I’ve found that the online character sheets at D&D Beyond are incredibly useful for keeping track of things, and the encounter creator is pretty fun so far. Sorry if this is off-track since I haven’t read the whole thread just yet and am nervously getting ready for my first DMing session in a week or so.
Then there’s advantage, which is super easy to get if you’re using flanking rules. The statistical value of advantage changes depending on what you need, but I’ve seen math showing is medians around +5.
So if our fighter has advantage - from flanking or status effects or whatever else - he’s hitting that monster closer to 80% percent of the time. And that’s still without magic weapons of any kind.
I’m not seeing the problem. Multiple 60% or 80% chances against a very challenging foe seems pretty good, especially if tactics and abilities can goose the odds.
Meanwhile, many of the very best combat spells are “suck or save,” where you either do something awesome and game-changing or you get a sad trombone noise. That is frustrating, and in my last campaign (we ended at level 20 and I was a spellcaster) I avoided them altogether despite their incredible potential.
I don’t usually go for sports metaphors, but Ted Williams, legendary for his ability to his things with a bat, had a life time batting average of .344. In his single best season, his average was .400.
I hesitate to dip my toe in these waters, but just as Williams was facing the very best pitchers, these level 20 fighters are presumably up against some pretty formidable does.
A typo so good I’m leaving it in.
Dire does are anything but docile.
The game’s entertainment value actually begins dipping sharply as you get into the higher levels, which is why I think it’s kind of impressive that the bounded accuracy math still works for attacks. Everything else pretty much falls apart. I don’t blame D&D for that, though, high-powered games are very difficult to run no matter the system.
I’m so glad to have made it to level 20 once, but if it never happens again I won’t be broken up about it.
Also a really good point. An 11th level fighter versus a CR 11 monster is facing something that’s about as dangerous as he is. (Well, somewhat less, since CR 11 is versus a party, not an individual) He’s going to hit a lot more often against a bunch of low-level bandits, just like Ted Williams would have blasted the hell out of a minor league pitcher.
I suppose there is precedent for a legendary warrior making up for low accuracy with a large number of attacks…
But seriously, it sort of works out for attacks, where there are enough of them for the Law of Averages kick in. But it completely sucks for skills. Unless you have 11 levels in rogue, you simply can’t rely on skills.
Counter clip:
Two equally skilled swordsmen fight for about thirty rounds of combat without either one landing a hit until the very end.
As I’ve always pictured hit points as representing endurance and energy, as well as physical health (at least for player characters), those 30 rounds could, at least in my head canon, have contained “hits” (in D&D terms), which only served to wear down the opponent’s stamina, without actually drawing blood.
It’s not until the characters get down to their last 10 or 20 hit points that “hits” might be actual physical damage.
I thought this might be appreciated by this thread’s participants
How do disarm attempts factor in?
A ridiculously late update to this, which is partly due to me losing track and partly due to teh fact that teh group didn’t actually get together for weeks after I started this thread.
However! We have had three whole sessions since then so…
The battle went off fairly well. @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness 's tip about pre-set events was really useful and helped generate the sense of multiple dangers springing up. It took two sessions to resolve; the group used their NPCs quite well (with a bit of hinting); but it came to an abrupt end when one NPC shared their critical piece of information and succeeded on a Persuasion check to convince the villains it was true (it was). So… good in some ways and player initiative always to be rewarded, but in fact it happened before hte party was really imperilled which was the official point of the encounter.
Then they got given a bunch of quests that will send them pinballing all over the map, gradually uncovering pieces of a bigger mystery, until Event happens and the plot goes into high gear.
My job is going to be gauge how much fun all of this is. It should be really interesting world building but I find the tricky bit is giving everybody something to do. Not helped by the last couple of sessions being a) Zoom and b) short. So some people get to be lead depending on skill and some people are background/support act.
That is what Gygax said.
Until you get to half hit points, you really have not taken any real damage. It is being tired, bruises, etc.
To new DMs, I do suggest you let one player track initiative, and in a big battle, track the damage to the monsters, especially mooks.
I remember that from (I think) 1e, and it works as well as anything else–which is to say, not very well.
“The dragon swings at you with its razor-sharp talons, and hits armor class 24–a hit! You leap back out of the way, realizing that by dodging the blow you’re now breathing more heavily–26 points of damage!”
I’m getting ready to start a new campaign and I’m thinking of using the following system.
Level 1: Hit points as normal.
Level 2+: You get [some number I haven’t decided yet, maybe 1+con] as ‘core’ hit points each time you level, the remainder of your allocation is ‘cinematic’ HP.
Cinematic damage is always taken off first and heals per the normal rules. Go to bed or take a nap, wake up whole. Core damage will heal more slowly and maybe require special intervention.
So it’s kind of like the gag from True Lies. Most damage happens to be flesh wounds. Slap some dirt on it, walk it off. But once your cinematic damage is depleted, you’re open to more dramatic injuries.
From there I could iterate further. Like maybe a critical hit always does one point of core damage. Still kind of turning it over in my head.
The d20 version of the Star Wars RPG that Wizards published, 20-ish years ago, did something similar to this. They had two different pools: Vitality Points were the “cinematic” HPs, and Wound Points were the “core” HPs (though Wound Points didn’t go up as you leveled). My one issue with their system was that critical hits went directly to Wound Points, and it had an increased potential to lead to character death (especially with many weapons doing 3d6 or 3d8 damage).
Oh you’re right! I remember playing that.
In my concept, even a level 1 barbarian has to be careful about being hit since all their HP will be core. But as they level up, their ratio of core:cinematic will shift. Eventually they’d have lots of cinematic HP relative to their core.
In other words, the stronger they get the less often they’ll get grievously injured.
Yeah, that’s too much. I think one point per crit would be plenty, especially if core HP is slow to heal. It would make going adventuring while injured a real risk, but I don’t want any character getting one-shotted out of nowhere.
Of course there’s always more ways to iterate.
Minions (like from 4e D&D) might never do core damage. Boss monsters might always do a point on certain attacks, making them incredibly dangerous.
I just stick with “hit points represent how much you can get hit”. Making them meat points doesn’t work and rationalizing them as “luck” falls apart when you take non-whacking damage and effects (if that ghoul didn’t “actually” hit you, why are you making a saving throw against being paralyzed; if he DID hit you, why is this just “luck” damage?). It also goes against another handwave from the earliest days of D&D – in the six seconds of your combat round, you’re not just swinging at someone once like clockwork but rather your attack roll represents the one or more chances you got to land a hit in that six seconds with the rest of the time spent parrying, dodging, hits glancing off your armor, etc. The “luck” aspect is already baked into the combat round system.
I don’t say that to be snarky, I just haven’t seen a rationalization for D&D hit points that wasn’t ultimately brain damage and I’ve seen “body point” system hacks but never cared for them (in D&D; they might work fine for games built ground up with the concept). Better to just shrug and say that hit points are how much hittin’ you can take in whatever form that hittin’ comes in.
I just think about the scene from Last Action Hero were Arnold gets shot (stabbed?) and it looks super dramatic and grievous until they have a moment to look at it. When they do, they realize it’s “just a flesh wound.”
But I’m big on using action movie logic to justify the way stuff in tabletop games work. It’s not for everyone.
That works too 
It’s trying to make it “real” that feels like an effort in futility.