D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

I think this is pretty common - Save for Half is, essentially, identical to Damage on a Miss - the only difference is who rolls the dice

And what type of effect in fiction is causing it.

 

[Gimby]

And what type of effect in fiction is causing it.

No, not at all. You can trivially change who rolls and produce identical results and identical fiction. The only difference is a rules widget.

-Edit

To expand, if we take a 3.5 Fireball with a DC of 16 against a target with a Reflex Save of +5, we get a 50% chance of saving and doing 50% damage due to a save. If we invert it to defences and attack rolls based on the "Players Roll all the Dice" section of the 3e Unearthed Arcana to a Reflex Defence of 15 and a Spell Attack of +5, we get a 50% chance of doing 50% damage on a miss. It is identical aside from who rolls the dice

-Edit Edit,

To be clear, I'm not saying you can't or have a preference for the rules widget you are most familiar or comfortable with, but as I hope I've shown, the fiction is irrelevant.

 

[Enrahim]

I think it’s also a problem if the failed lockpicking roll draws attention while the success does not. A separate stealth roll should ideally be employed to determine the noise.

I think you agree that this problem is of a much less severity than the appearing cook though? After all I guess you agree it is not completely unreasonable that the thief's general skill with thief tools might include how to prevent the various picks to rattle against each other, and to smoothly pack everything back together without sound?

I’m interested in this part. I’ve been under the impression that all sim play was to some degree about an independent world.

It is tricky. While that is certanly a very common feature, I do not really know if it is neccessary given the definitions - at least not to the extent normally associated with it. Genre emulation sim play for instance often would feature things that might not make perfect "independent world" sense. Like the bomb having exactly 1 minute left on it when it is found after several hours of search.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm similar. I run the games that please my players. There's a ton of stuff out there I'm interested in playing that my usual players aren't.

Maybe in some cases its just GMs with broader tastes than their players. If I had narrower tastes--or a strong swing in my players toward things I actively disliked--it might be a bigger problem.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this is pretty common - Save for Half is, essentially, identical to Damage on a Miss - the only difference is who rolls the dice

I think people have baked in the idea that's okay for spells in a way they don't for most conventional attacks from decades of usage, honestly.

 

[Pedantic]

I think people have baked in the idea that's okay for spells in a way they don't for most conventional attacks from decades of usage, honestly.

It's down to what's being abstracted, right? Spells fill an area and might be partially avoided, swords connect or don't. The real issue there is AC being used to determine whether an attack "missed" or not. Frankly, I'd expect more pressure to go the other way and explore some kind of dodge rating and armor as DR.

 

[AlViking]

No, not at all. You can trivially change who rolls and produce identical results and identical fiction. The only difference is a rules widget

For me there's a difference between character nimbly dodging out of the way of a sword's swing or blocking it and taking half damage because everything around them is on fire. In other cases you've been poisoned or dipped in acid so you can't avoid it but you're so tough it doesn't bother you as much.

I'd be okay with some kind of damage resistance for physical blows as well from a philosophical standpoint but that gets tricky with the way D&D handles combat.

 

[AlViking]

It's down to what's being abstracted, right? Spells full an area and night be partially avoided, swords connect or don't. The real issue there is AC being used to determine whether an attack "missed" or not. Frankly, I'd expect more pressure to go the other way and explore some kind of dodge rating and armor as DR.

The issue with armor DR is that the system has never been designed for it. If you block a blow from a giant's club with your shield you probably should still take some damage. But then you have a different monster that does a whole bunch of attacks that average just as much damage as the giant's club but that are totally negated if there's DR even if they all hit. There will never be a perfect system.

 

[Gimby]

For me there's a difference between character nimbly dodging out of the way of a sword's swing or blocking it and taking half damage because everything around them is on fire. In other cases you've been poisoned or dipped in acid so you can't avoid it but you're so tough it doesn't bother you as much.

I'd be okay with some kind of damage resistance for physical blows as well from a philosophical standpoint but that gets tricky with the way D&D handles combat.

Sure, but as I note above, the difference between a making a save and missing an attack is purely administrative. You can even invert it the other way and make the defender roll to defend against a sword swing (or even make one or both an opposed roll) - constructing this so that the final probabilities (which are the only thing that impacts the resulting fiction) are identical is fairly straightforward.

 

[Pedantic]

The issue with armor DR is that the system has never been designed for it. If you block a blow from a giant's club with your shield you probably should still take some damage. But then you have a different monster that does a whole bunch of attacks that average just as much damage as the giant's club but that are totally negated if there's DR even if they all hit. There will never be a perfect system.

Sure, but that's just a design problem you can work through. If you accept the thing to be abstracted as presenting a design constraint, then it's just down to sorting our how precisely you want to model one big attack vs. several small attacks and so on.