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

[Micah Sweet]

Is this supposed to me my fault? Or prove that I'm a "sim hater"? Or what?

I'm not really sure what your goal is for this thread, if you're not interested in talking about some of the regularly observed features of D&D play, and understanding what cultural, systemic etc factors give rise to them.

I'm saying your posting style is hard for me to follow and respond to. Consider it my issue.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. @Don Durito said as much. But what is that "diegetic" reason, in D&D play?

I believe it was toughness in the case of the dwarf. If no such reason is apparent, then IMO we go to better rules for such situations.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To be fair armour and DR in many more abstract systems can feel just as odd.

I mean if you stab someone wearing a breastplate with a rapier you either need to go through it or do no damage - the idea that you do less damage doesn't really make all that much sense.

That depends - armour is heaviest in the most vital larts

And rapiers had edges as well as points. Even if you stab through a breast plate you aren't going to cut as much as if you were able to make a draw cut on the way out.

 

[AlViking]

Do the rules say that? A good thing D&D has an almighty GM that can override such ridiculousness when desired! Here is a free D&D suplement:

Faling from great height.
If falling more than 500ft the character declares at the end of their turn how far they want to fall - between 500 and 1000ft. If this failing causes them to hit the ground, they then take damage as per the normal falling rules.

You are welcome, your resident physicist.

(Edit: numbers chosen to be easy to remember, while not being ridiculously far from real world corresponding numbers)

According to XGtE you fall 500 feet in six seconds, which is close if you were falling at terminal velocity and round off. Using the splat calculator, a person using the skydiver belly down position reaches terminal velocity at around 160 feet, although it varies by height and weight and the person falling probably doesn't have good form. So 20 dice of damage is not completely out of the question.

I thought about creating a house rule at one point - that as you fall you fall faster and faster so each 10 feet is an extra d6. So
Of course what doesn't work is that it's only 20 d6, I'd be tempted to double up the dice for every 10 feet after 20. So fall 20 feet and it's 2d6, at 30 it's 6d6, 40 for 106d6 and so on. If you do that by the time you've fallen 200 feet you're taking 210D6 (plugging numbers into a spreadsheet) for 732 points of damage on average. You can change that fairly easily, add an extra 1d6 for every 10 feet by 20 foot intervals or such.

In any case I just let people know that if they fall far enough they're going to die unless they can fly or someone has magic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's why in my game, if someone blithely ignores something deadly, they are voluntarily forgoing most of their hit points. That 120 hit point barbarian will survive that 200 foot fall, but because he's grabbing at branches, rocks, etc. and slowing himself down, getting super lucky(like those rare skydivers), divine intervention, etc. If he just decides to step off of that cliff, he has decided to give up his hit points except for what a commoner would have and will be rolling up a new character.

The same goes if someone just stands there and lets someone shoot a crossbow into their head. If they aren't trying to live, they aren't using their hit points.

A thought always worth keeping in mind, but not enough to cover all such situations IMO.

 

[Faolyn]

Can we try to find an example arguing against simulation that doesn't involve hit points? Just as a change of pace?

OK, here's a possible one: It relies heavily on the game's creators and players knowing (a) how to accurately gamify reality, and (b) how to gamify it well, and (c) what actually should or should not be gamified. It's kind of hard to find all three.

I'm using gamify to mean "turn into playable mechanics." While I'm sure you can figure out gaming mechanics for just about anything, no matter how detailed it is in reality, it's not always easy to do it in a way that's good for a game. Especially one that you want to be able to play without having to stop and make a ton of rolls of worse. Case in point: GURPS Vehicles (3e) where you needed a bunch of math to make your vehicle, which isn't necessarily very useful for the typical gamer. Actually, SJ Games is pretty bad with the math all around--there's a ridiculous amount of math that has to be calculated each time a Song is used in In Nomine to determine how far away it can be felt. (That game could do with a new, more streamlined edition.) I haven't actually read Rolemaster but like everyone else I've heard stories of its tables upon tables upon tables, and I know from the games I have played that things like that can slow the game down. (Actually, this is the sort of game that could benefit heavily from digital tools, as all of that could be easily automated.)

And as for (c), not everything needs to be put into a game. The worst and most obvious offender I can think of is FATAL, since ain't nobody need any of that stuff the creator felt the need to add. To a lesser degree, AD&D1e had a big series of tables on random sicknesses and parasites and the like. Not things you might contract up from being attacked by monsters, but simply things you might pick up just because you're an adventurer living in the wilds. Realistic, yes. Did its inclusion actually add to the game in a fun or interesting way? Considering that it was never used in any later edition, I'm guessing not so much.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To be fair armour and DR in many more abstract systems can feel just as odd.

I mean if you stab someone wearing a breastplate with a rapier you either need to go through it or do no damage - the idea that you do less damage doesn't really make all that much sense.

The DR would need to be high enough to completely negate the rapier's damage, either in general or to piercing. Alternatively, the damage represents striking a joint or other weak spot.

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK, here's a possible one: It relies heavily on the game's creators and players knowing (a) how to accurately gamify reality, and (b) how to gamify it well, and (c) what actually should or should not be gamified. It's kind of hard to find all three.

I'm using gamify to mean "turn into playable mechanics." While I'm sure you can figure out gaming mechanics for just about anything, no matter how detailed it is in reality, it's not always easy to do it in a way that's good for a game. Especially one that you want to be able to play without having to stop and make a ton of rolls of worse. Case in point: GURPS Vehicles (3e) where you needed a bunch of math to make your vehicle, which isn't necessarily very useful for the typical gamer. Actually, SJ Games is pretty bad with the math all around--there's a ridiculous amount of math that has to be calculated each time a Song is used in In Nomine to determine how far away it can be felt. (That game could do with a new, more streamlined edition.) I haven't actually read Rolemaster but like everyone else I've heard stories of its tables upon tables upon tables, and I know from the games I have played that things like that can slow the game down. (Actually, this is the sort of game that could benefit heavily from digital tools, as all of that could be easily automated.)

And as for (c), not everything needs to be put into a game. The worst and most obvious offender I can think of is FATAL, since ain't nobody need any of that stuff the creator felt the need to add. To a lesser degree, AD&D1e had a big series of tables on random sicknesses and parasites and the like. Not things you might contract up from being attacked by monsters, but simply things you might pick up just because you're an adventurer living in the wilds. Realistic, yes. Did its inclusion actually add to the game in a fun or interesting way? Considering that it was never used in any later edition, I'm guessing not so much.

I actually liked all that random disease stuff, but then realism in principle and in practice is very important to me. My favorite OSR allows for the sort of thing you're talking about in 1e, and I'm happy it does.

And the thing I best remember from my brief contact with Rolemaster is it's pages and pages of crit tables. And I remember them fondly.

 

[Eric V]

I suppose one could say it's the opposite of damage-on-a-miss: no-damage-on-a-hit.

On a rolled narrow-miss the narration might go: "BONG! Your war hammer makes the foe's armour ring like a bell, but the armour does its job and your foe takes no damage".

Remember that it's not that I don't know how to narrate it...it's that it (wearing armor makes you better at dodging) doesn't simulate how armor works.

 

[Don Durito]

The DR would need to be high enough to completely negate the rapier's damage, either in general or to piercing.

Yes. In which you case you wouldn't attack the armoured part -in effect making a smaller viable target which is more difficult to hit.

Alternatively, the damage represents striking a joint or other weak spot.

If there is one. The reason for using the example of a breastplate is because it in particular doesn't work in this situation it doesn't have joints or weak spots. The weak spots are where the armour isn't.

Armour as DR works better against full sets of armour for that reason. But if you have a setting like the 16th century where a lot of people went around with a solid metal helmets and breastplates Armour as DR, as least situationally, doesn't work as well as just making it harder to hit.

This is one of those cases, like weapon speeds where I think people's intuition is often wrong.

Modelling armour is difficult. Especially if you want plausible and realistic interactions of weapon and armour without too much complexity overhead.

Ultimately you need the system to have the means to have both DR and to have means to bypass and get around armour (or use hit locations) - or in other words make you harder to hit.