lethal and any character with a negative number of hit points is both incapacitated and mortally wounded.
Would you be willing to have another mechanic represent just how ferocious the Slayer is? Like, he can either make his attack roll and chance missing, or he can automatically hit, dealing Strength modifier in damage?
If it actually represents that ferocity as well as the Reaper feat, sure, but your suggestion here replaces Reaper being boring when the
fight is boring with Reaper being boring when the combat should be at its most tense and dramatic. That version of Reaper doesn't represent overwhelming ferocity in battle, it represents a matador poking a bull to death one flimsy little sword at a time.
Right, but are there not other ways to represent that? What if, as I proposed above, the Slayer has the choice of a normal attack for a lot of damage (but potentially a miss), or automatically deal Strength modifier in damage? Would that be acceptable?
No. I would be amenable to a replacement mechanic, but not a replacement mechanic that is inferior to the original on every conceptual level.
I think the advantage based on HP threshold would draw a lot smaller outcry, and would support changing it to that (even if I dislike HP thresholds). Thanks for the reply.
It would draw a smaller outcry, but it also does not represent the same thing at all. Granting combat advantage against low-hp foes isn't a relentless, unstoppable onslaught-- it's batting cleanup.
The people complaining that Reaper is boring are complaining about it being boring when they're fighting
kobolds. The reason Reaper is boring when fighting kobolds is because kobolds are not what the feat is for. The Slayer fighting kobolds simply improves his odds of killing one kobold per round from 65% to 100%.
Reaper is for raising your odds of dealing
some damage to the Dark Priest from 40% to 100%, making it harder for him to cast spells and making the fight less boring because you-- with the best attack bonus in the party-- aren't stuck whiffing more than half of your attacks while he's wrecking your party unimpeded.
I think people would be more in favor of automatic damage without a roll then automatic damage on a miss, honestly.
Except that is a fundamentally
worse mechanic because it removes all tension entirely-- the problem with Slayer vs. Kobolds-- and either does too much damage and is overpowered for an automatic hit or it does too little damage to be worth giving up your normal chance for normal damage.
The Reaper feat does a good and interesting thing, and it does it in a good and interesting way. It is reasonably balanced against other comparable abilities-- such as
magic missile-- and is demonstrably compatible with a simulationist narrative. The most vocal opponents of the feat are objecting that the feat is bad because it is 'unrealistic' and want the feat removed for the purpose of imposing an inconsistent standard of 'realism' on systems that were never realistic nor intended to be realistic in the first place, at the expense-- the endlessly encroaching expense-- of the combat capability of the one class in the game whose
sole purpose is to be the most effective combatant.
3.X was a good game, and I love it, and I still play it... but it had its weak points. The weakest of its weak points was the fact that everything magic was automatically superior to everything non-magic forever because it wasn't constrained to the same artificial, arbitrary, and inconsistent standards of 'realism' that the non-magical superhumans labored under.
People who don't like 3.X are claiming that the current D&D Next playtest rules bear too much resemblance to it-- an accusation I see no merit whatsoever in, and an accusation that I certainly do not wish to
create merit in by introducing that game's idiosyncratic flaws into this one. If we are going to take from 3.X, let's take the
good parts of it instead.
I know some people don't like the "the guy can never miss" feel of it, so automatic damage without rolling an attack would bug that group of people, too.
Unless the Wizard does it. A lot of people are complaining about the auto-hit at-will
magic missile--
not without merit-- but nobody seems to have any problem with the Wizard's
other attack spells not requiring a roll to hit and still dealing half damage on a miss.
Again, I like some sort of advantage mechanic, personally, since it scales to all levels.
I would prefer to make the existing Reaper mechanic scale with level, instead. Not as much as the damage on real hits, of course, but enough to keep it relevant. Perhaps it would benefit from the same level-based damage bonus that the Fighter's regular attacks get, but from none of the weapon-specific feats that the Fighter gets.
The thing is, Reaper grants the Slayer Fighter the same small benefit against monsters no matter how high their AC is. Advantage grants a much bigger benefit to attacks against creatures the Slayer can hit around half the time, and a much smaller benefit to the attacks for which Reaper was designed and for which it provides the most benefit.
Maybe the feat could give you an attack against everyone, like Whirlwind Attack?
That would be great for batting cleanup, which is a different thing. I'd like to see Fighters-- and fighterish classes-- having a Whirlwind Attack at-will option.
Or, if you're fighting 3 or more enemies, you have advantage? I don't know.
I actually really like that, but for the most part if you're in melee with 3 monsters you either don't need Advantage or you're in serious trouble. That reflects an entirely different type of ability from Reaper, but one that's certainly appropriate for a Slayer.
I was just trying to figure out why people seem so attached to this mechanic when trying to reflect the Slayer's ferociousness, and why a different mechanic that more people liked couldn't express that fiction.
I like the Reaper mechanic because of the flavor which I've already described, that the mechanic supports perfectly. It does a good thing in a good way, and the reasons being given for removing it fall apart with even a cursory examination. They don't hold water. And the suggested replacements for it, while mostly good mechanics in their own right, do entirely different things-- things that I agree Fighters or Slayer-Fighters should also be able to do, but not this specific thing that I really like Slayer-Fighters being able to do.
Yeah - what I was saying was, I have been replying to several people and forgot you were you and not someone else. Sorry; I really meant nothing by it.
It's really hard to be fair to the person who is trying-- and succeeding-- to be civil and constructive when you are replying to him at the same time you are replying to other people who are neither succeeding nor trying.
