Thread #97885165
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What does /tg/ prefer? Personally, I prefer the latter, especially if the system allows you to increase your chances of hitting through conditioning mechanics and tactics.
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>>97885165
>gif my bloodrager with blur and displacement
I had the ultra instict tune on the phone ready for whenever an enemy missed, GM found it really annoying
and answering your question...why not both? example see above
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In games like D&D 4e, D&D 5.5e (with the Monster Manual 2025), and Path/Starfinder 2e, avoiding hits is almost always better than soaking them up due to on-hit secondary effects: debuffs, grabs, forced movement, and so on.
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>>97885165
The best thing to do is have a balance of both with a spectrum between. Easy to hit HP sponges cause the combat meta to shift to maximizing damage and/or Save or Suck/Die effects while hard to hit glass opponents leads to minmaxing accuracy and unavoidable effects.
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It depends on the tone I am going for. Rocket tag/evasion focus works for some survival and martial crunch, tanking 1000 cuts fits mech and superhero things.
In my martial arts system I went on the premise of two good blows. You either dodge or you block (or soak with damage reduction), otherwise you are knocked down quick even at high level
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>>97885165
Hard to hit (within reason) for small/human sized enemies feels more fitting in most cases. It's also deeply satisfying when you finally hit the bugger and it really hurts them.
While large enemies being a hit sponge makes a lot more sense. Something as big as a barn shouldn't be hard to hit, but it makes sense that it takes quite a few hard wacks to take it down.
In otherwords, as usual it depends, so tune your monsters or whatever according to the situation.
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>>97885222
>>97885267
Defenses can be broken down into 3 "types": Avoidance, Absorption, and Ablation
Avoidance - defenses that negate being hit. Things like AC, Dodge, Parry and Block chances. Some games have things like Invisibility give a miss chance.
Absorption - defense that negate damage such as damage reduction damage resistance and soak rolls.
Ablation - defenses that are removed to prevent death. HP and Wounds are the primary examples
High Avoidance can make can players upset due to the whims of RNG. The exact same enemy might be an easy fight one time due to good rolls while being a pain another time due to poor rolls. A 35% chance of hitting will make many players feel useless unless they are making 3+ attacks at a time and even then constant whiffing is not enjoyable.
High Absorption can make hits ineffective if they fail to do enough damage. 3.0 D&D's high damage reduction numbers made a lot of monster invulnerable unless the party had the way to bypass it.
High Ablation makes opponents tough but it can also make fights last too long. 4e D&D got a reputation early on for "padded sumo" combat as fights could drag on as PCs ran out of "fun" stuff to do in the fight because they could run out of encounters and dailies well before opponents lost half their hp.
The key factor is to find a good balance between the three defenses that doesn't cause fights to last so long that they become boring.
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>>97885210
It doesn't need to be damage. But did the characters spend any stamina or resources or end up with any special status/conditions as a result of all of this frenzied blocking and dodging? Or is it just:
>that's a 2, misses
>and a 3, miss
>rolled a 1, miss again
And I also don't consider a flowery description of how a character didn't do anything to be something happening.
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>>97885725
He's just a shitposter, anon, in threads about fluff he asks "what system?".
>When was the last time you saw the system take into account setting lore
It happens quite frequently actually, it's strange for you to ask that.
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>>97885165
I don't really prefer one of those over the other, it's more about feeling like something is getting accomplished per turn.
Everything that happens in combat is the proverbial tick of a proverbial countdown, everyone is doing something to accomplish something, whether its the forces of evil who want to consume, corrupt, and destroy, or wild animals who want to protect their young or get their next meal, or the adventurers who want to live and prevent evil from winning.
To me, the scenario of
>your 25 doesn't hit fuck you
is just as inherently bad as
>you dealt 48 damage (to a monster with more than 500 HP) fuck you
Without trying to make this too long, my system of HP is a "protection layer" over Health. HP represents the endurance, fighting stamina, and luck of a given body part category (head, body, arms, and legs). These four pools of HP may also have Durability from character options that grant armor, and Durability acts as protection from HP loss and Injury.
There are certain effects that can damage Health regardless of Durability, HP, or Injury, such as Burn and Venom, but for the most part, Durability of a body part must be worn down before that part's HP can be affected, and the character must have an Injury before her Health can be damaged.
Where my system stands between sponginess and evasion is how you want to look at it; while characters have many pools of protection, it still boils down to being "hard to hit", because the only time contact is actually made is when they sustain an Injury or Health-damaging Ailment, and when that Injured appendage is struck; at any other point, it's just a character's own stamina and luck being worn down from the consequences of fighting.
It's also fair to note that critical hits are actually critical, and not just adding one or two dice on an already shitty "hit or suck" AC system that could simply result in 4 damage anyway.
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>>97885165
Enemy defenses are based on threat level, which follows a bell curve according to how dangerous the region is. The average threat level of foes scales with peril.
My rule of thumb is
Attacks / Powers TL +2
Active TL +1
Passive TL +0
Psychic TL -1
Other TL -2
The idea here is that there are a lot of effects that can interact with active defenses, like Ensnare, Stun, combat stunts, grappling, and the like, and these are useful enough that players often purchase them for their own sake anyway. Players are thus incentivized to get creative and deny active defenses.
Non standard defenses are lower so that effects targeting them are more likely to actually work and last for at least a page.
Defenses are in general not particularly high across the board. This allows me room to give higher defenses to certain foes, which helps make them feel more dangerous, without risking accidentally making them invulnerable.
As mentioned, this is a rule of thumb, and can be modified to represent specific types of foes. But it makes it really easy to drop in any sort of opposition I need anywhere at a moment's notice, only having to imagine powers and whatever unique qualities are relevant. For example in my current game, I'm using this unchanged for groups of pirates, and it functioned exactly as I hoped. For their captain, all I did was improve attacks and powers by +1d and added Deflect.
Getting back to defenses design, I usually prefer good attacks and average or bad defenses for most foes relative to average threat level, and I prefer increasing the quantity and frequency of opposition to increasing Health or armor. This way battles feel dangerous, and players are incentivized to find ways to end fights as fast as possible or avoid them altogether (especially if there's a reinforcement mechanic).
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>>97886095
What I've learned from my many mistakes and awful games can be summed up as
1 - every participant in a conflict has a reason for being there.
2 - real battles don't take place in stone boxes.
3 - no opponent is more dangerous than one who's trying to survive, just like you.
Here are some examples of how I've applied these in a real game. I'll use the starter tutorial encounter from my current game : the pirate attack.
1 - The heroes all began play at a particular outpost, though none were required to actually live there (although two of them do). But that's not the source of their motivation, at least not the only one. As one of the few outposts in the world, it's a safe location where they can turn in loot, pick up contracts, hire mercenaries, buy supplies, purchase, repair, build, or refit ships, and maybe most importantly, enjoy the benefits of a Full Rest. All of these options have mechanical benefits, and it's up to every individual player to decide whether and how much they care about each. While an outpost is under attack, its services are disabled, and they may stay disabled while it rebuilds afterwards.
The reason for being there for the pirates is quite simple : they heard that the outpost recently brought in a big haul, and they want to steal it.
2 - I divided the outpost up into several sections. Peppermint grove : lumber source. Inland : outpost buildings, cannon defenses, treasury. Beach / shallows : transitions from inland to the docks, which transitions to the pirate ship.
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>>97886099
Each player decides where their hero begins play. The opposing participants consist of the pirate captain and three groups of crew members. One group on the ship, manning cannons, repelling boarders and making repairs as needed. One group on the beach, engaged with outpost defenders (and, soon, several heroes), their job is primarily to keep combatants engaged and block access to the ship while the last, smallest group sneaks through the outpost to find and sabotage the cannon defenses. The pirate captain initially remained on board, granting mechanical benefits to her crew as long as she was not otherwise occupied.
The idea here was to make sure there were many different possible methods of engaging with the scenario, so that I would have no idea what the players might try to do, and would have to make decisions as if I was the pirates. It turned out better than I could have hoped. The golem began play underwater, and tried attacking the hull of the ship from below, where no one could reach him. The detective got in a shootout with the sabotage group, forcing them to focus on him instead of their objective. The ghost possessed one of the pirates from that group and used him against his allies. The puppet pirate captain declared the other captain as his nemesis (a feature of the rules) and went straight for her, narrowly avoiding capture.
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>>97886099
The players made short work of the pirates, defeating most of those on land quickly, and the defender cannon got one good hit in on the ship, dealing serious damage to the hull. The ship began taking on water. The captain decided to cut her losses and try to flee (3), but the ship will be damn near impossible to move until they can get at least some amount repaired. That's where we are right now, and personally I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next just as much as the players. This is why I roll in the open and I don't fudge, and I expose mechanical information to the players as much as possible, so they can make decisions that really do affect outcomes, and really do matter. For me, this is the very core of the reason these games are worth playing at all.
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HP sponges can be dialed to just the right numbers. Something too hard to hit often requires breaking the system to be workable.
Not too far ago, our B/X party had to fight a guy with a plate +1, a shield +1 and a protective amulet. This asshole should be familiar to many players. Without a bonus from strength or magic item, he's only hittable with a 20 and perhaps a 19. Our only way to deal with him were the undefined holes in the system around oil and catching fire as well as grappling. It was cheap as fuck, but the only other options the books give you are to put him to sleep or to fire Magic Missiles at him till he drops.
And it likewise is cheap as fuck when opponents can't hit your guys.
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Neither. Getting hit should be probable and going down like a sack of potatoes if you are should be the most likely outcome. No fair fights, approach from behind, remote explosives, God will sort out his own.
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>>97886140
Almost none of those things have a defined effect in B/X and I just told you that one of us grappled him. It might even be worse if they had rules. Then we might only be able to raise the 5-10% hit chance to 20% or so.
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>>97886140
Use tactics? Not on my dnd table. No, I'm serious, because, first of all most of the above are not in dnd 5e or are in a completely non-working form, and more importantly, dnd autists only care about broken builds that do a ton of damage. And before you say that not all dnd players I'll say exceptions only confirm the rule. Try a suboptimal build and you'll see what most dnd autists will say.
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>>97886173
>Grapple
>To grab your opponent, roll Strength + Brawl – Defense. On a success, both of you are grappling. If you’ve got a length of rope, a chain, or a whip, you can add its weapon bonus to your Strength when grappling. If you score an exceptional success on this first roll, pick a move from the list below.
When grappling, each party makes a contested Strength + Brawl versus Strength + >Hold your opponent in place. Neither of you can apply Defense against incoming attacks.
Dndfag detected. And yes, I haven't posted most of the rules because text is too long, for anyone who wants to see what other options there are, here's a link.
https://theonyxpath.com/grappling/
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>>97886189
>Try a suboptimal build and you'll see what most dnd autists will say.
5e is actually the third-least offender among all editions, behind only 1974 OD&D without supplements and the widely identical (but capped at level 3) 1977 Holmes Basic. Everything else demands more optimization.
>>97886228
>Dndfag detected.
No shit, we've played a classic D&D module using classic D&D rules.
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>>97886203
>and it's a bit anticlimactic to see the guy one shot.
>https://youtu.be/aJCSNIl2Pls
>https://youtu.be/5rs6BWAAWS8
Depends on taste. Also, ending a long duel with one blow is also fun.
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>>97886241
>5e is actually the third-least offender among all editions,
And yet the community is mostly focused on optimization. Finding non-sweaty dnd players these days is a Sisyphean task.
>No shit, we've played a classic D&D module using classic D&D rules.
It wouldn't be bad if dndfags didn't consider dnd the best system in the world and didn't reject the idea that many things could be implemented better than in dnd.
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>>97885165
Thematically the idea of scoring a big hit on an enemy swordsman just for it be described as “You parry their sword with a big clatter and disrupt their balance and nearly cut them,” and reserving actual physical damage for only when they get knocked down to 0 hit points seems really lame. The heroism of a really tough guy who can survive getting stabbed twenty times is a little more exciting to me than a guy who never gets stabbed at all. But it’s really everyone going down in one or two good hits in the name of “realism” that’s really boring.
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>>97885198
It's 37.5%, since base speed is like 5+3 for base dodge. And if you have a high relative skill, you can easily tank those numbers with a deceptive attack, lowering your chance to hit by increments of 2 to lower their defenses by 1 each. You're still taking the attack action, you're just applying a modifier, like a telegraphed attack.
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>>97886498
>And if you have a high relative skill, you can easily tank those numbers with a deceptive attack
That's why I said without using combat options. You could use the long-forgotten Feint maneuver too, or Riposte from MA. Plus even shitty mooks should have Combat Reflexes for that +1
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>>97886428
I want to specify that my issue is when EVERYONE dies in one or two good hits. If it’s 70-80% of the mooks that’s one thing, having one or two established tough villains be killed like this can make sense in the right context, but NOBODY being able to take blows is lame.
Also, fewer hits taken per kill or KO is not necessarily realistic, it’s an over-simplification of a reality that’s quite complex and not easy to translate into tabletop. Basically, blows that end fights and blows that kill people are not necessarily the same thing. Take for instance, a stab wound to the abdomen. If you do not get medical treatment for a stab wound to the abdomen it will quite likely kill you. But it could take hours to do so. The golden hour for stab wounds exists because most of the time it takes much longer than an hour for a stab wound to kill you. And that stab wound doesn’t usually put you out of the fight. Many people who are stabbed at first think they have been punched, and there are many people who get stabbed 5, 6, 7 times and go on to escape their assailant or beat them and win. Instant drops from abdominal stab wounds do happen, but they aren’t the majority. Meanwhile a trained boxer who aims a little high or to the side in roughly the same area will quite often be able to knock an unsuspecting opponent down with a body shot, and have a minimal chance of killing his opponent. Stab wounds to the abdomen are fairly likely to kill someone but not end the fight, and good punches to the same area are fairly likely to end the fight with essentially no chance of killing them. A stab to the neck is both likely to kill and likely to end a fight.
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>>97885165
>Fake binary choice thread
Kill yourself
>>97885193
>Combat going for more turns than absolutely needed
Yeah, no
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>>97886360
>A paladin swears to uphold justice and righteousness, to stand with the good things of the world against the encroaching darkness, and to hunt the forces of evil wherever they lurk. Different paladins focus on various aspects of the cause of righteousness, but all are bound by the oaths that grant them power to do their sacred work. Although many paladins are devoted to gods of good, a paladin’s power comes as much from a commitment to justice itself as it does from a god.
>Paladins train for years to learn the skills of combat, mastering a variety of weapons and armor. Even so, their martial skills are secondary to the magical power they wield: power to heal the sick and injured, to smite the wicked and the undead, and to protect the innocent and those who join them in the fight for justice.
>main stats - char and str
Lol, lmao, tell about you smug magic. Also, the paladin is the most stupid class in terms of lore because it has one archetype for all gods, despite the fact that the gods themselves have completely different archetypes.
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>>97886742
>dnd destroyed by making good decisions
Says everything you need to know about the "quality" of the system. The only saving grace is a bunch houme rules made by community, but the vanilla dnd system is crap.
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As far as my experiences are concerned, a defensive tank is better than a fragile speedster. Most games are, after all, dice games. You are going to have a bad roll. And when you do, you want to tank the damage, not just crumple.
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>>97886593
There's no such thing as needed. Fights end when everyone on one side is incapacitated, or has fled, or surrendered, or turned traitor, or is otherwise unable or unwilling to continue fighting. There is no particular length of time that a fight is supposed to take.
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>>97885165
I prefer a system where its hard to hit. But this also includes armour.
I use a system where you attack as a skill check and then you roll a number of d6s equal to your damage against a Difficulty equal to the armour of the target.
This makes it so every injury can be serious. And translates strength against armour and speed against dodging more accurately
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>>97886573
Would my idea here work for you? >>97888303
Basically you add a bit of health to the boss, so it cant be killed in one strike, and make its armour high.
This also allows damage you deal to mooks be described as deadly, while damage to bosses even if high can be described in a serious manner.
It allows you to treat HP as flesh points without abstraction issues. I personally assign damage points to my bosses (if dealt high damage (more than third health) its left arm is cut off for example. And as such have actual results
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>>97885165
Basically a question of rocket-tag versus meat-grinder. I can't say I like pure rocket-tag too much, it can seem very punishing if the GM/players aren't completely on the ball when operating their character. But slow grinding combat can just completely wear out its welcome, especially if session has to be called before the fight can be finished.
Personally, my pet project system messed around with something of a combination of both. Characters could get fairly bulky and moderately hard to hit, but could spend resources to increase their chance to hit and damage. This effectively came at a cost to the character's bulk, so a gambler who wanted things to end fast could nearly down his own character trying to put an end to a fight immediately, or a more confident character could slowly whittle down an adversary making more conservative tradeoffs.
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>>97886428
That's why for my game there are no "big hits" until an injury is suffered, or health is lost.
Parries are reactive skills, chosen instead of taking the normal defense check if the user believes they can beat the attacker in a reflex check.
Hits won't, nor should ever be, described as defensive maneuvers, because that's not how my durability > HP > health system works.
A knock to the armor is durability loss. A glancing blow, unarmored block, or avoidance is HP loss. A hit, injury, burn, or poisoning is health loss.
Sure, most people hate this sort of codification, but in the end, it really helps avoid confusion, because I try to maintain a sense of consistent cause and effect, not really thinking about realism or thematics, but what works for the kind of game I want to play.
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>>97885165
If you're not trading hits you're not fighting, you just suck at whack-a-mole. Active and passive defense should work in tandem, but active defense should mitigate damage, not necessarily avoid it completely. If I go to punch someone and they protect their face, I still hit them, there's still pain, just far less consequential damage.
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>>97890226
>https://youtu.be/wvg7Rk9XNDk?si=iRD2m9NssoWs2J9u
Swords are sharp, shoking, I know. And all the HP system does is turn swords and other weapons into a wet fish.
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>>97885165
Big guy you have to stab a lot to win is kino. le epic anime Vorgil & Donte *teleports behind u* wank offs work better in solo games, better still in non-turn-based games, and best in video games with not a lot of RNG. They are not a good fit for dice rollan and just lead to a lot of unpredictably swingy encounters.
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in a recent session, I featured a big robot with a high AC of 20 and very few hit dice, with the idea being that a solid hit through the plating would puncture a bunch of internal batteries.
a player took a shot at it, rolled an 18, missed, and declared that the robot couldn't be damaged with conventional weapons, to which the other players nodded sagaciously.
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>>97891873
>manage the RNG
The dumbest thing I've heard all day. Not to mention that the whole point of dice games is to have RNG. Play chess, that's the game for you, I don't understand why you're torturing yourself playing games with RNG.
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>>97890508
>And all the HP system does is turn swords and other weapons into a wet fish.
The best RPG system in print uses both, and treats "HP" as endurance, how much the character can duck, dodge, dip dive and dodge away at the last second, or take glancing hits that wear someone down but don't cause significant harm, until a critical hit lands, which are considered real damage. This method lets enemies be tanky and shrug off blows, but also makes it possible for the Great And Powerful Demon King to die to a single blow from the plucky Chosen One.
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>>97891822
At a certain point you're just flipping coins to see who wins. Players want their tactics and decisions to matter and that big extension means you must manage RNG to a degree in any system worth playing.
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>>97892900
Its more "full random with no manipulation options bad"
Let tactics affect it. Position yourself for better to hit or ac, meta currency for a reroll or modifying the roll, bypassing damage reduction by striking from the back.
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>>97892991 #
>>97893015 #
>system has a critical success/failure
>rrrrreeee, I hate random
>but I will continue to play a system that has a critical success/failure
Only a stupid autist can continue to do something they don't like just because it's part of their routine. And don't talk about manipulating chance because no system guarantees 100% result and will still be random. So the question remains - why you continue to play a system based entirely on random if you hate random?
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>>97885165
Neither. Low HP, high chance of death. Combat and violence should be messy and fucked up. Player choice should have consequences. If they're fighting fair they're fucking up.
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>>97893425
Unlucky rolls still happens. But I've already figured out that you're one of those DnD 5e retards who only want the appearance of risk without any consequences from bad rolls and maximum benefit from critical successes. In other words, you like it when the game strokes your ego by showing you how cool your character is who never knows the real challenges, but you don't like the overly straightforward approach so you demand that the game mask the lack of danger. Just go fuck yourself, people like you are the reason everything is so bad.
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>>97893448
>Unlucky rolls still happens.
Roleplaying games are probability-based, luck or lack thereof has nothing to do with it
I like games better when my competent adventurer has a 75% base chance of success instead of 12%
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>>97886650
Thatsthepoint.jprdl
>>97887236
>There's no such thing as needed
Of course there is - and it's 1 or aiming for 1.
It doesn't matter how it is achieved, the goal is to get it over with ASAP.
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>>97893589
>luck or lack thereof has nothing to do with it
What is nat 20/1? Do you even play games?
>I like games better when my competent adventurer has a 75%
Even dnd 5e isn't that casual with a 60-65% chance to hit normal enemies while bosses can drop the hit chance to 30%. You're just stupid nogames.
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>>97893271
My nigga.
>>97893640
Yes, and this is a good thing. Why should the hesitant and slow-witted win?
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>>97885165
What about holding your action for a critical parry?
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>>97893942
5E's hit chance is low among RPGs actually and especially low for how little damage is done by PCs, you only really see lower in hyper lethal games or games that fucked up their own math. Other D&D editions lap 5E in damage and accuracy pretty hard until 4E and it's way easier to stack a ton of shit in 4E than it is in 5E. 5E is casual shit for many many reasons but whining about hit rate too high is not one of them.
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>>97893942
>nogames
No, I play GURPS, the game of gods. A competent adventurer at skill 12 has a 75% to-hit chance in melee but only about a 50% chance to defend himself successfully if he doesn't take defensive options or use a shield
You can get rekt in single combat and WILL get rekt if outnumbered. I fucking love this system
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>>97885165
As long as the "hard to hit" isn't RNG. Pic related is a boss in Mewgenics and is notorious for the fact that he will respond to any attack by jumping into an adjacent square, meaning that single-target attacks are useless against him unless you can corner him somehow which is easier said than done. There are multiple hard counters against him but if you don't have them you're in big trouble.
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>>97885165
just take the anima: beyond fantasy pill and implement both
attack roll vs defense roll
attack < defense, you miss; enemy might counterattack with bonus based off roll result difference
attack > defense but attack < defense + armor you hit, make the target flinch (hence lose the turn) but cause no damage
attack > defense + armor, you cause damage based off the difference between both rolls
there are also creatures which don't defend but rather are hp sponges; those can't flinch and lose the turn under normal circumstances
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>>97896228
>As long as it isn't Shadowrun style where entering melee can get you killed on your own turn
might happen if the enemy explode its die and/or you fumble badly or you challenge an enemy many levels your senior
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>>97890828
>>97891822
Interesting that your takeaway from that post was "RNG bad."
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>>97893321
Were you dropped on your head as a child or did you do whippets in high school? Numbers and special features, things every RPG worth playing has, lower the unpredictability of any system innately. Do you think D&D is 100% unpredictable?
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>>97900427
Right. Like I said. You put points into the things you want to be good, which makes you better at them. It's still unpredictable, since you could fail, and you don't know what sorts of stuff you'll encounter or how difficult it will be, so you can't predict if you'll succeed.
You become more reliable, and the game is still unpredictable. Which is good. Do you need me to repeat it a third time? Retard?
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>>97900466
So your pea brain cannot comprehend that what you are describing is a dilution of unpredictability. You are adding reliability to your actions by investing in these mechanics instead of just rolling dice, allowing for a predictable range of outcomes. That means that pure unpredictability is not just good. If you feel the need to repeat yourself at this point feel free, but you're only proving you have no idea what you're talking about.
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>>97901839
Nope, no such thing. Either you can predict it, or you cannot. If there is any possibility of failing to predict accurately, at all, no matter how slight, then it is not predictable, by definition. You lose.
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>>97902153
>>97902156
https://iws.mx/dnd/?view=power7161
Silent Malediction is a stun (full action denial) on a hit, and half damage and a daze (half action denial) on a miss.
A monster would very definitely prefer to be dazed rather than stunned.
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>1000HP character with 100% to be hit
>500HP character with 50% to be hit
these two characters have the same EHP, on average your TTK is about the same
the former is defeated more or less consistently, any deviation is determined by whatever damage spread is defined as the system
the latter experiences much more variation, if you roll 3 misses in a row it takes longer, if you roll 3 hits in a row it takes faster
the stronger your attacks are in comparison to their HP, the more variance you get
there are edge cases where one is better off than the other
fixed damage attacks benefit having a higher HP, like half-damage on failed saves or attacks that never miss
but overkill damage benefits weaker but more evasive characters, especially if it comes with inherent loss of accuracy, since they were never surviving it anyways