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Grabbit Allworth

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I completely agree with the premise that any time a character/party engages in combat it should be dangerous.

There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the factors is that 5e takes the "resource drain" approach by throwing numerous mildly challenging encounters at the players before presenting them with a significant challenge. I completely oppose that style of play because it's a massive time sink and combat simply for the sake of "draining resources" is mind-numbingly boring. Combat needs to serve a purpose: start a conflict, resolve a conflict, progress the narrative, represent the inherent danger of an area, etc., etc.

My players know that each time initiative is rolled they need to be paying attention. However, they do occassionally get encounters that don't pose a real threat to them, but that's simply a consequence of the fact that not everything the characters encounter in a living, breathing world is level-appropriate. I.e. Sometimes a group of low-level thugs in the city try to mug the wrong people.

Regarding combat duration, I can't speak for other systems because I haven't played anything but D&D for years, but combat is usually resolved in a handful of rounds. Typically 3-6 (or 18-36 seconds in 'real' time).

Regarding Hit Points - Hit Points are an abstraction that combines a lot of elements: luck, skill, training, will to live, endurance, etc. They are not 'meat points.' This is why I tend to avoid narrating combat with stuff like "your arcing swing with the greatsword cleaves through the Orcs defenses to open a massive gash in its torso." That kind of wound would likely put the Orc down.

In my mind, it's only the strike that takes you to zero HP that does anything significant.
 
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Arden

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I’ve always thought of hit points in DnD as more of stamina/exhaustion than “ok I got hit for 20 damage, I have a huge bleeding gash across my chest” type stuff. That helps with what you’re talking about.

Yep- I get that D&D bundles a bunch of elements into the concept of hitpoints. I just think there is a better way. One that results in quicker combat and prevents numbers bloat.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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I’ve always thought of hit points in DnD as more of stamina/exhaustion than “ok I got hit for 20 damage, I have a huge bleeding gash across my chest” type stuff. That helps with what you’re talking about.
I think the Star Wars 3.5 game had something like this. We only played a handful of sessions because we had too many people and it just got stupid, but you had your hit points which I think was your Constitution and then stamina points or something which was your hit die you got for whatever class per level. Anytime you were in a blaster battle, you reduced your stamina stuff and then when you got to your actual physical hit points was when you can end up dying. I guess the idea was this if you're ducking and covering and jumping around in a firefight, tired and get blasted.
 

Dr.Retarded

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Its dead and buried... it should stay that way lest the newer generations of man succumb to its horror.
Oh shit is it really that bad?

I just never heard of it before. I do know one system that was kind of on my radar on point when we were looking at maybe picking up a different game was Numinara or whatever the hell it's called.

It has a pretty weird system of skill checks and just odd dice mechanics if I remember correctly, but it was way different than anything I had ever seen.. I think I actually got all of the PDF versions of the books on humble bundle at one point, but we never got anything off the ground as far as a campaign.

Also remember somebody posting something on the forums of a pretty crazy game that was in Kickstarter at the time that was an odd post-apocalyptic type world but had fantasy elements or something. I can't remember the name but the art for it was amazing and it seemed like it was just a very very cool setting. Just can't remember what it is. This was maybe a year or so ago.
 

Srathor

Blackwing Lair Raider
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I adored and still adore the Hero system 3rd edition. Big blue book version of Champions and Fantasy Hero.

Back in late 80's early 90's when me and friends were young footloose and fancy free.

System was crunchy and complicated as fuck though, but with time and practice it was fun as hell, brutal at times and we made the most of it.
 

bigmark268

Vyemm Raider
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What I've come to do over the years is just rp through small encounters. But again encounters that I've placed for the sake of there needs to be a thing to hit here.

And sometimes the guys just wanna smash a thing oe 5. It's always funny how my crew deals with things.

Like last week. They got into a fodder fight. It was with a low level dracolich in the shadowfell. 4 attacks were made. And the fight ended with the lvl 20 paladin wrangling and convincing the dracolich to fly us to a tower.
 

Arden

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Devastating fumbles and criticals are important imo for a few reasons. One, like Dr.Retarded Dr.Retarded said, I think it's important for the lowliest Hobbit to at least have a shot at getting that super lucky shot and taking down a foe that should technically be out of his league. Two, they really do spice things up. Severed limbs, sucking chest wounds, and smashed skulls are just more fun in combat. So is turning your opponent into a pile of ashes with a firebolt crit.

That said, the system needs to be designed from the ground up to factor that stuff in, or things aren't balanced. Take fumbles in D&D. There is basically a 5% chance to fumble every time you swing. That 5% chance never changes. That means a lvl 1 newb is just as likely to fumble as a lvl 20 fighter. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In my system your combat skill determines your chance of fumbling (or critting). That means the higher your skill, the less likely you are to fumble. Even a very skilled fighter still has a chance of fumbling, of course, but as your skill goes up, that chance decreases- which makes more sense to me.

You also have to fine tune your crit charts to make the "one shot kill" type crits rare. Here's an example of one of my crit charts:

Piercing Critical Chart

(Includes all piercing weapons, bows, and firearms that cause Impact damage)​



RollResult
01-50%No additional benefit.
51-70%Your strike tears through your opponent’s flesh, opening a deep wound and causing 1d6 bleed damage each round for the next three rounds, starting this round.
71-85%You piece your opponent’s artery causing massive bleeding. Your opponent takes 2d6 bleed damage each round for the next three rounds, starting this round.
86-99%Your strike buries itself in one of your opponent’s vital organs (Devastating Injury). Opponent is knocked to -10 hitpoints and is now dying. If revived, opponent gains the critical Stunned (-3) condition until the injury is healed.
100%+Clean shot through the center of the throat. Carotid severed; windpipe destroyed. Instant death.
 
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Qhue

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Hero / Champions was amazing fun back in highschool/college. Was good friends with a mega fan of the game who actually ended up doing some supplement work for them. The craziest thing about the system were the ways in which some people managed to craft crazy useful power sets with accountant like rules optimization.
 

Kuro

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Legend of the Five Rings used "exploding" dice (if you roll max result, roll again and add, repeat if you roll max again) to bring an ever present feeling of danger to the combat. No matter how statistically irrelevant, there was always that chance of a d10 quadruple exploding
 
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Seananigans

Honorary Shit-PhD
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Legend of the Five Rings used "exploding" dice (if you roll max result, roll again and add, repeat if you roll max again) to bring an ever present feeling of danger to the combat. No matter how statistically irrelevant, there was always that chance of a d10 quadruple exploding

Oathsworn, a recent board game Kickstarter I backed uses this exploding dice mechanic, I love it.
 

Qhue

Trump's Staff
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Earthdawn (which I use in my game) does as well. It makes things often very exciting and has caused me to sometimes radically change the overall planned storyline when a player rolls like 42 against a target number of 8 when trying to find a clue.
 

Mist

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I'm not familiar with that system whatsoever. I'll check it out. Thanks 👍🏻
It's complete cracked out nonsense. Imagine you made a Thundercats-meets-Guardians of the Galaxy RPG at the peak of late 80s hair metal vibes but it was also just systematically terrible and pathologically insane.

Speaking of literally cracked out nonsense, here's another one:

Freebase RPG PDF
 
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Chanur

Shit Posting Professional
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I always roll with death at 0 hp and res is not something a low to mid level party will ever easily get access to. If you die you are fucked.

As far as this OGL bullshit Wizards wanted in the pockets of Critical Role and Kobold press and stuff. Basically the few entities actually making big bucks on DnD besides wizards. I'm really hesitant to buy anything DnD ever again now. I'll do PF2 or one of the other recent games I've gotten like Ironsworn, Hyborea, and the game my buddy just put out Heroes and Hardships.

Then there is always the new One Ring edition or Warhammer Fantasy RPG.
 

Qhue

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Interesting read. I've seen the '70% of Hasbro Value' statement before and I don't know if its true. I DO know that Hasbro has done a completely shit job of cross promoting / monetizing WOTC over the years. I mean they crossed Transformers with My Little Pony before they did D&D. It can be argued that they still havent as the 'transforming' D&D toys for the movie are called 'Dicelings'
 

Arden

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Interesting read. I've seen the '70% of Hasbro Value' statement before and I don't know if its true. I DO know that Hasbro has done a completely shit job of cross promoting / monetizing WOTC over the years. I mean they crossed Transformers with My Little Pony before they did D&D. It can be argued that they still havent as the 'transforming' D&D toys for the movie are called 'Dicelings'

Like others have said, the 70% seems totally reasonable to me. How many copies of Monopoly do you think these guys sell a year?
 
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