D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[Thomas Shey]

I made my own Hit pointless D&D felt kind of anti-heroic and wrong genre, perhaps horror fiction or something

Eh. In the sense that D&D uses them, RQ doesn't use hit points, but I can't say it feels anti-heroic. Just gritty.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm pretty curious about this. Does the study mention if/how much the injuries impacted general combat effectiveness for those who carried on, and what the related weapons systems for the study are?

Depends on what you mean by "carry on"; note this only applies short term, i.e. during one continuous exchange. After the adrenaline has worn off all kinds of things come home to roost (including the shock they've managed to avoid setting in and various impairing levels of pain).

Its been some time since I saw it, but it involved modern exchanges between police and criminals primarily, and thus a lot of it was firearms injuries, but I remember distinctly some break-out sections on blunt impact and knife wounds (which were common enough there was a summary list). Its also, as far as I know, not been repeated but then, it required the agency doing it (I want to say the American FBI but its been some years now) to do a fair amount of data trawling. I do know I've seen some similar data from military sources, though I expect the weapon profiles involved were somewhat different (would have leaned into longarms and small scale fragmentation more than the police data did, and probably didn't deal with melee attacks to any real extent); in any case there was some consistency of conclusion.

(There was also some similar data from trauma centers some years ago.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

Military studies I read indicated there was something like a 5 percent performance degradation

That sounds right. It was honestly one of those counter-intuitive and almost shocking sorts of conclusions.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not much for death spirals, but I would guess more gritty fiction where death comes cheap and easy?

That's easily handled by making people, well, die easily. Its not like there's not plenty of ways to do that compared to D&D that don't involve death spirals (I mentioned the BRP family of games; they don't do death spirals, but I remember when we first shifted a long time ago, and how abrupt the difference was. You could be very capable and pretty good at defending yourself, but you learned you were never, ever safe no matter what you were fighting).

 

[Thomas Shey]

As for non-combat solutions...maybe? But it's been my experience that most people who play melee characters actually want to fight with them, to the point that I've had people protest when I attempt diplomacy or lock down foes with a spell!

Honestly, its a little perverse to expect people who pick a combat focused character type not to expect them to want to get into combat.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Military studies I read indicated there was something like a 5 percent performance degradation

That's pretty impressive.

Depends on what you mean by "carry on"; note this only applies short term, i.e. during one continuous exchange. After the adrenaline has worn off all kinds of things come home to roost (including the shock they've managed to avoid setting in and various impairing levels of pain).

Its been some time since I saw it, but it involved modern exchanges between police and criminals primarily, and thus a lot of it was firearms injuries, but I remember distinctly some break-out sections on blunt impact and knife wounds (which were common enough there was a summary list). Its also, as far as I know, not been repeated but then, it required the agency doing it (I want to say the American FBI but its been some years now) to do a fair amount of data trawling. I do know I've seen some similar data from military sources, though I expect the weapon profiles involved were somewhat different (would have leaned into longarms and small scale fragmentation more than the police data did, and probably didn't deal with melee attacks to any real extent); in any case there was some consistency of conclusion.

(There was also some similar data from trauma centers some years ago.)

Was referring to the population that did not succumb to shock/blood loss during combat. If they're still pretty high functioning and able to capably protect themselves (especially in melee) that takes any remaining air out of the whole death spiral logic (at least for earth humans).

 

[Undrave]

Pull out those best moves before it comes down to the wire, then. Lead with them. Get the BBEG into its own death spiral before it gets you into yours; and if the BBEG gets lucky and you can't hurt it fast, have a getaway plan. Make not getting damaged an important part of your attack plan, rather than just wading in and trading blows. Etc.

Which sounds like a good idea but then you start to get into the 'HP are meat' debate and I don't know if you want to go down that route? It's not like you can guaratee not to take any hits, there's gotta at least be some thresholds going on here. You'll also end up with way more wack-a-mole healing.

Death spirals are a good incentive to avoid combat all together, but a lot of people LIKE combat so you gotta make the rest of the game more fun. I can see where that would be attractive to someone used to 1e where fighting was basically failing.

It's not like you can prevent taking hit point damage while adventuring, especially if you're a melee character. You kind of sort of need to be standing next to bad guys to do your work. If there were penalties for taking hit point damage, who would want to be a melee character? Everyone would be ranged specialists trying to use crowd control spells and summoned minions to take melee damage.

Twilight Clerics would probably replace all other healing classes, I suppose.

You end up with the Heroclix Batman problem where the most efficient thing you can do is to HEROICALLY hide in bushes chucking batarangs at the enemy.

 

[James Gasik]

Which sounds like a good idea but then you start to get into the 'HP are meat' debate and I don't know if you want to go down that route? It's not like you can guaratee not to take any hits, there's gotta at least be some thresholds going on here. You'll also end up with way more wack-a-mole healing.

Death spirals are a good incentive to avoid combat all together, but a lot of people LIKE combat so you gotta make the rest of the game more fun. I can see where that would be attractive to someone used to 1e where fighting was basically failing.

You end up with the Heroclix Batman problem where the most efficient thing you can do is to HEROICALLY hide in bushes chucking batarangs at the enemy.

Oof, yeah, Heroclix is a pretty rough example of this sort of thing. Even if you have a click that makes you super powered, good luck staying on it for more than a zeptosecond. But for most characters, you just go from bad to worse with frightening rapidity if someone can target you.

I remember my first game, I had some old clicks, and I actually thought my Living Laser with Defense Value 10 would be about invincible. Yeah, not so much, lol.

 

[Undrave]

Or take defensive feats and abilities rather than just those that add to your DPR.

Except that's a losing proposition, as you'll want to send the enemy into THEIR death spiral faster. Advancing the game state, to use TCG speak, will always be more desirable and the more efficient. You won't see people take defensive actions, you'll see them take feats to be able to snipe opponent from 100 yards away and hit as fast as possible. You'll end up with a bunch of Skyrim Stealth Archer.

 

[Undrave]

Oof, yeah, Heroclix is a pretty rough example of this sort of thing. Even if you have a click that makes you super powered, good luck staying on it for more than a zeptosecond. But for most characters, you just go from bad to worse with frightening rapidity if someone can target you.

I remember my first game, I had some old clicks, and I actually thought my Living Laser with Defense Value 10 would be about invincible. Yeah, not so much, lol.

At least in Heroclix you have multiple units when they start going down the death spiral.

I only played Heroclix a short while WAAAAAY back when it first came out. The best unit in the first few runs of DC Heroclix was the experienced Batman (not the Veteran one, who had the JLA team ability). I dunno how it is now, but back then, being able to climb and move unhindered in difficult terrain was a power on the same stat where you would find Stealth (letting you hide in stuff like bushes, making you basically invisible even after attacking), but Bat Family members got Stealth as a bonus power. So you'd often see Batman or Robin just hiding in a bush chucking Batarangs. And Batman in particular had the 'Willpower' power which mean it could activate two turns in a row without taking damage. I think he might even have had a way to ignore defensive abilities?

Anyway, he was kinda broken AF. And with the fact that you could only move OR attack (if I remember), melee was basically useless.