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

[herrozerro]

It hadn't occurred to me that your objection (or anyone else's) was that the ability is unbalanced. I don't see that at all. Assuming that 3/5 of attacks hit (that is roughy the ratio in 4e), then 3 damage per miss is the statistical equivalent of a +2 damage bonus. I don't think that's game breaking at all!

That's bothered me as well, not even on the wotc forums is anyone even really talking about the balance, just whether they like it or not.

 

[urLordy]

IME, once you start expanding the circle of mechanics beyond just the sword-swings themselves, I have often run into what I would call inconsistencies (the healing spell titles perhaps being the most readily demonstrable.) How bad and precisely what these are has varied a bit from edition to edition. "Deft narration" can solve some of the problems, but often the key seems to be "narration avoidance", which is what I was referring to upthread by learning to "not see" some of D&D's problems. When mechanics are encouraging me to avoid narration or narrative consistency...it irks me. D&D has these issues baked in at a very fundamental level, but since its what everyone plays...I've sorta made my peace with it. (That's part of why I found this thread so entertaining as a spectator....a lil' bit of schadenfreude, I guess.)

I agree with you that the healing spells are just inconsistent.

I mostly had 4e in mind, but even then I think there is at least one circumstance that can come up which I think you would count as inconsistent or narration-avoidance, to do with the prone ooze or snake.

(emphases mine) So what do you guys think encourages and discourages narration avoidance or inconsistency across the different editions? And are there lessons to apply in D&D Next?

My feeling is that outcome-based mechanics (which are readily embraced in 4E) either induce more narration avoidance or not any less so than in previous editions.

Hit rolls, damage and hit points are common to all editions -- so I don't know that any one edition can discourage narration inconsistency in that respect. Cure spells, of course, too, which we all admit. There was always some narration avoidance in corner cases of sneak attack, evasion, fireballs that may or may not set things on fire -- and I would truly enjoy if the D&D Next continued to encourage the gaming table to consider fictional positioning in such cases.

But in a standard combat with outcome-based powers, where players are in zoomed out 3rd person perspective, and a player uses a fiat ability, and it's not explicit why/what process occured, isn't that easily narration avoidance or inconsistency? Bob hits on a miss and imagines the greatsword clipping the pixie, but John imagines the pixie's exhaustion flitting aside, and Betty and Sally and Ebert don't imagine anything at all. But they can't come to a shared hallucination, because Bob and John have different visions, and Betty considers both ideas to be ludicrous so she ignores it, and Sally and Ebert simply don't care as it's not their roleplaying stance and why should they care because nothing in gameplay induces them to care otherwise.

I don't have a real conclusion to any of this. If D&D is a confused animal that isn't quite self-aware of what its design goals are, then I'm equally confused if -- objectively, outside of my personal preferences -- designing mechanics like hit-on-miss is supposed to further those undeclared design goals or not, other than just some WoTC designer thinking that's a cool mechanic.

 

[Celebrim]

That's bothered me as well, not even on the wotc forums is anyone even really talking about the balance, just whether they like it or not.

A mechanic can be debated on multiple levels. It's effect on game balance is just one of them. As a Gamist mechanic, I wouldn't expect there to be much debate over the mechanics game balance. Even from a simulationist perspective, this isn't a mechanic that is 'unbalanced'. Simulationist are primarily concerned with balance in the sense of, "Does the presence of the mechanic cause running the Sim to diverge from the thing it ostensibly simulates?" So Simulationists are going to likely be more worried about say low level access to invisibility, flight, and fireball - and whether or not there are available counter-measures - than 'hit on a miss'.

 

[Celebrim]

(emphases mine) So what do you guys think encourages and discourages narration avoidance or inconsistency across the different editions?

There are several things you want to avoid, but one of the big ones is a mechanic that causes the same outcome regardless of the fictional positioning. 'Hit on a miss' is just such a mechanic. These mechanics are 'absolute'. They usually involve no fortune roll, or they pay only binary attention to the fortune roll in a case where the fortune roll is actually determining degree of success. They just tell you what must happen.

One that isn't obvious but which I try to be really careful about is immunity to X. If you want to give a creature 'Immunity: Fire', it's almost always a smarter move to give it 'Fire Resistance 100'. If you want to make something 'Unbreakable', it's almost always better to give it something like 'Hardness: 200'. Quantifying things like that gives you answers to questions like, "What happens when an unbreakable object meets an irresistible force?" It means that the DM has already considered what sort of fictional positioning might cause him to reconsider the objects 'unbreakability'. It means that say a fire elemental can potentially be burned by a 20th level Pyromancer, that a frost giant can be frozen in the Well of Utter Cold, or that the God of Smashing Things can smash even things that are presumed to be unbreakable. Or, that he can't; but, either way you don't have to rely on fiat rulings.

In short, you want a mechanic that takes into account the 'edge cases' and the possible range of fictional positioning right from the start. I mean, as a guy that does lean toward process simulation, I'm judging rules by the same sort of standards that I'm judging good computer code. Did the designer think to check for zero before attempting to perform division? If posting actuals to an accounting system, did the designer think to check if the date was beyond the present? If the designer is designing a handicapping/rating system for a competitive game, did he think to include a ceiling on the handicap so that small result sets (awesome performance on one game being the only game in the reviewed time frame) don't produce insane results (this one game is used to assess the player as best in the world). And so forth. If the designer doesn't seem to have given much thought to what the algorithm actually represents, and to the inputs it can receive, and to the outputs it ought to give in extreme cases, guess what... I don't think much of his design.

 

[Kobold Stew]

There are several things you want to avoid, but one of the big ones is a mechanic that causes the same outcome regardless of the fictional positioning. 'Hit on a miss' is just such a mechanic. These mechanics are 'absolute'. They usually involve no fortune roll, or they pay only binary attention to the fortune roll in a case where the fortune roll is actually determining degree of success. They just tell you what must happen.

This is a thoughtful post, and you present some good ideas. I simply do not see them as being relevant to the Heavy Weapons fighter.

As you know well, it's not "hit on a miss". It's damage on a miss, in certain circumstances. There is still a hit-state and a miss-state; the HW ability allows for a different result on the miss-state than otherwise. Nor is the result "absolute": damage done is determined by one or two rolls of the dice (to attack, weapon damage if a hit).

The character attacks, and if she hits, she does damage (weapon and bonuses). If she misses, she does not do damage with the weapon, and so also misses out on many of the potential bonuses available. Instead, the damage done in the miss-state is dependent upon the build of the specific character, and will be less for a character with a lower strength. Everything is conditional upon the fiction, and the result is always dependent upon randomizing elements.

So:
same outcome regardless of the fictional positioning? No.
mechanics are 'absolute'? No.
involve no fortune roll? No.
tell you what must happen? No, other than there will be some minimal damage from a pool of points thart represent a combination of physical and other resources (assuming the attacker has at least Strength 12).

 

[urLordy]

same outcome regardless of the fictional positioning? No.

If you have 12 heroes of various skills and calibre against an undeclared enemy, only the fighter hero with the heavy weapon is guaranteed/predestined to inflict some measure of loss to the enemy. Regardless of the relative qualities of the attackers and defender, the one and only variable for fictional positioning is binary: the absence or presence of heavy weapon expertise. The rule is blind to fictional positioning such as the qualities of the target creature or the exclusively direct correlation between a heavy weapon and that particular fictional outcome.

Now let's pretend the theoretical rule was: If you use a heavy weapon, once per encounter you may roll to attack against the target's touch AC. The idea is that the fighter may summon the strength to bring that weapon crunch through any hide or armour. Two outcomes are the same regardless of the fictional positioning: that the fighter can only summon sufficient strength to do so only once per combat, and that the fighter can do so regardless of whether it's leather or platemail or dragonscale or adamantium shield. OTOH, the outcome does respect the fictional positioning that a heavy weapon can only damage a creature if it physically contacts the creature's body as abstracted by the attack roll. (Again, this is just a theoretical rule for illustration purposes.)

Back to the always damage on a miss, the only way that the rule's outcome can respect the fictional positioning is to pre-declare that in any combat that occurs during that fighter's "onscreen" battles, the heavy weapon always physically contact every enemy or always depletes the enemy's stamina, and that the heavy weapon fighter will never encounter an enemy that cannot be physically contacted or have its stamina depleted so, and there will be no other heroes in the story not wielding a heavy weapon who can guarantee to inflict the same. The entire fiction in the minds of all the players must therefore be controlled/limited in order to protect the fictional integrity of the rule, and all that is caused by one little rule in one subset of one class.

I could imagine something mythical like a fighter born with the destiny that "When thou wieldeth a greatsword, thou shalt never fail to harm thine enemy" and that this manifest destiny shall come to be true by the power of the gods, but it would be tiresome to imagine this every time a player chooses the heavy weapon fighting style for their PC.

 

[Iosue]

Back to the always damage on a miss, the only way that the rule's outcome can respect the fictional positioning is to pre-declare that in any combat that occurs during that fighter's "onscreen" battles, the heavy weapon always physically contact every enemy or always depletes the enemy's stamina, and that the heavy weapon fighter will never encounter an enemy that cannot be physically contacted or have its stamina depleted so, and there will be no other heroes in the story not wielding a heavy weapon who can guarantee to inflict the same. The entire fiction in the minds of all the players must therefore be controlled/limited in order to protect the fictional integrity of the rule, and all that is caused by one little rule in one subset of one class.

I just don't see this. The rule gives damage if an enemy can take damage. Just like every HP-depleting option in the game. If the enemy cannot have their HP depleted, then the mechanic will not deplete their HP.

All damage in D&D, in every edition, is narrative-independent. There are no called shots, no hit locations. It falls to the DM to narrate the effect of any HP loss in the game, to the degree that they want to. There's nothing that makes this mechanic any different in that regard. How do you narrate a "critical hit" that only takes away a third of the opponent's remaining HP? How do you narrate a damage roll of 1 that kills an opponent?

So one time the fighter misses with the sword but is able to get a glancing elbow in. Another time the opponent avoids the hit just enough so it's only a light scratch. Another time it's a strained muscle avoiding a blow. Still another time it's not even any physical injury -- the GWF totally whiffs, but avoiding the blow just used up a little bit of the opponent's luck.

If the GWF can hit it and do damage, then he can miss and do a much less amount, and any other character that can deal damage and damage it just as well. Unless you try to make a monster that only the GWF can damage on a miss: AC higher than anyone's prof and magic bonuses, immune to all magic, etc. And if you're going through all that trouble, just give the creature damage resistance 5. Boom. Not even a GWF with 20 STR can damage it on a miss.

 

[Celebrim]

This is a thoughtful post, and you present some good ideas. I simply do not see them as being relevant to the Heavy Weapons fighter.

As you know well, it's not "hit on a miss". It's damage on a miss, in certain circumstances.

Nonetheless, regardless of the 'to hit' roll - the primary fortune mechanic of combat - the target receives the positive fortune - damage is inflicted. The outcome, regardless of fictional positioning, is therefore either 'success' or 'more success'. The fortune is always positive, the only thing that varies is degree of success.

(D&D is a bit unusual in that it doesn't normally tie degree of success to the fortune mechanic directly, and instead relies on a second 'damage' die. This sort of 'do you succeed', 'if so, by how much", logic occurs in several areas of the rules.)

So:
same outcome regardless of the fictional positioning? No.
mechanics are 'absolute'? No.
involve no fortune roll? No.
tell you what must happen? No, other than there will be some minimal damage from a pool of points thart represent a combination of physical and other resources (assuming the attacker has at least Strength 12).

I answer these questions completely differently:

Success regardless of fictional positioning: Yes.
Mechanic is absolute: See above.
Involves a no fortune roll: No. But outcome of fortune roll determines only degree of success. Therefore, fortune roll involves automatic success.
Tells you what must happen: Yes. Regardless of outcome of fortune role, the result of a proposed attack is always that the target receives some minimally impactful blow. This violates are intuitive understanding that an attack is a risky proposition.

 

[urLordy]

All damage in D&D, in every edition, is narrative-independent. There are no called shots, no hit locations. It falls to the DM to narrate the effect of any HP loss in the game, to the degree that they want to.

I'm not sure I understand this. Damage is not narrative-independant to everyone, as long as they idealize a correlation. For example, the hp-as-meat crowd. Note that in the Q&A, in answer to the question "what is happening in the game world when a PC damages on a miss", Rodney gave a "hp-as-meat" answer. So even the official Q&A kinda contradicts your comment?

I'm sure a good system might encourage everyone to view hit points as 100% meta, but D&D Next is not that system, giving so many conflicting signals and incohesion.
IOW, D&D doesn't objectively state that damage is "narrative-independant", nor does it state it's not, because the system doesn't even know it itself. All conclusions are therefore subjective AFAICT.

There's nothing that makes this mechanic any different in that regard. How do you narrate a "critical hit" that only takes away a third of the opponent's remaining HP? How do you narrate a damage roll of 1 that kills an opponent?

Yes, yes, yes, everyone here AFAICT admits that D&D's core has incohesion like that. The ONLY question is to add more of the same, or quarantine what's there as a sacred cow and stop adding to it.

Like if there's a vanilla ice cream with chocolate in the centre, then the vanilla lovers want more vanilla, and the chocolate lovers say, "Look, you're already eating chocolate, so why can't we have some chocolate chips on the outside" and the vanilla lovers worry about the choco-invasion changing the overall taste of the ice cream, and the vanila lovers say enough with the chocolate chips, we got used to it but we don't want more, and the choco-lovers are confused why because of the core chocolate. So when do we stop comparing the chocolate core to the new proposed chocolate chips and start accepting the choco/vanilla conflicts and start asking how do we deal with this chocolate vanilla mess.

And if you're going through all that trouble, just give the creature damage resistance 5. Boom.

Won't that boom have ripple effects on the mechanics? Now the regular non-heavy weapon fighters have to subtract 5 damage from their attacks? All because of the one heavy weapon fighter. Sounds like a terrible idea.

 

[Iosue]

Won't that boom have ripple effects on the mechanics? Now the regular non-heavy weapon fighters have to subtract 5 damage from their attacks? All because of the one heavy weapon fighter. Sounds like a terrible idea.

What 5 damage from their attacks? It already has an AC higher than anyone's prof's and other bonuses. It literally can't be hit.