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Vengarr posted:If monsters and players both can't miss, it eliminates the monsters-can't-win thing. Ok Vengarr posted:I'm a level 1 fighter. I'm fighting this Orc. I have 12 HP. Every round, this orc takes off, at a minimum, 20% of my HP. And? What is the specific complaint here, exactly? The Fighter would similarly deal damage every round. Given that he's a Fighter of all things, probably more damage and/or some other effects. Maybe the Fighter is variant human and has the Heavy Armor Master feat. Besides the fact that 5e isn't really built for Fighter/Orc duels in the first place but rather for group-vs-group fights, what is the problem? Vengarr posted:I'm a level 20 Rogue. I have 2 HP left from fighting a dragon. A lone level 1 orc walks up, rolls 20 on initiative, attacks me and misses. I die. That is a ridiculously contrived scenario. Might as well say that a lone goblin throws a pebble, rolls a natural 20, and you die from the crit. Any rule can lead to weird outcomes if you go out of your way to misuse it. You're not even trying to approach this from a reasonable perspective. For all you know effects-on-a-miss can't happen if the target is 5+ levels higher than the attacker, or whatever. You're just assuming the worst because you want the worst at this point, or at least so it seems to me. Vengarr posted:In what universe does avoiding a blow not boost your chances of winning? Slipping a punch in boxing isn't a case of "wow, nothing happens", it gives the guy who dodged a chance to punch back and do damage instead. A chance of winning is not the same as winning. Whiffing utterly might increase the chance of one side reaching their goal before the other does, but it does not by itself progress either side towards their goals.
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Dec 8, 2016 19:41
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What do you suppose Tabletop Baseball RPG looks like? I'm guessing you would take the sum of your natural athletic ability, add it to your specific bat-swinging proficiency, add a little randomness (since the ball moves irregularly in flight) and roll a dice against how difficult of a pitch it was to see whether or not you hit.
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Dec 8, 2016 19:46
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Sage Genesis posted:And? What is the specific complaint here, exactly? The Fighter would similarly deal damage every round. Given that he's a Fighter of all things, probably more damage and/or some other effects. Maybe the Fighter is variant human and has the Heavy Armor Master feat. Besides the fact that 5e isn't really built for Fighter/Orc duels in the first place but rather for group-vs-group fights, what is the problem? It leads to less interesting outcomes. Every fight has a hard countdown determined by relative HP pools. In this case, the fighter has 5 turns max. quote:That is a ridiculously contrived scenario. Might as well say that a lone goblin throws a pebble, rolls a natural 20, and you die from the crit. Any rule can lead to weird outcomes if you go out of your way to misuse it. I'm not an admirer on the system because it seems to lead directly to these sorts of scenarios to me. I'm not a partisan of 5e. I haven't even gotten my game started yet. quote:A chance of winning is not the same as winning. Whiffing utterly might increase the chance of one side reaching their goal before the other does, but it does not by itself progress either side towards their goals. But increasing your chance of winning the fight is part and parcel of winning a fight! If I punch a guy in the kidneys over and over in Round 1, he may not be knocked out when the bell sounds. But I have drat sure made some progress.
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Dec 8, 2016 19:55
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Vengarr posted:Well, the fight still progresses if you miss, it just proceeds in an unfavorable direction to you/the party. exactly. maybe a truce occurs. maybe a player is killed. maybe the players retreat early. there's tons of fight resolutions besides players win minus some resources also a lone goblin throwing a pebble which kills you is absolutely something that should be able to happen no matter your level. let the goblin be the David to your Goliath, especially since your party can resurrect you mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 19:56
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Vengarr posted:What do you suppose Tabletop Baseball RPG looks like? IT looks like incredibly boring. Why are you playing tabletop baseball? Why are you not playing a heroic fantasy game like dungeons and dra-ohhh wait.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:00
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CaPensiPraxis posted:IT looks like incredibly boring. Why are you playing tabletop baseball? Why are you not playing a heroic fantasy game like dungeons and dra-ohhh wait. Please share with me your solution?
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Dec 8, 2016 20:05
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Vengarr posted:It leads to less interesting outcomes. Every fight has a hard countdown determined by relative HP pools. In this case, the fighter has 5 turns max. Two things. First, your orc apparently never rolls a 1. The Fighter apparently has no way to mitigate damage. (For example, why is your Fighter not using Second Wind?) You've taken a quick off the cuff example and extrapolated it in uncharitable ways. Again. Second, the game would have all the same outcomes as before, with one exception: it is far less likely that a fight between one orc and one 1st level Fighter can drag on for 6+ rounds. And this is bad because...? Nevermind that this was very unlikely in the first place, what is bad about endless whiffle bat fights not occurring? Vengarr posted:I'm not an admirer on the system because it seems to lead directly to these sorts of scenarios to me. I'm not a partisan of 5e. I haven't even gotten my game started yet. Ohh... Have you actually played any RPGs? I don't want to sound like a dick or anything, it's just a possibility that just occurred to me. Vengarr posted:But increasing your chance of winning the fight is part and parcel of winning a fight! If I punch a guy in the kidneys over and over in Round 1, he may not be knocked out when the bell sounds. But I have drat sure made some progress. So... whiffing is progress, because hitting a guy in the kidneys is progress? What you describe is the equivalent of doing damage. It is the opposite of whiffing. Edit: Actually, you know what, never mind. I'm out. This is not doing any good.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:12
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Just assume that Hit Points aren't Meat Points and that damage on a miss can represent a glancing blow, but also exertion or morale loss.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:22
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You're kinda being an rear end in a top hat here, so sure, lets end this one. Have I played RPGs? Sure. I played 3.5 and liked it, and 4e and liked it less. I'm pointing out real flaws as I perceive them and you're waving your hands and acting like I'm being hysterical. One last crack at this one though, because I think my conclusion is obvious and I'm just not explaining it properly: quote:So... whiffing is progress, because hitting a guy in the kidneys is progress? What you describe is the equivalent of doing damage. It is the opposite of whiffing. Do you feel that nothing happens in this clip?
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Dec 8, 2016 20:35
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Scyther posted:Just assume that Hit Points aren't Meat Points and that damage on a miss can represent a glancing blow, but also exertion or morale loss. This is the correct answer. In the clip above, what happens is that one side tires out, lowering his defensive ability and endurance, thus making it easier for Ali to win. None of that happens when you miss in D&D. Literally nothing changes. But if HP represents morale and endurance, damage on a miss simulates the combatants tiring out and progresses the fight to a conclusion.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:44
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D&D doesn't simulate physical exertion resulting from the action of attacking. Repeated whiffs just maintain the status quo. Look, this discussion somehow spun out of the assertion "Fudging rolls shouldn't be necessary" to which someone responded along the lines of "But what do you do when people miss over and over and over and the fight turns into the world's worst game of whiffleball" and that's when the topic came up of damage on a miss or miss tokens or whatever other systems. Somehow someone confused this with "fail forward" (it isn't) and now we've got this whole mess. Arguing it isn't a problem because of your personal definition of "progress" isn't helpful because some people do consider it a problem. It's tedious and unexciting.
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Dec 8, 2016 20:51
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Vengarr posted:You're kinda being an rear end in a top hat here, so sure, lets end this one. Have I played RPGs? Sure. I played 3.5 and liked it, and 4e and liked it less. I'm pointing out real flaws as I perceive them and you're waving your hands and acting like I'm being hysterical. I'm not trying to be, I'm just getting frustrated because from where I'm sitting, I just don't get your point. Your position seems to shift and you appear to invent unreasonable problems purely for the sake of there being problems. I don't think you're hysterical, I think you're hard to understand. The fact that you try to get a point across by asking a question about a boxing match is just another example of that. Just come out and say it, don't make me guess for what you might mean. As for that clip... I think it's irrelevant. A Muhammad Ali boxing match has nothing to do with an orc attacking a Fighter. 1. Boxing has rules that real fights don't. 2. Muhammad Ali is not a good example of first level. 3. The heroic action-adventure fantasy of D&D is not a realistic fight, where fatigue and differences of several inches of reach are meaningful factors. 4. We don't have game mechanics here, we just have a real-world event. In terms of game mechanics this could be anything. Maybe it is Michael Dokes attacking once. Maybe he was attacking 23 times. Maybe this was actually Ali's turn and he describes the damage as fatigue and wasted exertion.
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Dec 8, 2016 21:00
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We already have auto-hit attacks anyway and nobody really complains about them when you call them spells.
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Dec 8, 2016 21:03
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When you miss in combat nothing happens, nothing changes. It's been like that forever in D&D. There's some goddamn hilarious mental gymansitcs going on here. "Well really when nothing at all happens that's actually the same thing as something happening and furthermore..." "I rolled a 12". "Miss! Who's up next?" See that? That's nothing happening, at all. D&D combat's just like that. It's been like that forever. The way to-hit works is fundamental to D&D. Trying to change it would involve rewriting nearly everything. "Well it would be bad if nothing happened on a miss, but actually since stuff actually happens on a miss in D&D, it's not actually bad" is a dumb loving position to take. It's OK for nothing to happen on a combat miss, and if it's not OK, then D&D's never ever been OK. The place nothing happening on a failure is loving stupid is in skill rolls. "I pick the lock. I rolled an 8." "You can't pick the lock." "Well we gotta get through here, I try again. I rolled a 3." "You still can't pick the lock." "drat, guess I'll keep trying. Awesome, an 18." "The door opens". ...and if you don't think that happens, find that old demo podcast and realise that it's exactly how D&D's lead designer DMs the game.
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Dec 8, 2016 21:36
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You can just take 20 there though, no? I realize that there were no codified rules for that until 3e but come on, that's the obvious implication of such a system. Why would you have the player roll if they're an expert lockpick doing a routine thing with no time constraint?
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Dec 8, 2016 21:39
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AlphaDog posted:The place nothing happening on a failure is loving stupid is in skill rolls. Didn't an older edition have the concept of taking 10 or taking 20, to do away with the notion of rolling and rolling until you get it right? Of course, you could also just say that if there's no penalty for failure and there's no time pressure, you just eventually succeed without needing to roll for it. I'm curious what this podcast is though. If they actually designed it for rolling over and over again like that, that's pretty dumb.
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Dec 8, 2016 21:40
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AlphaDog posted:The place nothing happening on a failure is loving stupid is in skill rolls. 
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Dec 8, 2016 21:43
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404notfound posted:I'm curious what this podcast is though. If they actually designed it for rolling over and over again like that, that's pretty dumb. They might mean the first episodes of Acquisitions Inc, I believe that is using pre-release 5e rules and is DMed by one of the designers, Chris P<something>
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Dec 8, 2016 21:51
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Nah. He's talking about Mike Mearls' wall description fiesta. They had to roll an intelligence check something like 8 times to even start the dungeon.
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Dec 8, 2016 21:55
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I found 13th Age's damage on a miss mostly annoying to be honest (source: ran it for 15 months) - I'm all for fail forward but chip damage isn't a particularly interesting result of failure and just means I'm writing down 3 damage on the 80 hp monster again and again. Stuff like the fighter's Grim Intent talent baked into classes would be way more interesting for me - when you miss, something interesting specific to you happens.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:02
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taqueso posted:They might mean the first episodes of Acquisitions Inc, I believe that is using pre-release 5e rules and is DMed by one of the designers, Chris P<something> That's Chris Perkins, who in contrast to Mearls seems like a cool guy and competent DM. The handful of features you can find with him hosting games are all pretty entertaining. Since he seems like an intelligent dude I always kind of wondered what his stance was on the 4th to 5th edition transition.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:12
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404notfound posted:Didn't an older edition have the concept of taking 10 or taking 20, to do away with the notion of rolling and rolling until you get it right? It's one thing to do this when there's zero time pressure. In that case, I see no reason to roll unless it's literally the best lock ever made and your DC is 25, in which case a failure should activate a trap or something, or you've got some kind of thing going on where really low failures damage the lockpicks. It's reasonable to do continual rerolls if, for example, a guard is patrolling around and you've only got three rounds before they see you trying to open the door.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:21
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Zomborgon posted:It's reasonable to do continual rerolls if, for example, a guard is patrolling around and you've only got three rounds before they see you trying to open the door. Why roll 3 times for this? If you succeed, you open the lock quickly and slip through the door undetected. If you fail, you open the lock slowly and a guard spots you slipping through the door thinking you're undetected. The consequence for failure is "the guard sees you". If you want to make it easier or harder, don't adjust the number of rolls, adjust the DC. That's what it's there for.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:40
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AlphaDog posted:Why roll 3 times for this?
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Dec 8, 2016 22:42
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Scyther posted:When it comes to D&D I think fail forward would be mostly relevant to all the noncombat poo poo that far too often leads people to the default assumption of "Oh, you failed the roll? I guess nothing happens." This is how I play. Fail forward and degrees of success is best for skill rolls. Integrating it into a turn-based combat system is delicate. I once put together a mash up of DnD style turn-based-combat with some Dungeon World mechanics. It was an educational failure--I learned how carefully integrated every system is in Dungeon World.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:42
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:What if the player wants to take a different action if it's not an immediate success? Like "briefly try to open the door, if fail I go through the vents instead." Doesn't seem too crazy to me. The scenario was you've only got three rounds before they see you trying to open the door. Sure, if there are air vents you can go through those instead in the 12 seconds you've got left. What about rapelling down from an airship though? Or riding a purple worm up through the basement? Or what about a system where you need X number of successes at "breaking and entering" style skills before you get Y number of failures?
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Dec 8, 2016 22:46
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AlphaDog posted:The scenario was you've only got three rounds before they see you trying to open the door. Sorry if this poo poo is obvious, I'm new at DMing and trying to figure out intuition here.
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Dec 8, 2016 22:52
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As far as combat whiffing goes, I'm not a fan of chip damage either. I just think it's kind of boring. I prefer something where rolling a miss offers the player an interesting choice of some kind. Once upon a time, I tried the option of 'you can convert a miss to a hit, but it lets the enemy attack you in return', but it didn't work well because a) players are risk averse as gently caress so wouldn't take the option even when it favors them and b) sometimes had weird interactions with ranged attacks and stuff. Probably a better choice to offer the player is the option to spend some sort of resource to turn a miss to a hit. This could be miss tokens like in Strike, or some kind of RP bennie, or even just give characters some kind of stamina points. Or, if it's appropriate to your game's theme, you could do something like Dark Sun and let players turn misses into hits, at the cost of smashing their weapons on their enemy's dumb face.
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Dec 8, 2016 23:03
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AlphaDog posted:Why roll 3 times for this? In addition to the option of allowing a chance at alternative action, if they're dead-set on picking the door, then there's also something to be said for mounting suspense. Not every situation has to be binary. e: My apologies for inadvertently causing that bit of a scuffle, I didn't mean for that to be a situation in a vacuum. Zomborgon fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 23:06
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:I was imagining the guard was on the other side of the door so that, 20 seconds from now, they would see if it opened, but right now they do not. I dunno whatever, it basically seems like figuring out when to roll and when to give it to the players is an important job of the DM. If failures are (known to the players or not) catastrophic, always roll. If they never are, never roll, just say they succeed or will never succeed. Middle ground you gotta decide. Nah, it's cool. I was trying to convey that if the goal isn't "open this door before the guard sees you" but is instead "get into this building", then yeah, different scenario and different approach. In the scenario presented (open the door before the guard sees you), I would go with "roll once at an easier DC, if you fail then consequences" instead of "roll three times and if you fail them all then consequences" because those are equivalent in terms of what actually happens, but the second one takes longer and it's less obvious what "you get three tries" does to the difficulty. If the goal is "get inside undetected", then yeah, PCs will do a bunch of different stuff to try to achieve it. Way better scenario. A couple of days ago (here or in the GM advice thread) I wrote a post about listening to your players plot and plan and then basing stuff of what they thought would be coming up. "Get inside undetected" would be a perfect scenario to apply that kind of thing. Zomborgon posted:In addition to the option of allowing a chance at alternative action, if they're dead-set on picking the door, then there's also something to be said for mounting suspense. Not every situation has to be binary. No worries, if it's not the one thing that going on then like I said, completely different. Still, look at the (revised) skill challenge stuff from 4th ed - it's pretty dull, but it's got that whole "you need to try multiple times, and you need to succeed X times before you fail Y times" thing going on, and it's a fairly disconnected subsystem so if you wanted a framework for trying many times / different thing to achieve the result, it might be something you like and easy enough to bolt on. e: The scenario you described seems to fit "Tell me how you're getting inside, get 1 success before 3 failures or else the guards see you". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Dec 8, 2016 |
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Dec 8, 2016 23:09
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Zomborgon posted:e: My apologies for inadvertently causing that bit of a scuffle, I didn't mean for that to be a situation in a vacuum.
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Dec 8, 2016 23:23
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Vengarr posted:I thought that the original argument was that players should not be allowed to miss, because it wastes time, does not "progress the action", and is also less interesting. I'm just trying to address all of those. If monsters and players both can't miss, it eliminates the monsters-can't-win thing. Oh man, wait till you find out about all the spells and effects that do half damage on save.
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Dec 9, 2016 00:11
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Scyther posted:D&D doesn't simulate physical exertion resulting from the action of attacking. Repeated whiffs just maintain the status quo. The thing here that is missing, is that the fudging of rolls happens probably 90% of the time in the early levels. The system beyond that begins to give all the classes alternate ways of doing damage or avoiding rolls where you outright die, of if you do die, ways to come back. Whether it's from Maneuvers, or spells that deal damage regardless of save, they give you those options. But for the first few levels it can certainly be a game of whiffleball. The suggestions for fixes would simply make them incredibly OP beyond those levels, so it's not perfect, but it is certainly good enough; at least I think it is. Most of the game is focusing on story and puzzles. The fighting mechanics play a large part, but I'm not going to throw the game out because I'm not happy with part of it, or if one class might not be as powerful as it should in combat. I've had plenty of sessions where combat has never happened and had a loving blast. People play because they like the settings and stories told within them. People might hate Drizzt and everything about him and the world, but a lot people like myself eat this poo poo up. It sold a quadrillion copies and people are flipping out for more. FR, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Greyhawk, etc people don't tire of this. Philthy fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Dec 9, 2016 |
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Dec 9, 2016 00:40
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Philthy posted:Most of the game is focusing on story and puzzles. The fighting mechanics play a large part, but.... If you do a story and puzzle based game using D&D, I'd love to hear your take on it - like how you get it done, how D&D helps you do it, what stuff you've changed to make it work better, etc. I've never managed to really make that work in D&D. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Dec 9, 2016 |
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Dec 9, 2016 01:19
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Vengarr posted:I'm a level 1 fighter. I'm fighting this Orc. I have 12 HP. Every round, this orc takes off, at a minimum, 20% of my HP. Also, more importantly, why does everyone seem to think that fail forward in combat means half damage? Missing meaning nothing is boring because while sometimes it's an incredibly tense situation of "I roll good or we're all hosed SO TENSE", most of the time it's more "Well the guy who threw a fireball spent five minutes rolling various dice and being patted on the back. My time to shine! ...I rolled a 6. Turn over I suppose". Very rarely is "You did not do thing" as interesting as "You did thing, but also bad thing happened".  : I attack the orc! I got a 6  : Fair enough. : My turn? I use my bonus action to hide and then backstab a goblin.vs : I attack the orc! I got a 6 : Roll your damage. Got any move left?: ...no: You've left yourself horribly exposed. Everyone has advantage against you until the start of your next turn.: Aww jesus: My turn? I use my bonus action to huck a smoke bomb at the barbarian.:  : ...I also rolled a 6.: The last thing the barbarian sees before he's surrounded by life-saving darkness is a nearby goblin wanging you on the back of the head.: I WAS HELPING MY BUDDY YOU GREEN gently caress I'LL GET TO YOU IN A MINUTE
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Dec 9, 2016 01:20
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I appreciate how 5e has all dragged us down to the point we're reenacting the lovely ENWorld grogs complain about damage-on-a-miss forum.
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Dec 9, 2016 01:22
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Philthy posted:The thing here that is missing, is that the fudging of rolls happens probably 90% of the time in the early levels. The system beyond that begins to give all the classes alternate ways of doing damage or avoiding rolls where you outright die, of if you do die, ways to come back. Whether it's from Maneuvers, or spells that deal damage regardless of save, they give you those options. But for the first few levels it can certainly be a game of whiffleball. The suggestions for fixes would simply make them incredibly OP beyond those levels, so it's not perfect, but it is certainly good enough; at least I think it is. It seems like the part you like about the game is the part that has nothing to do with the rules. If you like FR, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Greyhawk, etc you can transplant those settings to any number of other systems with relative ease and tell those same stories but with better mechanics 
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Dec 9, 2016 01:51
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Arivia posted:I appreciate how 5e has all dragged us down to the point we're reenacting the lovely ENWorld grogs complain about damage-on-a-miss forum. I never read it, but I can only assume that had a lot more arguments about "verisimilitude"
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Dec 9, 2016 02:07
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P.d0t posted:I never read it, but I can only assume that had a lot more arguments about "verisimilitude" we just had someone compare a D&D fight to ali boxing. so we did just without the word.
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Dec 9, 2016 06:33
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I tied the last two pages with my wrist with a computer cord and tried to yo-yo it to my hand. It didn't work so clearly damage on a miss should be a Caster-Only feature.
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Dec 9, 2016 06:35
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