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

[Fifth Element]

II understand what the designers see in it: a simple, mathematical mechanic to make the Fighter deal commensurate damage (commensurate with the idea of a Fighter being a bad ass)

That can't be it, because the feat comes from a theme, and themes are not tied to class. If they were trying to pump up the fighter's damage, presumably they'd do something with the fighter class rather than a theme that any class can take.

What I reject is the idea that a miss (not a "miss," not rolling low on the d20, but actually physically swiping your axe over the enemy's head) should result in a dead enemy on a regular basis. But the way Reaping Strike is described in the text, when you use it against a kobold or a rat or anything with only a couple hit points, this is exactly what happens. You miss the enemy--in the narrative sense, not the mechanical one--and it falls over dead.

If you don't want a narrative "miss" to kill an enemy, then don't describe the result of the Reaper feat as a miss! Rolling low on an attack does not require you to narrate the attack as a whiff.

 

[herrozerro]

I agree. What I am trying to say is that we are already at that point.

4E and Pathfinder have already pushed us to the point where differences in play style actually *are* deal-breakers for a lot of gamers (and potential buyers). They have already tried the "changing the way you think about D&D" design approach. I hope they try a more inclusive approach this time around.

that's actually kinda funny, inclusiveness doesn't mean "Exclude everything that the old school thinks is stupid".

 

[Drowbane]

IME, it varies from player to player. and the abstraction gives each player the option to do it as they please.

in the same game we had a barbarian who took the very literal flesh and blood path and a player who chose to play a sorcerer child who never took a "hit" ever (except the ones that actually took her down), playing it as luck and divine fortune.

I am fine with that abstraction. One of my favorite HP subsystems was from D20 SW. Vitality (HP) and Wound (effectively your Con). Attacks hit Vit until you were out of Vit, then you were out of luck and you started taking "real" damage. Crits bypassed Vit altogether (instead of multiplying or maximizing dmg).

 

[Fifth Element]

Seasons don't fear the Reaper, why should we?

 

[Drowbane]

that's actually kinda funny, inclusiveness doesn't mean "Exclude everything that the old school thinks is stupid".

[[MENTION=2885]diaglo[/MENTION]]OD&D (1974) is the one true edition!![/diaglo]

 

[CleverNickName]

that's actually kinda funny, inclusiveness doesn't mean "Exclude everything that the old school thinks is stupid".

Hmm...I can see how my posts could have been interpreted that way. Sorry about that.

I do not think the designers should cater to any one particular "school" of gamer. Instead, I think they should leave the storytelling stuff (such as what is/is not a miss, or the nature of hit points, and so forth) up to the DM, and stick to the rules mechanics.

From a game mechanics point of view: an attack roll fails to meet the required value to deal damage to a target. The DM reduces the target's hit point value anyway. I think we all understand why some people have a problem with that.

 

[El Mahdi]

...you see slapstick but thats a failure of your own narrative.

No. He sees a failure of the narrative of the ability.

And I think you may want to start paying closer attention to how you're saying things. Most people consider it rude to make personal statements about what you think they are failing at or not. Rudeness is something that's not acceptable under ENWorld's rules.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

So an attack that misses but causes an enemy to dodge out of the way in a foolhardy manner, accidentally cracking his skull on a table/knocking himself unconscious on a door/impaling himself on a spike/tumbling off a cliff/stabbing himself with his own dagger, etc., despite being perfectly plausible, a staple of fantasy fight scenes, and obedient to the rules structure, is completely unacceptable in your mind and has no place in D&D?

Really?

My main problem here is it presumes incompetence on the part of the defender when such incompetence is not a given. Our 1st level ability whether against a lowly kobold or an epic level combatant, they are still taking x hps damage from a "miss" and they are still possibly being killed by it. There are too many corner cases here where this simply will not make sense in the game. That this foolhardiness, clumsiness, accidental happenstance, and self-inflicting incompetence happens around this guy so consistently makes it unbelievable in the long run.

Fine for an advanced wahoo module for those like you who love this sort of stuff and for those who it does not bother, but please not in the core rules where it is defining such play for everyone.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[herrozerro]

No. He sees a failure of the narrative of the ability.

no, he is choosing to see something that is not implied. The Slayer is so ferocious in his attacks that even his misses damage your physical/Luck/Mystical defenses.

I don't know how you get slapstick out of that unless you choose to see it that way.

 

[Fifth Element]

My main problem here is it presumes incompetence on the part of the defender when such incompetence is not a given.

You could choose to describe some of these attacks as incompetence on the part of the defender. But you can also describe it as competence on the part of the attacker. And hey, you can mix and match as desired, you're not tied to one narrative description that must be used in every case.