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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7726783" data-attributes="member: 6775031">That's practically where they are with 5E. Good light weapons do a d6, good versatile weapons are d8/d10, and good heavy weapons are 2d6 or a d12. I wish that there was a little more variation, to account for things like ease-of-use and stopping power, but I couldn't begin to tell you the difference between an all-metal mace and a stone head affixed to a wooden shaft (outside of very narrow applications, such as trying to cut it). Of course, I'm arguing that from a position where a hit represents a defined in-game reality and damage represents something observable, so that may not apply if you take a much more abstract view of hits and damage.The DM owes it to the players to be impartial. If special things happen to the PCs because they're PCs, then it feels contrived and the players don't get a sense of accomplishment. If I miraculously only encounter enemies that I can overcome, except for the occasional big scary monster that I'm supposed to run away from, then the world feels artificial. I would feel more like the protagonist in some novel or video game, and less like an actual person who really lived in that world.I'm having some difficulty parsing your statement. I said (or at least I meant to imply) that the guidelines in the book would lead to a series of encounters that the PCs were highly likely to win, if the DM chose to follow those guidelines as though they were rules. If the DM sticks with those guidelines, then the PCs are highly likely to win; that means the DM is choosing to have the players win, if they choose to enforce those guidelines.Combat-as-Sport means that the initial conditions of a fight are contrived in such a way as to achieve the desired success rate, regardless of outside factors. You can't use clever tricks to make the fight easier, because the whole point of playing in a Combat-as-Sport style is that you want to have an engaging combat where you get to make tactical decisions that let you win fairly. The trade-off is that, since you can't alter the odds beforehand by employing clever tricks, the baseline odds without doing anything special - if you just roll initiative and try to best them on the battlefield - must be wildly in your favor. It wouldn't be tenable for the game to posit a series of fights, and expect you to win them fairly in straightforward combat, if the odds weren't in your favor. Because of that, you can know with a high degree of certainty that odds are contrived in your favor all along.That's what I mean when I say that Combat-as-Sport means that the DM has already decided to let you win. By following those guidelines, the DM has decided that you have a ninety percent chance of success (or whatever) as long as you use your powers intelligently; and I don't see the point in playing out a series of combats while knowing that's the case. I would rather play some miniatures combat game when I wanted contrived fights, and play an RPG when I want to role-play.</blockquote>

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