Quote from: Benoist;693550Yes. I'm following, and I agree to some extent, with the caveat that it also could mean that there was no contact at all during the pass of arms during the round.



OK. So that means it assumes there is a contact or block made during the round. This is potentially problematic to me, because it basically breaks the abstraction and implies that there's ALWAYS contact when you try to hit something with a two-handed weapon and you're specialized with it.

I understand what you're saying.  But it's also only a STR mod damage.  So if your normal damage is 1d12+6 (for various things), and your STR mod is +2, you're only doing 2 points of damage.  And in a round of many parries and blocks, I don't think you'd miss all the time.  Maybe, I guess, depending on the scenario.

I don't know.  It's one of those things that raised an eyebrow for me as well, but after looking at it it just isn't that big of a deal I guess to me.  Bigger fish to fry.

In addition to the above reasons for damage on a miss, it also may help keep combat from dragging on to some degree.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;693552I understand what you're saying.  But it's also only a STR mod damage.  So if your normal damage is 1d12+6 (for various things), and your STR mod is +2, you're only doing 2 points of damage.  And in a round of many parries and blocks, I don't think you'd miss all the time.  Maybe, I guess, depending on the scenario.

Yeah for me the amount of damage doesn't matter. It could be 1 point each round and it'd still bother me, because what I see is the assumption there's always contact and, while clearly in some situations that wouldn't bother me, in others it might.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;693552I don't know.  It's one of those things that raised an eyebrow for me as well, but after looking at it it just isn't that big of a deal I guess to me.  Bigger fish to fry.

Yeah I'm not saying it should be a huge deal for you or anything. I'm not taking up arms and going "D&D NEXT IS BROOOKENZZZ".

It's kind of a big deal for me, though. If these things pile up too much in a game I start having trouble actually playing it, in the game world I mean, because I start thinking about it in terms of the rules, and I don't like when the rules are the game. I become way less engaged with what's going on than I would be otherwise. Hence, less fun, to me.

Quote from: Bill;693553In addition to the above reasons for damage on a miss, it also may help keep combat from dragging on to some degree.

Yes but that's a completely meta-game reason. It's got nothing to do with what's going on in the game world, the justification or assumption for how things work the way they do in the game.

Quote from: Benoist;693555Yeah for me the amount of damage doesn't matter. It could be 1 point each round and it'd still bother me, because what I see is the assumption there's always contact and, while clearly in some situations that wouldn't bother me, in others it might.


Yeah I'm not saying it should be a huge deal for you or anything. I'm not taking up arms and going "D&D NEXT IS BROOOKENZZZ".

It's kind of a big deal for me, though. If these things pile up too much in a game I start having trouble actually playing the game, because I start thinking about it in terms of the rules, and I don't like when the rules are the game. I become way less engaged with what's going on than I would be otherwise. Hence, less fun, to me.

I think damage on a miss is a way bigger 'problem' when players are tracking an enemies HP.

I am more worried about immerssion busting than the auto damage itself (Allthough I understand why it would bother people)

Now if it was worded as something like "IF there is any chance of contact with the target during the round, in an ongoing melee where multiple passes of arms are likely, for instance, . . ." then you let the door open for scenarios where this interpretation could not logically happen and the DM could rule "sorry dude, there is no way you can make contact with your target this round on a miss, so you're not doing your STR mod damage if you fail your attack in this particular situation."

Quote from: Benoist;693556Yes but that's a completely meta-game reason. It's got nothing to do with what's going on in the game world, the justification or assumption for how things work the way they do in the game.

Sure, and I generally detest metagaming. But it may serve a useful metagame purpose.

If I remember right, there's something similar to this in Unknown Armies: if two people get into a knife fight, they each take a small amount of damage per round because it's actually difficult-to-impossible not to get cut in such a fight. (The book makes an analogy of trying to disarm someone waving around a permanent marker - you can do it, but you'll almost always get some ink on you).

Of course, UA health works on a percentile scale so it's rather different. I'd suggest that these sort of minor cuts and bruises are precisely the sort of thing characters inevitably pick up in D&D combat, but equally should be abstracted away for the most part. I guess the rationale for making the exception for great weapons is "that sword is huge, so even a glancing blow from it can actually make quite a big cut".

Quote from: Bill;693559Sure, and I generally detest metagaming. But it may serve a useful metagame purpose.

Sure!

Quote from: Benoist;693555Yeah for me the amount of damage doesn't matter. It could be 1 point each round and it'd still bother me, because what I see is the assumption there's always contact and, while clearly in some situations that wouldn't bother me, in others it might.


Yeah I'm not saying it should be a huge deal for you or anything. I'm not taking up arms and going "D&D NEXT IS BROOOKENZZZ".

It's kind of a big deal for me, though. If these things pile up too much in a game I start having trouble actually playing it, in the game world I mean, because I start thinking about it in terms of the rules, and I don't like when the rules are the game. I become way less engaged with what's going on than I would be otherwise. Hence, less fun, to me.

The only time I'd have an issue with it is if there was some power down the road that said something like, "Whenever you cause damage, you do X."

That would be a big red light for me, because when paired with auto-damage each round, it opens the door for horrible rules exploitation metagaming.

4E featured some damage on a miss attacks but these were usually limited resource encounter or daily powers and the reasoning was to give something for the expenditure of the resource so baby Jesus wouldn't cry.

Auto damage on every attack?  I suppose all  great weapon fighters are trained in Dr. Evil's underground lair.

" Let that be a lesson. This organization does not tolerate failure." :rotfl:

Quote from: Benoist;693558Now if it was worded as something like "IF there is any chance of contact with the target during the round, in an ongoing melee where multiple passes of arms are likely, for instance, . . ." then you let the door open for scenarios where this interpretation could not logically happen and the DM could rule "sorry dude, there is no way you can make contact with your target this round on a miss, so you're not doing your STR mod damage if you fail your attack in this particular situation."

It really is already this way.  If you get to make an attack roll, there's a chance that you hit and do damage.  Thus, there is a chance that you 'make contact'.  If you're standing 20 feet away, you're not going to get your STR modifier on a 'miss' because you're not even permitted to roll.

Since HP are abstract, there are lots of descriptive elements that can explain the ability - and all of them generally work better on a heavy weapon than on smaller, lighter weapons.  

If HP represent 'fatigue' in some sense, than allowing a light weapon to bounce off your armor is less tiring than jumping out of the way of a heavy weapon.  If HP represent 'minor damage' until it piles up, when a light weapon hits your armor, it is less likely to bruise than a heavier or more damaging weapon - hitting someone with a greatsword, even if it doesn't penetrate their chainmail, is going to hurt more than hitting them with a rapier that doesn't penetrate their armor.

Ultimately, I think the implementation helps make heavier weapons 'better', but that reflects both the games sensibilities (they want heavy weapons to be a viable choice) and reality (heavy weapons were heavily favored against heavy armor for a reason).

Quote from: Benoist;693551There's no doubt to me that the decision to do this was motivated by the game aspect first, to make the specialization into a two-handed weapon style worthwhile in terms of damage output/rules. It's just that these type of things annoy the fuck out of me.

It's no biggie: since it isn't a default move/attack for the fighter, I could always play something else. But that alone would make me NOT play a two-handed specialist in a D&D Next game, and I'll be honest and say I'd cringe inside if one such specialist would show up in the game and do constant damage like this, though I probably wouldn't pip a word about it while playing (because that's neither here nor there, I'm here to play, not bitch at the rules I don't like).

I agree with why they probably added the rule and that it is not a good motivation. But it doesn't make the mechanic bad in of itself. To me it is a plausible mechanic of how 2H weapons work in real life. That the while the stabbing or cutting aspect of the weapon may be stopped by armor the sheer mass of the impact still does some damage.

In OD&D this was represented by a better To Hit modifier. In Next is represented by a small amount of damage even if you miss.

Now if it read like some kind of shadow dancer move where the eldritch shadow force of the fighter seeps through the armor to do damage then you and I would be on the same page for the core of D&D. That kind of stuff is for a specific setting in my opinion.

*nod* I think it'd be much better if the assumption was spelled out. After, that's why you have human referees: to judge on a case-by-case basis if that particular ability applies or does not apply.

Like

Great Weapon Fighting: When you miss a target with a weapon that you are wielding with two hands, the target still takes damage from the weapon. (. . .) This ability assumes there is a chance of contact with the target during the round even on a miss, in an ongoing melee where multiple passes of arms are likely to be modeled by a single attack roll, for instance. In situations where a miss could not be interpreted as anything else but a lack of contact with the target, this ability would not apply.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;693566It really is already this way.  If you get to make an attack roll, there's a chance that you hit and do damage.  Thus, there is a chance that you 'make contact'.  If you're standing 20 feet away, you're not going to get your STR modifier on a 'miss' because you're not even permitted to roll.

It's not just that. There are also situations in which a single attack roll really can only logically be interpreted as a single swing. The actual strength of the D&D attack roll abstraction is that you can interpret it in a variety of ways, depending on the exact circumstances of the game as they unfold. With something like this, you are making an assumption that there is always contact and the attack roll with the weapon always models multiple passes of arms. So it cuts off the possible interpretation that there would be a single blow, hit or miss, in a particular circumstance. Which absolutely CAN happen at my game table on occasion.