D&D General Reification versus ludification in 5E/6E

[mamba]

I'm rather curious how it is explained that my HALFLING gladiator (after all, Gladiator's can be any humanoid race) deals MORE damage than an ogre using the same weapon.

do you mean this?

“Brute. A melee weapon deals one extra die of its damage when the gladiator hits with it (included in the attack).”

I am not liking it either, Halflings should have a severe Strength penalty, but what can you do, if you want them as PCs you cannot differentiate races as much as would be needed. Win some, lose some

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Something that did just occur to me as well. Since the argument is that having these abilities somehow makes things more consistent, I'm rather curious how it is explained that my HALFLING gladiator (after all, Gladiator's can be any humanoid race) deals MORE damage than an ogre using the same weapon.

Presumably, since neither Halflings nor Ogres normally or inherently possess that ability, that would be through skill and training.

I'm rather interested to hear how that is meant to be narrated. After all, I'm told that having the reason explained in the stat block and called out makes it reified and consistent.

Any number of reasonably obvious ways. Do you REALLY need examples? Since the Brute ability does not actually specify how or why the extra damage occurs, we'll have to rely on implied meanings:

adjective
animal; not human.
not characterized by intelligence or reason; irrational.
characteristic of animals; of brutal character or quality.
savage; cruel:
brute force.

"The halfling slashes you with practiced and unreasoning efficiency."
"The halfling lunges at the beast with feral fury, throwing its full body into the spear thrust."

It's not actually difficult or complicated.

It's literally impossible for the ogre to deal more damage using exactly the same weapons. In fact, that same halfling with a 10 strength can potentially deal more damage with the same weapon than an ogre can.

How could a weaker but more skilled combatant POSSIBLY cause more damage than a hulking, clumsy, lazy one? It's a mystery!

At the end of the day, no, giving something a special ability (Brute in this case) with only a nominal clue as to its means of function is NOT a fantastic way of explaining a damage bonus. HOWEVER, and this is key, it is INFINITELY more informative than having no explanation at all.

 

[ezo]

The thrust of my question - why is it acceptable to change the meaning of damage in one dimension (character hit points) but not in another (weapon damage) still stands. Besides preference, that is.

This is a missed oppotunity IMO.

Just like a commoner has d8 HP and a longsword does d8 damage, experience and skill can (and should) change those numbers.

So, as you level up, you have more HD and more HP, and as you level up, the d8 longsword should become something more as well... but it doesn't. Why? Because in both cases your expeience and skill improve both (or should IMO).

It makes sense to my mind, anyway.

WotC just stop write the fluff text to "justify" why they hit harder, for saving page space I guess.

Must to the lament of many players of the game. Oh, but they can stuff a bunch of artwork in there to fill the space they saved.

Halflings should have a severe Strength penalty

Halflings should have a weight carried, etc. penalty IMO, not the ability Strength penalty.

Small weapons should also deal less base damage, just as Large weapons deal more.

There should also be immediate advantage/ disadvantage for any change in size, not this "one category larger" nonsense.

 

[TwoSix]

These preferences are arbitrary and based on familiariy and legacy traditions. For what it’s worth I share your general preferences but I don’t assert that they contribute to a sense of realism in any meaningful way.

Yea, I think this is a very salient point. Never forget your preferences are just rationalizations for a viewpoint that you've internalized.

 

[Stormonu]

It should be noted on the PC side, the monk is already the poster child for damage increase output with a weapon. For all the other classes, and unarmed attack does 1 point; for a monk it does 1d4, increasing to 1d6, 1d8, 1d10 and finally 1d12.

Something similar occurs with the rogue's sneak attack and the additional d6's. Likewise for cantrip scaling and the Cleric's additional d8 radiant damage at ~8th level that miraculously kicks in for "reasons". PC damage simply scales as levels increase, so NPCs need to do so as well. It's all well and good to notate on the creature where/why this is happening - especially if the PCs can benefit from it by taking their gear, but if it's not gear-based and is some sort of innate ability, I'm fine with it just being increased as needed.

I'm not much for the treadmill game of increasingly bigger numbers on both sides, but I think it is a side effect of the HP bloat over the editions. There are times I wish that PCs either got additional HD every other level or stopped gaining HD at 10th. Monsters with over 200 hp just feels like a bad card game with its 1200 power and the like. It all just needs to be reigned in.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

The more I think about this the more it seems that monsters should maybe be designed like how they work in Lancer. Because I think that might satisfy more people than what we currently have.

You have a number of basic classes all of which are roughly equal.

In addition you have a number of templates. These add features to the basic classes. They're much more "basic" than the templates people might think of from 3.5 or PF1. They primarily add HP and actions. The most powerful templates basically quadruple an NPCs hitpoints and allows them to act twice per round.

Adapting this to D&D we'd have something like this:

1: A basic monster type, like Mimic, Goblin, Treant, Dragon. These are all supposed to be roughly equal (so it's a young dragon heh).

2: Then you pick a class. Something like Warden or Smasher or Sneaker. These add focus and define what they actually do.

3: Finally you can pick a template like Elite, Minion or similar.

Note that much like in Lancer, we should make sure that the templates and the classes (and the basic types) are all quite simple.

 

[TwoSix]

The thrust of my question - why is it acceptable to change the meaning of damage in one dimension (character hit points) but not in another (weapon damage) still stands. Besides preference, that is.

Outside of preference, I can think of a few reasons that tie together in the case of "humanoids with weapons" stat blocks.

-"Weapons use a specific polyhedral for damage" is an identifying characteristic of D&D as a system. Making weapon damage be a function of character, rather than the equipment, has been done in other systems, but is generally rejected for D&D-type games. Heck, even 4e wasn't willing to jettison that, even though a fixed die for powers would have been much easier than the [W] damage notation.

-Weapons are fungible, even in the context of one encounter. Weapons get dropped, weapons get thrown, and new weapons get swapped to and picked up.

Thus, it's nowhere close to a white room scenario to imagine a PC getting disarmed of their greatsword +1, and it being picked up by a hobgoblin with a "2d10 with a longsword" damage expression, and the rules being entirely unclear as to what damage expression the hobgoblin could use.

Not that I couldn't adjust to that scenario as a DM, but in a game where so much of a monster's capabilities seem to be determined by algorithm, I don't love the fact that basic stat blocks don't have outputs that are derivable and thus allow for extrapolation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why can a PC cleric pick up a weapon and deal an extra 1d8 fire damage at will? Why can a PC fighter score crits on both a 19 and a 20? That's a learned skill, inherent ability, or other such trait, right?

Why does the PC cleric have proficiency in Wisdom and Charisma saves? Learned skill or other similar ability from their cleric training, correct? As detailed in the cleric class description.

So the 2014 mage NPC has proficiency in Intelligence and Wisdom saves, but there's no explanation as to why. Like you say, they just have that, and it's obvious from the stat block. Why is the NPC guard proficient with spears? Well, they just have that ability. A PC wizard doesn't have proficiency in greatswords because the wizard class doesn't grant that, as described in the class description.

So we have many traits that are omitted from the 2014 NPC stat blocks, and no one's complaining really. Why does the mage have a d8 HD and proficiency in Arcana and History? Well, because they just do! Because those are listed on the stat block, it means they get them. Simple as that. Why is this NPC proficient with the greataxe but this other one is not? Why does this NPC have no saving throw proficiencies at all? Well, they just don't. The explanation is right there, they don't, ergo they don't have such an ability.

But suddenly there's a problem when the 2025 update comes along. To me, it just seems that the issue is change. It's done a little different, so that feels wrong. All the omitted traits in the 2014 NPC stat blocks are fine, but the change in the 2025 version is wrong -- even though the 2025 versions follow the exact same logic as the 2014 versions: you don't have to include every single trait that applies an always-on adjustment to the creature's abilities.

The PC cleric can deal extra damage with their weapon and the PC fighter can score more critical hits because they have a learned skill or an inherent ability. The exact same reasoning applies to the NPC stat blocks. The NPC can deal extra dice of damage with a weapon because they clearly have a learned skill or an inherent ability -- but we don't have to spell it out because it's evident just from the fact that it's featured on the stat block, just like their HD, saving throws, ability score totals, skills, vision traits, etc. We don't include a trait "Drow Darkvision: Drow have superior darkvision up to 120 ft." for drow NPCs, because simply having "Darkvision 120 ft." in the vision section is plenty enough. The reason why the drow NPC has 120 ft. darkvision is due to their inherent ability or learned skill, just like this other NPC's higher damage is due to learned skill or inherent ability.

The aarakocra NPC can wield a weapon with extra damage and magic because it can, the same way it has its particular HD or saving throws or other magical abilities: learned skill or inherent ability.

My issue with these complaints is that they are applied incredibly inconsistently. Why is this NPC's inherent ability or learned skill okay to simply state through its stats without a specific trait that spells it out, but this other NPC's inherent ability or learned skill must include a trait that simply says that the creature has that trait?

I'm not inconsistent in my desire for explanations of abilities and setting logic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Very good and valid question. For non-living foes such as undead and constructs, sure, they're destroyed at 0. Living creatures, though, should IMO all work the same in this regard; thus if PCs get death saves then so should NPCs and living monsters. Pain in the butt for the DM to have to keep rolling all those saves, though, so maybe the solution is either a) no more death saves for PCs or b) find a more elegant system that works for all creatures (unconscious at 0, dead at -10 seems simple enough).

This would be FAR easier to answer if D&D would ever go to a wound-vitality or body-fatigue hit point system. Low-level characters haven't built up the skill and endurance to be able to handle the punishment that higher-level types can take; they're mostly relying on their body points - which everyone has and that don't change with level.

We all have to come up with our own answer to the hit point question, and if necessary modify the rules to help that answer work better for us.

 

[TwoSix]

We all have to come up with our own answer to the hit point question, and if necessary modify the rules to help that answer work better for us.

For the past year or two, I've really started to lean into the idea for D&D that "levels" have an in-fiction existence, and that hit points are explicitly supernatural resilience. It makes the narration of how damage and healing work so much easier.