D&D 5E Replacing Damage-On-A-Miss

[Ahnehnois]

The question is "Is this fun?" If not, why and what can be done about it. In the group I tested, they will not touch a great weapon without DoaM or EAoaM because the benefits of a heavy shild, bow, or second weapon is too great.

One other assumption that seems to be buried in there is that the big weapons are supposed to be as good for the purposes you're getting at. As others have noted upthread, something like a D&D greatsword or greataxe probably is not such a great weapon in single combat or in a confined space, but instead would make more sense out in an open area against a large number of enemies, or against heavily defensed or large-sized enemies.

To me, if I put two guys in a dungeon room and give one a longsword and a shield and the other one a greatsword, all other things being equal, the longsword and shield guy should win on average. To me, the mechanics for fighting with huge unwieldy weapons should reflect on some basic level the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.

Then again, I always found that in 3e, the allure of Power Attack and huge base damage kept TWF relatively popular; at leats competitive with the other options. So perhaps it's simply a question of needing to make the big weapons better when they do hit rather than worrying about when they don't.

 

[Minigiant]

Wekk that is the thing. Are great weapons viable weapons? Are they fun to use? Or is using them stupid?


According to my playtests, using a greatsword without Reckless Attack, a second attack, or DoaM is just a bad idea.

Therefore Greatswords are bad unless you have 35+ HP.

 

[the Jester]

This is a great thread. In general, there are a lot of cool ideas in here, from "attack on a miss" to the control aura to advantage on damage rolls.

In general, I'm not really fond of damage on a miss, but I can take it or leave it. That said, I'd prefer it be out, or at least optional, for nonmagical weapon attacks. Simply speaking, it violates my sense of verisimilitude. (I know, I know- that word.)

On the other hand, I have no issue with it for magical effects (i.e. I'm okay with save for half damage effects from magic). I think the whole point of magic is to break (or at least bend) the rules of reality; after all, you're evoking a bolt of lightning! H

I wanted to just throw in my 2 coppers' worth on a couple of things:

Improved Evasion does though.

I wouldn't defend Evasion/Improved as being a well-written ability, but it's not the equivalent of damage on a miss in terms of in-world implications or in terms of how it affects gameplay.

I feel that it's worth pointing out that the evasion ability, albeit without a name, comes originally from the monk in 1e, where it's quasi-magical/quasi-psionic in nature. With this origin, it's only natural that it goes a bit beyond normal martial abilities. In 3e, when it was expanded to other classes (and named), it kept this quasi-magical flavor.

Failure is only accepted if it is not common.

I have to dispute this. In 1e, a 1st level fighter facing a goblin (AC 7) would need a 13 to hit. With a 17 Strength, he'd need a 12. So that means that he misses more than he hits. And that was the status of things from the 1e days until the beginning of 3e; that's decades of time during which failure was common. And attack values didn't increase quickly; even a high level fighter, when facing high level threats, would miss fairly often. So I think failure can be accepted even if it's quite common.

The chance of failure created the difficulty.
When the orc warriors rolled low a couple times, they were massacred.
When the party warriors rolled low a couple times, they were wiped.

Is low level D&D supposed to be a game of coin flips where you attempt to never roll anything and avoid everything?

How about sprinkling some tactics on that fight?

 

[EnglishLanguage]

Tactics such as?

Anything that isn't a class ability(like precariously placed chandeliers to drop on them, cover, 10 foot wide hallways to hole up in) are entirely up to if the DM feels like putting those things there.

Class abilities though, what exactly can a Fighter do? Trip them? Cool...before they stand up and smack you anyways. Or disarm them...hoping they actually rely on weapons, and don't have a back-up weapon.

Generally wasting an attack to do something that isn't an attack is a waste because that's a turn you're not doing damage to them. At low level, the best "tactic" is to make the enemy dead as fast as possible, and the best way to do this is to spend turns just hitting them with attacks over and over again.

 

[ExploderWizard]

If it applied to many different abilities instead of just one of five options for a few fighter-types, you'd be right.

But "people" can accept failure as part of the fun of playing a game just fine, with the ability as it stands in the game.

This is, of course, the identical argument one can apply to any spell spellcasters can cast which does damage on a miss. It is one of the arguments that applies exactly equally to all those spells, and alchemical weapons. And yet, for decades you've never had a complaint about those other spells and types of weapons.

While I think one can argue the difference between spells/splash weapons and these melee weapons with this ability, "don't know how to have fun without failure" is not one of those differences.

I've challenged you before to explain why your argument doesn't apply to, for example, lightning bolt, and you never answer the question directly. Then you wait a week or so, and make the same argument again.

So answer the challenge already. If your argument is sound, why doesn't it apply to half-damage spells, and why didn't you complain all these years about them if it's about people not being able to have fun despite failure?

If you really are saying that you cannot see any difference between a grenade and a bullet then there is little to discuss.

Oh I see now - people who have fun with things which you don't like are now poor sportsmen - unless it's a spell or an alchemical weapon, in which case...crickets.

No. People who only enjoy gameplay when they are winning are poor sportsmen. Some don't actually enjoy gameplay. They are looking for a different experience and that too is a valid way to have fun. That some feel the need to base their sense of self worth on how well they roll or how successful they are in a tabletop game is pretty sad.

DoaM would be like telling a basketball player that any missed 3 point shot would count as 1 or 2 points because missing a basket is unfun. How the player reacts to that depends on why he plays the game.

Have your fun however you want, just be honest about what you find fun.

 

[Minigiant]

How about sprinkling some tactics on that fight?

They had the orcs 5 to 3 with a surprise round and against a wall in 3 fights that they manipulated into happening.

In the first fight, the fighter and cleric charged in and clobber the orcs with two good rolls. And then the rest cleaned up.

The second attempt had the cleric miss and the fighter not one shotting. The orcs pounded the cleric and survived the spells but not the sneak attack.

The last fight before their plan of coaxing out the leader was a wipe since the fighter missed 3 times and got hit with focus fire. One the relentless turns, the orcs aced the mage. And this gave the leader time to join the fight and slaughter who stood.

I recorded the attack rolls and ACs. If either side had used long sword and shield, they would have tipped the fights in their favor.

The Great Weapons held the good guys and bad dudes back

 

[ForeverSlayer]

If someone has to have the concept of missing removed from certain games because of the unfan factor, then they don't need to be playing those games anyway.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm cool with the fate of individual encounters being determined to even a significant extent by the fate of dice. Big spikes and big troughs yield big emotions which are big fun.

The trick as I see it is to make sure that a streak of lousy luck is something any character can basically recover from (and remove that safety net if you want a higher challenge).

Typically in D&D this has been "bring a cleric." In NEXT, maybe that's expanded to "bring a Plan B."

I prefer a game where loosing encounters is expected, where victory isn't just presumed with a few die rolls that give that victory "color." In any encounter, there are TWO possible outcomes, and one of those is "you fail," and that needs to be a real possibility, IMO.

....this has strayed pretty far from the original thread topic, though?

 

[Minigiant]

Well you do need to understand why something exist in order to replace it.


The part people are not getting it DOAM in the GWF style is not about the misses themselves. It is about frequency of misses.

It is much the different between how spells are written to how many you get per day.

DOAM is there because on D&D's low tolerance for mistakes. There was a very commonly heard complaint about D&D that its low level game is so lethal and intolerant that it fosters gameplay which isn't heroic or could be seen as cowardly or boring. And this translates into encouraging stereotypical PCs as other PCs greatly raise your chance of failure.

This is we're GWF comes in. Without a fighting style or Reckless attack, using a great weapon is a bad idea until you get a second attack and some bonuses from class features. The benefits of damage do not outweigh the drawbacks of missing and being in melee range.

So you either must:
Increase the base damage
Reduce the frequency of misses
Reduce the penalty of misses
Or reduce the penalty of going into melee, shieldless against a high HP enemy.

Or no one with a brain would use a great weapon.

 

[Hussar]

It sounds to me like the issue you have is that the orcs are more difficult than you thought they should be, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the base chance of any one creature hitting another. Perhaps the orc stats should simply be adjusted. Everything I've read of 5e monsters has been a mess.

That being said, the description you give sounds like the classic feel of low level D&D to me.
To turn it around, is low level D&D supposed to be a hack and slash romp through monsters that you can't possibly miss or lose to?

The part you are missing here is that the players have to get lucky every time. The orcs only have to get lucky once.

After all, the orcs are supposed to lose.