D&D Next: Miss-conceptions

Great Weapon Fighting
When you miss a target with a melee weapon that you are wielding in two hands, the target still takes damage from the weapon. The damage equals your Strength modifier. The weapon must have the two-handed benefit or versatile property to gain this benefit.
–Classes, pg 25

Now that is a very clunky read, but given that part of D&D Next‘s design philosophy is restructuring the format so that you have to sift through walls of text to get the necessary details I am not really surprised.

A much easier, yet just as clear way to write it could be:

When you miss a target while wielding a two-handed or versatile melee weapon in two hands, the weapon deals damage to the target equal to your Strength modifier.

(EDITED: There ya go Svafa and Justin.)

Same results at half the text. You are welcome. The only other thing I might change is so that the fighter has to at least roll a 10+, or take a page from 13th Age and make it work on an even/odd die result. 4th Edition had reaping strike, which also did damage on a miss, and that never bothered me or upset the game in the slightest…so of course some people are really upset about it. At least when it pertains to non-magical miss damage because, you know, non-magical.

Personally I do not get it. Dungeons & Dragons has always had, to put it lightly, very abstract rules. Take hit points for example: they represent a combination of your physical fortitude, combat aptitude, luck, mental resolve, “plot armor”, etc. Where some games give you a physical and mental pool to individually track, Dungeons & Dragons kind of lumps it all up together. Certainly it is easier to manage, but then you run into the problem of how cure light wounds restores damage if you are not even wounded.

So why take umbrage with damage on a miss?

Some think that a miss should just be a miss. While this might make sense it discards the fact that a miss has really never meant that the attack failed to connect at all, unless for some reason you believe that wearing plate armor and packing a tower shield makes you somehow better at dodging. Especially for characters without a Dexterity bonus or, worse yet, a penalty, misses more often than not mean that you did get hit, but it just failed to inflict any appreciable damage.

You can see another example of this in Next by taking a look at the barbarian class: one class feature lets you add your Constitution modifier to your Armor Class so long as you are not wearing any armor at all. So what does that mean? Is the barbarian somehow better at dodging because she is incredibly tough? No, it means that she is so tough that she is able to ignore minor wounds, ie “misses”.

Another claim is simulation. As in they do not like the idea of a character that can never miss. This kind of plays upon the previous point, but there the fact that Dungeons & Dragons is not only horrible when it comes to simulation, and hit points do not, and never have universally represented physical trauma. A fighter that takes that feature is not always hitting things. Rather her blows hammer shields so hard that it rattles her foe, or her swings force them to exert themselves trying to keep out of the way, or maybe she is just be scary as fuck swinging a giant axe.

The thing is that what hit points mean has always been dependent on context. If you are attacking an orc then to a point they represent varying degrees of exertion, combat prowess, and physical damage. If you are attacking a goblin then they are likely more representative of prowess, luck, and resolve than anything else. It is when you get into to stuff like mindless undead, elementals, or big, tough monsters that making them represent “meat” points is probably going to be more appropriate.

Here is another exercise in context: if a giant throws a rock at you and hits, do you interpret it that the rock actually struck your character? No, you would be crushed. Even if it was just a glancing blow you would at least have broken bones, something more than some damage that not only affects you in no way, but that you can walk off in a day or so. Same thing for a dragon: do you honestly think any living person would survived getting blasted by fire, or taking the brunt of a multiattack routine?

Now a huge factor is magic. For the longest time Dungeons & Dragons often two different task resolution systems for swords and sorcery (some of the time, anyway), and for some the only way for magic to seem magical is if it continues to use different rules or even ignore them entirely. Why? I have no idea: Mage: The Ascension, FATE, Numenera, 13th Age, Dungeon World, Shadowrun, and 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons all resolve tasks the same way, and I do not hear anyone making the argument that magic in those games does not seem…magical enough.

Another major trend for spells? Half damage on a miss. Not all spells do this, mind you, but enough to where people seem to get hung up and think that it should be the purview of magic for no discernible reason other than “this is how it worked before”. Some argue that it “makes sense” for area-effect spells like fireball, because you have to dodge so much–ignoring the fact that you can still somehow take half damage even in a small pit–but then is it really that much of a stretch to allow a fighter with a specific ability to force one enemy to have to “dodge so much” with a big weapon?

Finally the last argument that I found was that–despite Dungeons & Dragons have a lot of exception-based design–allowing fighters to (not really) “hit” on a “miss” will somehow onfuse players. The d20 system is built around the simple idea that you roll a d20, add some modifiers, and try to beat a number to determine success; if anything were to violate that universal truth? Well…probably nothing, because again there are already many rules exceptions built into the game:

• Elves cannot be put to sleep.
• Uncanny Dodge causing you to take no damage on a successful Dexterity save.
• Magic missile deals automatic damage (except in 4th Edition, for awhile anyway).
• Melf’s acid arrow deals half damage on a miss despite being single target spell.
• Alert prevents you from being surprised, ever.
• Mobile prevents you from taking opportunity attacks against the target you attack.
• Polearm Master allows you to make opportunity attacks against creatures that enter your reach.
• Stealthy allows you to hide when only lightly obscured.
• Goblins can hide at the end of their turn without spending an action.

There are more I am sure, but you get the idea.

So maybe people are opposed to this because they for some reason think that 4th Edition is the worst thing to happen to the game, ever. Maybe they dislike it because it was not in previous editions. Maybe despite all the other rules exceptions, abstract nature of hit points, and other reasonable explanations they do not understand it, or do not want to understand it. Ultimately it is just one ability that–fighter players have to consciously choose, mind you–is guaranteed to inflict a trivial amount of damage on a miss. It is not going to ruin encounters, or break the game.

My Next Wishlist

When I got the first playtest packet I was pretty underwhelmed, but still hopeful. Yeah the characters were pre-gens, the system looked like the worst of what 3rd Edition had to offer, and the adventure made absolutely no sense, but despite the protests of my group I figured that this was just the initial release: it looked bad now, but it would get better over time.

And it did.

For awhile, anyway.

More packets came out and we saw the “classically” boring fighter gain maneuvers, sorcerers and warlocks had a lot of promise (and their own magic system!), and you could pick not only pick any four skills you wanted, but there were also neat background traits to go with them. The game still had a very long way to go, but each packet seemed to build on the previous ones bit by bit, making the game better in some places, worse in others. Even so I was still hopeful that these issues would be addressed down the road.

They were not.

Races saddle you with a bunch of features at the start but do not influence your character down the road (and like 3rd Edition, might not even be relevant or usable), classes are largely and needlessly predefined, magic makes no sense, is boring, and does nothing to evoke the concept of the classes that can use it, skills have been replaced with absolute knowledge, feats can instantly make you a “master” in certain fields, heavy armor is pointless when you can just max out Dexterity, combat is boring, monsters are boring, magical healing is necessary…the list goes on.

Honestly I want to like Next. I thought I would, but right now it offers absolutely nothing to a gamer like me. Maybe the game will change down the road, or maybe a module will be added that will cater to my playstyle. Since the public playtest is wrapping up I decided to make a wishlist of things I would like to see in Next, whether by default or with a module, with the caveat that modules do not take a lot of time and/or effort to implement.

NOTE: Obviously I cannot say for certain that without these changes I would not play the game since it is not out yet, but I think it is a safe bet that the less there are the more likely I am going to pass (especially given other games like 13th Age, Numenera, and Dungeon World). Also this list is not complete, it is just the stuff that immediately comes to mind.

• Race need to matter more, not less. Or rather, players should have the choice to help determine how much race impacts their concept. 4th Edition is an excellent model for this (especially with race/class feats), and even 13th Age lets you spend feats to boost racial traits. I could even see a case for 3rd Edition’s racial levels, which could allow some people to play a “dwarf” or “elf” class.
• Halfling fighters need to be at least competent. I call out halfling fighters, but feel free to swap it out for half-orc wizards, gnome barbarians, and any other unconventional combination that did not work in editions before 4th. Right now they can work out just fine, though with all the other 3rd Edition-isms I am concerned that racial penalties might make a comeback. I am fine with races being better than others at certain things, but any race should be able to play any class and at least hit the bare minimum.
• Classes should allow you to make meaningful decisions. Defining most of a class ahead of time, even in a “basic” game, is pointlessly boring. It is entirely possible to allow players to make decisions when creating a character and/or when they are leveling up. You do not have to overload characters with 4th Edition’s options at the start, even letting players make one or two choices would add some much needed diversity without adding too much complexity to characters. Of course you could take a page from 13th Age and rate classes based on their complexity to better prepare characters. Plus it would be nice to see a complex fighter and simple spellcaster.
• Adventurers in general should be competent. Running around with enough hit points to sustain one, maybe two hits is not enjoyable, even if you are a wizard. I get that the world of Dungeons & Dragons can be a scary place and all, but it makes it difficult to run a game where the pace is something other than exploring rooms at their leisure and/or there are not lengthy periods of downtime.
• I want to be able to feasibly realize a kind of fighter/wizard within the first two levels. This means that either at 1st-level I have an option to pick up a cantrip or two, or at 2nd-level I can just take a level in wizard. I do not want to have to wait two or more levels for the wizard apprentice/hedge mage aspect of my background to kick in. It does not have to be anything extravagant or fancy: a fighter that can fire off a ray of frost, conjure light, or shield herself with a plane of force will do.
• While we are on magic, I want a magic system that makes sense. I say this at every packet, and I will say it again: pseudo-Vancian magic makes absolutely no sense. It never has. This by itself is bad enough to turn me off, but it also utterly boring, inflexible, and predictable. There are a variety of much more interesting and evocative magic systems out there to draw from, including Vancian magic. Why not draw from sources that Dungeons & Dragons claims to use for inspiration, like Conan or H.P. Lovecraft.
• Unify task resolution. I am not one of those people that thinks that just because magic systems use the same rules for hitting things and climbing walls, that it somehow makes it less “magical”. There are plenty of games where magic uses the same mechanics for other forms of task resolution–4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, 13th Age, Shadowrun, Dungeon World, Numenera, to name a few–and I greatly prefer this method for its consistency. I see no reason why attacks, skill checks and some spells follow one set of rules, while some other spells demand saving throws.
• Skills should be assumed, preferably how Next was going to have them (pick any four things), but I would settle for 13th Age’s background points (spend 8 points on anything), or even 4th Edition’s trained/untrained model (though, again, let people pick anything they want). If you want to use skill dice, please do not make it universal based on level. 
• Armor that people will actually want to wear. As it is the best route is to max out Dexterity and go with light armor, since you do not suffer Stealth disadvantage or a speed reduction (this also has the benefit of increasing your Dexterity saves, ability checks, and initiative). Include class features for armored archetypes–fighters, paladins, some barbarians, etc–as well as a more in-depth masterwork system. While you are at it, throw granular damage resistance on at least the heavy stuff to really make it stand out.
• Realms management, specifically one that does not assume or even require that high-level characters are at the reins. In other words, I should be able to hand characters a keep somewhere in the level 1-5 range and have it work out. In fact, that sounds like a good idea for a campaign…
• Magical healing cannot be mandatory just to adventure and keep the pace going. A party should be able to work with largely whatever the players want to play: no one should be relegated to the role of a healer. For that matter, there needs to be other healing methods besides magical.

Hybrid Versus Multiclassing, Part 2

I’m a fan of 4E’s iteration of multiclassing because its very simple to do, makes it impossible to completely cripple your character, and is much gentler for the game narrative. If your concept calls for more than “dabbling” in another class, 4E also offers a way to combine two classes from the get-go, in a sort of homage to 2nd Edition’s own multiclassing style/3rd Edition’s gestalt characters via hybrid classes. I wanted to try out these rules, but they lost traction with me because I didnt have a character that demanded a half-and-half ratio until now.

Its been quite awhile since I last blogged about hybrids and multiclassing, and hopefully no one was holding their breath on this: in short, I like multiclassing better in-most-cases. Here’s the thing. Hybrid classes claim to let you take the features of two classes and combine them, but when I initially sat down to do just that, I discovered that the result was less than the sum of its parts. Normally I wouldnt mind this much as I’m a bigger fan of executing an interesting concept over character optimization, but in this particular case the sum was a lot less.

My foray into hybrids started with Tuska. As it stands, he is perfectly viable mechanically (moreso because of his racial bonus to Strength) and mostly fits the concept I’d envisioned with the only caveat being that Josh let me swap out a warlord at-will for magic weapon because it fit the concept. I decided to give hybrid classes a shot so that I could try and create Tuska “legally”, merging the warlord and artificer, which would let me take magic weapon and not have that irritating yellow flag glaring at me. Judging me.

Hell, they’re both leader classes, what could go wrong?

Well…a lot.

Both the artificer and warlord get dick for class features. Artificers get to heal once per encounter (yawn), and warlords are in the same boat except they still dole out free Initiative bonuses (stifled yawn). Okay…thats all well and good, only not. I mean, artificers normally get to fiddle with magic item daily powers and get free rituals, while warlords can (again, normally) constantly mod action points.

You dont get any of that shit in any capacity.

When you tally it all up, you can heal twice per encounter (like a normal leader) but get fuck-all else. It sucks ass. Sure, you can burn a feat on Hybrid Talent, but its about an effective patch as Pathfinder was for 3rd Edition. Warlords can pick up Commanding Presence and mod one action point per encounter, while artificers can choose from either item-daily-fiddly-feature. You dont get rituals, but you can always burn yet another feat to take Ritual Casting (and then buy your own damned rituals, moocher).

What if I dont want to burn a feat on Hybrid Talent so I can still be less effective than a single-classed character? In that case I’m stuck with leather armor, no shields, three skills, and the ability to give my allies an Init boost. In the end, I found that it would take about five feats just to get almost back up to where I was, when before it took a single feat and DM permission to snag a thematic power to get the character I was going for. Another feat and I could freely swap one one category of powers as I please. Hell, at the cost of four feats I could do what hybrids set out to do, just more effectively (and efficiently).

I know that Wizards came out and said that, yeah, its not always going to work. Thats fine. I totally understand. I dont expect all MC combos to work either. Frankly the major problem here isnt the hybrid rules or the warlord, but the artificer. I went through and checked the other leaders, and they all get their healing power plus something extra, even if its something shitty like Skill Versatility. Throw it a freakin’ bone here, people.

In other news, I did a quick-and-dirty ranger/shaman hybrid, which seemed to be much more mechanically viable. Ultimately, I would say that hybrid characters can have a place, its just a pain in the ass that it can take quite a bit longer to determine whats sound and whats shit. In the case of traditional multiclassing its pretty damned easy to figure out whats a good MC for another class by checking their attack stats. Also, if you dont like it, you can always train the feat out later (you cant trade out hybrid classes or “unhybrid”).

Story Rewards

In the past I used to toss some bonus XP to players who did particularly well in a session, be it good social role-playing, clever ideas, or just some form of sacrifice on the part of a PC or (better yet) a NPC. This didnt matter to most classes except non-artificers who could also make magic items. Hell, as a fighter I kept a log of “bonus XP” that I was given so that I could have the wizard scribe scrolls and make potions for me.

Though several DMs have done so in the past in games I’ve played in, I’m not exactly a fan of rewarding players for “role-playing” (as it is often mistakenly identified), but for role-playing of any type. I also like players who actually create a character history, especially if it gives me tender bits to chew on when writing adventures. It was mostly a problem of determining a viable reward that they would actually give a fuck about but doesnt mess with long-term balance.

See, extra XP in 4E isnt terribly useful since you no longer have to burn it in order to make magic items, and it would take quite awhile for it to accrue to the point where you are leveled temporarily higher than everyone else…assuming no one else is also hoarding bonus XP.

So, no, thats out. Some ideas that are in are as follows.

• A bonus action point that never “decays”, and can be used in the same encounter as another one.
• Add +1d6, +1d8, or whatever to an attack roll or skill usage.
• Recharge a spent encounter power.
• Recharge a spent daily power.
• Remove a spent magic item power usage.
• Act as if you got a 20+ on a death save.
• Typed bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, defenses, etc.
• Untyped bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, defenses, etc.
• Automatic critical hit if an attack hits at all.

I dont really have a name for these, yet, though boons seems like a fitting name (except that DMG2 added those, as well). I wouldnt create specific conditions to award these, but do so on a case-by-case basis to avoid “boon farming”, or whatever. Mostly I’m doling these out when the plot would benefit most from having a mechanical representation.

For example, if a friend or loved one is being attack by a monster, I might grant a bonus on the attack and/or damage roll. If a player is on their last leg trying to defend someone or thing, I might give them a power bonus to defenses to represent their determination. A chaos sorcerer might get a variable bonus to an attack roll. Think any scene in any media where an adrenaline rush of sorts pushes the character to do something particularly badass, or just pick an anime where rage-bullshit kicks in to save the day.

"Advanced" Classes are Stupid

Okay, I don’t know why some people think that having to master a system in order to play something is ever a good thing. One of the many reasons I enjoy 4E is because all classes, regardless of their narrative capabilities, all follow the same mechanics for task resolution. This allows a player to learn one system and then be able to play any concept she desires from the options presented to her, instead of being forced to learn additional rules to play, I dunno, “privileged” vs. “newbie ghetto” classes I guess.

For example, I like wizards. In any given game where a spell-slinging pushover is up for grabs, I’m most certainly going to give it a shot. I did this in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I did it in Shadowrun (street mage), I did the Jedi shit in Star Wars (WEG version-only), and when 3E came out the first character I rolled was a sorcerer (mostly because I wanted to see how spontaneous casting actually worked out in play).

In no instance did the extraneous rules add anything to the class except for additional work on my part. Having to use other rules to do the stuff my class is purported to do did not make it “feel” more like magic, or whatever. I think this is a mental hangup for many, in that by dealing damage with a separate subset of rules makes it feel different than how the other guy does it. In the end its just damage: the description is really what sets it apart.

The fact that D&D wizards used to be wizards for about one combat encounter a day didnt help matters, either. -.-;

To make matters worse, as Wizards released more classes they also made new rules for many of those classes. Want to try out a new class? Be prepared to memorize even more rules!. I remember taking a lot of time to learn how meldshaping worked in Magic of Incarnum, and boy did no one want to give any of them a whirl even after I gave an abridged explanation of how it all worked.

Honestly, were any of these classes made more fun because of the secondary systems I had to learn?

No. Fuck no.

One of the reasons many new players don’t want to try those classes is because of the extra work and mechanics you have to figure out in order to play them. Like, you learn how skills and mundane combat works (and that was annoying enough what with opportunity attacks and grappling), but woe to the player who wanted to try something with scaling damage dice. They bellied up to the table to play, damnit, not do homework.