D&D 5E (2014) Q&A 10/17/13 - Crits, Damage on Miss, Wildshape

[Mistwell]

We used this ability a lot last night in our session. And while I've spoken out in this thread in favor of it, my group called it "a bit cheesy" and "doesn't feel right". So, I'll be against it in my final package survey.

 

[pemerton]

I reject the notion of 'damage on a miss' as an absolute concept because it only makes sense in some situations.

<snip>

saying, "Regardless of how hard it is to connect with the target, you still manage to do tissue damage.", is not something I can accept.

there are two ways to defend against an attack. You can either block it, or you can simply evade it

<snip>

if we apply the mechanic, "The attack does damage on a miss", it forces the color. In order to explain the mechanic, we must use the color that the attack found its mark and was only partially blocked.

I don't mind damage on a "miss", at all. It can serve to illustrate the normal "fatigue" incurred during combat

D'karr has the answer here. It has never been part of D&D that hit point loss is nothing but tissue damage - it has always been possible to lose hp to fatigue and exhaustion, for instance. And evading an attack can certainly be fatiguing.

There are people who are OK with disassociated mechanics. But these people don't actually need disassociated mechanics, they are fine with either associated or disassociated.

And there are people who are NOT OK with disassociated mechanics. The weaker the association, the more people dislike the game.

An intelligent designer should immediately understand that associated mechanics are better, because they don't alienate anybody, while disassociated mechanics always alienate someone and should be avoided.

Disassociated mechanics (or week, poor associations) really spoil the fun of a lot of people, while associated mechanics do not spoil anyone's fun.

Are you actually asserting that there are no people for whom the absence of process simulation mechanics (what you are calling "associated" mechanics) is a selling point in an RPG?

From WotC's point of view, I would have thought they would want to retain at least some of that pool of 4e players who are likely to migrate to 13th Age (which takes "dealing damage on a miss" and dials it up to 11).

This is a trick to be aware of: you loved it because it boosted your PC. It's like extra sugar in your donut, you love it when you eat it, one day you'll wake up with diabetes. It's a cheap trick by RPG designers to make characters appear ever slightly more powerful than before. It's understandable, they have to market every edition or revision as "better" than before, and power creep gives you the illusion by mixing up "better game" with "more powerful characters".

This is just bizarre.

There are RPGs in which casters can fail to cast their spells. D&D has never been one of them - casting success is automatic. Has that led all players of casters to gain diabetes? Giving the player of the fighter the power to declare "I deal damage - let's roll the dice to see whether it's a lot (W+STR) or a litte (STR only)" is no different from giving the player of a wizard the power to declare "I cast a spell - now you roll the dice to see whether I get max effect (failed save) or min effect (successful save)". I think we could assume that in both cases it might be possible, in the fictional world, for something to go wrong - for instance, presumably the wizard could forget his/her words of power at the last minute, or suddenly cough or sneeze - but we don't both to try to model that in our mechanics.

Another well-known rule from which it is no different is "taking 10". The SRD tells us that "When your character is not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10." We don't both to roll to see if your character suddenly coughs or sneezes and therefore plummets from tightrope to his/her doom. Some possibilities aren't worth modelling in our mechanics.

Damage on a miss is no different from any of these.

 

[Celebrim]

D'karr has the answer here. It has never been part of D&D that hit point loss is nothing but tissue damage...

I've got the 1e DMG. I can quote the relevant text. I'm familiar with 1e mechanics. I believe you are wrong. Hit points loss has always represented more than tissue damage, but it has never been divorced from tissue damage. In other words, each bit of damage has always represented a wound of some sort, but lost hit points incorporate more than just the physical wound - but always at least some physical wound.

The 1e DMG explanation of hit points is well worth reading in full, but for the purposes of this discussion the most important point is this:

"Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and six sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts, and bruises. It will require a long period of reset and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points."

I'm sorry, but speaking quite frankly, your description of how hit points have always been looks NOTHING like hit points have always been, and is a description that became popular only when rationalizes changes to 4e healing mechanics.

- it has always been possible to lose hp to fatigue and exhaustion, for instance. And evading an attack can certainly be fatiguing.

To the extent that I accept that it is possible to lose h.p. to fatigue and exhaustion, it has never been the case that hit points lost to fatigue and exhaustion are both the ordinary hit points that track wounds (instead of say non-lethal damage) AND also represent mere ordinary fatigue in the sense of being 'out of breath'. When a player takes actual damage from fatigue and exhaustion, such as on a forced march, it is not at all clear to me that the reason for the loss of hit points - above and beyond a mere 'fatigued' condition - is not actual tissue damage - blistered feet, bleeding sores, torn muscles, etc. Merely being 'out of breath' as you might get from a non-wounding combat or any other aerobic exercise and being temporarily tired is not hit point damage, because characters recover from that condition far faster than they do from the sort that involves receiving wounds. In point of fact, in 1e forced marches and similar sources of exhaustion weren't modeled by hit point loss, but by (in essence) level drain. And exhaustion was not recovered or cured in the same way or rate as damage from wounds. Simple fatigue unaccompanied by wounds has never been a source of hit point loss.

There are RPGs in which casters can fail to cast their spells. D&D has never been one of them - casting success is automatic.

This is not true. AD&D 1e had a variety of rules for spell failure, they were just generally ignored.

 

[pemerton]

I've got the 1e DMG. I can quote the relevant text. I'm familiar with 1e mechanics. I believe you are wrong.

What tissue do you think was being damaged when someone lost hp due to psionic attack? Or even Phantasmal Killer?

To the extent that I accept that it is possible to lose h.p. to fatigue and exhaustion, it has never been the case that hit points lost to fatigue and exhaustion are both the ordinary hit points that track wounds (instead of say non-lethal damage) AND also represent mere ordinary fatigue in the sense of being 'out of breath'. When a player takes actual damage from fatigue and exhaustion, such as on a forced march, it is not at all clear to me that the reason for the loss of hit points - above and beyond a mere 'fatigued' condition - is not actual tissue damage - blistered feet, bleeding sores, torn muscles, etc.

If you go that way - and I do not think that's the most natural reading of the hunger and thirst rules in the WSG - then evading an attack could certainly cause a torn muscle.

This is not true. AD&D 1e had a variety of rules for spell failure, they were just generally ignored.

A spell could fail if interrupted. There were no rules for it failing due to the caster sneezing (unless the sneeze was caused by a magical effect).

 

[Li Shenron]

Are you actually asserting that there are no people for whom the absence of process simulation mechanics (what you are calling "associated" mechanics) is a selling point in an RPG?

From WotC's point of view, I would have thought they would want to retain at least some of that pool of 4e players who are likely to migrate to 13th Age (which takes "dealing damage on a miss" and dials it up to 11).

I simply meant that it's hard to believe that there are people who actively do not want mechanics associated in general with narrative.

That there are fans of specific mechanics, which happened to be disassociated or weekly disassociated, and these fans absolutely want those mechanics in the game, is a different thing. They love the mechanic because of how it works, but again it's hard to believe that they love it because it is disassociated, I'd rather think they would love it anyway even if it was associated.

Damage on a miss is no different from any of these.

It's not different in the sense that it's just another donut, but my metaphore was that each single donut doesn't make you sick, it's the total that slowly will.

 

[pemerton]

I simply meant that it's hard to believe that there are people who actively do not want mechanics associated in general with narrative.

Damage on a miss is "associated with the narrative". The narrative is that this fighter is so unrelenting that every round of combat with him/her wears an opponent down.

 

[Tovec]

What tissue do you think was being damaged when someone lost hp due to psionic attack? Or even Phantasmal Killer?

Presumably whatever caused Neo's mouth to bleed, "Your mind makes it real."

But as far as the meat of that? Don't know. Doesn't seem to resemble exhaustion though.

If you go that way - and I do not think that's the most natural reading of the hunger and thirst rules in the WSG - then evading an attack could certainly cause a torn muscle.

Oh, how so? How is it that you get the torn muscle damage.. equal to 3 every time the fighter swings and misses.
Oh, and it also somehow damages constructs who lack muscles? And oozes, plants, elementals, creatures without discernible/critable/sneak attackable anatomy in general - can get torn muscles from the fighter swinging a greatsword and missing?

You could mix that with the "he hits your armor and bruises you" but then (again) you are just making up rationalizations for something that doesn't currently make sense by the existing rules and mechanics of the game.

At the very least we should have various restrictions to how this "hits" to deal the 3 damage. Model it as non-lethal damage would be a great thing to add to the list (I think it was KS' or Salamandyr's).

But I'm still waiting for why the things you are all describing don't work and make sense already as other mechanics and interactions. And specifically how they are supposed to work with those half dozen or so mechanics without creating new problems in believability.

 

[pemerton]

you are just making up rationalizations for something that doesn't currently make sense by the existing rules and mechanics of the game

Speak for yourself. It makes perfect sense to me. As per my post 146, "this fighter is so unrelenting that every round of combat with him/her wears an opponent down".

Also, by "existing rules and mechanics of the game" I assume that you are excluding 4e, which has had this sort of effect from the beginning, and also 13th Age, a recently released D&D variant that also has this sort of effect baked into its core.

 

[Li Shenron]

Damage on a miss is "associated with the narrative". The narrative is that this fighter is so unrelenting that every round of combat with him/her wears an opponent down.

Yeah I understand that... You can always find an association if you want. So when I say "disassociated" I may not mean something strictly/technically/scientifically. I just mean that the association used (at least so far) is not strong enough, and still makes the mechanically feel disassociated. The fact that this is subjective doesn't make it unimportant.

 

[pemerton]

The fact that this is subjective doesn't make it unimportant.

I'm not denying that it is unimportant for you. My point is that you have claimed that there are no players who prioritise being able to play an unrelenting fighter over process simulation in mechanics. I don't think that is true - for instance, I regard myself as a counterexample.

It may be that you are projecting from your own preferences to the player base as a whole - I don't know. But if you think there is no one who wants this mechanic, how do you account for the fact that, in 13th Age, it is generalised across the whole game?