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

[Hussar]

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:



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.



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.



How about sprinkling some tactics on that fight?

Yes but turn that around. The PC likely had an AC of 4 (chain and shield at minimum) meaning the Orc hit on a 16 or better. The fighter wins two falls out of three. Tack on the usual 18 percentile strength or weapon specs from Unearthed Arcana and the fighter wins nearly every time.

 

[Ahnehnois]

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

True, but the players don't have to get lucky every time, as long as they don't play the same characters every time. On aggregate, all the 1st level characters and creatures in the world that regularly engage in combat have to be pretty lucky in order to survive long enough to make it to level 2. It's Darwinian.

After all, the orcs are supposed to lose.

Maybe in your game. If you adopt that as a stylistic conceit, it's certainly fine. I don't see any reason why a first level character should be guaranteed a win in the rules as a whole.

In general, I agree that low-level play is very swingy. I just don't see why that has to be a bad thing.

 

[Mistwell]

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

Look, you and I have jousted for years online. I know you well enough, you know me well enough.

So what's with the obvious, blatant strawman? Come on mang, you're better than that.

Try again. Of course I can see the difference, and of course that has absolutely nothing at all to do with a word I said. Seeing the difference between the two is not relevant to the "being unable to have fun with failure" aspect of this topic. Because spellcaster players have lots of fun without failure of their spells just as much. The differences between the spell version and the melee version exist, but none of those differences have a darn thing to do with this topic of fun with failure. The fun with failure argument applies just as well to the spell version as to the melee version.

A bunch of irrelevant stuff

Did you think I would let you get away without answering the question yet again?

Seriously, not gonna happen. I challenged you to show me why the melee version of damage on a miss is an indicator of poor sportsmanship or inability to have fun with failure, but the spell version is not.

That's it. That is the one and only topic I am talking about right now. No matter how much you drift the topic back to stuff you feel gives you firmer ground, I am going to drag it right back to that topic.

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.

So why doesn't the player of a spellcaster who casts spells that do damage on a miss not get characterized this way by you?

You know, there is a huge difference between, say, a car, and a train. But if you make an argument about "not being capable of enjoying walking to your destination", and you apply that to train travel but not automobile travel, then I am going to say to you, "why wouldn't your argument about fun with walking apply just as easily to a car?" And no matter how many times you said, "cars are different from trains," it would still be irrelevant to the topic you raised about fun with walking. Because the two can be different in many aspects but share a basic similarity of "transportation that isn't walking". Much like, while spells and melee attacks are in many ways different, they do share a basic aspect of "things which can do damage even on a miss" for this topic.

So bottom line - answer the question already and stop dodging and changing the subject.

 

[the Jester]

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.

It sounds like their idea of tactics was "attack!" I don't hear any mention of trying to arrange an ambush (well, they had a surprise round, I guess), opening with missile fire, arranging for a favorable battlefield ("their backs were against the wall!" is far removed from "look at this, we can attack from cover, trick them over here and collapse these rocks on 'em!"), etc. Honestly, I think my feelings here derive from playstyle and from the difference between "combat as sport" (complete with assumed good guy victory) and "combat as war" (dispensing with the notion that the orcs ought to be the ones to lose). It's a stylistic thing, but I am very much okay with tactical ineptitude leading to pc deaths or even a tpk. This, you'll note, is NOT for everyone- but it works fine for me and my group(s).

Anyhow, all of this is orthogonal to the topic at hand.

 

[the Jester]

Yes but turn that around. The PC likely had an AC of 4 (chain and shield at minimum) meaning the Orc hit on a 16 or better. The fighter wins two falls out of three. Tack on the usual 18 percentile strength or weapon specs from Unearthed Arcana and the fighter wins nearly every time.

Sure, the pc is more likely to win the fight. I was referring to the assertion that "failure isn't common" as regards missing on your attack.

I'd also dispute that the average fighter in 1e had percentile strength. If you actually roll stats- and that's how 1e does it- 18s are exceptionally rare.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Look, you and I have jousted for years online. I know you well enough, you know me well enough.

So what's with the obvious, blatant strawman? Come on mang, you're better than that.

Try again. Of course I can see the difference, and of course that has absolutely nothing at all to do with a word I said. Seeing the difference between the two is not relevant to the "being unable to have fun with failure" aspect of this topic. Because spellcaster players have lots of fun without failure of their spells just as much. The differences between the spell version and the melee version exist, but none of those differences have a darn thing to do with this topic of fun with failure. The fun with failure argument applies just as well to the spell version as to the melee version.



Did you think I would let you get away without answering the question yet again?

Seriously, not gonna happen. I challenged you to show me why the melee version of damage on a miss is an indicator of poor sportsmanship or inability to have fun with failure, but the spell version is not.

That's it. That is the one and only topic I am talking about right now. No matter how much you drift the topic back to stuff you feel gives you firmer ground, I am going to drag it right back to that topic.



So why doesn't the player of a spellcaster who casts spells that do damage on a miss not get characterized this way by you?

You know, there is a huge difference between, say, a car, and a train. But if you make an argument about "not being capable of enjoying walking to your destination", and you apply that to train travel but not automobile travel, then I am going to say to you, "why wouldn't your argument about fun with walking apply just as easily to a car?" And no matter how many times you said, "cars are different from trains," it would still be irrelevant to the topic you raised about fun with walking. Because the two can be different in many aspects but share a basic similarity of "transportation that isn't walking". Much like, while spells and melee attacks are in many ways different, they do share a basic aspect of "things which can do damage even on a miss" for this topic.

So bottom line - answer the question already and stop dodging and changing the subject.

Spells can totally fizzle as well. Disintigrate, polymorph, hold person, suggestion, etc. It is possible to cast these spells, expending a limited resource, and still get no effect. The spellcaster dance doesn't work. Having a spell disrupted also means you don't get an effect.

Some spells affect an AREA. They do not " miss". Likewise a charm person that actually gets cast but the target makes a save does not miss.

Once again-the making of a successful save does not mean that the effect missed.

There are creatures only affected by a handful of spells. Other spells cast do not miss, they simply have no effect on the creature in question. The end result is the same for the player-no change in the status quo. So a spellcasting player (at least in TSR versions) has to live with certain failure rate as well.

So to answer your question, yes, spell casters have to contend with failures of their own.

 

[Minigiant]

The issue is whether low level D&D should encourage "Fantasy Vietnam" or not. Combat as War is seen in most of the editions of D&D as the basis of low level tactics. But many D&D fans hate this and many Anti-"FanNam" mechanics have popped up in the past few editions (higher starting UP, healing during rests, recovery of resources during rest, recovery of resources on failure "Reliable powers", damage on saves/misses, increased accuracy, etc)

If damage on a miss was created to mitigate the extreme damage of failure due to bad luck, then any replacement should too. Much how new sets of MTG contain replacements for cards that rotated out.

Should low level D&D be "stack up advantages or avoid the obstacle at all cost"?

Because if it is, great weapons are useless until high levels as you must put yourself in dangerous situations just to use them.

If it is not, then how do we make great weapon users not suicidal?

 

[pemerton]

Spells can totally fizzle as well. Disintigrate, polymorph, hold person, suggestion, etc. It is possible to cast these spells, expending a limited resource, and still get no effect. The spellcaster dance doesn't work. Having a spell disrupted also means you don't get an effect.

So is a player of a caster who only uses spells that always have an effect (magic missile, fireball, lightning bolt etc) a bad sport?

 

[Tovec]

Strap in, it's going to be a long one. If you don't want to read it all, and I know some of you don't like to, that's entirely up to you. (EDIT: Huh, not as long as I thought it was going to be, good job on the cutting down if I do say so myself.)

[sblock]

And my point is that if you can accept that sort of mundane hand-waive type ability, then why freak out, to this degree, over a different mundane hand-waive ability likely to appear in fewer games than evasion did?

I can accept that psi warriors use psionic abilities ... and that mundane fighters use mundane means. I'm confused what you were aiming for here. Mostly I'm saying that unless the reasoning is that they are mind-wizards I don't buy damage on a miss.

And evasion came up more than this ability is likely to come up. What party had nobody with evasion? And yet, as only one of five different choices for three fighter-type classes, it's quite possible to have many parties with nobody that has this ability.

Evasion does not come up more than this comes up. This ability comes up every combat, evasion comes up if the rogue makes a save. And oh yeah.. only if they MAKE the save. Also, I already agreed evasion is a little broken. I've seen several ways to mitigate it, I'm not really looking to discuss it further but that problem has been solved.. unlike DOAM. Also..

Although, to be fair Mistwell, in a game where a fighter has this, it will come up every combat encounter which is far more than evasion ever will.

This.

For the record, the evasion ability doesn't always work so it's not as crazy as people make it out to be.

And this.

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

Also this.

And why I'm really not interested in continuing to have the same conversation with you over and over about this @Mistwell

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I don't get why Attack on a Miss is not a suitable replacement for Damage on a miss.

I don't see why we are rewarding failure. It is as if rogues got the secondary effect of improved evasion (but without the "evasion part they already had") and took half damage on every single reflex save, success or failure. Why is it necessary? I'll get to what you say more about this later.

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.

Or in the case of kobolds, goblins, basically any "canon fodder" type lowbie creatures.. the best way to do this is by MISSING over and over again. Kills them just as fast as hitting apparently.

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

I think that what is getting lost here is that you also need to understand why it doesn't work in order to replace it.

You have a problem with the frequency of misses. This ability does not solve that, it just gives you freebie points for trying. Those freebie points also happen to have the added effect of breaking soo many people's suspension of disbelief. In addition, as I said earlier, I don't believe in rewarding the failure. I don't see why they should get better next round for missing this round. A long time ago (in one of the many past threads) I said that if it was a concentrated attack of some kind, where they steadied and readied an attack and it went wrong (thinking of something like a precise arrow shot or something) then I could understand giving them a bonus to the attack for next time. Heavy weapons kind of work the other way, they are unwieldy.

Now, I'm not opposed to making fighters better on the front end so they miss less often, but DOAM and all solutions I've seen thus far DO NOT boost their attack to avoid missing more often. (I may have missed one or two, so if it has been proposed direct me to it.) My ideal solution is to stop DOAM'ing and give them a better bonus to attack, in-line with the king of all combatants. Failing that, if they want to use the description already in the playtest packet (about an attack so brutal) then rewrite the ability so it DOES THAT. Have it bypass DR in some fashion. But the major problem is they are playing around with the ambiguity of the armor as AC (instead of as DR, as it should be for this ability) and it breaks my mind and makes the game less fun by simply existing. Even the solutions I've seen here that I dislike (like the aura) do this less than the way WotC has chosen to screw around with AC in their own system.[/quote][/sblock]

@Manbearcat Just a small thing. If you had a point you should probably tell me what it is with words. Because as of right now I don't know what you are saying. Or particularly care, except that you quoted me.

 

[Manbearcat]

Sort of like when a running back "misses" a block on the blitzing outside linebacker but an incidental (mundane) legwhip, due to his frenzied effort, leaves the linebacker prone as he sprawls to avoid the contact.

@Manbearcat Just a small thing. If you had a point you should probably tell me what it is with words. Because as of right now I don't know what you are saying. Or particularly care, except that you quoted me.

I've disputed the premise that DoaM is an incoherent concept within the mechanics of D&D (specifically with respect to the target number of AC which is a - well understood - conflation of dodge and force of impact dispersal/mitigation) many times in other threads.

Beyond that, I utterly dispute that the concept of DoaM is an incoherent concept in physical martial exchanges in real life. A Running Back performing a blitz pickup of an Outside Linebacker coming on a rush is entering into a physical martial exchange akin to a melee skirmish. The Running Back is attempting to successfully interpose himself between the blitzer and the QB, attacking the blitzer with proper technique (deliver the blow, hands inside the shoulders and under the numbers, anchoring his position by lowering his pad level and dropping his hips for leverage). The Running Back here whiffs at his primary block attempt. His technique is poor and he is flat out beat to the edge. What does he do? What plenty of guys do when they're beat in the frenzy of a melee skirmish. He instinctively flails wildly. His flailing causes the defender to take evasive action to avoid the (illegal) legwhip. He hits the deck hard and is prone.

Damage (and an afflicted condition - prone) on a (proverbial) "Miss". The frenzy of martial exchanges are rife with these sorts of examples. Guys getting injured (tearing an ACL, spraining an ankle, or simply winding themselves in the sprawl to avoid) by taking evasive action when dealing with a flailing, off-balance opponent who fails in their offensive flurry. The number of times I've seen, or been involved with, incidental, collateral damage having a huge (if not decisive) effect on a martial exchange is huge; from football, to basketball, to actual physical combat. It doesn't even have to be actual injury from trying to evade a flail. It could be just the exhaustive wear and tear of sprawling to avoid a takedown attempt or a tackle or trying to split defenders when you're going to the rim in basketball. Avoiding contact (especially takedowns) is extremely fatiguing. Fatigue makes your concentration wane and causes your muscle memory response to have a higher propensity for failure. Its demoralizing. It breaks up the honed, subconscious OODA Loop that you would have developed in the respective discipline you are plying. Being tired is a thousand times worse than the pain of a tweaked ankle.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that DoaM is probably the closest D&D has come to actually simulating the process of a martial exchange. Every exchange causes you some kind of wear and tear, be it physical, fatigue, or mental, leaving you more susceptible for failure on the next exchange.