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6 months ago ::
Dec 30, 2012 - 6:28PM
#21
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Date Joined:
May 27, 2012
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Does anyone know why everyone gets BOTH damage dice and the damage bonus? I'm only theorycrafting at the moment (the only packet I've actually playtested was the second), but it looks like overkill from here and that seems to be where the problems in this thread are coming from.
Yeah, like Molecule said, it's just an unusual notation. A damage bonus of +20 is almost equal to another +6d6, except rolling 12d6 (+weapon) would be a lot of dice and a lot of potential maneuvers. This way, you're guaranteed to have some damage that you can't trade it out for more maneuvers, and it keeps you to only rolling seven dice at once.
The metagame is not the game.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 30, 2012 - 7:00PM
#22
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Date Joined:
Apr 23, 2011
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Does anyone know why everyone gets BOTH damage dice and the damage bonus? I'm only theorycrafting at the moment (the only packet I've actually playtested was the second), but it looks like overkill from here and that seems to be where the problems in this thread are coming from.
I've noticed a tendency on WotC's part to throw in two or three different mechanics to accomplish the same goal in places where any one of them (in this case I'd go with the dice) would do. Rogues being better at skills in the second packet was a major offender; this time around, scaling up martial damage appears to have a similar kind of overkill built in.
Weapons stay interesting on account of the weapon-specific freats and maneuvers they have. I expect that there will be a heavy weapons specialty which gives bennies to weilding a heavy weapon in two hands, just like there's a shield tree, archery tree, and polearm tree. (Reaper is falsely described right now, but as such feats don't currently occur)
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6 months ago ::
Dec 30, 2012 - 7:12PM
#23
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Date Joined:
Aug 13, 2001
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Does anyone know why everyone gets BOTH damage dice and the damage bonus? I'm only theorycrafting at the moment (the only packet I've actually playtested was the second), but it looks like overkill from here and that seems to be where the problems in this thread are coming from.
Yeah, like Molecule said, it's just an unusual notation. A damage bonus of +20 is almost equal to another +6d6, except rolling 12d6 (+weapon) would be a lot of dice and a lot of potential maneuvers. This way, you're guaranteed to have some damage that you can't trade it out for more maneuvers, and it keeps you to only rolling seven dice at once.
Which raises the question of why WotC seems to view rolling lots of dice as a bad thing. (This has been the case since around the middle of the 3.5 era, though never very consistently.) Everyone I know who has an opinion on the subject thinks throwing lots of dice for an ability is fun.
The maneuvers might be a good objection, I'd have to take a closer look to be sure. But if that's a problem, and I emphasize the if, perhaps it could be handled by capping either the number of maneuvers usable in a round, or an encounter, or the number of dice devoted to each.
(Just throwing ideas out there at this point - for all I've read so far about maneuvers in this playtest packet, those ideas might be already there, obviously naive, or inapplicable. I'm literally in the midst of my first read-through of it.)
Jeff Heikkinen
DCI Rules Advisor since Dec 25, 2011
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6 months ago ::
Dec 30, 2012 - 7:32PM
#24
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Date Joined:
May 27, 2012
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Which raises the question of why WotC seems to view rolling lots of dice as a bad thing. (This has been the case since around the middle of the 3.5 era, though never very consistently.) Everyone I know who has an opinion on the subject thinks throwing lots of dice for an ability is fun.
Some informal research I've done on the subject has indicated that it is lots of fun to roll a lot of dice, as long as it's not every round. Late-game 3.5 rogues, rolling 12d6 per attack with six attacks per round, seemed to tire of rolling dice in fairly short order.
For comparison, though, both sunburst and meteor swarm deal 12d6, because a wizard has so few high-level spell slots. Rolling extra dice makes them feel like a big deal, even when they do less damage than the fighter's at-will weapon attack.
The metagame is not the game.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 30, 2012 - 7:39PM
#25
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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Which raises the question of why WotC seems to view rolling lots of dice as a bad thing. (This has been the case since around the middle of the 3.5 era, though never very consistently.) Everyone I know who has an opinion on the subject thinks throwing lots of dice for an ability is fun.
If it's something you're doing every round, having to add up 12 dice gets to be annoying. As a few-times-per-session type of thing it's fine, but as an at-will all that addition would suck up a lot of table time.
<Ioun> they're apparently making a MolIsCool pp
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6 months ago ::
Dec 31, 2012 - 11:30AM
#26
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Date Joined:
Jun 11, 2005
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I like the martial damage dice and damage bonuses just fine the way they are, and don't want to see them reduced or turned into an encounter resource. If anything, respec the monsters so that they can stand up to the abuse, and dish it back. I am also fine with the fact that spellcasters lag in terms of raw damage since they are more than amply compensated in terms of greater versatility and area of effect attacks.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 02, 2013 - 8:43AM
#27
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To me, what suffers most from inflated damages is the game immersion.
Tabletop RPGs are not video-games, they are not MMOs.
Having a warrior cause 10 damage at first level and 100 or 1000 at higher level is OK for an MMO. It's not OK for D&D.
D&D needs not be realistic, it was never its intention as a game, but it needs to make sense.
I'm not playing a super-hero RPG, so why would my character be able to unleash a single attack of which the damage is capable of obliterating a thick steel door or stone wall, for example?
D&D character advancement represents becoming more skilled, overcoming weaker opponents with technique and combat experience... not gaining super-powers and becoming The Incredible Hulk.
Having combatants at high levels being capable of unleashing multiple attacks with precision, having better TH and/or AC, maybe dealing better criticals, applying difficult maneuvers with greater ease... all that makes sense as I'm playing, when I picture in my head a fight involving a highly skilled warrior.
Now, having a warrior deal 50+ damage per blow on average just makes no sense to me.
Of course one could argue that damage is not merely the strength behind the blow but also precision and technique, and that's absolutely right!
But when you apply some bonuses from Weapon Specialization, Power Attack and such it's all right. As each small bonus to your damage comes with a bit of its own explanation/justification.
When you progressively gain more and more damage like that, however, the immersion is simply gone and it just feels like you are slowly turning into Hercules, even if it's not what the description says.
Clearly all this extra damage from 5ed was included as a substitute for multiple-attacks in high level.
But not only the damage is extremely exaggerated, even if corrected for better balance it's still a poor substitute for multiple attacks, as it gives a lot more immersion (and it makes a lot more sense to that kind of game) having a skilled fighter unleashing a sequence of blows and have his greater damage output be a consequence of multiple hits (if they all hit), than simply applying one big damage every round.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 02, 2013 - 10:12AM
#28
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Date Joined:
May 27, 2012
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I'm not playing a super-hero RPG, so why would my character be able to unleash a single attack of which the damage is capable of obliterating a thick steel door or stone wall, for example?
Do we have rules for breaking walls yet? I wonder if that might actually cause them to second think this whole damage inflation game, because even they should realize it's silly when you have high-level fighters charging clear through stone walls.
But not only the damage is extremely exaggerated, even if corrected for better balance it's still a poor substitute for multiple attacks, as it gives a lot more immersion (and it makes a lot more sense to that kind of game) having a skilled fighter unleashing a sequence of blows and have his greater damage output be a consequence of multiple hits (if they all hit), than simply applying one big damage every round.
As Salla would say, there's nothing wrong with fluffing your martial damage bonus as a series of hits. That actually makes a lot more sense to me, too, since you don't have to decide how much to spend until after you know that the hit connects - you just need to hit once, and then you can decide whether to follow-up combo into a strong hit or a trip or a disarm or whatever.
The metagame is not the game.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 02, 2013 - 11:18AM
#29
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Damage is only out if control if you can't by into the abstraction of HP.
HP is supposed to be an amalgamation of durability, experience and luck. Therefor any damage done is an amalgamation of force acciracy and psychological aggression. A higher level fighter doesn't hit harder, the hit deadlier and are better able to press even the staunchest of opponents.
This abstraction breaks when HP is used for inanimate objects as they lack the more intangible elements.
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6 months ago ::
Jan 02, 2013 - 5:24PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Sep 25, 2007
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This abstraction breaks when HP is used for inanimate objects as they lack the more intangible elements.
I agree with this being the problem behind the "unrealistic damage" concern.
A wall, door, or other object shouldn't have HP at all and should not be subject to damage in the traditional sense - it should be breakable based on what it is, and what is happening to it, such as having glass items shatter as a result of any attempt to break them and stone walls/doors barely showing scratches at all until struck with a proper tool (pick, for example) and then simply have a base amount of time that it takes to get through a certain amount of each material...
I'd rather see a list of how many rounds it takes for one person to batter down doors of differing materials or dig through a foot of different substances based on what tool is used than see objects have hitpoints (whether that is a low amount of HP and some sort of hardness mechanic, or objects just having giant pools of HP like a wooden door having 100).
Careful, man. That much logic might be illegal on the internet. - Salla
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