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There really aren't many spells that you know will succeed when you use them though. dice rolls exist for a reason. saving throws exist. shielding when you know you will be hit and being overwhelmed isn't some unrealistic or unfair thing, it just makes sense to happen occasionally. sometimes a blow comes faster than you can cover with your spell and its wasted. Its not at all strange to attempt to protect yourself with a spell against an oncoming blow. its not as if specific numbers on an attack roll determine exactly where and how an attack is made. i can dodge a blow aimed right at my heart in a number of ways. I view a failed shield spell as the mage being unable to overcome the attack fast enough or the attack overwhelmed the shield in a struggle. only using shield when its effective is kind of insane from a roleplay perspective.
"oh he swung that sword really well, i'm just gonna take it on the chin even though i'm frail instead of using the magic i know is designed to protect me here"
its up to a good DM to describe that action not necessarily just say "oh the spell didnt do enough, you get hit"
The warriors blade briefly stopped on the shimmering arc of force you created in front of you, you strain to hold it strong as the blade inches closer to your face and you feel the power waning as the blade crashes through the shield and cuts the front of your chest. you take 5 damage.
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Finally got a chance to catch up on this thread, I mostly agree with GDong. Most of the modification he would run would be DM-side, not player side. So while Soniv and PX might find issues with that mindset as a player-side of a campaign, if GDong had actually decided to run such a campaign all the work and math stuff would fall on DM, and players would not notice the difference in how campaign is played out. After all, if you run into an encounter as a player, you wouldn't really know how strong shit is anyways when you encounter it, it's not like player should have #hp information, or the AC of the enemy anyways.
On January 21 2015 06:20 PrinceXizor wrote:
I really just can't stand the way you look at the game dude. it takes all the mystery and exploration out of the world and makes it a math game or wow raid.. math games suck unless you are doing them by yourself. i dont want to play dnd by myself.
This coming from wrong point of view though. You're viewing it as a player. Where the "math" stuff might be annoying, but to be honest if you were to play it, you wouldn't notice a difference. All the math stuff is the DM's work, so unless you're DMing under Gdong's changes, there's no math change for you.
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If the DM views that all the characters are aware of intimate mechanics, and that players should be optimizing combat then encounters and everything are designed for this which does impact the players quite a lot. a DMs view on how a world is run affects the entire world. saying of players don't notice differences in DMs is just wrong.
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On January 22 2015 07:17 Goumindong wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 23:10 jcarlsoniv wrote:
One piece of critique from last night - I personally don't like telling my players the exact die roll that mobs got. This was applicable when LT was reacting to a hit with Shield. I would have told him whether he was hit or not, and then let him decide if he would try to Shield, but without telling him the exact number. It leaves a bit of the air of combat chaos for the players to try and make decisions in.
It's really just a stylistic choice though, I'm sure GMD would probably lean more towards the side of revealing numbers. I think its pretty important if you have abilities that you can use that boost your AC but doesn't really matter if you don't. Almost more importantly i think that, if your players have such abilities its easier to just tell them the number than to tell them "its a hit but you can shield it". Though doing the latter may feel better for your players and if it does you will probably want to do it. I rationalize it by saying that your players should have an idea if they can deflect something. They've used the magic before and presumably have some idea about how it works. They're used to combat even if they aren't amazing or supernatural at it, like a high level fighter would be. They know that the thing that is dead on at them can't be deflected, but the thing that isn't can be. And if that is what attack rolls represent then they would know that to a reasonable precision, even if they don't know the precise number. From a functional system perspective the spells lose a lot of power if you do not know whether or not they will succeed when used. Most defensive spells are reaction based(or at least the best ones are) because spells that cost actions have "hidden" costs in disallowing you from attacking that round. And the power of the spell tends to assume you know whether or not you're going to get hit.
hmm, fair enough
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On January 22 2015 07:50 jcarlsoniv wrote:
hmm, fair enough
his viewpoint only makes sense if you are playing a robot wizard or a high level wizard or abjuration specialist. experience and study are different than mastery or always correct judgement.
it might make the players feel like they are in more control, but if they could cast any spell they wanted any time they wanted it would also make them feel like they are in more control. but both cause pretty big detriments to the players in other ways.
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On January 22 2015 07:47 PrinceXizor wrote:
If the DM views that all the characters are aware of intimate mechanics, and that players should be optimizing combat then encounters and everything are designed for this which does impact the players quite a lot. a DMs view on how a world is run affects the entire world. saying of players don't notice differences in DMs is just wrong.
except nothing gdong has said, has suggested that players have to optimized for combat... nor has anything he said that players have to be aware of intimate mechanics (with exception of roll bonus changes that he's made, which applies to all DM House-rules anyways).
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i have no words for you wei2.
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the shitpost alliance ist strong at work i see
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Soniv isn't that bad dude. thats a little harsh.
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On January 22 2015 07:51 PrinceXizor wrote:his viewpoint only makes sense if you are playing a robot wizard or a high level wizard or abjuration specialist. experience and study are different than mastery or always correct judgement. it might make the players feel like they are in more control, but if they could cast any spell they wanted any time they wanted it would also make them feel like they are in more control. but both cause pretty big detriments to the players in other ways.
where the hell are you getting this crap from?
His (and yango's) point is that characters, as well studied or well practiced, would be adept enough to know whether a blow would hit or miss. Even just you or I, if we saw an arrow flying, would have a general idea of where it would land.
As such, using dice numbers as a generic adaptation of accuracy, a character would be able to figure out the proximity of the attack to the intended target - the further the roll is from the AC or save, the further off the attack would land. In the example I presented, LT was being attacked, and Asmo provided the attack roll so LT could decided whether or not Shield was worth casting. As a studied caster who understands the abjuration of Shield, he would reasonably be able to calculate whether it would be necessary or worth at all.
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yeah. knowing whether a blow will hit or miss is insanely different from knowing the roll, which is what goumindong is suggesting. knowing whether or not shield will raise your ac enough to turn a hit into a miss isn't something that is known to the caster unless they've mastered the spell or arguably if they dedicated themselves to the study of that school. or they think purely like a robot and not like a person who cares about self preservation.
if a sword is swung at me, and its going to hit me i can choose to cast shield or not cast shield, if i cast it, i may not be in time to block the blow, or the blow could overpower the shield. if it was meant to be impenetrable it would be. it wouldnt just raise AC it'd stop the attack. unless you've mastered the use of the spell in these situations you would probably not be able to know in an instant that oh, this blow is going to bypass my shield if i cast it, outside of obvious circumstances like an attack from frost titan against a level 1 wizard, the wizard is going to know he will be outclassed. you are going to do what you can to avoid the blow. suggesting a wizard will elect to do nothing in 100% of the circumstances the spell will fail to protect him is like suggesting a warrior isn't going to attempt to block or dodge a critical blow. yeah its not going to work but you still try out of self preservation.
i'm sure if the wizard stopped and studied the situation they could figure it out in a few moments. but in the half a second the sword is swinging at you? yeah not unless its second nature to them at this point.
just like you dont know when you've been 'critically hit' outside of metagame stuff like knowing the stats on an enemy and knowing that the damage is above the dice. an 8 damage blow is going to be as deadly to you as an 8 damage crit you aren't going to know the difference based on the opposing warriors actions.
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On January 22 2015 08:08 PrinceXizor wrote:
yeah. knowing whether a blow will hit or miss is insanely different from knowing the roll, which is what goumindong is suggesting. knowing whether or not shield will raise your ac enough to turn a hit into a miss isn't something that is known to the caster unless they've mastered the spell or arguably if they dedicated themselves to the study of that school. or they think purely like a robot and not like a person who cares about self preservation.
if a sword is swung at me, and its going to hit me i can choose to cast shield or not cast shield, if i cast it, i may not be in time to block the blow, or the blow could overpower the shield. if it was meant to be impenetrable it would be. it wouldnt just raise AC it'd stop the attack. unless you've mastered the use of the spell in these situations you would probably not be able to know in an instant that oh, this blow is going to bypass my shield if i cast it, outside of obvious circumstances like an attack from frost titan against a level 1 wizard, the wizard is going to know he will be outclassed. you are going to do what you can to avoid the blow. suggesting a wizard will elect to do nothing in 100% of the circumstances the spell will fail to protect him is like suggesting a warrior isn't going to attempt to block or dodge a critical blow. yeah its not going to work but you still try out of self preservation.
Well, and that was kind of where my original argument came from. And as I said earlier, it's a stylistic choice.
But as a player, I totally understand wanting to know the numbers if I can. Especially at level 1, when spell slots are SUPER important, I would hope to know whether or not my spell would be worth it. If the DM is feeling kind, he can feel free to divulge that information.
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If my players were complaining they couldn't metagame with dice numbers and that it was seriously hampering their enjoyment, i'd tell them that even if a spell doesn't prevent a blow entirely, it can certainly slow down the speed of the blow and lessen the impact. and to roleplay their character, not their character sheet.
but if its a group of players who all want to optimize combat and focus everything on that rather than the world or story, thats fine GMD would make a fine DM for a combat only session among powergamers. but there are a lot better games and rules for that sort of thing than DnD.
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On January 22 2015 08:15 PrinceXizor wrote:
If my players were complaining they couldn't metagame with dice numbers and that it was seriously hampering their enjoyment, i'd tell them that even if a spell doesn't prevent a blow entirely, it can certainly slow down the speed of the blow and lessen the impact. and to roleplay their character, not their character sheet.
it almost sounds like you'd enjoy more of a story based system than D&D
you can't just ignore the character sheet
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On January 22 2015 08:19 jcarlsoniv wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2015 08:15 PrinceXizor wrote:
If my players were complaining they couldn't metagame with dice numbers and that it was seriously hampering their enjoyment, i'd tell them that even if a spell doesn't prevent a blow entirely, it can certainly slow down the speed of the blow and lessen the impact. and to roleplay their character, not their character sheet. it almost sounds like you'd enjoy more of a story based system than D&D you can't just ignore the character sheet
I never said to ignore a character sheet. just that a character isn't the sum of the numbers on a sheet. and playing your character like its a series of actions and flowcharts in combat isn't good for DnD. you can play other tabletop games and actually have a lot more fun doing that than taking a roleplaying system with a functional combat system into a powergaming session. there are even more freeform d20 systems that focus a lot more on combat so you can minimize story to make more time for the optimized powergaming combat.
DnD is closer to 40k rpg and CoC than to the d20 combat systems.
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taking the opposite view isn't too strange. It is just a larger abstraction of attack rolls and more reliance on damage rolls. Normally we think that a 20 is better than a 19 and that if you roll a 20 you would be able to hit a higher AC than if you had rolled a 19. But this makes the assumption that a 20 is a 20 is a 20 regardless which attack that was made.
Its similar to how i break the idea that a troll is a troll is a troll regardless of what the troll is fighting. Against a level 5 party a troll has 84 HP, Regeneration and does 14.5 damage/round. Against a level 15 party a troll has 1 HP, no regeneration, and does say, 20 damage/round.
If you break that rationality axiom then it makes perfect sense to not know about the numbers, because rolling a total value of 20 for one attack isn't the same as rolling a total value of 20 for the next attack. Since we have damage rolls too that even makes sense. A glancing blow is rolling a 1 on your d8, a heavy blow is rolling an 8. How can you "succeed by 1; just barely hitting" and then roll an 8 on your d8 for damage? Thematically you cannot, unless the "succeed by 1 and succeed by 2" are something a player can't tell between
Part of this is because the structure of AC and damage rolls isn't integrated in a way that makes a lot of intuitive sense, there is no clear interpretation of the system. And if there isn't a clear interpretation of the system then there isn't a clear "what your character knows" answer either.
Now i will freely say i fall on the side of "attack rolls matter" more than "damage rolls matter" and do this largely because i think that, from a systematic point of view using one of your limited spells for the day and having absolutely zero effect sucks and also because I am ok with wizards getting a small increase in durability that such a tradeoff implies. Effectively, i fall on the side of "heroic competence" with player characters. After all, if HP represents some sort of durability/difficulty to kill then even wizards have about 50% more durability than a commoner. By level 2 they should be at least twice as durable(A 10 con wizard will have 6 HP at level 1 at level 2 he will have 7-12 or 10 if going by the no roll method, a commoner has 4 HP)
But its not the case that is so obvious as to have no other interpretation.
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the general assumptions i make is that if the roll is less than 10+ Dex bonus to AC it was dodged, above that it was stopped by armor if it was dead even with the AC and they had a shield, the shield blocked the blow, slightly above that the nature of the blow depends on the damage roll and the method of attack, a finesse weapons strike was likely too fast for the attacked, a strong characters blow too mighty. drastically above the targets AC is an unexpected blow or unavoidable blow, like a finesse character dodging your attack and counter attacking before you could react while your sword was still extended. or a strength character just blindsiding you or blatantly overpowering you. but the nature of the actual blow still depends on the damage. you can't possibly suggest a character got run through with a rapier for 2 damage because the guy rolled a 20 for attack and 2 ones for damage dice. thats just silly we aint cloud strife.
i view attack rolls as the nature of the combat, and damage as the nature of the actual strikes.
attack rolls help determine my narrative for how the fight is going, an enemy sidestepping blows or shrugging them off, counter attacking or getting cheap shots in ect. damage rolls explain how effective those moves were. I can swing a maul at someone unaware and clip them, i wasn't going to miss almost certainly, but at the same time i'm not going to be hurting them much.
in this way you could perhaps hint to the wizard that he can cast shield to block a blow, "the orc pulls back and begins to swing his axe aimed unerringly at your chest"
"i cast shield in response to block the axe"
"as the axe hurtles toward you, you reach our your hand as if to catch the axe, and a pulse of force sends the axe off course enough for you to step out of the way and regain your footing, the orc cursing your magic takes a couple steps before turning to face you again"
as opposed to "as you see your companion take an arrow in his shoulder a sharp sound catches your ear as the orcs axe whistles toward you, you turn to face the orc only in time to see the axe close in on you"
in terms of HP, a person trained in combat is more likely to be able to push themselves close to death compared to a commoner. which explains the difference between a frail wizards HP and a dude who works in a market. a wizard has studied and seeks to adventure or learn, and is willing to push themselves beyond when their body is telling them to stop. if you beat up a merchant to the point of exhaustion he's probably just going to give in to the exhaustion for lack of motivation or training. so he'll fall to the ground and begin to die sooner than someone trained to be in a militia.
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If an attack roll is the nature of the fight, why would an adventurer in the middle of that fight not know it? How does the player know that "the axe unerringly aimed at your chest" is shieldable compared to "you turn to face the orc only in time to see the axe close in on you"? When i read the first one i thought "whelp that wizard is done for"
On January 22 2015 08:21 PrinceXizor wrote:
I never said to ignore a character sheet. just that a character isn't the sum of the numbers on a sheet. and playing your character like its a series of actions and flowcharts in combat isn't good for DnD. .
Ahh so that was what you really took exception to. The idea that you should have an idea of what your character would do in various situations so that when they come up you can just do them instead of hemming and hawing about what you would do.
That applies to character temperament just as much as it does to "optimal combat decisions" and its a really good idea to do. Its like studying your character. Does he defend his allies if they're attacked? Does he charge off into the face of the biggest baddy? Which spells does he or she cast and when? These things are important to know because when you know them you spend less time thinking, and more time doing. I mean unless your character is crippled by indecision.
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On January 22 2015 09:24 Goumindong wrote:If an attack roll is the nature of the fight, why would an adventurer in the middle of that fight not know it? How does the player know that "the axe unerringly aimed at your chest" is shieldable compared to "you turn to face the orc only in time to see the axe close in on you"? When i read the first one i thought "whelp that wizard is done for" Show nested quote +On January 22 2015 08:21 PrinceXizor wrote:
I never said to ignore a character sheet. just that a character isn't the sum of the numbers on a sheet. and playing your character like its a series of actions and flowcharts in combat isn't good for DnD. . Ahh so that was what you really took exception to. The idea that you should have an idea of what your character would do in various situations so that when they come up you can just do them instead of hemming and hawing about what you would do. That applies to character temperament just as much as it does to "optimal combat decisions" and its a really good idea to do. Its like studying your character. Does he defend his allies if they're attacked? Does he charge off into the face of the biggest baddy? Which spells does he or she cast and when? These things are important to know because when you know them you spend less time thinking, and more time doing. I mean unless your character is crippled by indecision.
in regards to the example. i know writing and language isn't your forte, but the first sentence implies that there is time left to react, while the second implies there is no such reaction possible. if the wizard doesn't pick up on that from the description, then he was too distracted from the fighting to think clearly about how to use his spells. i'm not saying i'd put a timer on the player. if the player asked for time to think i'd give him some, not an obscene amount but definitely a little bit. The important thing is you are giving choices to the player. the player can choice to attempt to shield in both situations, and neither is objectively a waste from the description. both situations the wizard has not been hit yet, but the language gives away a distinction that could be picked up on as a hint.
as opposed to telling the wizard that the attack cleared by 1 and the wizard going on yeah i can shield that then, and using shield. or it got a 20 total, and the wizard going, yeah my character totally just accepts the incoming attack like its NBD. because thats what he'd do. out of fear of wasting a spellslot.
if you follow a flow chart for your character then you could just leave the flowchart and go do something else. it lacks the human element and the emotion or stress that an adventure should have. take what i did throwing myself at the vine wall in the one shot. Merrit isn't selfless, so why would he do that? he just watched a tiefling dragged to the ground and crushed, his daggers weren't cutting through the vines enough to free him, Marrit began to realize that if he were caught by the wall alone he'd be done for. a small gnome who isn't particularly strong would yield quicker than the tiefling. his best chance for survival was to make himself valuable to his companions and to keep them alive. if the vine creature grabs him, the two warriors with bigger blades than him at his sides could free him, if the vines incapacitate one or both of the warriors he had been shown that he could do little to help. and it could set the battle on the road to his own death.
i didn't decide, i need to be a healer and protect my team so i'm going to do these actions; i thought things through the eyes of my character at the time. you can't plan for every scenario, knowing what your character is capable of and his personality is a must yes, but at the same time, having that pre-determine his/her reactions is just soulless.
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1) Unerringly means "faultless and infallible". To say something is unerringly headed towards your chest means, quite literally, that nothing you can do will stop it. So if you're going to be a dick about "language not being your forte" you could actually use words that imply the thing you mean to get across.
2) So in the second one you wouldn't let the player use his reaction to cast shield? Because you're quite literally saying here that he doesn't have time? What is, then, the purpose of forcing your player to guess? If you do allow him then what? Does he still expend the spell slot since your implied result is that the blow will land before he can cast the spell?
3) Look if your character isn't going to behave like a character should behave then why have a character? Knowing your character doesn't take the "human element and the emotion or stress" out of anything just as your "merrit is coldly rational robot who quickly calculated that making himself valuable to his compatriots was the right call and so acted in a way that was seemed selfless, doing this swiftly and off the cuff while in a combat and also figuring that it would be worse if another person were grappled for the overall survival of the group" doesn't contain any human element or emotion or stress and is well, kind of dumb and that same sort of "maximizing dnd" that you claim to be rallying against.
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EPT
