D&D, multiple attacks, and an alternative

[Foxwarrior]

How much damage is a 1 round stun worth? Or put another way, if you were 100% certain that you would deal x damage or stun your opponent for one round (but not both), how big would x have to be before you might choose the damage option. It's okay to answer as a percentage of the opponent's hit points rather than a fixed number.

That's a sneaky question, it depends so much on which side outnumbers the other. If your side is bigger, then being able to stunlock an enemy is a better than even trade, but if their side is bigger, it's a bit of a fool's errand. The way some people read the CR system, they have the players be ganking one enemy every time and then obviously you go for the stunlock, but that's definitely not the only way to DM this game. In a 1v1, a guaranteed at-will 1 round stun is actually a win for you, too, since you still have a move action. Save-or-Sucks usually have a saving throw in them, so that you can't just spam them on an enemy who's Better Than You and auto-win.

In practice, a Tome party consists of a blend of save-or-suckers and damage-dealers, they're kinda different roles. So an auto-stun makes all the save-or-suckers hate your class's author with a burning passion, and the X for damage should be "whatever fits in with the other damage-dealers in the party".

What I'm saying is, your question is a little bit like: "Imagine you could either play a skilled hacker in Shadowrun, or have a really large gun. How large would the gun have to be before you might choose the gun option?"

[JonSetanta]

Many variables.

Is this a 1v1 like Fox said, or can an ally deal damage to said Stunned target?

I see it as a stall tactic if you can only stun as your action, but if you think of Monk attacks, that Stun is followed by a buttload of attacks, guarantee win.

I'd look at how soon a PC can use a Stun ability in levels, and how much of the action economy it uses.

Color Spray comes to mind.

[JonSetanta]

Also, Stun effect almost always has a save.

The assumption is ironically near 50% success if the attackers DC rivals the Fort save of the target.
Although, warriors get +2 Fort more than glass cannons.

So I'd say about 45% success, or an equal proportion of 1 turn worth of damage if we're talking about standard action abilities (not Stun as an attack action)

"A stunned character drops everything held, can’t take actions, loses any Dexterity bonus to AC, and takes a –2 penalty to AC."

So pretty much "all further attacks count as if the target is flat-footed".
And to correct, Color Spray is Will save, 1r for 5HD targets or higher.
Monk Stunning Fist is Fort vs. Wis.

[deaddmwalking]

I was going to respond to Foxwarrior last night, but I got pulled away.

First off, you are with a party of adventurers. Even if you don't outnumber the enemy, you can outnumber a single enemy. If you have 4 characters versus 8 of the exact same creature (say Girallons), stunning one doesn't change the equation too much, but if you're not otherwise able to drop 1/round it does actually effectively remove one from combat, which would be a net gain. Getting attacked by 8 Girallons on their turn is worse than getting attacked by 7 Girallons.

In a case where the party is being attacked by a Nighthag and a half dozen Gnolls, being able to disable the BBEG while dealing with the mooks is hugely beneficial.

That said, the larger point still stands - every status effect is worth some tradeoff in terms of damage. Some actions allow you to include a debuff with an attack (and therefore with the full damage) like a monk's fist, but their damage is so painfully low that they need a rogue to take advantage of the stun for it to even matter. Most, however, require you to take an action OTHER than attacking for damage.

An analysis of a class can't focus exclusively on DPS - while that is IMPORTANT, so are status effects.

Additionally @JonSetanta, one of the 'institutional problems' with D&D is that damage is one-track for removing enemies from the game, but there are other tracks that don't interact with hit points at all. If you're fighting 8 Girallons and you've done 57 damage to each of them, they're still at 100% effectiveness. If someone casts a wail of the banshee you can kill enemies whether they are at full hit points or at 1 hit point. Effectively, any amount of hit point damage is negated by a death effect/failed save. The same is true for a Vorpal beheading - no matter how many hit points you've dealt to an enemy, you automatically kill them. Effectively, you make the hit point damage unnecessary. The same is true for Deep Slumber - you always want to target enemies that are as close to full strength as possible because it's a 'waste' to disable an enemy that was close to being disabled another way. Ultimately I think it's important to remember that hit point damage is one way of removing enemies from play, and that many classes get other ways of doing so that may or may not interact with hit point damage (usually they don't) and that matters, too.

[JonSetanta]

I was thinking about Displacement more recently, and had a dream about playing an RPG with nothing but 1-2 "coin toss" rolls with any die.

This leads to three levels of accuracy at most basic:
Good (two dice rolled, 1 hit needed, 75% chance)
Average (1 die rolled, 50%)
Bad (two dice rolled, 2 hits needed, 25% chance)

Ideally, a D&D game wouldn't have so many tiny bonuses. Just levels of training and maybe circumstances that allow or cause rerolls.

If the expected chance of a level-appropriate encounter attack or save is 50% (or nearly that) why do we have so many fiddly bonuses on each side?
It's as if this is the underlying probability of D&D encounters behind all the math.

We could even do away with ability scores and just have Trained, Expert, Master, for skills and attack rolls (and even Dodge rolls) and whatever, allowing a greater ease of use.

Are there any games like this, with a semi-dice-pool?


But regarding the Vorpal quality to a Paragon Metastrike (Ref or attack roll, then Fort save), or Slay Living (touch attack roll, then Fort save), it's a 25% chance of success. One with two saves, the other with an Average chance against armored targets and Bad chance against speedy targets.
That's 25% chance of reducing HP to 0 in one hit.
The odds are there, but they might always roll to kill, or never succeed at all, depending on luck.

What if I just had an attack that reduced max HP by 25-50% on a success?

[Foxwarrior]

Yeah, Gempunks uses a d6 instead of a d20 and nothing much of value is lost.

[pragma]

This die rolling scheme sounds a lot like Blades in the Dark. That game uses a pool of 1-5 d6 and takes your maximum to determine a result. 1-3 is fail, 4-5 is success at a cost because this is rules lite nonsense, and 6 is straight success. There is some nuance to how a "success" is interpreted when you're fighting a much tougher target.

[JonSetanta]

Fascinating. I'll check out both and see how it compares to D&D.

[JonSetanta]

Wow. I didn't realize this at first, but 25/50/75% odds can be done with a minor tweak to the d20 roll, by removing crit fails and successes.
Just make it DC 6, DC 11, and DC 16 with a single roll.

I just figured it would be easier with dice pools.

[deaddmwalking]

A d20 increments probability at intervals of 5%. Success on a 2 or better (19/20 = 95%). For each additional point you need to succeed the probability drops by 5% (until you have only a 5% chance of success with a natural 20).

The d20 does not deal with probabilities less than 5% very well. Ie, if you want 'call in a divine favor' to be a 1% chance you could do that pretty easily with d100 (2d10 with a 10s die and a 1s die). You could also do that using iterative probability (nat 20 for 5%, than 17-20 for 20% of 5% or 1 in 100), but it requires 2 steps.

The other thing about a d20 is that any result is equally likely. You are just as likely to roll a 1 as a 20. If you assume that people are most likely to get a 'middling roll' (ie, you neither tie your shoes exceptionally well or exceptionally badly, just 'average') rolling two dice makes that more likely.

You can use Anydice to look at dice probabilities pretty easily. Using 2d6 you're 5x more likely to get a 7 than to get either a 2 or a 12. Using a dice pool makes extreme results much less common and the average result much more likely. For example, a 10d6 fireball could theoretically do 60 damage but in reality the results will cluster between 28-42 with a full 35% chance that it is between 33-37.

If you want to encourage average results, you want to consider a dice pool. If you want to make exceptionally good rolls and exceptionally bad rolls to be equally common, you want a single die.

[JonSetanta]

Pulled this tidbit from a Reddit post about "Fighter AoEs". Apparently it's RAW in 5e, but I never knew about it.



there is an alternate rule for that in the Dungeon Master's Guide as follows:

"When a melee attack reduces an undamaged creature to 0 hit points, any excess damage from that attack might carry over to another creature nearby. The attacker targets another creature within reach and, if the original attack roll can hit it, applies any remaining damage to it. If that creature was undamaged and is likewise reduced to 0 hit points, repeat this process, carrying over the remaining damage until there are no valid targets, or until the damage carried over fails to reduce an undamaged creature to 0 hit points."

[JonSetanta]

I recently read in a manga named "UQ Holder", same creator as "Negima", about a warrior that has the ability to "cut anything" with any sword he uses.

https://uq-holder.fandom.com/wiki/Juuzou_Shishimi

He does the following over the latter course of the comic:
Attack injury (healing), literally to the point of rejoining lost limbs and his own head.
Attack nanites (he had to be aware he had been infected with them, then did a flurry of slashes, and they were gone)
Attack concept (Bard spell Modify Memory), wherein by demonstrating it he... tells two younger allies to think of the concept of an apple, then slashes their heads, and then holds up an apple and asks "what is this?". They say "Uhhhh" then have to be reeducated about the fruit.
https://imgur.com/J0cUFJC
Attack dimension (Gate), it's been done many times in class design here on this forum.
Split atoms (Nuclear explosion at a distance)


EDIT: On further thought, and this ALSO has been done on this forum, the ability to "attack magic" would be emulating Dispel Magic and Disjunction spell effects as attack riders without actually being magic.
I'll extend this to "attack area effects" such as AoE spells and breath weapons, but I am dipping dangerously into weeb territory with all this.
I just like the concept of a warrior punching or slashing dragonfire so that it doesn't affect them or the party. With a chance of failure, of course, otherwise it would just be ridiculously overpowered.

[Zaranthan]

I feel like if one were to do a deep dive into European warrior fantasy, there's plenty of anime fightan magick to be found. People wrestling bears, hulking brutes that can chop several men in half with a single sword swing, that sort of thing. Slamming the ground and hitting everyone in a cone or burst with the shockwave is something you could easily pass off as a Beowulf level stunt.

If you want to hand out breath weapons, you could do worse than just making them explicitly wizards. Gandalf got more mileage out of his sword than his staff.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Juuzou's thing has been done before. DC Comics' Persuader was pulling similar shenanigans in '67, for instance.

European warrior fantasy is actually pretty light on that sort of thing — except when empowered by magic items. Roland vertically cuts through an armored guy and his horse with one slash, and also cuts a pass through the mountains, but it's unclear how much of that is him and how much is his magic sword. Beowulf doesn't do anything even as impressive as that.

The bulk of Euro-anime-fightan content I've found is in Celtic myth. The Spear Feat is throwing three spears at three different guys, jumping from the ground onto each of the spears in flight, and then jumping to the ground to kill a fourth guy. The Feat of the Stunning Shot is ricocheting a sling stone from one target to another for AOE damage. The Thunder Feat is not well-described, but it killed 309 people when Cú Chulainn did it.

[Foxwarrior]

Attack concept (Bard spell Modify Memory)

At this point it's gone from swordplay to wordplay.

I'm not convinced that connecting all of a character's abilities to their sword is actually more appealing to the fantasy of a master fighter guy than just giving them some magic powers on the side. Isn't it about glorying in the athleticism of having muscles and bones that actually make an impact on their surroundings? I don't think it matters how you make the portal as long as you do a cartwheel through it to get on top of the dragon.

[deaddmwalking]

I just like the concept of a warrior punching or slashing dragonfire so that it doesn't affect them or the party. With a chance of failure, of course, otherwise it would just be ridiculously overpowered.

Why is it ridiculous?

Protection from Energy doesn't have a failure chance.

Something can have a cost without a chance of failure and be balanced. If a warrior must be aware, able to respond, and uses some resource (like an AoO), why shouldn't they be able to exclude their space and a cone behind them from a breath attack?

Hell, even allowing them to fail the save to protect people behind them would be an actual ability.

[Foxwarrior]

Being able to no-sell a standard action ability used by a creature 10 levels above you is an iffy thing in D&D, there are a lot of considerations involved, probably enough to be worth making a new thread about...

[JonSetanta]

Being able to no-sell a standard action ability used by a creature 10 levels above you is an iffy thing in D&D, there are a lot of considerations involved, probably enough to be worth making a new thread about...

I'll start a thread about Action Economy vs. Renewable Resources or something like that.
Mostly pertaining to whether a PC gets to use X actions per round to do an ability, or -Y points of resource pool to do the same thing.

At this point it's gone from swordplay to wordplay.

I'm not convinced that connecting all of a character's abilities to their sword is actually more appealing to the fantasy of a master fighter guy than just giving them some magic powers on the side. Isn't it about glorying in the athleticism of having muscles and bones that actually make an impact on their surroundings? I don't think it matters how you make the portal as long as you do a cartwheel through it to get on top of the dragon.

It's not magical. It's destroying the memory, which defies natural physics, but essentially the same as a spell in result. I'd most likely limit it to "delete a memory" rather than allow a warrior to implant one.

If that's too far fetched for a STR focused warrior, I could do abilities tied to either STR, DEX, or CON, and the player focuses on whichever they like.

Juuzou's thing has been done before. DC Comics' Persuader was pulling similar shenanigans in '67, for instance.

Eh? I'll look into that character.

[Foxwarrior]

It's not magical. It's destroying the memory, which defies natural physics, but essentially the same as a spell in result.

I'll try to put it this way: visualize yourself in the place of the sword guy, imagine what it would feel like to destroy someone's memory with a sword slash. Probably something like, you reach out with your super senses, and 'see' the memory inside their head, then you focus on cutting only that, and swing your sword. To me, that feels more like the experience of "reaching out with the force" as a Jedi, or "playing around with the strings of the weave" as an Aes Sedai, or "visualizing two things being actually the same" as a Name of the Wind-caster, than it feels like being an athletic sword guy.

[JonSetanta]

Nope, it'll be more like guesswork for the warrior, as they don't really know what to "attack" unless they know what the target knows.
Maybe teamwork with social characters or prior knowledge would help, but in my example of removing "knowledge of an apple" it's assumed that everyone from Earth in future times has at least seen a picture of one.

[JonSetanta]

OK found a post detailing some exploits of Cuchulainn. Seems like every translation I've read describes them differently, but this person sums them up succinctly.

https://www.reddit.com/r/respectthreads ... lainn_the/

[Kaelik]

Truly amazing how dumb it is to want modify memory on a sword strike.

It's a fucking fighter. He hits people with weapons.

If ou weren't so committed to this specific bad idea of the sword does everything on the attacks for no reason you would just give fighters a class ability that says:

"Head trauma(ex): a level 10 fighter can remove recent memories. If a target is unconscious a fighter can bang their head against the ground in a calculated way to erase their memories of events. They can erase the most recent 1 minute, 10 minutes, or all give total amnesia.

A victim of amnesia still remembers how to perform any actions or use abilites but forgets past events and associations having to negotiate a new world.

These effects can be cured by a regeneration spell or effect but absent total amnesia a victim might not realize anything is missing to be fixed.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That's not weeaboo enough. I should be able to cut a dude with a sword so hard that he becomes impotent for the rest of his life.
Uh, NO, I don't want to actually HURT him with the sword, just make him impotent with a mighty sword slash.

[JonSetanta]

It's a fantasy game with alignment-coded spirits populating entire realms of existence and mages that can chain-summon Efreeti for infinite wishes.

Let a warrior remove memories with an attack, no matter now they do it. Sure. Concussions. I can do that.

[Kaelik]

It's a fantasy game with alignment-coded spirits populating entire realms of existence and mages that can chain-summon Efreeti for infinite wishes.

Let a warrior remove memories with an attack, no matter now they do it. Sure. Concussions. I can do that.

This is so fucking stupid.

No one is telling you that having a Fighter cut the memories out of people's brains without hurting them is too powerful!

People are telling you that's not what fighter players and most other people want fighters to do because it doesn't fit with their character concept of person who uses muscles and actual physical weapons.