D&D 5E Now that "damage on a miss" is most likely out of the picture, are you happy?

[pemerton]

*looks around in awe*

It's own sub-forum?

I know - isn't this the most awesome sub-forum ever!

 

[Jester David]

The issue right now is that most Fighter "options" boil down to:

* Attack it
* Attack it again
* Hit it a little harder
* When you hit it really well, hit it harder

DoaM is hardly the most exciting of options, but it's at least something different than any of the above.

DoaM changes things from:
"Attack; deal damage on a hit, do nothing on a miss" to "attack; deal damage". It's less diverse reducing the number of outcomes from 2 to 1.

And this is overlooking the option of the Weaponmaster fighter. And there will undoubtedly be more maneuvers added with later subclasses.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I'm not sure why you're using a 9 in 20 hit rate, though.

I was using your number: you had said "Assuming that the typical hit range is 12 in 20" -- did you not mean hit on a 12 or higher? I may have misunderstood. In any case, I stand by my point.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So are hit points, which is what a fighter is spending to deal DoaM.

HPs are spent by EVERY D&D character to do what they do -- everyone's got them, everyone gets attacked. The fighter spends more, and is attacked more often, but she has more to spend as well. The ratio remains comparable, if not precisely equal. The danger of getting attacked is always true in combat for every PC.

Gameplay-wise, if you can only do something once, deciding to do it or not becomes a tense moment. A wizard can only drop a fireball once. A fighter can get into an enemy's face and can actually spend quite a bit of time there before it becomes a significant risk to stay there any longer. It's not forever, which is why it's still interesting (there is some tension), but the fighter class is designed to mitigate the loss aversion of combat -- especially melee combat -- in most kinds of D&D. High AC's and saves will do that.

If the fighter paid for her area attack DoaM by being reduced to 1 hp, sure, that might be comparably as interesting, in play.

 

[pemerton]

I was using your number: you had said "Assuming that the typical hit range is 12 in 20" -- did you not mean hit on a 12 or higher?

No, I meant 12 in 20 ie on a 9 or higher. Hence you chance of critting, assuming a 20 is required, is 1 in 12. Every increase in crit range adds 1/12 to the chance of critting. If bonus damage for a crit is 12 (which it is with a d12 weapon; in general a dN weapon does +N damage on a crit; with double dice weapons crit bonus damage drops, though, to 8.5 with a 2d6 weapon bonus damage and 5.5 with a 2d4 weapon) then each increase in crit range therefore adds +1 to damage.

Given that crits are prone to overkill (for the general reason that the more damage you do to a single target, the more likely you are to do more than you need), increasing the crit range by 1 is probably not as good, overall, as getting a steady +1 to damage.

Archery style gives +1 to hit. A longbow does 1d8 damage - assuming a 16 DEX for an archer-fighter, that is 7.5 per hit, on average. Increasing the hit range from 12 in 20 to 13 in 20 gives an increase in expected damage of 1/12 * 7.5, or a little +0.5. So it's actually not that strong in damage terms, but archery has other obvious advantages.

Getting to add you stat a 2nd time with two-weapon fighting, on the other hand is very good: +stat on a hit is more expected damage output than +stat on a miss whenever your chance to hit is better than your chance to miss, which on current AC values is likely to be the case. With a 16 stat (STR or DEX), it's a straight +3 damage bonus. I think it would be a serious design flaw to make two-weapon fighting systematically more powerful on the damage front than great weapon fighting, especially when it is already more reliable, and hence less prone to overkill, due to splitting the damage over two attack rolls.

 

[pemerton]

A wizard can only drop a fireball once.

In the latest version of the playtest rules, when you get it (at 5th level) you can do it twice. And it goes up every level from there.

EDIT: Let me put it another way. I have played 4e with a fighter who used Reaping Strike. No one keeled over from boredom.

FURTHER EDIT: Let me put it yet another way. How many GMs tell the players the number of hp remaining? If the players don't know, then they don't know whether or not autodamage will suffice to kill a target.

Also, sometime damage dealt on a hit is enough to guarantee a kill even if minimum damage is rolled. In my experience, that actually happens quite a bit. But the elimination of that element of the gambling process of D&D, on that occasion, doesn't make anyone fall asleep either.

 

[Obryn]

DoaM changes things from:
"Attack; deal damage on a hit, do nothing on a miss" to "attack; deal damage". It's less diverse reducing the number of outcomes from 2 to 1.

And this is overlooking the option of the Weaponmaster fighter. And there will undoubtedly be more maneuvers added with later subclasses.

It's another toy in the toybox, nothing more and nothing less. Some Fighters deal small amounts of damage on a miss, and some don't; that's variation, not "less diversity."

As for the Weaponmaster from the most recent public packet ... it was pretty awful, sadly. The basic idea wasn't bad - a Fighter with a resource pool - but the implementation was wacky and the special effects were tepid.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

Let me put it another way. I have played 4e with a fighter who used Reaping Strike. No one keeled over from boredom.

Funny enough, Reaping Strike actually rates pretty low as far as Fighter's at-wills go.

 

[pemerton]

Funny enough, Reaping Strike actually rates pretty low as far as Fighter's at-wills go.

The character in question now has Footwork Lure (with Rushing Cleats) for Polearm Momentum/Deadly Draw style stuff, and Weaponmaster's Strike (? the one that lets you switch weapons) so he can switch easily between his polearm and his mordenkraad.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In the latest version of the playtest rules, when you get it (at 5th level) you can do it twice. And it goes up every level from there.

Yeah, and I imagine that the fireball is going to be a little less impressive as a result. Still, the fewer uses of a thing you have, the more it hurts to get rid of it, which means that DotM for limited resources is less dull than DotM for at-will resources. The more limited they are, the more true that is (3e: probably not limited enough; 1e: possibly limited enough; 5e: maybe limited enough?). Exactly where that switch flips is probably a pretty subjective call, but two extremes of the continuum are, "DotM: on every attack I make" and "DotM: Once per day," so I figured that'd be useful for illustration.

EDIT: Let me put it another way. I have played 4e with a fighter who used Reaping Strike. No one keeled over from boredom.

'course not. But if you want to play Dueling Anecdotes, we can be here all night. Some groups/players have a much higher threshold for tedium or a much lower threshold for loss than others. I like a game with significant swing, because it creates more interesting emotional highs and lows, and DotM at-will is crazy dull while DotM limited-resource is much less so. One works, the other doesn't. It doesn't have much to do with favoring a particular character type (spellcaster vs. non).

FURTHER EDIT: Let me put it yet another way. How many GMs tell the players the number of hp remaining? If the players don't know, then they don't know whether or not autodamage will suffice to kill a target.

Also, sometime damage dealt on a hit is enough to guarantee a kill even if minimum damage is rolled. In my experience, that actually happens quite a bit. But the elimination of that element of the gambling process of D&D, on that occasion, doesn't make anyone fall asleep either.

Well, minions (and the 5e-equivalent) become player knowledge pretty fast, and rounding off the last 2 hp or so isn't a significant swing for most games, so getting rid of it is mostly just accounting.

But none of that really removes the dullness of DotM at-will. In 4e, Magic Missile and Reaping Strike are both pretty milquetoast abilities. Which isn't what I really look for in a game.

And which also isn't to say that such things should not exist, just that for the default assumptions of the basic newbie-friendly game, they could probably do better.