Quote from: Bren;909963Uh....you do know that binary means two things, not three things, right?

Either you are hit or your not is two things. You got that right. But the rest of what you wrote is...well wrong actually.

Once you are hit, i.e. touched, then either you are damaged or you are not damaged, so that gives us a total of three things, not two.

• Not touched.
• Touched but not damaged.
• Touched, i.e. hit and damaged.

Moreover, damage in D&D and any other game with hit points, isn't binary. You might be damaged for 1 pt, 2pts, 3pts, etc. So very much not binary. So three basic states and then lots of minor versions of the taking damage state. Really, really not two things.

Oh dear.  It seems you're conflating two separate mechanics into one without realizing it.  And you've just proven that you have little idea how AC reallty works.  Worse, you've actually hit on the problem that AC and Hit Points have:  Two separate mechanics that actually cover most of the same thing.

See, AC removing all the garbage about it being skill, armour, chutzpah, Tuesday on Jupiter, gravity and wind shear, does one single thing:  Did the D20 roll past it's threshold?  If Yes, Roll Damage Die.  If No, Move On To Next Item On Checklist.

That is it, that's all.  Are you hit or not.  End of Line.

Hit Points and Damage are completely different mechanics that require more than one die to determine.  Things like size/class/ of weapon, or just the weapon itself.  The roll there is random, but it doesn't matter if you rolled a 10 or a 20 on the To Hit Roll.  Even if you're using the sometimes optional Critical Hit rules, you could in theory roll less on that mechanic than a normal strike.  Neither roll have anything to do with each other past, the D20's determination that it hit the Target Number or not.  You can describe it as you like (I do) but in reality, and I'm going to repeat this, the severity or how well you hit doesn't matter past maybe multiplying or adding dice.

Critically hitting for 2 points on a multiplied D6, and then hitting regularly and rolling a single d6 for max damage proves my point well enough.

The thing is, both mechanics are DESCRIBED as somehow being interlinked but that's just fluff.  You apparently bought into it, not realizing that mechanically speaking they don't really do as people claim.

And the only thing that affects AC is Magic and Armour.  And Magic includes spells and items, like Rings/Cloaks of Protection, Bracers of Defense and the various tiers of enhanced armour.  Except for one or two class, the Monk and Barbarian and that's highly dependant on the edition your playing.  Well, 4e tried to change that up to no one's wishes.  Except maybe mine.

I'll give this one more try on the off chance that someone who can actually read and understand words on a page is still reading and gives a shit.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;909973Oh dear.

Someone pass Chris the smelling salts, the poor dear seems to have fainted like somebody's maiden auntie.

QuoteThat is it, that's all.  Are you hit or not.  End of Line.

Rolling to hit and comparing to AC in D&D determines if you are hit and damaged. Not if you are simply hit. I know this is confusing to people who are unused to a language where the same word has multiple meanings and nuances of meaning and who are lacking adequate secondary education. Which is why later editions of D&D introduced the idea of using AC 9 or the lowest AC for determining whether a touch attack succeeds. Because the designers, unlike you, knew that an ordinary hit in D&D really meant "hit the target and did damage" and it did not mean hit or touched the target without doing any damage.

QuoteHit Points and Damage are completely different mechanics that…

The only aspect of hit points that is relevant to the pirate question is that increasing hit points corresponds to increases in level and level is a proxy measure for increased skill in fighting (or wizarding or clerking).

So if we have two pirates, Billy* who is a 1st level pirate (with 1d8, let's say 5 hit points) and Peter Blood who is 7th level pirate (and has 7d8, let's say 30 hit points). If both Billy and Peter wear the exact same (poor) armor because they are pirates, we will, in D&D still see a sea battle a lot like the ones in the Errol Flynn movie Captain Blood where Peter, the 7th level pirate will be able to cut his way through several Billies without Peter getting killed. Because his armor class is low, Peter will take hit point damage, but hit points in D&D are a fuzzy and abstract measure. The key feature of which is that Peter is not dead, or missing a leg, eye, or hand after he gets "hit" a few times by the low level pirates.

Even if Captain Blood has to face, Sancho, a 1st level Spanish soldier wearing a helmet and back and breast equivalent to an AC that is say a step or two lower than D&D full plate armor, we would still expect Peter Blood to beat at least a couple of Sanchos despite a fairly big difference in their AC. And to be fair, Peter Blood has a good DEX (just watch Errol Flynn jump around and slash his rapier about) so his AC is better than no armor.

For the math lovers, we can even crunch some numbers.

Spoiler

Using my OD&D combat table, we assume Billy and Peter are each AC 9 (no armor), but Peter gets a +1 to his AC for his superior DEX. Sancho the Spanish soldier has AC 5 (he has no shield, an open helmet, and only a back & breast without vambraces or greaves so I call that 2 AC worse than knightly plate armor.

1st levels like Billy and Sancho use the first column of the combat table so they hit (and damage) AC 9 on a 10 or better and Peter’s DEX enchanced AC 8 on an 11 or better, i.e. 50% of the time.

Peter is 7th level so he uses the third column of the combat table so he hits (and damages) Billy on 5 or better (80%) and Sancho on a 9 or better (60%). We’ll assume their weapons– rapiers and cutlasses, do the same damage: 1d6.

Each hit that does any damage, does 1d6 damage or an expected value of 3.5. So to kill Billy or Sancho, Peter Blood needs to score at least 5 points of damage. In 2 rounds Peter will do 2 x .8 x 3.5 = 5.6 points of damage, which is enough to kill Billy. In those same two rounds Billy will get (at most) 2 attacks. Which will do 2 x .5 x 3.5 = 3.5 = 4 points of damage to Peter. Nowhere near enough damage to kill Captain Peter Blood. Hmm... seems like this pirate thing might work after all. Who knew?

Now let’s pit Captain Peter Blood against 3 pirates just like Billy.

• In the first 2 rounds Peter kills 1 pirate and takes 3 x 2 x .5 x 3.5 = 10.5=11 points of damage (we round in Billy’s favor). Peter now has 30-11=19 HPs.
• In the next 2 rounds Peter kills the 2nd pirate and takes 2 x 2 x .5 x 3.5 = 7 points of damage. Peter now has  19-7 = 12 HPs.
• In the next 2 rounds Peter kills his 3rd and last pirate and takes 1 x 5 x 3.5 = 1.75 = 2 points of damage. Peter now has 12-2=10 HPs.

Peter has killed all 3 enemy pirates. He has lost 20 HPs and he still has nearly twice as many HPs as an ordinary level 1 pirate like Billy. And in this example, we played the clever Captain Peter Blood as too dim to maneuver so that he doesn’t have to fight 2 or 3 opponents at the same time.
 
Now let's try some Sanchos.
Facing the relatively heavily armored Spanish soldiers, Peter is going to be a bit more clever and cautious and maneuver so he only has to fight at most 2 Spaniards at one time. Spanish soldiers do damage at the same rate as Billy the pirate. Captain Peter Blood will do damage at the rate of .6 x 3.5 = 2.1 = 2 points of damage per round. So it now takes Peter an average of 3 rounds to kill an opponent.

• In the first 3 rounds Peter does 6.3 points of damage and kills Sancho #1. In those 3 rounds the Spaniards do 2 x 3 x .5 x 3.5 = 10.5 =11 points of damage. Peter now has 19 HPs.
• In the next 3 rounds Peter kills the 2nd Spaniard and in those 3 rounds that Spaniard does 1 x 3 x .5 x 3.5 = 5.25 = 6 points of damage (we still round against Peter). So Peter ends this fight with 13 HPs and 2 dead Spaniards.

• Note that if the clever Captain Blood can maneuver so as to only fight 1 opponent at a time, he will be able to slice his way through quite a few opponents since the expected damage per round for a single opponent is less than 2 HPs.

• Also note that if we use initiative, about half of the time in the last round of combat, Peter’s opponent will not get to strike, reducing the damage of a pirate like Billy to only 3 points over 2 rounds. That means it will take an average of 20 rounds for a sequence of solo pirates to do enough damage (30 points) to kill Peter Blood. And in those 20 rounds we would expect Peter to kill 10 of those pirates.

Now in any half way reasonable game universe, sometime before the 10th pirate steps forward, I’d expect the remaining pirates will probably fail their morale roll and as a consequence they will surrender, rout, retreat, or at least refuse to be the next dumb fuck who volunteers to step forward so Captain Blood can spill his blood.

QuoteAnd the only thing that affects AC is Magic and Armour.

And DEX. You forgot DEX. Again. At least this time you did remember the Magic Bracers, and Spells, and shit that you ignored the first time.



* He won’t even get a sobriquet like “Bones” to take on until he’s at least 2nd level.

D&D pirates have always worked just fine.

I've played plenty of OD&D on the seas games.

Want an easy houserule? PCs get +1 AC per level when not wearing armor (max +10). Boom. Done.

Quote from: Bren;909963So what's your excuse for totally misunderstanding the system you use?

Pretty much everyone on the site would love to know the answer to that fucking question.

Quote from: Bren;909982Rolling to hit and comparing to AC in D&D determines if you are hit and damaged.

Where do you get the damaged part?

One LEADS to the other, but they're two different mechanics.  Because if you don't hit, then you don't get to use the Damage system.

And, I didn't include Dexterity because it's a one time bonus that rarely (Only three editions allow you to actually increase it, 3-4-5e) scales, unlike armour and magic spells like Armour or items like Bracers of Defense.

If you want to combine two mechanics and claim they're one, that's your problem, but they are not a single mechanic.

This is why to make a D&D pirates game you need to house rule.

And adding character level to AC is something I tried back in AD&D 2e for a Swashbuckler-ish game, which lead to an incident that meant that at tenth level, it was smarter for the rogue to not wear the Leather Armour +2, because being nakers was better on defense, and the Wizard having the best AC for a long time.  Didn't occur to me to maybe do it +1 per two levels until I saw 4e, but by that time...  Few years too late, sadly.

Quote from: CRKrueger;910020Pretty much everyone on the site would love to know the answer to that fucking question.

No, actually, I couldn't care less.

Right. I just thought of an interesting twist, that could make pirate games more fun for some, depending on taste: being a pirate hunter rather than a pirate. This could mean that the players are actually Spanish for instance (though not necessarily of course, the French, English and Dutch also hunted down pirates). This would be interesting from the point of view that in pirate books/movies/whatever the Spanish are usually portrayed as the bad guys, conveniently dressed in black (but that really was the Spanish fashion). I could also mention that the Spanish employed a lot of Italians.

One good thing about being a pirate hunter is that portraying pirates as the bad guys should be pretty damn easy

Quote from: Christopher Brady;910026Where do you get the damaged part?

By reading the rules then applying logic and common sense.* How is it that you are confused by the notion that damage must be done for hit point loss to occur and that in D&D a "hit" means a hit that also does damage?

It's always been obvious that the to-hit roll in D&D uses a single roll to answer one complex question. (Here complex doesn't mean difficult, it means a question with more than one part.)

The question is,

   Did the attack reach the target and get through, past, or around the target's armor and do damage?

(The words "do damage" just mean the attacker gets a damage roll the result of which subtracts from the target's current total of hit points.)

If the answer is YES, then a damage roll is made using the appropriate dice or die.

If the answer is NO, then the attack either completely missed the target or it impacted the target but didn't get past the target's armor to do any damage.

Ponder this for a while then let me know which part(s) of this you disagree with.

To help your thinking, here's a little thought exercise. Let's say your bright and shiny paladin is riding his special paladin horsey down the main street of the nearest town when a mischievous street urchin tosses a horse turd at your paladin's shiny breastplate. Did he hit? How does the GM figure out the answer to that question? And if the turd does hit, how many hit points of damage did the turd do?




* The common sense required is readily available to street urchins and elementary school children.

Quote from: Trond;910041One good thing about being a pirate hunter is that portraying pirates as the bad guys should be pretty damn easy

True. The difficulty is that historically there were almost no good guys. Just different bunches of bad guys under different flags. But I like the idea of subverting the usual anglophile pirate trope of the Spaniards being the bad guys.

Quote from: Bren;910047By reading the rules then applying logic and common sense.*

But the problem is that you're missing an important reason as to why AC isn't part of the Damage system.  There are basic rules that damage you, without ever touching your AC:  Falling damage, pits, dragon breaths, poisons...  Everything that makes someone roll dice for damage, but requires a Saving Throw to lessen or avoid.  Except spells, because each spell is actually an exclusionary rules block that doesn't interact with the base system that effects every PC and quite few Monsters too.

You're saying 'logic' and yet, you're missing key facts and claiming I'm wrong.

It's like have a cake and a bowl of icing and proclaiming both things are what makes up every cake, but completely ignoring that coffee cakes often don't have icing.  Icing ADDS to a cake, but isn't the cake.

AC works WITH the Damage system, but they're separate parts.  Because, like I said, you can be damaged without worrying about AC.


As for having a Pirate Hunter game...  Technically, every game I've ever run of Pirates of The Spanish Main has been one.  Even the Privateer game, in which the players had Letters of Marque that allowed them to pillage Spanish ships, they went and hunted down Spanish Privateers and other pirates.

It's been a really weird thing with my campaigns there.  I pretty much let my players do what they want, drive the game their way, but every single time, they claim t'be wantin' a pirate-y game, they be th'ones huntin' them bastards down.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;910358But the problem is that you're missing an important reason as to why AC isn't part of the Damage system.  There are basic rules that damage you, without ever touching your AC: Sure there are damage methods that don't use AC. There are even attacks that don't affect hit points e.g. Save vs. Death. But none of those things have anything to do with the point at issue which was your claim that AC caused D&D to be unplayable as a pirate game without massive house ruling.

Let's review where this started. In response to Trond and The Butcher who were talking about pirate and swashbuckling games you said the following.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;909901That doesn't work with D&D without massive houseruling with certain editions, simply because armour is your dodge, and the more you have, the more nimble in combat you are.

You don't discuss problems for pirates for saving throws or falling damage. You are focused on armor. You claimed that the problem is "because armour is your dodge, and the more you have, the more nimble in combat you are." If it were true, which it is not, that heavily armored fighters in D&D were actually more nimble* than people in no armor you might have a point. But of course heavily armored fighters move slower and don't climb or jump better than do people in no armor, in other words they are less, not more nimble. Heavily armored fighters are, of course, more resistant to taking damage than is someone in no armor.

QuoteYou're saying 'logic' and yet, you're missing key facts and claiming I'm wrong.

I'm not missing key facts. I'm ignoring facts that are irrelevant to discussing your claim that one cannot use D&D to play a pirate game without massive house ruling...because unarmored pirates will be less nimble than knights in armor in a game of D&D as written.

QuoteIt's like have a cake and a bowl of icing and

Playing D&D in a pirate setting has nothing to do with cakes or icing.

Quote from: Bren;910051True. The difficulty is that historically there were almost no good guys. Just different bunches of bad guys under different flags. But I like the idea of subverting the usual anglophile pirate trope of the Spaniards being the bad guys.

Now take Sir Francis Drake/The Spanish all despise 'im
But to the British he's a hero/And they idolize him
It's how you look at buccaneers/that makes 'em bad or good
And I see us as members of/ a noble brotherhood

Quote from: daniel_ream;910373Now take Sir Francis Drake/The Spanish all despise 'im
But to the British he's a hero/And they idolize him
It's how you look at buccaneers/that makes 'em bad or good
And I see us as members of/ a noble brotherhood

Exactly.

Quote from: Bren;910363Sure there are damage methods that don't use AC. There are even attacks that don't affect hit points e.g. Save vs. Death. But none of those things have anything to do with the point at issue which was your claim that AC caused D&D to be unplayable as a pirate game without massive house ruling.

Let's review where this started. In response to Trond and The Butcher who were talking about pirate and swashbuckling games you said the following.
You don't discuss problems for pirates for saving throws or falling damage. You are focused on armor. You claimed that the problem is "because armour is your dodge, and the more you have, the more nimble in combat you are." If it were true, which it is not, that heavily armored fighters in D&D were actually more nimble* than people in no armor you might have a point. But of course heavily armored fighters move slower and don't climb or jump better than do people in no armor, in other words they are less, not more nimble. Heavily armored fighters are, of course, more resistant to taking damage than is someone in no armor.

I'm not missing key facts. I'm ignoring facts that are irrelevant to discussing your claim that one cannot use D&D to play a pirate game without massive house ruling...because unarmored pirates will be less nimble than knights in armor in a game of D&D as written.

Playing D&D in a pirate setting has nothing to do with cakes or icing.

Yeah, I'm done.  You're not willing to see past your own biases.  Not willing to actually point out where I'm wrong, just ignoring what facts you don't like.  That's just unproductive.

Oh well, I was hoping for more.  I expect too much, I guess.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;910487Yeah, I'm done.  You're not willing to see past your own biases.

This might be funny. If it was meant as a joke. But I'm afraid it wasn't.

As regards ignoring facts, as far as this discussion is concerned I'm ignoring non-Euclidean geometry, the Calculus, Corporate Strategy, the works of Thucydides, the bulk of Shakespeare's plays, why the sky appears blue, the air speed velocity of both African and European swallows, the hair, eye, skin color, and gender of everyone on this and other threads, WWII, Major League Baseball's standings for the year 1935, and the writings of Karl Marx. I ignored those (and many, many other) facts because they aren't relevant to the discussion. The facts you have provided like critical hits and save vs dragon breath are similarly irrelevant to a discussion of why armor class in D&D is a problem for playing swashbuckling pirate games. So I have ignored them and will continue to do so until someone shows how they are actually relevant to the topic you raised.

Chris, I pointed out the several ways in which your claim that a good Armor Class correlates to good nimbleness is wrong. I provided several examples to demonstrate that your claim was wrong. You didn't contradict the points I made nor the examples I provided. Instead, you ignored them and chose to toss out unrelated and irrelevant facts and an unsupported claim of bias.

I hoped for better, but I can't really say that I expected it. I have observed that you have some weird tics about D&D. I don't know why, and frankly I don't much care. But those tics make your contribution to most D&D related topics unproductive.

As the bard said,

QuoteIt is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.