D&D 5E Poll on the Reaper: is damage on missed melee attack roll believable and balanced?

[Dannager]

Common Sense

Is a rhetorical crutch. Use your words.

 

[CleverNickName]

I was actually thinking more relevantly: How To play Document pg. 12:

"Your hit points represent a combination of several factors. They include your physical durability and overall health, your speed and agility to avoid harm. They also account for luck, divine favor and other mystic factors.
In short, hit points are an abstraction. While you are at or above half your hit points, you show no signs of injury. At less than half your hit points, you have acquired a few cuts or bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points or fewer strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simple knocks you unconscious."

Emphasis mine. In short according to this document, which might i remind you all goes with this game we are play testing. HP is an abstraction, a PC might never be actually hit until that 0 of fewer blow. Relying on luck alone or perhaps divine fortune keeps all attacks from hitting a character until the god's fortune runs out.

I don't disagree on any particular point except the first one. This is a playtest, not a published set of rules (yet)...so I think both definitions are equally relevant.

I hope the designers of D&D Next agree.

 

[El Mahdi]

It's a miss on the main attack. But the Slayer is just so good at fighting, they can at least salvage a little damage. And face it, the amount of damage is tiny (compared to what they can do with an actual hit). This probably would be getting a lot less complaints if people weren't fighting 2hp kobolds.

That's an assumption that may be true for some people, but not for all. It's usually a mistake to assume one knows what people's reasons are unless they've been stated.

I do not care that it's killing 2 point kobolds. I dislike the concept* as is, period...just as I disliked this with 4E. It makes no difference to me if it's 2 hit point kobolds, or a 200 hit point dragon


*(it's not the damage itself that I have a problem with, but the marriage of mechanics and fluff that are present in this concept)

 

[herrozerro]

Common Sense

HP is common sense?

Using a mechanic that can represent: Physical, Luck or other mystical durability and your saying that someone who misses physically cant damage the other three?

maybe it was a miss because that character used up some of his luck or mystical defenses dodging the fury of the slayer.

 

[Drowbane]

In our PF game that recently died, the DM tried to introduce something like this for *everybody* and it didn't take. It lasted one or two sessions and was never heard from again (everybody deals a d4 dmg on a miss).

In my opinion, this is a silly ability, one that I would expect to see on a 4e character sheet. 4e wasn't for me, so perhaps 5e in this vein isn't for me either.

1e (actually every other edition of D&D, including 4e) fighter vs kobold: if the fighter hit, he probably killed it. He never killed it on a *miss*.

 

[Dannager]

In our PF game that recently died, the DM tried to introduce something like this for *everybody* and it didn't take. It lasted one or two sessions and was never heard from again (everybody deals a d4 dmg on a miss).

In my opinion, this is a silly ability, one that I would expect to see on a 4e character sheet. 4e wasn't for me, so perhaps 5e in this vein isn't for me either.

1e (actually every other edition of D&D, including 4e) fighter vs kobold: if the fighter hit, he probably killed it. He never killed it on a *miss*.

Okay. Any reasons for this, or just "It's silly cuz I think it's silly"?

 

[El Mahdi]

HP is common sense?

Using a mechanic that can represent: Physical, Luck or other mystical durability and your saying that someone who misses physically cant damage the other three?

maybe it was a miss because that character used up some of his luck or mystical defenses dodging the fury of the slayer.

Hit Points make as much sense as possible. It's an abstract quantification that is used because the alternative is usually much more complicated and slower to adjudicate.

The fluff that goes with the Reaper damage does not make as much sense as possible. It could be easily fixed by the designers, and should not require customers to "change the text" to make it palatable.

 

[herrozerro]

Hit Points make as much sense as possible. It's an abstract quantification that is used because the alternative is usually much more complicated and slower to adjudicate.

The fluff that goes with the Reaper damage does not make as much sense as possible. It could be easily fixed by the designers, and should not require customers to "change the text" to make it palatable.

Eh, I think we are gonig to have to agree to disagree. I think it makes sense, and you dont. I dont know how else to argue, your just cemented in your ways.

 

[Dannager]

The fluff that goes with the Reaper damage does not make as much sense as possible.

It makes all the sense it needs to make. God this is a stupid thing to argue over. You were just posting in another thread that D&D Next is allowing people with multiple playstyles and expectations to play at the same table, and you called it a good thing. Now you're saying that a particular character option being in the game is going to destroy the experience for you? If you don't like it, don't use it.

It could be easily fixed by the designers, and should not require customers to "change the text" to make it palatable.

It's only unpalatable to a certain subset of players. Personally, I do not find the rationale behind those players' preferences defensible. In the absence of the ability to defend their preferences in a playtest environment where important design decisions must be made, I believe their preferences should be marginalized. If that means that those players become disenfranchised, it's nothing to cry over; pleasing everyone is not a worthwhile goal when it necessitates the creative dilution of your product.

The best part is they won't be able to claim they had no input this time around.

 

[Minigiant]

I play a lot of fighting games. I have no problem with believability with someone being knocked out or even killed while defending themselves.

When you have a chip of life, there is a good chance the other guy moves close for a Shoryu Reppa or Shinkuu Hadoken.

Plus in my wilder days, I've seen many dudes block attacks and still go down or get hurt noses. And blocked kicks still hurt. Blocked punches too.