"Save My Game" oversight?

[Glyfair]

In the most recent Save My Game column, the author goes into a lot of detail about issues with the jermlaine swarming enemies with subdual damage, yet only doing 1d3-4 damage. He goes into a long analysis of the subject. There are some good ideas there, but he seems to have missed something.

By the rules, they can't inflict subdual damage or regular damage with their attacks because they are too puny and weak to do anything.

Yet, the PHB says:

Minimum Damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of damage.

That doesn't invalidate the points, but it seems an odd thing to miss.

 

[Darklone]

OMG. That guy is no D&D player.

He tries to explain it with editing problems?????

Hell, even the Sage mentioned long ago that these kind of stats are given to make it easier to calculate buffs (e.g. bard song, prayer, bulls strength), nothing else!

Could someone please post at his board and tell the nice Mr. about the rules?

 

[Krafen]

Aren't articles like that edited by someone? It seems like an awfully glaring error to miss. Tough to take that guy seriously when he is clearly BSing his way through the question.

 

[Darklone]

I mailed. No answer yet.

 

[Arnwyn]

I don't think I've been impressed with anything that "Jason Nelson-Brown" fellow has written.

 

[Glyfair]

OMG. That guy is no D&D player.

Well, it did take someone asking the question as well. It seems that person plays D&D (or at least tries to)

Well, they've added a note:

Producer's Note: As folks have pointed out, according to the SRD jermlaine fall into the category of minimum damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of damage. Scoring less than 0 hp wouldn't actually heal a character, after all. That said, introducing jermlaine swarms and other strategies are effective ways of making these pesky threats a little more threatening.

 

[Mr. Patient]

I usually like the Save My Game articles, but this one was pretty poor. I notice how he also keeps talking about using "the swarm template," as if such a thing existed.

 

[Glyfair]

I usually like the Save My Game articles, but this one was pretty poor. I notice how he also keeps talking about using "the swarm template," as if such a thing existed.

I was wondering about that, but thought he might have a book I don't (I suppose he might have a book none of us have).

 

[silentspace]

Wow, I tried to read this, but I couldn't. Even skimming it was painful.

 

[Darklone]

Ah well. Official excuses for my behavior here, I guess everyone has a bad day now and then like the author probably had... Guess I went a little overboard.

I should have rather wondered if it's not possible to have two or three others in such a big company read stuff before they put it on their website.

The Sage wasn't without fault either. Yet, things like this show me once again how good he did the job.