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

[hawkeyefan]

Makes sense. People don't realize just how valuable post-grad studies really are.

It was actually a part of my thesis… we were simulating falling in RPGs!

 

[Maxperson]

Since when do D&D characters of any level demonstrate MCU hulk/thor-esc physical capability?

The 3e epic handbook had the prestige class that allowed some mighty feats of strength. I'm sure there are other examples.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It all comes back to hit points, huh? We can't stay away from it for long.

It is kind of the low-hanging-fruit of mechanics-for-game-convenience. Even AC looks better if you know the original designers came from ship and armor combat games.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Yeah, there's some limitations based on few games really getting into weapon types. You can address that sort of problem but it usually involves making the rapier be intrinsically low penetration, but multiplying after you deal with armor; that way its still pretty nasty against light or no armored opponents while likely to bounce off heavier armor barring finding a way through (usually represented by critical hits in most such games).

But a lot of people get soggy when you handle damage in any kind of sophisticated way, because with some weapons its not going to be simple.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

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.

Yeah, but assuming you don't assume really static combat, there's always attacks coming in at angles not intended. Even good breastplates aren't hermetically sealed; you can get up under them or come in at some angles because you still need to bend in them.

You could deal with that by being really fine in dealing with angles and locations, but its finicky beyond what even most simulationists want to fiddle with. I ran Fringeworthy on occasion, but I sure didn't use its game system and hit location tables.

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.

I'm not sold on that. Even in those cases there were weapons in use that could tranfer some damage in through armor; there wasn't enough deadspace for a maul not to still bruise you up pretty good, and there's the pick problem.

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.

Depending on your definition of "too much" I'm not sold its functionally possible.

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.

The problem is, sometimes it shouldn't even really do that. That's always the problem with the giants-and-large-animals issue in fantasy. Some of those even the best mundane armor is going to do is take the edge off what may be too much damage anyway.

 

[Maxperson]

Always remember the 5 D's of D&D: Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge!

Amateur! You forgot the most important D. Divide. I want my loot!

 

[Don Durito]

Yeah, but assuming you don't assume really static combat, there's always attacks coming in at angles not intended. Even good breastplates aren't hermetically sealed; you can get up under them or come in at some angles because you still need to bend in them.

You could deal with that by being really fine in dealing with angles and locations, but its finicky beyond what even most simulationists want to fiddle with. I ran Fringeworthy on occasion, but I sure didn't use its game system and hit location tables.



I'm not sold on that. Even in those cases there were weapons in use that could tranfer some damage in through armor; there wasn't enough deadspace for a maul not to still bruise you up pretty good, and there's the pick problem.

Well yes but I was using the example earlier of a rapier. You do need to distinguish between at least types of weapons.

Depending on your definition of "too much" I'm not sold its functionally possible.



The problem is, sometimes it shouldn't even really do that. That's always the problem with the giants-and-large-animals issue in fantasy. Some of those even the best mundane armor is going to do is take the edge off what may be too much damage anyway.

Yeah. Fantasy with big monsters probably needs to be more abstract. But given that I don't really see any good reason to prefer armour as DR over the alternative. Both have issues at the abstract level. (And armour as DR has the double chance of failure issue - although at the same time that can help make PCs more survivable without escalating hit points - but these are gameplay issues)

And for my personal gaming needs - I tend toward historical scenarios rather than fantasy these days.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well yes but I was using the example earlier of a rapier. You do need to distinguish between at least types of weapons.

Absolutely. And dueling blades are kind of an outlier at least to some extent, since they were mostly used in a period when anything but pretty light armor wasn't common any more.

Yeah. Fantasy with big monsters probably needs to be more abstract. But given that I don't really see any good reason to prefer armour as DR over the alternative. Both have issues at the abstract level. (And armour as DR has the double chance of failure issue - although at the same time that can help make PCs more survivable without escalating hit points - but these are gameplay issues)

Eh. The problem is armor-as-deflection has at least as many failure states because of its all-or-nothing nature as armor as DR, and runs into evven more special-casing if you're going to cover a wide range of weapons. That's always a problem because weapons and armor evolve in reaction to each other's presence, so when you want to mix and match you're going to always have problems, but I can't help but think the tools with DR-armor are more easily had to address it if you want to than the other way around (of course you can just not care, but then you start getting into things like using Strength as the primary attribute controlling attacking which has a certain virtue if everyone is in moderate-to-heavy armor, but doesn't make much sense the moment you're up against a target who's defense is primarily avoidance).

And for my personal gaming needs - I tend toward historical scenarios rather than fantasy these days.

Well, that's fair, but I think the part of the hobby that isn't playing in environments with at least some fantastic elements is vanishingly small. And--well, even in environments where that's not intense, you can still have the question of "what happens when the half-ton brown bear takes a swing at me?"

 

[Maxperson]

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.

If you're doubling the dice every 10 feet over 20, it goes up a lot farther than 210d6 by 200 feet. 20=2d6, 30=4d6(normally 3d6), 40=8d6, 50=17d6..........100=512d6 and on. Or maybe I don't understand what you mean by doubling the dice after 20 feet.

 

[Older Beholder]

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

Turn based combat.
Eg: If you line up a million people and each one uses a free action to pass a piece of paper (or whatever) from one person to the next, you can move that piece of paper an infinite distance in 6 seconds, based on how many people you can line up.