D&D 5E I just don't buy the reasoning behind "damage on a miss".

[MJS]

Part of where the disconnect for us is the word "whiff", and I blame DM's for narrating misses this way (including me). The dude had a 12 AC until he put on fullplate. My 15 attack did not whiff. It went *KLUNK*. In my mental schema, this opens up a realm of possible narrative outcomes.

it does, but thats really not where the disconnect lies. The disconnect, the "whiff", narrated as much by players as DMs, is the VERY low roll, like a 2 when you needed a 19. Thats a whiff. Generally narrated as no contact made. The near-miss usually is said to be a "klunk".
There is this linear thing, since OD&D Chainmail on 2d6, and on to the "alternate system" of the d20, where snake eyes or 1 is not a "klunk", its swatting flies. Not in the rules, but in practice.
Hence the shitstorm here. It goes against all combat narrative tradition to say that 1, 2 or 3 etc. is a klunk, when its always been a whiff. Turning this whole thread into a toot and a snore.

 

[pemerton]

One thing I have never quite figured out about the whole hp thing...

If hp's don't primarily represent physical damage then why does it take a more powerful cleric to heal the wounds of the higher level injuries.

Its always worked pretty well for me in modeling small or large wounds, depending. Not in a strictly medical sense, but in the narrative sense of glancing blows, stabs, claws and teeth ripping into flesh, and there being bleeding.

A 0-level NPC has 3 hp total. A goblin stabs that person with a dagger for 3 hp of damage. They are now at 0 hp and dying. A Cure Light Wounds spell will restore them to full health. From which I infer they were suffering nothing but a light wound - yet were dying! From which I infer that 0-level NPCs - the bulk of a D&D world's population - die from light wounds. And therefore bear little resemblance to ordinary people on earth, who have a pretty good survival rate for light wounds

A 10 th level fighter has 100 hp total. A frost giant critically hits her for 48 hp of damage (Bestiary p 46 lists the damage as 3d12+6, which is 42+1d12 on a crit). One thing to note - this is not a critical hit in any literal sense; the figher is not dying. Indeed, according to p 22 of the "How to Play" document this fighter shows no signs of injury, as she has not lost half her hit points. Certainly she has not suffered a serious wound, given that she is in no way impaired in her physical capabilities.

Yet a cleric who tries to heal her light wound with a Cure Light Wounds spell cannot. A 5th level Cure Wounds spell - which is the traditional level for Cure Critical Wounds - will heal 10d8+2, or 47, hp - which is not quite enough to get this fighter back to her full health.

I'm not 100% sure what to make of that, but I don't think it is at all clear what is happening in the fiction.

I guess an alternative interpretation would be that the fighter - who is not dying - has suffered more "meat" loss than the 0-level NPC, who is dying - and hence can't be healed to full by a spell 4 levels higher. But what that "meat" loss would possibly look like on an actual biological organism resembling a human being I have no idea.

What would be the difference in me hitting and doing 5 points of damage and me missing and doing 4?

Me hitting could be I hit you so hard that I rattle you in your armour. What if the creature only had 10 hp? I just dropped that by half by both examples so there really is no difference between the two.

I answered this in the other thread. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. That's the point of the ability. It is a player fiat ability that guarantees that the attacker always rattles his/her enemies in their armour, or pushes them into weak defensive positions, or etc etc etc (all of which are represented, on the mechanical side of things, by hit point loss).

While the HP mechanic itself is very poor

This is the bit I don't get. There are all these D&D players who apparently dislike D&D's core combat mechanic - yet run up the flag of "tradition" and "believability" to oppose damage on a miss. While those of us who actually like D&D's core combat mechanic, and therefore see how it can easily make room for damage on a miss, are accused of spoiling the party for everyone.

If you don't like hit points, why are you playing D&D? There are heaps of other good fantasy RPGs that actually have non-hp-ablation combat systems.

 

[Wicht]

This is the bit I don't get. There are all these D&D players who apparently dislike D&D's core combat mechanic - yet run up the flag of "tradition" and "believability" to oppose damage on a miss. While those of us who actually like D&D's core combat mechanic, and therefore see how it can easily make room for damage on a miss, are accused of spoiling the party for everyone.

I don't think that's actually a fair understanding of positions. I like hp. Quite a bit. But I don't like damage on a miss.

I think your last sentence conflates liking hp's with a certain interpretation of hp's. I think it is possible to both disagree with the premise of the interpretation (that hp's don't primarily represent health) and still like the mechanic of hp's.

 

[billd91]

If you don't like hit points, why are you playing D&D? There are heaps of other good fantasy RPGs that actually have non-hp-ablation combat systems.

I ask that question a lot, but about other mechanics and elements of D&D.

 

[TwoSix]

I ask that question a lot, but about other mechanics and elements of D&D.

Weird, it's almost like we've been having circular arguments about what actually defines D&D for years now.

 

[Abraxas]

I don't think that's actually a fair understanding of positions. I like hp. Quite a bit. But I don't like damage on a miss.

I think your last sentence conflates liking hp's with a certain interpretation of hp's. I think it is possible to both disagree with the premise of the interpretation (that hp's don't primarily represent health) and still like the mechanic of hp's.

I'm with you on this regarding hps and what they may or may not represent.
I don't understand why liking hit points and not liking damage on a miss is so hard for some to understand.

In previous play test packets they had the variations of DoaM that weren't automatic and/or required a minimum die roll and/or required the expenditure of martial/expertise dice. I hadn't seen either camp get into this kind of a discussion then so why does the latest version of DoaM "have" to be in the core rules now? Why not go back to one of those earlier versions that weren't so divisive?

 

[tsadkiel]

Not just on this site I'm afraid.

There are people over on the WoTc website, RPG.net and even Mearls has decided to take a look at the mechanic.

Point of order - rpg.net is Damage-On-A-Miss argument free, at the moment. It's honestly pretty nice.

 

[pemerton]

Why not go back to one of those earlier versions that weren't so divisive?

Those earlier versions were "divisive". There was as much complaint about the reaper then as there is about the great weapon fighter now.

For instance, consider "glancing blow" (from the August 2012 packet):

* If you miss a creature but roll at least 10, you can turn the miss into a glancing blow by spending an expertise die;

* The glancing blow has no effects other than the specified amount of damage, and is not considered to have hit.​

This has the same basic structure, of an attack roll that is defined as a miss nevertheless does damage. It has the same "pixie dodge" issue. Given that expertise dice are recovered each round, it is at-will, the same as the current ability. The only respect in which it is different is that it requires a minimum roll of 10, which means that it basically never comes into play (because with an attack result of 10+prof+stat, a D&Dnext fighter is not missing very much). The more you drop that minimum, in order to make the ability actually mechanically relevant, the more the "pixie dodge" issue and related complaints arise.

The fundamental question is - should the player of a fighter, simply via action declaration, be able to bring it about in the fiction that foes are worn down. And for reasons that are somewhat opaque to me, this is considered permissible for the players of MUs and grenade throwers, even though - in the fiction - there are any number of reasons why a spell might fizzle or an explosion may not injure everyone in its radius, but is not considered permissible for the players of fighters.

I ask that question a lot, but about other mechanics and elements of D&D.

I assume that is an allusion to 4e.

For my own part, I did not spend the years from 2000 to 2008 posting about how 3E/3.5 is a crap system that destroys the legacy of D&D. (Though in my view some of its changes, most notably to saving throws, are departures from that tradition which relate to some of the widely-noted features of 3E play, namely, the comparative vulnerability of mid-to-high level fighters to magical attacks.) I simply didn't play it.

Then when 4e came along, and it was obvious both in the period leading up to it, and once it was published, that it developed all the features of D&D that struck me as strengths while purging many of those that struck me as weaknesses, I bought it and played it. The game has some flaws - the rules for pacing extended rests need patching (13th Age is one good way to do that), the combat/non-combat resolution interface has issues, and - a deeper flaw, in terms of degree of mechanical embedding - the game would probably be better if stats did not contribute to attack bonuses (though that might heighten the interface issues, depending how it was handled). But I certainly don't regard it's core resolution mechanics as "very poor". I can't really imagine playing a game whose core resolution mechanic I regarded as "very poor".

If D&Dnext - as seems likely - is a system that doesn't appeal to me, I may not buy it and probably won't play it. I certainly won't play it while thinking that it is "very poor".

 

[Cadence]

The fundamental question is - should the player of a fighter, simply via action declaration, be able to bring it about in the fiction that foes are worn down. And for reasons that are somewhat opaque to me, this is considered permissible for the players of MUs and grenade throwers, even though - in the fiction - there are any number of reasons why a spell might fizzle or an explosion may not injure everyone in its radius, but is not considered permissible for the players of fighters.

I like the way you phrased that.

On the one hand I'm inclined to try and play the "two wrongs don't make a right" card and say that the flaws in implementing area effect and splash effect actions shouldn't be seen as a green light to instill similar flaws in other mechanics. I'd rather fix those flaws.

Say something like having characters in the center of a large area or splash being able to only save for half, while those on the edge get a save to get completely out of the way, or something like that. If an analogous trait with weapons is desired, then I'd be fine with any weapon that fills an entire 10' square having the same effect as the area effect of similar size (so great for an at least 1/2-damage area of effect with the Tarrasque swinging a building, not so much for a regular human fighter). To me, the attack with regular sized bow or sword seems like it would be better matched up with a touch attack than area effect. Should the ray of frost or a ranged touch attack do damage on a miss?

On the other hand, I get that in D&D hit points are the combination of meat, soak, stamina, and heroic ability to turn blows that would have crushed someone else into scratches. Is it just easy to fall back into thinking of it all as meat in the midst of play? Would a nice description of how 5e views hit points make the "damage" on a "miss" more palatable?

I think I'd also be open to an easy to use system where we have a meat pool and a heroic pool... and the heroic pool can be healed by the Warlord yelling at you and can be worn down by dodging continual near misses in addition to soaking part of the actual hits, while the meat pool takes time or magic to heal and is only hurt by being actually hit.

Rereading that, does it need to be "near misses" to have it make sense for wearing someone down? If its simply the act of having to work to dodge that wears someone down, should the attackers continual exertion where the attacker down to?

 

[pemerton]

I like the way you phrased that.

Thanks!

I'm inclined to try and play the "two wrongs don't make a right" card and say that the flaws in implementing area effect and splash effect actions shouldn't be seen as a green light to instill similar flaws in other mechanics. I'd rather fix those flaws.

As you can probably already guess, this is the approach that I think pushes towards more thorough-going process sim in design, and away from the current way that hp work.

I can't see an easy way to start down this path and find a stopping point short of a fundamental change in the game.

To me, the attack with regular sized bow or sword seems like it would be better matched up with a touch attack than area effect. Should the ray of frost or a ranged touch attack do damage on a miss?

At the moment, besides AoE-based fiat (eg the person on the edge of the Burning Hands spell - 15' cone - or the person on the edge of the Called Lightning - 5' R - or Circle of Death which allows a CON save but no DEX save to avoid the "wave of negative energy", and Cone of Cold is similar) we have quite a few single-target half on a miss (Melf's Acid Arrow) or a save (Blight, Chain Lightning, Destructinon, Finger of Death, Harm, Inflict Wounds).

For a 5th level evocation mage, Ray of Frost and Shocking Grasp become damage on a miss.

In order to eliminate the fiat element quite a lot of changes would have to happen.

I get that in D&D hit points are the combination of meat, soak, stamina, and heroic ability to turn blows that would have crushed someone else into scratches.

<snip>

I'd also be open to an easy to use system where we have a meat pool and a heroic pool... and the heroic pool can be healed by the Warlord yelling at you and can be worn down by dodging continual near misses in addition to soaking part of the actual hits, while the meat pool takes time or magic to heal and is only hurt by being actually hit.

The earliest version of this I know was by Roger Musson in a White Dwarf article "How to lose hit points and survive". It prefigures WotC's Wounds/Vitality approach - hit points as "heroic pool", CON as "meat pool".

In Musson's system on a successful saving throw vs a spell you only lose hp, not CON. On this approach, Great Weapon Fighting would only do heroic, not CON, damage on a miss.

I think this sort of system is quite hard to implement, though - and it creates a temptation to have backstab, crits etc do CON damage, which can then tend to make them super-deadly.