Rant on d20

[mmadsen]

I fear that efforts to "correct" the D&D combat system, while laudable--seems destined to add levels of complexity and time-consuming details to the game that will ultimately bog it down, and make it less attractive to play.

Agreed -- to an extent. It's certainly easier to "kluge" on some new rules where you see a problem (and thus add complexity) than it is to come up with an elegant solution.

As I said before, "The key is to make injuries dramatic and interesting without making the game more complex. People are playing D&D because they don't want bookkeeping -- except to track gp, xp, spell slots, wand charges, arrows, healing potions..."

I think higher ACs and lower Hit Points could achieve some of what we're looking for without adding any complexity. Combined with armor-as-DR and widened Crit Threat Ranges, that could achieve a lot -- all without introducing extra chart & tables, multiplication and division during gameplay, etc.

 

[Psion]

I think higher ACs and lower Hit Points could achieve some of what we're looking for without adding any complexity.

Yeah, but you do that, and then you increase the "wiff factor." Players get annoyed because they continually miss. At least with HP, they feel they are making progress.

There is a lot more to HP than meets the eye.

 

[mmadsen]

Yeah, but you do that, and then you increase the "wiff factor." Players get annoyed because they continually miss. At least with HP, they feel they are making progress.

The "whiff factor" and the "lumberjack factor" are opposite sides of the same coin. Miss too often, and nothing seems to happen. Hit too often, and combat feels like chopping down a tree -- twenty-some sword blows to take down a high-level Fighter.

Realize that D&D moves along the whiff-lumberjack continuum as the party advances from low level to high level. If AC naturally kept up with BAB, and Hit Points didn't advance at all (or just kept up with Damage increases), then a fight between medium-level Fighters would feel like a fight between higher-level or lower-level Fighters. As it stands, the game progresses from a fight of a few good shots to a lumberjack contest of dozens of easy-to-make shots.

GURPS is often presented as the example of the "whiff factor", and I have to point out that it uses a very different mechanic from AC, one that guarantees "whiffing" at high level (or high point values). In GURPS, an attack roll isn't againt AC or Defense or anything else. It's against a fixed DC. So skilled attackers always "hit". Then the defender gets a Defense roll, also against a fixed DC. At high levels, of course, the defender almost never misses his Defense roll -- so none of those potential hits turn into actual hits.

As I said before, if AC naturally kept up with BAB, then two high-level Fighters would hit each other as often as two lower-level Fighters hit each other -- hardly "whiffing".

 

[Wolfen Priest]

Addressing the wiff-lumberjack axis, in real life terms:

Have you ever seen a fistfight between two really inexperienced, young, or generally ineffective opponents? They both suck. No one really gets hurt. You see a lot of 'defensive' maneuvers, and generally a lot of wiff.

Have you ever seen a real fistfight between two strong, experienced, or generally powerful combatants? By and large, you see lots of blood. Lots of pain. Their attacks are usually much more brutal and effective than the wimps. Hockey brawls are a decent (though not perfect) guideline to look at. Look at those guys! They're often just like lumberjacks chopping down the tree, until one of them 'breaks' and goes down.

Pretty good analogy, no?

 

[mmadsen]

Pretty good analogy, no?

Not really. Compare a "tough man" competition to a professional boxing bout. The amateurs throw big bombs, generally miss, but often rock each other. The professionals throw tight, crisp jabs from a defensive posture, generally miss, and very rarely find an opening for a fight-ending overhand right.

People enjoy watching unskilled fighters and mismatches because the fighters don't have sophisticated defenses. They go for blood, and they don't have the skill to protect themselves.

GURPS actually emulates this fairly well. Two novices flail at each other, often missing, rarely blocking an accurate shot, while two expert fencers go at it forever before drawing first blood.

As Psion pointed out though, if every combat is full of "whiffs", it's no fun, and GURPS, as a game, falls apart at higher levels; experienced fighters never hit each other. An opposed roll (instead of two fixed-DC rolls) avoids this problem -- and some of its benefits. It doesn't stress the system to the breaking point at higher levels, but it also doesn't give the flavor of two novices flailing while two experts coolly defend every attack. It does avoid the "lumberjack" effect though.

 

[LostSoul]

Pretty good analogy, no?

Nobody really gets hurt in a hockey fight. Usually it's over when one guy loses his footing and the refs have to break it up. You don't usually see a guy lying on the ice unconcious after the fight.

 

[Wolfen Priest]

Some of the greatest boxing matches of all time (like Muhammed Ali vs. Joe Phrasier (sp?)) involved tons of devastating blows. The defense is there, but not in enough quantity to withstand the powerful offense each fighter possesses.

Usually, good fighters have better offenses than defense. The result is that the last man standing is the victor, which is why high-level fights very often end in knock-outs.

It's the fly-weights that 'box' defensively all day, and their offense is low enough that no one really gets hurt as often as the heavyweights.

This all adds up to the general fact that superior fighters usually win by having superior offense, and more hit points, so to speak. I just don't see how you can deny that the hp is actually pretty realistic...

 

[mmadsen]

Some of the greatest boxing matches of all time (like Muhammed Ali vs. Joe Phrasier (sp?)) involved tons of devastating blows.

Ali-Frazier is considered one of the greatest boxing matches of all time because of how unusual it is to throw and land that many power punches in a single bout. In fact, CompuBox lists that fight as the record holder for Total Punches Landed (Ali, 443), Total Power [Punches] Landed (Ali, 365), and Total Power [Punches] Thrown (Ali, 712) in a heavyweight bout by a fighter. It's also the record holder for totals by both fighters combined: Total Punches Landed (797), Total Power [Punches] Landed (702), Total Power [Punches] Thrown (1339).

Here's what CompuBox had to say about the recent Barrera-Morales fight:

The fight was too close to call and the final stats showed why. Morales landed 205 of his 599 total punches (34%)(he threw 868 in the first right) to 207 of 608 (34%) for Barrera, who threw 618 in the first meeting. Morales had the edge in the power punch department, landing 135 of 334 (40%) to 117 of 329 (35%) for Barrera.

It's interesting to note that skilled boxers miss two thirds of the time -- when fighting another skilled boxer.

But that's boxing, not D&D.

 

[TiQuinn]

Hockey? Ali-Frazier?

The basic problem with trying to inject too much realism into a game is that there will always be somebody smarter than you who comes along with a physics book and refutes something you say or do simply because it is not realistic.

Far better to just nip in the bud as soon as it starts and forget about the realism. It's a fantasy game, not a simulation.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Re: Rant on d20

It's a fantasy game, not a simulation.

Let's just replace the combat system with a hand of poker then. Poker's a fun game with well-established game balance.

Really, what do we want out of a combat system? A number of things, and a number of different things for different people, obviously, but some of the biggies:

• Emulates heroic action: feels like an action story
• Good gameplay: fast, simple, balanced, etc.

Heroic action certainly drifts away from reality, but it is grounded in the visual of two guys facing off with swords (or whatever). We don't want wanton unreality. We're only willing to suffer unreality where it matches heroic action conventions (our hero can take on hordes of scrubs, he can shoot an arrow off his son's head, etc.) or where more reality would cost us too much gameplay.