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

[EnglishLanguage]

That's the thing. People can say "use tactics" but difficult is difficulty.

Low level d&d is much like the hardest difficulty in strategy games. You lower the chance of success and are at the mercy of terrain and enemy placement. Trap you avoided behind you, enemies in front of you... guess we are losing 1d4-2 PCs. Most of the TPKs at low levels that I have seen or heard of have been a PC dropping from bad luck and the dominoes fall eventually.

Great weapons promote a style that raises your TPK chance until the users HP is high enough to take 4 hits before heals easy.

That's always been one of the weird ironies of D&D. Low level is a difficult as hell time with TPKs around every corner and requires either heavy game mastery or a bidner full of back-up PCs to get by, while high-level D&D(3.x anyways, I have no experience with pre-3.x) is easy as pie as long as you're playing a spellcaster.

 

[Lanefan]

True, missile weapons might really change the scenario. By the same token, orcs are not often armed with bows, while PC's almost always are. At range, my money is definitely on the PC's.

Orcs might not have bows but they quite often come equipped with spears...

But, it's true that it might go badly for the PC's, but, my money is still on the PC's. The orcs just can't hit anyone other than the MU enough to really have an impact. Go forward to Unearthed Arcana AD&D, and the odds favour PC's even more. Go into 2e, and it's a cakewalk encounter.

Ah, 1e Unearthed Arcana - the first D&D release where a DM had to be careful what to allow. Keep in mind also that the orcs don't need to hit that often - once or twice per PC might well be enough.

Things change quite a bit, of course, if you're using death at -10 (which I do, for PCs and living enemies) rather than at 0: the party's chances improve greatly in that badly-hurt orcs are very likely to fail morale and flee where badly-hurt PCs will probably stand in until the end.

Lan-"and how would someone doing DoaM interact with morale, I wonder"-efan

 

[Hussar]

Hrmm. Morale. That gives me an idea.

What if hitting with a great weapon imposed attack penalties to all enemies within reach? Maybe your Str bonus for one round? Or maybe Cha bonus.

The idea is that the GWF is so scary you don't want to melee with him after seeing your buddy get pounded into paste.

 

[Lanefan]

Hrmm. Morale. That gives me an idea.

What if hitting with a great weapon imposed attack penalties to all enemies within reach? Maybe your Str bonus for one round? Or maybe Cha bonus.

The idea is that the GWF is so scary you don't want to melee with him after seeing your buddy get pounded into paste.

I could see this, provided the opponent(s) met the following criteria, or something close:
1. It/they have enough intelligence to realize what the GWF just did; and one of
2a. It/they are lower level or HD than the GWF; or
2b. It/they are one or more sizes smaller than the GWF

I could almost see this working in reverse too - you're up against a GWF giant, it pastes one of the front-liners. The rest of the front line are smart enough and small enough to be affected - but the giant's Cha. is so bad the front liners get a bonus (equal to the giant's Cha. penalty) to attack it for a round: "How dare something that dumb and ugly smear poor Fred! Why, I'm gonna..."

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

I'm not sure I'd worry too much about relative size. That's a rabbit hole I'd rather avoid. If I can kill a hundred foot lizard with a longsword, surely I can intimidate something with my great axe.

 

[GX.Sigma]

But in virtually every version of DnD, your odds of success on a reasonable encounter, ie one that is not overwhelming, always favours the PC's and always has.

I don't understand this statement. Encounters that are not difficult are easy? That's just a truism.

Or do you mean that all encounters are too easy or too difficult, with no middle ground?

 

[Emerikol]

That's always been one of the weird ironies of D&D. Low level is a difficult as hell time with TPKs around every corner and requires either heavy game mastery or a bidner full of back-up PCs to get by, while high-level D&D(3.x anyways, I have no experience with pre-3.x) is easy as pie as long as you're playing a spellcaster.

That has not been my experience. The death toll is far higher at high levels than it is at low levels in my campaigns. The amount of firepower and the cost of bad play is so much higher at the high levels.

 

[Hussar]

That has not been my experience. The death toll is far higher at high levels than it is at low levels in my campaigns. The amount of firepower and the cost of bad play is so much higher at the high levels.

What edition are you talking about though? In ad&d, by say 12th level, your pcs are virtually gods. The monsters just don't do enough damage to be a credible threat unless you start bombing the group with very large numbers.

3e otoh tends to turn into rocket tag.

 

[ignayshus]

Homebrew for balancing the choices for those with a fighting style.

style: Heavy Weapon - Use reaction to reroll a miss when wielding as 2handed weapon
style: Dual Wield - +1 dmg when dual wielding or as a double weapon
style: Sword n Board - Shield as a d6 bludgeoning weapon
style: Archery - +1 Attack w/ Ranged, No disadvantage for range
style: Thrown - Ability mod to offhand if both weapons light and thrown


feat: HWMaster - prof, same cleave, str damage on a miss
feat: DWielder - prof, use any 1 handed weapon, +1AC and +1 hit when dual wielding
feat: Fencing - prof, same reaction, same flurry
feat: ShMaster - prof, +1 AC shield bonus, reaction to disadvantage an attack against a target within 5ft
feat: Archery - prof, ignore 1/2 and 3/4 cover, same flurry
feat: Polearm - prof, double weapon (d6), same provoke AoO
feat: Thrown - prof, ignore 1/2 and 3/4 cover, +1 hit, make two offhand attacks w/o ability modifier when wielding light/thrown weapons

Napkin math results in fairly well balanced styles, big weapon is a slightly more offensive, dual wield is slightly more defensive, thrown is just below ~95%, Archery and SwordnBoard is ~85%.

Polearm with Dual Wield style is in between 2hander+HWMaster and Dual wield+DWielder.

 

[DamageOnAHit]

The actual reason this is even an issue is because people cannot accept failure as part of the fun of playing a game.

I agree, most of the posts I've seen amount to a personal preference for a non-dice game where success is a matter of degrees, and failure is discounted entirely.