Shane Hensley comments on the RPG industry

[hong]

Yes, well, you know I did already address the shortcomings of that rationale you're espousing at some depth in my previous long-winded posts, so rather than re-hash, I'll only suggest you go back and check it out when you have a few minutes.

And _you_ can see my reply to Synicism.

Suffice to say, the big problem is that, just as with Synicism's dynamite scenario, just as with PEGShane's comments about a soldier shrugging off a direct hit from a tank round,

Nobody, as far as I know, has shown how a soldier can survive a direct hit with a tank round. Point me to where the hit point model mandates that taking X points of damage must be the result of a direct hit.

just as with my anecdote about characters jumping off a mountain because it's the shortest way down, is that character, having done the math. knows for certain that there's not a chance of dying.

1) Massive damage Fort save. Natural 1 always fails.

2) Hit points presume a character actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of an attack. Someone who jumps off a mountain in the knowledge that he has lots of hit points is, arguably, not actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of the attack, and therefore the hit point model doesn't apply. Spatula time.

3) The jump-off-a-cliff example is awfully, terribly old. It's so old it has hair. If this is the worst aspect of the model you can come up with, that would indicate it's actually doing rather well in the areas it's _supposed_ to model.

So much for drama. Some dastard pulls a gun on the hero, the hero sighs and walks across the room to take his shotgun down off the wall. "Well, nobody's shot at me today, so I have some dodging points to burn. You go ahead and start shooting. I gotta load this thing."

How is this different to having, say, massive PD and DR in GURPS? Or any other mechanic by which a powerful character can avoid being hit by lesser characters?

Now, before everyone rushes to make some obtuse commennt about how the GM can arbitrarily override the rules in this situation and decide what happens in a given situation, but realize that in doing so you're just going off on a completely unrelated tangent. Here's my statement: d20's hit point system is a flawed and inadequate method for handling realistic or cinematic combat.

It is? I hadn't noticed.

Saying "a good DM would easilty handle it this way" or "a GM who lets that happen is dumb" doesn't refute my statement one tiny iota. It is irrelevant what a DM can or might do. If the system's adequate, the DM doesn't have to override it and make up house rules on the spot to keep things from getting goofy.

There's no such thing as a perfect model. Some models have more obvious holes than others, that's all.

Conan is a powerful character. In one story, a handful of guards catch Conan someplace that he shouldn't be. Does Conan just roll initiative and tear the guards apart? No. One of the guards has a crossbow leveled at him and Conan knows he's more than likely a dead man if he tries anything funny. He has to use his wits to wait for an opportunity to strike.

For every "stupid rules! Can't handle situation!" example, there is a counterexample. In this case, in _The Long Kiss Goodnight_, Geena Davis's character is involved in a standoff with a mook who has a gun pointed at her head. They argue for a bit, and then Davis slaps the gun out of the way, twists the mook's arm around, and uses his own gun to shoot two of his friends who were sneaking up on her. And you know what? I _like_ it like that.

In D&D, a couple of barbarians are sitting in a bar when they are surprised by four goons with crossbows. In a movie or novel, the characters might use a tactic like flipping over their table and using it as a makeshift mantlet, perhaps picking it up and using it to ram the guards. In D&D, the barbarians needn't bother thinking out a plan like that, they just rush the guards knowing that they can't be killed. In fact, the barbarians are somewhat foolish if they do use the makeshift-mantelet tactic, since in D&D it almost always better to do something offensive than defensive. Characters relying on hit points don't have to use their wits.

Have you actually played D&D at high levels, or like so many others, are you so hypnotised by hit points that you start believing it's nothing more than chop-chop-chop-kill?

In the last high-level outing I was in, our 13th-15th level party got our butts kicked by a derro necromancer and her uber-death slaad companion. Not once, but twice. In one battle, the slaad reduced the 170+ hp fighter to single digits twice (he got a heal spell in between), knocked the rogue and the archer (me) unconscious, and blinded half the party, before we teleported the hell out of there. In the next session, the necromancer's horde of wraiths and spectres swarmed us and took out the cleric, and we again had to teleport the hell out of there. We finally managed to take them down on the third go after a protracted session of planning out buffs, strategy, and similar things.

Tactics are VERY important at high level, possibly even more so at low level. And a character who focuses entirely on offense without looking at things like saves, AC and resistances better have a humongous initiative bonus, because if he doesn't take out the opposition in the first round, he's meat in the second round.

Interesting perspective. Let's do a field study. When you get a chance, run out to your local hobby shop and find how many published d20 products you can find that provide 15th-level parties with 1HD opponents to fight.

Do you always rely on other people to exercise your imagination for you?

Let's keep everyone posted on the results. I'm sure we'll find it enlightening how many dummies are making a living scaling every opponent in every encounter to the party's level.

The DMG itself says that high-level characters should be given the opportunity to enjoy the powers they gain. That means being able to demonstrate that they are, indeed, badasses by comparison with the everyday people around them. Do you prefer to argue by what's in the core rules, or what's in various modules, most of which I don't give a whit about, and some authors of which don't even know half the rules anyway?

Oh, that's the answer! ROFL! Good one.

Your blustering technique needs work.

Any time I see some hero fighting on despite mortal wounds, I'll just think "Oh, he's got that feat from one of the splatbooks!" Heh. You're a real card.

I know. You, however, have some catching up to do.

But wait a sec...Remain Conscious has Iron Will as a prerequisite, and that's hardly appropriate for Boramir, is it?

Boromir can have Iron Will, and with his Wisdom of 9, he might still have a Will save of +4 at 10th level. Quick quiz: how useful is a +4 Will at that level? Answer: not very.

Wait, never mind. We'll just say he had a very low Wisdom score, and the Iron Will didn't compensate enough. Yeah, that works.

Indeed it does. You are enlightened. You can thank me later.

Hey, looks like the time I've spent with you guys must have unlocked the powers of spurious reasoning that lay hidden deep within me. Glad to see that this thread hasn't been entirely unproductive.

Now I'm confused. Your reasoning is indeed spurious, but this fact hasn't been very well hidden. Am I missing something?

 

[Synicism]

Originally posted by hong It's entirely possible, and even probable, for an iaijutsu master to kill his opponent in the strike phase of a duel. See the prestige class writeup in OA.

Yeah. And it's also not beyond the realm of possibility that the one-cut-one-kill duel will lead to some grievous wounds, a few more rounds of combat, and one very confused iaijutsu duelist.

L5R is an extremely deadly game. We used to joke that just looking at a sword might kill you. The d20 system mechanics takes a lot of that away.

Granted, there are many things that you can do with the system to fix that. Spycraft did a decent job with the HP/VP mechanic. Although I would have preferred to see no VP at all and some kind of dodge or parry roll instead.

Likewise, Mutants & Masterminds has a lot of promise with its damage saves.

And every time someone comes up with a "new and improved" damage resolution method, we get farther and farther from the "stock" d20 that we tend to see these days and closer to what Shane Hensley predicted - more OGL and less d20. People taking the system and tailoring it to suit the particularities of their games.

 

[Synicism]

Originally posted by D'karr Like I said before, don't blame D&D rules or lack thereof for the follies of a DM. The DM could describe each combat just like that. The players can describe the damage like that. It is up to the game group how the game is played, not to the "rules". If you've agreed as a group that you want the damage to be cinematic (LotR example) there is nothing stopping you from doing that. My current group is an example of that.

I'm not blaming the rules for anything. Stock d20 works great for certain types of play.

However, being a big fan of operational consistency in my games (I hate being surprised by unusual rulings so I tend to avoid them whenever possible), I don't believe that rule zero, while always a nice tool to have, should be required to fix these sorts of things.

This gets back to my last post - the OGL lets designers fix things and tailor the system to their own needs.

If you want a game where fundamentally fragile human beings are capable of superhuman stunts but will still suffer extremely serious injuries when impaled with a sword or blown away with a sniper rifle, then you can provide for active defenses and few hit points.

That way, sure it may take just as many shots to bring a character down, but only one hit.

In many ways, this is more reflective of actual combat, even in fantasy. Actual swordfights are a series of maneuvers, attacks, parries, feints, and dodges, until there is a single serious injury that generally ends the fight.

However, and this goes back to the series of gripes about Silver Age Sentinels d20, this kind of tweaking should be encouraged, not dismissed because it's "incompatible."

By sticking to the d20 license, a lot of the potential behind the OGL itself, independent of d20, gets lost.

 

[hong]

Yeah. And it's also not beyond the realm of possibility that the one-cut-one-kill duel will lead to some grievous wounds, a few more rounds of combat, and one very confused iaijutsu duelist.

Just to be clear, I'm referring to the iaijutsu master _prestige class_ in OA. That class gets big bonus damage on the first round of combat, multiple attack rolls in the same situation, and various other stuff. It's basically designed so that you _can_ get the one-shot-kill that's core to the duel concept. Once that first round is over, the duelist is just a rather mediocre fighter, but that's the tradeoff for taking a specialist PrC.

And really, is it so unreasonable that not _every_ iaijutsu duel might end in a conclusive result?

L5R is an extremely deadly game. We used to joke that just looking at a sword might kill you. The d20 system mechanics takes a lot of that away.

This is a taste thing. There have been other L5R players on these boards who have commented on this difference between d10 and d20, and have said they like how in d20 you don't have to fear for your life every time you get into a fight. Just sometimes.

Granted, there are many things that you can do with the system to fix that. Spycraft did a decent job with the HP/VP mechanic. Although I would have preferred to see no VP at all and some kind of dodge or parry roll instead.

Personally, I don't like dodge/parry rolls. 1) Too much rolling involved, especially for big combats; 2) the potential for long periods where noone makes any progress. But some people seem to like it....

 

[Synicism]

Hong said:

"Nobody, as far as I know, has shown how a soldier can survive a direct hit with a tank round. Point me to where the hit point model mandates that taking X points of damage must be the result of a direct hit."

The thing about a HP system is that an attack either hit or it didn't. If you want to change the model, having a lot of HP lets a character hopscotch through a landmine, fall all his reflex saves for half damage, and still walk away.

Hong said:

"1) Massive damage Fort save. Natural 1 always fails."

Not necessarily. There are a number of variants published for the treatment of ones and 20's. I personally use the -10/30 rule, where a natural one is a -10 and a natural 20 is a 30.

So yes, your natural 20 may not always succeed and your natural one may not always fail.

"Hit points presume a character actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of an attack. Someone who jumps off a mountain in the knowledge that he has lots of hit points is, arguably, not actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of the attack, and therefore the hit point model doesn't apply. Spatula time."

Show me where it says that. Granted, that's a nice use of rule zero and it makes perfect sense. But I'm talking about numbers. You can't build a system assuming that players will act a certain way.

Hong said:

"The jump-off-a-cliff example is awfully, terribly old. It's so old it has hair. If this is the worst aspect of the model you can come up with, that would indicate it's actually doing rather well in the areas it's _supposed_ to model."

Hmm... you're right. It is pretty old. Actually, TSR expanded it in the Spelljammer game to deal with reentry.

Yes. It is possible for a character to fall from outer space to the ground, hit, and survive, if he has enough hit points. It's right there, in the system.

Silly? Sure. However, the fact remains that SOMEONE must play that way. Otherwise the rule wouldn't exist.

Hong said:

"How is this different to having, say, massive PD and DR in GURPS? Or any other mechanic by which a powerful character can avoid being hit by lesser characters?"

Simple. In GURPS, I am either hit or I am not. If someone swings a sword at me and I parry the blow, I didn't get touched. If someone takes a shot at me and I dodge, I didn't get touched.

However, should my defenses fail, I have a very few hit points upon which to rely to take the hit. Especially given the damage multipliers that GURPS uses.

In "stock" d20, I swing, I hit, I do damage. You swing, you hit, you do damage. Lather, rinse, repeat. Many attacks, many hits, each one whittling away at the combatant's ability to fight.

In a GURPS fight, I might have my first ten attacks parried or dodged, only to land with my eleventh, stab my opponent through the chest, and kill him. In a D&D fight, I might have to actually hit him with my sword eleven times before he drops.

Big difference in the mind's eye. And that's what rules in a RPG are supposed to do, right? Help us imagine what's going on?

 

[Synicism]

Originally posted by hong Just to be clear, I'm referring to the iaijutsu master _prestige class_ in OA. That class gets big bonus damage on the first round of combat, multiple attack rolls in the same situation, and various other stuff. It's basically designed so that you _can_ get the one-shot-kill that's core to the duel concept. Once that first round is over, the duelist is just a rather mediocre fighter, but that's the tradeoff for taking a specialist PrC. This is a taste thing. There have been other L5R players on these boards who have commented on this difference between d10 and d20, and have said they like how in d20 you don't have to fear for your life every time you get into a fight. Just sometimes. Personally, I don't like dodge/parry rolls. 1) Too much rolling involved, especially for big combats; 2) the potential for long periods where noone makes any progress. But some people seem to like it....

You're right. It is a taste thing. Personally, I don't see the difference in time taken between me making an an attack roll vs. an AC and, if successful, rolling damage (two rolls of the dice), and me making an attack roll, and then having my target make a defense roll to see if he evaded somehow (same two rolls of the dice). I prefer the mental imagery the second way better. Others might not.

You do have a good point - it's possible to make the one-shot-one-kill highly likely with the right prestige classes.

This begs the following question. Does the proliferation of prestige classes designed to alter the system to produce certain effects that might otherwise be impossible (like the Iaijutsu Master) not seem like the plugging of a leaky dam?

Would it not have been easier to design a system that could handle these sorts of things in one book?

Granted the d20 approach does allow for a LOT of books, and that's good for publishers and chiropractors who treat gamers' back problems caused by lugging that much paper around. But what about everyone else?

Getting back to Shane Hensley's point again, this is what the OGL was designed for. To let people make up their own stuff. I like a lot of the d20 system. It's quick, it's tight, and it's easy to figure out. I don't like certain aspects of "stock" d20, like hit points, classes, and levels. The OGL allows me to fix it for my own purposes.

That is great!

What is not great is the criticism that tends to get heaped on such things.

"It's incompatible with d20."

"It doesn't work for my D&D game."

Wonderful. We have a d20 STL for those things. We have an OGL for people who want to make something suited to their product. Maybe dual-statting is an option - stock d20 on one side, and the OGL system on the other. But the OGL provides the tools. And the industry is (finally) starting to use them.

 

[Synicism]

Originally posted by hong And really, is it so unreasonable that not _every_ iaijutsu duel might end in a conclusive result?

Oh, and just as a historical note, knowing what I know about swords and the wounds they inflict on unarmored targets who are not moving to avoid getting hit, I'd say that the idea of the loser of a real iaijutsu duel surviving longer than the 1 minute it takes a D&D character to bleed to death from 0 to -10 HP is, factually, pretty unreasonable.

 

[hong]

The thing about a HP system is that an attack either hit or it didn't.

Well, let's be clear about what we're talking about. In _every_ RP combat system, an attack either hits or it doesn't. You either apply damage, or not. What varies is what the _game-mechanical application of damage_ (a "hit") is meant to represent in-game.

One bug/wart/misfeature of the hit point model is that hits ain't hits. Someone who takes 10 points of damage from a sword might have suffered a mortal wound to the belly (if they have 4 hp), a serious cut to the side (if they have 12 hp), or a minor graze (if they have 100 hp). The mapping between the abstract rules model and in-game reality is left unspecified.

The same applies to the VP/WP system, which is really just hp dressed up differently. Someone who takes 10 VP damage has in fact been _missed_; they use up their VP in dodging what would have been a solid hit. Only attacks that deal WP damage are real, physical hits that draw blood. The VP ablation process is explained in terms of fatigue or luck, but the point remains the same: hits ain't hits.

Contrast this to something like GURPS, which has explicit mechanics for parrying, dodging and blocking attacks. In this model, there is a clear and rigid mapping between the outcome of the abstract model, and what happens in-game. If you take 10 points of damage, that's always a serious wound (assuming you have 10 HT), regardless of how many points you have in swordfighting skills. In this sort of model, character ability comes into it in the parry/dodge roll, which determines whether you take that 10 points of damage in the first place.

If you want to change the model, having a lot of HP lets a character hopscotch through a landmine, fall all his reflex saves for half damage, and still walk away.

Nothing wrong with that. If you fail your Ref save, that doesn't mean you stand up and take the full force of the blast. It means you managed to dodge aside, but not quite as successfully as you would have liked.

Hong said:

"1) Massive damage Fort save. Natural 1 always fails."

Not necessarily. There are a number of variants published for the treatment of ones and 20's. I personally use the -10/30 rule, where a natural one is a -10 and a natural 20 is a 30.

Well, if we're going to go into variants, there are tons of them, some of which might also make it _harder_ to survive silly stunts like jumping off cliffs. d20 modern sets the massive damage threshold at damage equal to your Con, for example. I'm just going by what's in the PHB/SRD.

"Hit points presume a character actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of an attack. Someone who jumps off a mountain in the knowledge that he has lots of hit points is, arguably, not actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of the attack, and therefore the hit point model doesn't apply. Spatula time."

Show me where it says that. Granted, that's a nice use of rule zero and it makes perfect sense. But I'm talking about numbers. You can't build a system assuming that players will act a certain way.

Yes, it's rule 0. So what? I never said the hit point model was perfect. I said that it works. And personally, I've never seen anyone purposefully jump off a cliff in the knowledge that they'll survive a fall. I've seen lots of characters fall into pits or have their fly spells dispelled, but that's different.

Hong said:

"How is this different to having, say, massive PD and DR in GURPS? Or any other mechanic by which a powerful character can avoid being hit by lesser characters?"

Simple. In GURPS, I am either hit or I am not.

As in any ruleset. In fact, you said much the same thing about D&D -- see the first bit right above.

In "stock" d20, I swing, I hit, I do damage. You swing, you hit, you do damage. Lather, rinse, repeat. Many attacks, many hits, each one whittling away at the combatant's ability to fight.

And this is a Good Thing, believe it or not.

In a GURPS fight, I might have my first ten attacks parried or dodged, only to land with my eleventh, stab my opponent through the chest, and kill him. In a D&D fight, I might have to actually hit him with my sword eleven times before he drops.

As said before, hits ain't hits. In the end, the same result eventuates: you fight for eleven rounds, one guy eventually takes a killing blow, and the other is exhausted or heavily wounded.

Big difference in the mind's eye. And that's what rules in a RPG are supposed to do, right? Help us imagine what's going on?

No, they're supposed to help us _play the game_. A situation where two people hack at each other for multiple rounds without any discernible result is boring for most gamers, regardless of how "realistic" it might be.

 

[hong]

Oh, and just as a historical note, knowing what I know about swords and the wounds they inflict on unarmored targets who are not moving to avoid getting hit, I'd say that the idea of the loser of a real iaijutsu duel surviving longer than the 1 minute it takes a D&D character to bleed to death from 0 to -10 HP is, factually, pretty unreasonable.

You only take 1 minute to bleed to death if you took precisely enough damage to reduce you to -1 hp. When attacks are dealing out something like 10d6 or 20d6 damage, you'll typically either survive (have enough hp to soak it) or be dead.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Hong said:

Hong said:

"How is this different to having, say, massive PD and DR in GURPS? Or any other mechanic by which a powerful character can avoid being hit by lesser characters?"

Simple. In GURPS, I am either hit or I am not. If someone swings a sword at me and I parry the blow, I didn't get touched. If someone takes a shot at me and I dodge, I didn't get touched.

However, should my defenses fail, I have a very few hit points upon which to rely to take the hit. Especially given the damage multipliers that GURPS uses.

In "stock" d20, I swing, I hit, I do damage. You swing, you hit, you do damage. Lather, rinse, repeat. Many attacks, many hits, each one whittling away at the combatant's ability to fight.

In a GURPS fight, I might have my first ten attacks parried or dodged, only to land with my eleventh, stab my opponent through the chest, and kill him. In a D&D fight, I might have to actually hit him with my sword eleven times before he drops.

Big difference in the mind's eye. And that's what rules in a RPG are supposed to do, right? Help us imagine what's going on?

The problem with the GURPS example, is that the first attack has just the same chance to kill them as the eleventh. In D&D, you can tell whether you are winning or losing; it's not just whoever gets lucky first.

Geoff.