One Shot, One kill -- A classic concept that you can't do in DND

[strangebloke]

A pair of samurai scrutinize each other, readying their blades all at once they rush each other, the movement of their blades scarcely visible as they slash one another. For a single moment, they hold their blades aloft. One of them crumples, defeated.

An archer stands atop a tower amidst a burning city, and readies a single shot. The dragon has been tormenting the city below, laughing in the face of the hail of arrows. The archer releases his bolt, and it flies straight into the heart of the beast.

A boxer has been taking hits from his opponent for five rounds, scarcely hitting back. Everyone thinks he is finished... and then, with a single punch, the boxer knocks his opponent cold.

***

I think the concept of a one-shot fighter is pretty well established in fiction. Annoyingly, DND doesn't have a way of mechanically achieving this with any kind of reliability. Currently the best 'one-shot' builds are:

-open hand monk, shivering palm.
-Assassin, Death Strike
-Paladin/Hexblade, smite.

Those basically rely on either consuming a lot of resources, or on having a very specific kind of prep (attacking from stealth). They don't really fit any of the above concepts all that well. Bard wasn't being stealthy when he shot Smaug down. Those Samurai weren't using blades covered in holy energy. That boxer wasn't using no magical BS. It's obvious why it is hard to make a one-shot build, since any such ability would be very overpowered and swingy. But here are some thoughts on how such a thing could be homebrewed into 5e:

-Makes the most sense as a fighter subclass, since as I stated, the rogue already has a pretty good route to the one-shot build (albeit, sneakily.)
-As a bonus action, you enter into a battle trance. You take double damage from all sources until the end of your next turn, but you deal double damage as well.
-Maybe some kind of ability to avoid dying immediately upon hitting zero hit points? (for the samurai, specifically)
-You forgo extra attacks to deal more damage on one attack. You roll all the d20s you would normally make in your full attack action, take the best, and when rolling damage you roll all the dice as though you had hit with every attack of your attack action. You also double/triple your ability modifier to damage.

Thoughts?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

Some thoughts! I don't think Bard and Smaug is a great example of this, actually: Bard shoots lots of arrows. It's a good example of the abstract nature of hitpoints, though!

More on the topic, I like the idea of trading incoming damage for outgoing damage, combined with a delayed damage or death avoidance mechanism like what the half-orc has. I also like the idea of trading actions for damage - perhaps the samurai builds a bonus damage pool by forgoing attacks of opportunity.

Rolling all attacks and taking the best seems too strong. If you have two attacks you'd get double damage in exchange for making one attack with advantage. That's not really a tradeoff; it seems like strictly an upgrade. Perhaps the way to do it is to make only one attack roll, plus advantage as appropriate, and get a damage increase in excess of the possible maximum from hitting with all of your possible attacks.

[Theodoxus]

Play a different game is my typical Go To answer. Savage Worlds with it's very limited "hit points" is probably the best I've played (and I'll quickly add that I haven't played many "non-d20" based games, so I'm sure there's something comparable or better than SW to emulate this.)

But, I also enjoy the challenge of homebrewing up alternate rules for 5e. I wrote up a RoShamBo style jousting mechanic that my players enjoy...

So, that said, I'd probably make something like the samurai iajitsu stare down revert both opponents to their level 1 hit points - just for the first strike. If you survive the attack, great. If you're reduced to 0 HP, you lose.

Probably a similar mechanic for boxing... though that would inherently become more gamey if you really wanted to emulate what you're proposing with the boxers... and makes little sense even in reality... but if that was the desire, probably a RoShamBo variant here as well.

For the dragon? Outside of a 3.5 style arcane archer black arrow type deal, or a magical arrow, you're either talking kill steal - where your hit is the final blow that takes it out, or you've paid the DM $20 to guarantee that your hit is the final blow, regardless of how many HP the dragon actually has... I can't really see a way to encode that without making the character the De Facto Dragonslayer of the Realms. And that's just not all that cool outside of a one shot.

[MeeposFire]

One clunky way to theme a lot of damage in one attack that works alright for melee but not as well for most ranged attacks is to treat all the hits from your attack action as one attack and each success is just a way to show that the hit is even more deadly. Calculate the total damage from all of the attacks and fluff it as one attack. This also makes action surge into a seeming large single attack since a 20th level samurai with 8 attacks can be a fair bit of damage and you can fluff it as a single draw.

Obviously less effective to fluff for ranged attacks because you technically should be deducting ammo though you could just opt to count it as only one shot if that is important to you to show off and your DM agrees.

It is a band aid (and some people may not like it since they do not want to fluff successful attacks as just making a single attack more effective) but it is the easier to implement option.

[FelineArchmage]

5e really isn't the edition to do "one shot, one kill" types of play. The game has just been so simplified that it is nearly impossible to one-shot higher CR opponents outside of homebrewing. And even then if you start homebrewing, you'll have to figure out a way to balance that "one shot" out with other party members if you plan to use it in-game (but if you don't plan to use it in a game, go buck wild).

I agree with Theodoxus that - if you seriously want to go this route - play a different system or edition. 3.5 has so much number crunching and content out that there are ways to achieve what you're looking for.

[Zilong]

A couple reasons for this which mostly ties into how HP is viewed I believe. In literature and other mediums, the "one shot" works because the author says so and it is interesting. In a rpg environment, with other players, including the DM, this can be less interesting.

"Oh look, Jerry one shot the Big Bad...again. When's the pizza getting here again?"

Now the one shot is still possible mechanically, as you've mentioned, but is normally only applicable to less important npcs. Gathraine the knight can slay a hundred goblins one after another with but a single strike for each opponent. No fancy mechanics need be added, this already can happen (if the goblins are dumb and don't swarm him, but that is a different problem).

Narratively, however, its more an artifact of how we view HP. As is often expressed by other posters, HP is not, or not always, meat points. So as the samurai scuffle, they drain one another's concentration and one misses a beat. Smaug's luck is used up in the rest of the scene so that one arrow is fated to slay him. The boxer's opponent has used up all his endurance and all it takes is a good shot to take him over the edge. In each scenario there is only one "shot" but that one, the one that drops the target to 0, is the narrative "one shot".

You mention reliability and I'd say that, in this sort of game, reliably one shotting important opponents is not a good thing. It can happen from time to time to accentuate certain moments, but doing it all the time gets kind of boring. Admittedly, there are some stories that do this (One Punch Man) but they have more exceptional circumstances.

If a DM wants such a scene, it might be better to narrate the HP loss like above or present the situation more as a puzzle than combat. Smaug's death was, in my opinion, more a product of careful observation than a full on combat, though the dead defenders probably disagree. :smallbiggrin:

A few more options can be baked into future subclasses. But I don't see it as a pressing issue. Besides, PC's can already dole out metric tonnes of damage. A mechanical one shot is not really adding much.

As for your specific examples:
-double damage taken and received: sure why not, though it should probably be a regular action not bonus action
-not dying at zero: this is default anyway, if you mean not going unconscious, zealot barbarians already get this at 14
-highest dice: better be a high level ability because this is pretty broken

[ImproperJustice]

Stars Without Number which is OSR based has “Execution Attacks” for things like sniper rifles, and car bombs.

The general idea is that with enough prep and time to study an unsuspecting foe you can kill them in one shot regardless of their HP.

There is an Assassin focus which makes setting these up easier and a likewise Alertness focus that gives that action hero last second warning to try and save yourself.

[Calen]

The samurai example is a classic one-on-one one shot duel. Gunslinger tropes align with this. For that example it would make sense to have some kind of limiting mechanic that allows you to generate lots of damage, probably once per short rest. It would probably make more sense to do it as an element of story but

Only one walks away
Before you roll initiative or on your first turn of combat you may call out a foe that has not acted yet. If the target agrees or fails a charisma saving throw you both act on the higher initiative. All attacks against the target deal double damage and all hits you receive from target deal double damage. Both attacks are resolved at the same time. Killing the target does not prevent you from taking damage.

For your boxer example a feature that every time you take damage you add to the damage of your next attack that hits would be appropriate. (With some kind of text to prevent abuse)

[strangebloke]

Rolling all attacks and taking the best seems too strong. If you have two attacks you'd get double damage in exchange for making one attack with advantage. That's not really a tradeoff; it seems like strictly an upgrade. Perhaps the way to do it is to make only one attack roll, plus advantage as appropriate, and get a damage increase in excess of the possible maximum from hitting with all of your possible attacks.
Well, it is a pretty serious trade off since you can't get GWM or SS. It does boost the likelihood of a crit into absurd territory, however.

But yeah, maybe your idea is better.

Something like: "As an action, make a single attack. If the attack hits, roll your weapon damage dice once for each attack you can make as part of the attack action. Additionally, roll 1d8 for each attack you make as part of the attack action. You can expend a usage of action surge to double the number of dice being rolled."

So,
Normal Fighter: 3*(1d8+5) = 28.5
One-Shot Master: 3d8+3d8 + 5 = 32
SS fighter: 3*(1d8+5+10) = 58.5

Normal Fighter: 3*(2d6+5) = 36
One-Shot Master: 6d6+3d8 + 5 = 39.5
GWM fighter: 3*(2d6+5+10) = 66

...Do you see why I kind of think this is a bit too weak?



Play a different game is my typical Go To answer. Savage Worlds with it's very limited "hit points" is probably the best I've played (and I'll quickly add that I haven't played many "non-d20" based games, so I'm sure there's something comparable or better than SW to emulate this.)

But, I also enjoy the challenge of homebrewing up alternate rules for 5e. I wrote up a RoShamBo style jousting mechanic that my players enjoy...

So, that said, I'd probably make something like the samurai iajitsu stare down revert both opponents to their level 1 hit points - just for the first strike. If you survive the attack, great. If you're reduced to 0 HP, you lose.

Probably a similar mechanic for boxing... though that would inherently become more gamey if you really wanted to emulate what you're proposing with the boxers... and makes little sense even in reality... but if that was the desire, probably a RoShamBo variant here as well.

For the dragon? Outside of a 3.5 style arcane archer black arrow type deal, or a magical arrow, you're either talking kill steal - where your hit is the final blow that takes it out, or you've paid the DM $20 to guarantee that your hit is the final blow, regardless of how many HP the dragon actually has... I can't really see a way to encode that without making the character the De Facto Dragonslayer of the Realms. And that's just not all that cool outside of a one shot.

No, I mean, a dragon shouldn't be getting one-shotted in most circumstances. Although I feel the need to say, that if it was a small dragon, a high-level asssassin could do this by RAW. Just not the way that a Bard-esque figure would.

I don't like Rock Paper Scissors as a mechanic. I want some level of the player's abilities to matter.

And yes, obviously "Use a different system" is always a valid statement that is also generally useless. These are concepts that DND should be able to simulate, but can't. Yes, L5R combat is literally "Samurai face-off: The Game" and it does that pretty well, but why can't a system that is more narrowly focused on combat do the same thing?

[Grear Bylls]

A pair of samurai scrutinize each other, readying their blades all at once they rush each other, the movement of their blades scarcely visible as they slash one another. For a single moment, they hold their blades aloft. One of them crumples, defeated.

An archer stands atop a tower amidst a burning city, and readies a single shot. The dragon has been tormenting the city below, laughing in the face of the hail of arrows. The archer releases his bolt, and it flies straight into the heart of the beast.

A boxer has been taking hits from his opponent for five rounds, scarcely hitting back. Everyone thinks he is finished... and then, with a single punch, the boxer knocks his opponent cold.

***

I think the concept of a one-shot fighter is pretty well established in fiction. Annoyingly, DND doesn't have a way of mechanically achieving this with any kind of reliability. Currently the best 'one-shot' builds are:

-open hand monk, shivering palm.
-Assassin, Death Strike
-Paladin/Hexblade, smite.

Those basically rely on either consuming a lot of resources, or on having a very specific kind of prep (attacking from stealth). They don't really fit any of the above concepts all that well. Bard wasn't being stealthy when he shot Smaug down. Those Samurai weren't using blades covered in holy energy. That boxer wasn't using no magical BS. It's obvious why it is hard to make a one-shot build, since any such ability would be very overpowered and swingy. But here are some thoughts on how such a thing could be homebrewed into 5e:

-Makes the most sense as a fighter subclass, since as I stated, the rogue already has a pretty good route to the one-shot build (albeit, sneakily.)
-As a bonus action, you enter into a battle trance. You take double damage from all sources until the end of your next turn, but you deal double damage as well.
-Maybe some kind of ability to avoid dying immediately upon hitting zero hit points? (for the samurai, specifically)
-You forgo extra attacks to deal more damage on one attack. You roll all the d20s you would normally make in your full attack action, take the best, and when rolling damage you roll all the dice as though you had hit with every attack of your attack action. You also double/triple your ability modifier to damage.

Thoughts?

I actually started this recently after another post. Kind of made a joke out of it though:

Anime Archtype

Anime fighters not only know how to unleash flurries of attacks, but also how to make one attack obnoxiously powerful.

Epic Strike: At 3rd level, you know how to make 1 attack exceptionally powerful. When you take the attack action on your turn, you can forgo using a bonus action on your turn to gain advantage on the attack roll. If you do so, the attack deals twice it's normal dice of damage if it hits.
When you gain the extra attack feature, you can forgo each of the attacks to roll an additional die to hit the target for each attack you have up. For each attack you gave up, add the dice you would've rolled if you had hit the target.

[Nidgit]

Wouldn't the easiest way to do this just be to make a magic weapon type that grants this effect? Maybe something like:

"As an action, you can make a single fatal strike. When you Attack, you can choose to forgo additional Extra Attacks to make a single strike more powerful. You gain advantage on the attack and increase your critical hit range by 1. Additionally, for each additional attack you forgo, add 3d6 damage. At the end of your turn, you then take one level of Exhaustion.

This ability cannot be used again until you take a short or long rest."

I'm on the fence about the Exhaustion part. If it's too severe, it could instead be "if the target of this action is not killed on your turn, take one level of Exhaustion."

[strangebloke]

One clunky way to theme a lot of damage in one attack that works alright for melee but not as well for most ranged attacks is to treat all the hits from your attack action as one attack and each success is just a way to show that the hit is even more deadly. Calculate the total damage from all of the attacks and fluff it as one attack. This also makes action surge into a seeming large single attack since a 20th level samurai with 8 attacks can be a fair bit of damage and you can fluff it as a single draw.

Obviously less effective to fluff for ranged attacks because you technically should be deducting ammo though you could just opt to count it as only one shot if that is important to you to show off and your DM agrees.

It is a band aid (and some people may not like it since they do not want to fluff successful attacks as just making a single attack more effective) but it is the easier to implement option.
What I don't like about this is that it flies in the face of tons of existing mechanics. Like, TWF gets more attacks because you got two knives. That's it. Doesn't really work as a gameified rule. Atttacks are attacks.

5e really isn't the edition to do "one shot, one kill" types of play. The game has just been so simplified that it is nearly impossible to one-shot higher CR opponents outside of homebrewing.
I think there are ways to do this in 5e. As I pointed out, there are already one-shot builds out there. They require either prep, or limited-use resources. (and a failed save)

So the issue is not that you can't build a one-shot build, it's that you can't do one-shots in the way that people expect to be able to.


As for your specific examples:
-double damage taken and received: sure why not, though it should probably be a regular action not bonus action
-not dying at zero: this is default anyway, if you mean not going unconscious, zealot barbarians already get this at 14
-highest dice: better be a high level ability because this is pretty broken

-If it's regular action it would be pointless. The whole point is to rush in, make your sword swing, and then either die or kill the other.
-More like, you delay unconciousness for a single round.
-Not if it's limited use.


Stars Without Number which is OSR based has “Execution Attacks” for things like sniper rifles, and car bombs.

The general idea is that with enough prep and time to study an unsuspecting foe you can kill them in one shot regardless of their HP.

There is an Assassin focus which makes setting these up easier and a likewise Alertness focus that gives that action hero last second warning to try and save yourself.
This makes a lot of sense, but also isn't really what I'm talking about.


Only one walks away
Before you roll initiative or on your first turn of combat you may call out a foe that has not acted yet. If the target agrees or fails a charisma saving throw you both act on the higher initiative. All attacks against the target deal double damage and all hits you receive from target deal double damage. Both attacks are resolved at the same time. Killing the target does not prevent you from taking damage.

For your boxer example a feature that every time you take damage you add to the damage of your next attack that hits would be appropriate. (With some kind of text to prevent abuse)
Ok, these are some solid ideas

I like 'one walks away' since it's just so perfect for a samurai type.

For the boxer, I'd probably have something like:

Perfect Counter:
"If you do not take the attack action on your turn, as a bonus action you can plan your counterattack. Pick a target you can see. Every time that target attacks you before the start of your next turn, add 1d10 to your counterattack pool. On your next turn, if you hit your target with a weapon attack, you can expend dice in your counterattack pool and add them to the damage of that attack. You cannot have more dice in your counterattack pool than your current fighter level. If you plan a counterattack against an different target, the number of dice in your pool is reset."

Not sure how the balance of that works out, but the numbers can be altered as necessary. The idea is that you use the dodge action over and over... and then maybe true strike... and then WHAM.

[JoeJ]

The easiest way to do a one shot kill mechanic is ignore damage altogether. On a hit, the target dies unless it makes a successful saving throw of whatever type. I suspect, though, that a lot of players won't want this ability once it's pointed out that some of the bad guys will have it too.

[Spiritchaser]

One clunky way to theme a lot of damage in one attack that works alright for melee but not as well for most ranged attacks is to treat all the hits from your attack action as one attack and each success is just a way to show that the hit is even more deadly. Calculate the total damage from all of the attacks and fluff it as one attack. This also makes action surge into a seeming large single attack since a 20th level samurai with 8 attacks can be a fair bit of damage and you can fluff it as a single draw.

Obviously less effective to fluff for ranged attacks because you technically should be deducting ammo though you could just opt to count it as only one shot if that is important to you to show off and your DM agrees.

It is a band aid (and some people may not like it since they do not want to fluff successful attacks as just making a single attack more effective) but it is the easier to implement option.

In the general case this could really mess up concentration saves...

But a fighter AT with this specific ability once or twice per short rest would be pretty cool.

[LtPowers]

These are concepts that DND should be able to simulate, but can't.

Why?

D&D is a game about adventuring parties delving into dungeons and defeating enemies as a team. None of your examples fit that genre.

That's not to say those scenarios couldn't come up in a D&D game -- they could. But when they do, they are special scenarios. They are not typical D&D combat in any way, shape, or form.

Let's take them one by one, since each one is different.

* The Samurai. This is the closest to real D&D combat. A single round of combat between two fighters or monks under level 5 could easily match this scenario -- higher level characters could do it if you assume they'd been sparring back and forth before the climactic clash (thus depleting HP).

* Bard and Smaug. This is not something to be resolved with combat. Smaug is invincible, so there's no point anyone rolling to attack. Except, that is, for that one little chink in his armor of treasure. Once you have that knowledge, all it takes is one decent attack roll with the special weapon and boom, the dragon is dead. Ignore Smaug's HP. This isn't a real combat, so his HP are irrelevant.

* Boxers. This is really more of an opposed skill test than a combat encounter. There are rules to boxing and you can't do all the things you'd be doing if you were fighting in a life-or-death battle. So you use (a bunch of) Strength (Athletics) checks and see who comes out on top.


Powers &8^]

[Gorgo]

One thought about this idea is that having a way for your character to one-shot foes is fun, but being one-shot by a foe generally isn't, and the DM always has more monsters to throw at the party if an important encounter gets one-shot. Unless you were never going to have NPCs use these mechanics (which seems unrealistic), I'd be worried that they'd make the game less fun overall, particularly for campaigns where ressurection is challenging.

[GlenSmash!]

I think several builds can one shot thugs, guards, bandits etc. Which is good enough for me.

Against BBEGs I prefer knock down drag out fights that leave both sides bloody.

[JoeJ]

I think several builds can one shot thugs, guards, bandits etc. Which is good enough for me.

Against BBEGs I prefer knock down drag out fights that leave both sides bloody.

To let all the PCs reliably one-shot minions, just use the Guard from the MM. Reduce the hit point to, like, 5 or 6, and where appropriate give them bows or crossbows. You could recalculate the CR to take into account the lower hit points, but it's only 1/8 to begin with so you probably don't need to. Use them in hordes that get bigger as the PCs go up in level and take on more powerful BBEGs.

[fbelanger]

You may add a simple rule.
If you roll two 20 when making an attack with advantage you kill the target outright.
It may cause unexpected result, but will give that feeling of god shot.

If you find the kill outright too strong you may add a huge damage bonus. +50 or + 100.

Portent and lucky can mess with such a rule, you may need to add exception.

[MeeposFire]

You may add a simple rule.
If you roll two 20 when making an attack with advantage you kill the target outright.
It may cause unexpected result, but will give that feeling of god shot.

If you find the kill outright too strong you may add a huge damage bonus. +50 or + 100.

Portent and lucky can mess with such a rule, you may need to add exception.

Just as a note that sort of rule ends up hurting PCs more than enemies due to how PCs tend to get more attack rolls thrown at them than any single enemy.

[GlenSmash!]

To let all the PCs reliably one-shot minions, just use the Guard from the MM. Reduce the hit point to, like, 5 or 6, and where appropriate give them bows or crossbows. You could recalculate the CR to take into account the lower hit points, but it's only 1/8 to begin with so you probably don't need to. Use them in hordes that get bigger as the PCs go up in level and take on more powerful BBEGs.

I think you could go a little higher.

With max main stat, I wouldn't assume a lot of one-shotting at low levels but tastes may differ, plus an average d8 roll 9 or 10 HP is the sweet spot. So commoners, Acolytes, Bandits, Cultists, and Nobles are all in the realm of pretty easy to one shot and a Guard wouldn't be too hard.

GWM and SS make it even easier to one shot mooks. So that could open up Scouts and and assuming a big weapon on the GWM side Cult Fanatics.

[strangebloke]

Why?

D&D is a game about adventuring parties delving into dungeons and defeating enemies as a team. None of your examples fit that genre.
I think you're being too narrow with what you're considering to be 'DND.'

I mean, I'll typically be the second (Mephnick being the first) person to note that DND is primarily a combat engine with a few exploration and social interaction rules tacked on in the DMG, and that fighting against the system is foolish. However, a huge portion of the appeal of DND lies in getting class features that let your characters do cinematic stunts.

You don't play a monk (usually) because it's what your party needs. You play it because you want to be a super fast kung-fu action hero. It might be correct to note that if you want to do a kung-fu action adventure DND isn't a very good system, but nonetheless, DND includes a kung fu action class. Because it cool, and its something that some players will want to try out.

DND is narrowly focused, in terms of the types of things covered by the rules and the types of things that you are expected to be doing, but it's incredibly broad in terms of the types of characters you are allowed to build.

So, no, DND is not a good system for hyper-lethal combat in general but a class based around the concept is perfectly workable.

Notably, the 'Samurai' I described would only really be lethal when facing another Samurai who was using the same ability.


* The Samurai. This is the closest to real D&D combat. A single round of combat between two fighters or monks under level 5 could easily match this scenario -- higher level characters could do it if you assume they'd been sparring back and forth before the climactic clash (thus depleting HP).
Except that is never how PVP goes down. One fighter wins initiative, action surges the other, and probably wins the fight. The climax happens at the first die roll, not the last.


* Bard and Smaug. This is not something to be resolved with combat. Smaug is invincible, so there's no point anyone rolling to attack. Except, that is, for that one little chink in his armor of treasure. Once you have that knowledge, all it takes is one decent attack roll with the special weapon and boom, the dragon is dead. Ignore Smaug's HP. This isn't a real combat, so his HP are irrelevant.
Fine, bad example. Do you deny that the "Archer Firing a Single Shot to Kill the Bad Guy" is a fantasy trope? All archers, with the exception of assassin rogues, are basically stationary damage turrets who rapid-fire arrows. I think an archer that fires exactly one, deadly shot is a pretty cool concept.


* Boxers. This is really more of an opposed skill test than a combat encounter. There are rules to boxing and you can't do all the things you'd be doing if you were fighting in a life-or-death battle. So you use (a bunch of) Strength (Athletics) checks and see who comes out on top.


It's not two boxers with fists, then, it's two fighters with mauls, no holds barred. One guy is taking a beating the whole fight, barely throwing a single attack of his own. Then... *blam* he takes the guy out in a single swing.

[Kane0]

Something that springs to mind is crit manipulation. In 3.X you had different crit multipliers and crit chances for different weapons, which could be altered with feats, class features and magic. For example if you made yourself a scythe wielding weapon master you could crit for x5 damage, and 5e does something similar with barbarian brutal critical.

If you blended together portions of the fighter, barbarian and rogue we could do something like a martial class that attacks only once per round but when they do so they deal extra damage. Crits deal bonus damage and as a limited resources they can turn hits into crits. The important thing to balance is the damage output and how often it can be done, especially when multiclassing (smite, sneak attack, brutal crit, improved crit, etc could all throw off the balance).

Edit: You might also want to incorporate a build-up mechanic, so it can't be done round 1. A fight usually only lasts a handful of rounds, so if you have to 'charge' your OHKO for a turn or two you allow the rest of the party to participate and the fight to be interesting while also getting your single attack glory.

[JoeJ]

I think you could go a little higher.

With max main stat, I wouldn't assume a lot of one-shotting at low levels but tastes may differ, plus an average d8 roll 9 or 10 HP is the sweet spot. So commoners, Acolytes, Bandits, Cultists, and Nobles are all in the realm of pretty easy to one shot and a Guard wouldn't be too hard.

GWM and SS make it even easier to one shot mooks. So that could open up Scouts and and assuming a big weapon on the GWM side Cult Fanatics.

For generic mooks, my thought is that they pretty much die any time a PC (of any class) above about level 4 hits them and doesn't roll a 1 for damage. Thanks to bounded accuracy, however, large groups of them can still hurt the PCs, so the mooks have to be dealt with and not simply ignored.

[Naanomi]

How many of your PCs should die in one unanswerable hit? Things like this flow both ways in general...

[GlenSmash!]

For generic mooks, my thought is that they pretty much die any time a PC (of any class) above about level 4 hits them and doesn't roll a 1 for damage. Thanks to bounded accuracy, however, large groups of them can still hurt the PCs, so the mooks have to be dealt with and not simply ignored.

Oh yeah, hordes are truly to be feared in 5e.

[Eric Diaz]

My 2c:

- Rolling 1d20 for each attack and picking your favorite can never be overpowered; it is suboptimal, if anything. So, if you have three attacks, roll three dice, pick the best. Same thing for considering many attacks as one single attack.

- "Double 20, double damage" sounds good to me, and I'd go even further: "matches double damage". So, if you're rolling with advantage (not disad of course) and roll two 15s, you DOUBLE the TOTAL damage, even tough this is not a crit. Double 20s would be something like (1d8+1d8+4)x2 for a mid-level fighter with a longsword. Still a bit weak.... Maybe doubles allow you to replace the damage die by the d20? So, roll 15 and 15 and deal 15+4 damage, roll 20 and 20 and deal 20+20+4 damage... or something.

- Combining the two would not be too OP nor underwhelming, it seems, although still sub-optimal.

- In my retroclone, a natural 20 allows PCs to add their LEVEL to damage.

- If you want an infinitesimal chance of slaying the tarrasque with one arrow, maybe maybe a DC 22 test every time you crit: roll 1d10+prof, if you succeed you deal double damage and roll again, "ad infinitum".

- OR: when you crit, roll 1d20+level versus monster's CR+10 or +20, success means you reduce it to 0 HP...

EDIT: or just go crazy... crit lets you roll 1d100... if you roll lower than your level, target also must roll lower than its CR or be reduced to 0 HP.

[the secret fire]

My advice is to play Rolemaster if this is the sort of combat you like.

[smcmike]

A couple of thoughts:

First, D&D is very bad at modeling a lot of different fiction, but it seems pretty crazy to expect it to mode everything. You just can’t expect something to encompass Kurosawa and Jackie Chan, Avengers and LoTR, Rocky and Zodiac.

The specific examples you picked are interesting, so let’s look at them:



A pair of samurai scrutinize each other, readying their blades all at once they rush each other, the movement of their blades scarcely visible as they slash one another. For a single moment, they hold their blades aloft. One of them crumples, defeated.

The game actually does this just fine at low levels, but it’s worth pointing out that samurai duels like this are quite alien to most fight choreography in modern movies. Just like D&D, modern movies rarely have the big villain die at one fell swoop. Related note: most modern fight choreography is trash.



An archer stands atop a tower amidst a burning city, and readies a single shot. The dragon has been tormenting the city below, laughing in the face of the hail of arrows. The archer releases his bolt, and it flies straight into the heart of the beast.

Actually, the bigger problem with modeling this scenario in 5e is that a city fully of archers would take down the dragon no sweat, without any need for a special killing blow. Very few things are designed to actually withstand mass arrow fire, which is counter to many, many, many monsters in fiction. Still, you do have a point here: monsters are often killed by that one special blow in fiction.



A boxer has been taking hits from his opponent for five rounds, scarcely hitting back. Everyone thinks he is finished... and then, with a single punch, the boxer knocks his opponent cold.

This almost never happens, though! Most fights, boxers land lots and lots of hits before the end!

[PhoenixPhyre]

I find the "X is common in fiction, therefore D&D should be able to model X" arguments to ring hollow. D&D (at least this edition) does not claim to be a universal character modeling game. Trying to make it one has the potential to dilute what actually works about it. Lots of things work in other forms of fiction that are bad in games.

Reasons I don't like this archetype for this game:

* Party unfriendly. If it's too easy to get off its big attack, everyone else is playing second fiddle. If it requires help to get off its big attack, it's vulnerable or useless most of the time or it requires everyone else to play to its tune.
* Anticlimactic. If you're betting everything on one big shot, and you miss... The rogue, while closest to this, is designed to get off a sneak attack virtually all the time if it wants to.
* Punishing to the party if the enemies can use them. Being taken out of the fight with no answer on turn 1 sucks. And the party faces many more attacks than they make attacks.
* Anything that circumvents the HP mechanic produces strange incentives.

OHK or nothing is bad design--same with Save or Die effects. Note that those are few and far between this edition for good reason. And this is either SoD or it's brokenly good, there's really no in-between that achieves the proper flavor, as far as I can see.

[Akolyte01]

Why not a mechanic that let's you "charge up" potential damage over multiple rounds? You get high potential damage each turn BUT you have to maintain concentration or else you lose everything. Once you release and make the strike you count up all the damage. If it's more than the targets current hit points they die outright. If it's not you don't do any damage.

This would allow for interesting high risk high reward team-play while still keeping the flavor intact.

I would think this would make the most sense for the monk, but I suppose fighter would work as well.

[MeeposFire]

Why not a mechanic that let's you "charge up" potential damage over multiple rounds. You get potential damage each turn BUT you have to maintain concentration or else you lose everything. Once you release and make the strike you count up all the damage. If it's more than the targets current hit points they die outright. If it's not you don't do any damage.

This would allow for interesting high risk high reward team-play while still keeping the flavor intact.

I would think this would make the most sense for the monk, but I suppose fighter would work as well.

The original 4e assassin had a concept like this using "shrouds" as they would add one to a target each round and could wait to maximize your damage. Sadly by and large that technique was weaker than all other striker types but it did attempt to do this idea.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The original 4e assassin had a concept like this using "shrouds" as they would add one to a target each round and could wait to maximize your damage. Sadly by and large that technique was weaker than all other striker types but it did attempt to do this idea.

If the average fight runs 3-5 rounds (which is about right for me), then a 1-turn charge-up means that you act...once or twice for 3-5 actions of everyone else. This is the fundamental problem with such mechanics outside of MMOs, where boss fights are large, long, and common. And even then, long cast times tend to be disfavored.

It's just too much a pain to balance and the balance is exquisitely sensitive to variations in fights.

[Kane0]

The original 4e assassin had a concept like this using "shrouds" as they would add one to a target each round and could wait to maximize your damage. Sadly by and large that technique was weaker than all other striker types but it did attempt to do this idea.

See, this concept would have worked wonders for the Bard or something similar rather than bland spell slots. Build 'rhythm' as a bonus action on your turn to get better and better inspiration and spellcasting options, using inspiration or a casting a non-cantrip resets you back down to 0 rhythm. As you level up you gain rhythm when you roll initiative, etc.

Edit: Then you'd inevitably have some homebrew subclass that changes 'rhythm' to 'funk'.

[Akolyte01]

If the average fight runs 3-5 rounds (which is about right for me), then a 1-turn charge-up means that you act...once or twice for 3-5 actions of everyone else. This is the fundamental problem with such mechanics outside of MMOs, where boss fights are large, long, and common. And even then, long cast times tend to be disfavored.

It's just too much a pain to balance and the balance is exquisitely sensitive to variations in fights.

Having a feature doesn't mean that it has to be used every encounter.

[Akolyte01]

See, this concept would have worked wonders for the Bard or something similar rather than bland spell slots. Build 'rhythm' as a bonus action on your turn to get better and better inspiration and spellcasting options, using inspiration or a casting a non-cantrip resets you back down to 0 rhythm. As you level up you gain rhythm when you roll initiative, etc.

Edit: Then you'd inevitably have some homebrew subclass that changes 'rhythm' to 'funk'.

I do like the idea of having a "charge up" mechanic that takes a standard action being paired with a good amount of bonus actions that can be taken.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Having a feature doesn't mean that it has to be used every encounter.

So once in a while you get to do your archetype-defining thing. Smells like the Assassin subclass, which has the same problem and is quite over-valued.

Ideally, people would be doing their archetype defining thing frequently. Because that's what defines them. Paladins smite. Fighters action surge/get lots of attacks. Etc. Having a "when the stars align I can kill anything" ability is either busted (if the stars align frequently) or a ribbon (if they don't). And toning it down to "sometimes I can do a huge bunch...unless I miss and then I'm screwed" seems highly un-fun to me and kinda defeats the whole tone of the archetype.

Not all archetypes are, or should be, valid characters given the rest of the game design. I'm ok with that.

[Mith]

See, this concept would have worked wonders for the Bard or something similar rather than bland spell slots. Build 'rhythm' as a bonus action on your turn to get better and better inspiration and spellcasting options, using inspiration or a casting a non-cantrip resets you back down to 0 rhythm. As you level up you gain rhythm when you roll initiative, etc.

Edit: Then you'd inevitably have some homebrew subclass that changes 'rhythm' to 'funk'.

With fluff, you can sort of do this with speed initiative's effect on spell casting.

[the secret fire]

Having a "when the stars align I can kill anything" ability is either busted (if the stars align frequently) or a ribbon (if they don't). And toning it down to "sometimes I can do a huge bunch...unless I miss and then I'm screwed" seems highly un-fun to me and kinda defeats the whole tone of the archetype.

You seem to be thinking about this problem quite narrowly. There are game systems (Rolemaster the most famous of them) which feature critical hit mechanics that allow literally any character to one-shot any other with sufficient luck (especially if they are unarmored). You seem to be thinking about this as if the OP is asking for mega-cannon 1HKO abilities when by far the better solution is a comprehensive combat system which allows for anybody to do this sort of thing. Not really feasible in D&D, though.

[Malifice]

Thanks to the abstract nature of hit points (they measure things like luck and resolve) you can do a one shot one kill.

A 20th level action surging Samurai making 9 attack rolls, can easily be narrated as making just the single attack. The nine rolls represent his attack potential for a few seconds.

A success on an attack roll is not a discreet swing of a weapon and physically hitting the opponent. Unless you want to narrate every single successful attack roll as a discrete swing of a weapon and a hit of course.

But seeing as we are dealing with an abstraction like hit points, why limit yourself so?

In my games most creatures go down in one or two hits. Successful attack rolls are just their luck or resolve running out or near misses that they parry or dodge at the last second. The attack that reduces them to 0 hit points however is a solid hit that drops them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Thanks to the abstract nature of hit points (they measure things like luck and resolve) you can do a one shot one kill.

A 20th level action surging Samurai making 9 attack rolls, can easily be narrated as making just the single attack. The nine rolls represent his attack potential for a few seconds.

A success on an attack roll is not a discreet swing of a weapon and physically hitting the opponent. Unless you want to narrate every single successful attack roll as a discrete swing of a weapon and a hit of course.

But seeing as we are dealing with an abstraction like hit points, why limit yourself so?

In my games most creatures go down in one or two hits. Successful attack rolls are just their luck or resolve running out or near misses that they parry or dodge at the last second. The attack that reduces them to 0 hit points however is a solid hit that drops them.

That sums up my problem with this idea. It's either really hard to balance (if 1 hit = 1 actual hit) or it's already covered by the default mechanics (if HP =/= meat).

[LordEntrails]

The reason 5E doesn't do this like you are wanting is simply because over the last 44 years, the players have told the game designers this type of mechanic is not desired.

We used to call it "save or die". Their were lots of things that could cause the death of a NPC with a single die roll (spells, vorpal weapons, traps, abilities, etc). And as others have mentioned, if a player can use it against a NPC, then an NPC can use it against a PC. And that sucks.

One bad roll and the character that you have played for a few hundred hours is dead with no chance of resurrection... yea, not fun.

Use the concept of minions and hordes and hit point abstraction to give a theatrical concept of one-hit one-kill.

[Kane0]

The reason 5E doesn't do this like you are wanting is simply because over the last 44 years, the players have told the game designers this type of mechanic is not desired.

We used to call it "save or die". Their were lots of things that could cause the death of a NPC with a single die roll (spells, vorpal weapons, traps, abilities, etc). And as others have mentioned, if a player can use it against a NPC, then an NPC can use it against a PC. And that sucks.

One bad roll and the character that you have played for a few hundred hours is dead with no chance of resurrection... yea, not fun.

Use the concept of minions and hordes and hit point abstraction to give a theatrical concept of one-hit one-kill.

Or 'Ubercharger' or 'Mailman'. Can totally be fun in the right environment, but it's simply not a super popular playstyle amongst the entire playerbase.

[Fire Tarrasque]

If I had a duel like that, i'd probably do a temporary different system switch, yeah. Maybe have them make a dex contest for the first blow?

[MeeposFire]

Or 'Ubercharger' or 'Mailman'. Can totally be fun in the right environment, but it's simply not a super popular playstyle amongst the entire playerbase.

I find those to be more fun in my head than in actual play. Also a lot more fun to think up the build than to play too...

[Daithi]

Here is an idea --- a One-Shot Feat.


One-Shot Feat
Whenever you roll and crit, you can either have the target take the max crit damage, or you can have the target roll a CON saving throw. If they fail the throw they are reduced to 0 hit points. If they save they take no damage as the hit becomes a miss. The saving throw DC = 8 + your character's proficiency bonus + your character's Strength or Dexterity modifier (your character's choice).

[Fuzzy Logic]

Superman is also a popular and well known narrative trope that DnD doesn't model. I'm with a lot of others here in thinking that DnD just isn't the system to do this kind of thing in.

In 5e, with bounded accuracy, the designers decided to model increasing threat with higher HP and damage, keeping AC relatively flattened. This idea sort of sidesteps the 5e challenge structure completely.

I'll also agree you should pick a different system.

And a request I have, let's say you implement this in some way, I would ask that you have another player try playing the one hit wonder, and you play a vanilla class. I suspect this idea is a lot less fun for everyone else.

Then try playtesting where everyone is a one hit wonder. Then try giving it to enemies. I think you'll find it changes the game in a lot of unforseeable ways.

[Thrudd]

Has nobody mentioned the Vitality/Wounds system? This is a way to make combat more dangerous and give a real possibility for one-shot knock outs. It came from D20 Star Wars originally, and it was among the Unearthed Arcana options in 3.5e.
Vitality comes from your hit dice and works just like HP. Wounds are equal to your constitution score. Normally, all damage is applied to your vitality first, and when that is gone you lose wounds, when wounds are gone you are down/dead. Vitality heals relatively quickly, Wounds require longer recuperation. Critical hits, however, go directly to wounds. It still requires a lot of luck to one-shot something, but if you start messing around with critical hit mechanics, or start adding other abilities that can bypass vitality, like something that forces a saving throw or else damage goes to wounds...

[AvatarVecna]

Most any fiction you see with a "one shot kill" thing involves one of two scenarios:

1) The person getting killed got taken out by an effect way out of their weight-class (mooks getting mowed down by the dozens, novices facing masters, etc).

2) The fiction in question plays fairly close to real-world limits, so people are fragile.

You know what, you're right, it's weird that a dude can survive a rogue's arrow going through his skull and dealing 20d6 damage. You know what else is weird? That same dude can easily survive falling from orbit, taking a mere 20d6 damage. Anything surviving either of those is very clearly outside the realm of what's realistic.

Are you targeting mooks? Are you targeting people with realistic toughness? No? Then why were you expecting them to go down so easily?

The first example, about two samurais going at each other and one of them falling away cut in half? That **** should happen all the time in Star Wars too, and it does! Just not to Jedi, only to mooks. With Jedi, they manage to dodge just enough to avoid getting bisected by laser swords that can cut through basically anything, and the energy it takes them to dodge so nimbly could be said to represent their HP in some fashion. Basically every fight between Jedi ends with the first person to get a real hit, but simulating that in a TTRPG basically means pretending that most hits are misses, and it's only the one that takes you down to 0 HP that actually hits you. Because that's what a fight between high-level fighters/monks/paladins/whatever looks like: a long, drawn-out duel, like you see in lots of media.

The boxing example, taken from real life, is one of a dude tiring himself out too much to properly defend himself. D&D has this as well, if you put two Monks in a boxing ring: swarmers are boxers that prefer spending Ki on FoB, out-boxers are those that tend to use the BA Withdraw after a couple quick punches to avoid any AoOs, and Brawlers will tend to have strong guards that can be represented with the BA Dodge...but all three of these cost ki, and eventually those monks will run out. A few bad rounds of glancing hits later sets them up for the big punch that takes them out.

Also, part of the problem is that making this concept work at high levels is difficult, but making it work at low levels is sickeningly easy. Assassin Rogue 3, if they can surprise their target (which, if it's a target somebody hired an assassin to hit, they probably can get), they're looking at advantage to hit, and 8d6+13 damage on a hit; that's enough damage to take out most creatures under CR 2 in a single hit, and even a number of CR 2s will be laid out flat by that (and the rest will be in dire straits). PC damage scales a lot slower than health, both PC health and monster health, but in the early levels, PCs haven't fallen behind that badly yet. Combat would be at an extreme balance if it was possible

[Malifice]

You know what, you're right, it's weird that a dude can survive a rogue's arrow going through his skull and dealing 20d6 damage.

A dude that can survive 20d6 damage is an epic dude.

So the arrow doesn't go through his eye. He dodges it at the last second, and loses 20d6 hit points worth of (dodging skill, luck, resolve).

If he had 20 HP, and takes 40 damage, the arrow does go through his eye.

If he had 200 HP, and takes 40 damage, he's James Kirk and it barely grazes him, maybe tearing the shoulder of his velour jumpsuit.

[JNAProductions]

So, remember Fighting Spirit?

Specifically, Fighting Spirit II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?558375-Fighting-Spirit-II-Electric-HP-A-Loo&p=23059081#post23059081)? No you don't. I posted this just over a minute ago.

Does that help at all?

[2D8HP]

A pair of samurai scrutinize each other, readying their blades all at once they rush each other, the movement of their blades scarcely visible as they slash one another. For a single moment, they hold their blades aloft. One of them crumples, defeated.[...]Thoughts?


It is absolutely possible to have a class that does this in 5e.

(Hint: Katana is spelled R-a-p-i-e-r)


[...]the rogue already has a pretty good route to the one-shot build (albeit, sneakily.)[...]


Your on the right track, the question is how "sneakily".

"Sneak Attack" replicates the old TD&D Thieves and Assassins "Back-stab" ability, with surprise or other advantage granting Sneak Attack, and if the target has a foe within five feet (besides the Rogue doing the Sneak Atacking, OH! there's an idea! Two Rogues tag-teaming a target!), so you imagine the target as distracted by the other foe.

How about an anti-sneak "Sneak Attack"?

There is, and it was the best thing in the SCAG (in-my-not-very-humble-opininon), and. also in Xanthar's.

The Swashbuckler.

Check it out:

Rakish Audacity:
PC adds Charisma to initiative rolls, and doesn't need advantage to Sneak Attack if no creature other than my PC's target is within 5 feet of the PC.

So that's getting "Sneak Attack" when the target is not near another foe, with no need for suprised or another type of advantage, plus I've seen enough martial arts movies, my son's Naruto cartoons, and yes, Swashbuckler films, to recognize how a Charisma bonus to initiative works: by looking fearsome, and talkin' smack.

Fancy Footwork:
During turn, if the PC makes a melee attack against a creature, that creature can't make opportunity attacks against the PC for the rest of the PC's turn.

Oh yeah!

Combine that with high DEX and CHA, and maybe the Feat: Alert
+5 bonus to initiative
Can't be surprised while conscious.
Other creatures don't gain advantage on attack roles as a result of being hidden.

There you go!

Strike first, and strike hard!

Someone else please figure out options for the archer and the boxer.

[Kane0]

Well, PF has a fantastic feat for archers called Clustered Shot. It allows them to add up all their ranged weapon attacks into the one damage roll so damage reduction only applies once.

One could make a similar feat or ability in 5e, for example when making ranged attacks against one target during your turn only the first hit is subject to damage resistance, all hits after the first on your turn ignore resistance to your weapon damage (immunity functions as normal).
Then add in sharpshooter, and convince your DM to strike off one piece of ammo instead of a bundle (if your DM bothers tracking it at all).

[AvatarVecna]

A dude that can survive 20d6 damage is an epic dude.

A wizard who can survive 20d6? Yeah, probably epic, that's like 70 damage! Wizard 20 with 14 Con is probably looking at 122 HP in total; 70 damage is a hard hit for him, but he can take it - it's only 57.38% of his health. But a raging barbarian with Con 16? That dude has resistance taking it down to just 35 damage, so for a barbarian to be as comparatively injured as that wizard, he would need to be a Barbarian 6 - taking 35 damage to his 65 HP. Heck, if the barbarian is raging when he hits the ground, 35 is the average HP of a Barbarian 3, so he'll be bleeding out...but alive. Barbarian 4+ will survive in various states of injury, Barbarian 2 would be bleeding out, and only an average Barbarian 1 couldn't be saved by rage.

Of course, if that Barbarian had 18 HP at lvl 1, then raging would halve the 70 to 35, meaning as long as he was uninjured and raging when he hit the ground, he could technically survive. Of course, that's a Hill Dwarf Barbarian with 20 Con, or a VHuman Barbarian with 18 and the Tough feat...but it's possible.

Yeah, it's a lot of damage. But it doesn't take very long at all before you have PCs that can survive it. And monster HP scales even faster than PC HP! One-shot kills aren't really a thing unless you're targeting mooks, or the "equal level challenges" you're fighting are mook-tier, and you're the mook+ that happened to get a lucky crit, or an advantageous situation.

[Malifice]

A wizard who can survive 20d6? Yeah, probably epic, that's like 70 damage! Wizard 20 with 14 Con is probably looking at 122 HP in total; 70 damage is a hard hit for him, but he can take it - it's only 57.38% of his health.

Not his health. Hit points are not health. They're also resolve, luck and the will to live, and they increase with skill and experience (meaning they are also skill and experience in staying alive in a fight). Your increased skill at parrying and dodging and avoiding being struck. This is why Fighters get more.

The Wizard with 122 HP who takes 70 points of damage, likely isn't even physically injured. He just luckily leaps out of the way of the Rogues arrow (losing 70 HP of luck).

His apprentice buddy with 30 HP who takes 70 points of damage cops the arrow in the eye and is killed instantly.


Yeah, it's a lot of damage. But it doesn't take very long at all before you have PCs that can survive it. And monster HP scales even faster than PC HP! One-shot kills aren't really a thing unless you're targeting mooks, or the "equal level challenges" you're fighting are mook-tier, and you're the mook+ that happened to get a lucky crit, or an advantageous situation.

Dude, 2 x 20th level fighters slugging away for several rounds, and one finally whittles the other fighter after dozens of attack rolls down to 0 HP and drops him, likely only physically hit him once or twice.

One attack roll with a sword that 'hits'= not being stabbed once. In fact the sword that hit on the d20 roll was likely parried, dodged, luckily missed you or whatever (making you lose ''X'' HP in the process).

[JNAProductions]

And how does the Wizard "get lucky" with falling damage?

They fell from three miles up. They're going around 53 m/s, according to a quick google search on terminal velocity. There ARE reports of people surviving massive falls like that-but none of them were walking after the fact.

Our Wizard, with 122 HP, will not only brush the dust off his shoulders on an AVERAGE damage roll-he will actually be 100% combat capable with a MAX damage roll.

[AvatarVecna]

Not his health. Hit points are not health. They're also resolve, luck and the will to live, and they increase with skill and experience (meaning they are also skill and experience in staying alive in a fight). Your increased skill at parrying and dodging and avoiding being struck. This is why Fighters get more.

The Wizard with 122 HP who takes 70 points of damage, likely isn't even physically injured. He just luckily leaps out of the way of the Rogues arrow (losing 70 HP of luck).

His apprentice buddy with 30 HP who takes 70 points of damage cops the arrow in the eye and is killed instantly.



Dude, 2 x 20th level fighters slugging away for several rounds, and one finally whittles the other fighter after dozens of attack rolls down to 0 HP and drops him, likely only physically hit him once or twice.

One attack roll with a sword that 'hits'= not being stabbed once. In fact the sword that hit on the d20 roll was likely parried, dodged, luckily missed you or whatever (making you lose ''X'' HP in the process).

...I think you missed the point of my original post, where I mentioned this exact ****ing thing in regards to jedi and high-level fighters. My point was that a "one hit kill" that doesn't involve a significant damage advantage over the enemy's HP basically has to fluff the fight as a bunch of "near misses" and "glancing blows whittling away at the enemy's endurance or stamina reserves", partially because that's just what high level fights look like, and partially because if the mechanics let you one-shot enemies tough enough to challenge you, they'd be able to do the same thing, and combat would be a giant game of rocket tag. That's not a good design goal, so outside of low levels where HP is too low to have the "stamina reserves/luck" of powerful protagonists, PCs and NPCs would only be looking at one-hit kills if both sides were pretty weak...at which point it's basically a matter of "oh hey I got a crit and we're both paper-tough so you're dead now".

[Malifice]

And how does the Wizard "get lucky" with falling damage?

Like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KererBbavk"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KererBbavk

Heroes fall from great heights in fiction all the time, and the plot contrives to keep them alive (they are caught by a friend at the last minute, land in water, get snared by a tree and are left dangling precariously, a giant eagle swoops in to save them).

Come up with your own contrivance to explain it. That's the whole point of HP; they're an abstraction that are intentionally designed to be explained narratively.

[Malifice]

Here is what happens when Spock falls 100' and lands in a freaking active volcano:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeGBFWYYcP4

The plot contrives to keep him alive by having him land on an outcropping of rock.

He took 20d6 from the fall, and 20d12 from the lava. Luckily from him he has enough HP (LUCK) to survive, and was narrated to have landed on a safe rocky outcropping.

A redshirt in the exact same situation, that took the exact same same fall (and took the same HP loss), would have instead landed directly in the lava.

[Malifice]

A redshirt in the exact same situation, that took the exact same same fall (and took the same HP loss), would have instead landed directly in the lava.

Like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sra3Lua6Q4

In the above video Kirk just has more HP than the redshirt. That's why he survived the fall from orbit, and the redshirt did not.

The DM simply narrated what happened in the way you just saw it in that clip.

[MadBear]

Here is what happens when Spock falls 100' and lands in a freaking active volcano:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeGBFWYYcP4

The plot contrives to keep him alive by having him land on an outcropping of rock.

He took 20d6 from the fall, and 20d12 from the lava. Luckily from him he has enough HP (LUCK) to survive, and was narrated to have landed on a safe rocky outcropping.

A redshirt in the exact same situation, that took the exact same same fall (and took the same HP loss), would have instead landed directly in the lava.

This is how I view that scenario as well.

I will say that I've heard arguments against it. Such as that it makes for an "inconsistent" world where stuff is "popping" into existence out of no where. Because there wasn't a safe outcropping of rocks until the level 20 dude fell. There wasn't a lake/lucky tree to get snagged on, until the player found themselves in that situation.

[Malifice]

I will say that I've heard arguments against it. Such as that it makes for an "inconsistent" world where stuff is "popping" into existence out of no where.

Funny criticism to make in an imaginary world that is popping up out of nowhere itself.

Stuff isn't popping up from nowhere. It was always there, thanks to the narration that it was.

PC falls into a 50' pit lined with spikes taking 150 points of damage (he has 160 HP)

'As you fall, you see the razor sharp spikes looming large and you close your eyes waiting for the worst. Suddenly your fall breaks, and the wind is knocked out of you. You open your eyes and see that you are dangling precariously over the spikes, mere metres from certain death. Looking up in bewilderment you see...


Your wizard companion has used his magic to break your fall and suspend you in mid air.
The rope lashed to your backpack has snared on the pit opening and unspooled, leaving you swaying in the pit over the spikes.
A ghostly view of your [patron, deity] fading briefly as you hover in mid air.
The pit opening 50'above you, as the trinket you rolled for at 1st level glows warm to the touch, before shattering and breaking.


Etc.

[the secret fire]

Come up with your own contrivance to explain it. That's the whole point of HP; they're an abstraction that are intentionally designed to be explained narratively.

I dunno about that. The hit point system is as old as D&D, itself, and has its roots firmly in the war games which were its predecessors. It is very difficult to divine intent so far back in time, and we can no longer ask Gygax, but it seems more likely that the HP system was adopted mainly because of its simplicity and continuity with older systems.

And yes, I understand that unit-level hit points in wargames are also an abstraction, but they are a very different (and probably more sensible) kind of abstraction than what you're talking about. "Hit points are an abstraction" seems more like an ex post facto argument in defense of a creaky old system than an intentional design feature.

[the secret fire]

PC falls into a 50' pit lined with spikes taking 150 points of damage (he has 160 HP)

'As you fall, you see the razor sharp spikes looming large and you close your eyes waiting for the worst. Suddenly your fall breaks, and the wind is knocked out of you. You open your eyes and see that you are dangling precariously over the spikes, mere metres from certain death. Looking up in bewilderment you see...


Your wizard companion has used his magic to break your fall and suspend you in mid air.
The rope lashed to your backpack has snared on the pit opening and unspooled, leaving you swaying in the pit over the spikes.
A ghostly view of your [patron, deity] fading briefly as you hover in mid air.
The pit opening 50'above you, as the trinket you rolled for at 1st level glows warm to the touch, before shattering and breaking.


Etc.

Hit points as deus ex machina, eh? I think the arguments as to why this is problematic are pretty obvious. Among other things, why is the (apparently unharmed) character now much more likely to perish the next time he is attacked, and what in the world shall we make of healing magic in such a scenario? You get into the realm of disassociated mechanics here, where the character has every reason to believe that he is in tip-top shape, while the player knows he is precariously close to death. Not a good look.

This is, imo, ultimately the biggest knock on the HP-as-abstraction model: it tends to create a high level of disassociation between character knowledge and player knowledge. Your mileage may vary, but I find disassociated mechanics jarring, and hit points are the granddaddy of them all.

[Pex]

It existed before in D&D land but phased out because of unfun.

The first problem is not everyone could do it. Only magic users could. It's great the first few times the PC spellcaster kills the bad guy, but then the warrior starts to think why is he even there. It takes him three to five rounds to do what the spellcaster did by poof. It was justified because of magic, but that didn't make the warrior feel better.

The second problem is anti-climax. The BBEG fight is supposed to be epic. Having him die on round one lessens the drama. It becomes necessary to boost the defenses of the BBEG which can be overcompensated to the point of TPK because the PCs can't hurt him.

The third problem is goose/gander. The bad guys have access to the one shot kills too, and no player wants to lose his character over a single die roll. Have all your hit points. Have all your class ability resources. You haven't had your turn yet in round 1. Roll a 4 on a d20, character dead, gone, do nothing for the rest of the combat if not the game session.

Given a dramatic set up one shot kill is a moment of triumph for heroes in books and movies because the BBEG was made to be invulnerable and/or all powerful. In game play the "dramatic set up" are the rounds of combat before the attack that kills the BBEG. That is what makes the kill satisfying.

[2D8HP]

I dunno about that. The hit point system is as old as D&D, itself, and has its roots firmly in the war games which were its predecessors. It is very difficult to divine intent so far back in time, and we can no longer ask Gygax[...].


True Gygax being dead makes it a smidge difficult to get him to tell us again, but while he typed up the rules, he didn't invent hit points for the game that came to be called Dungeons & Dragons, "co-creator" Dave Arneson did:

"I adopted the rules I'd done earlier for a Civil War game called Ironclads that had hit points and armor class. It meant that players had a chance to live longer and do more. They didn't care that they had hit points to keep track of because they were just keeping track of little detailed records for their character and not trying to do it for an entire army. They didn't care if they could kill a monster in one blow, but they didn't want the monster to kill them in one blow...." (http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/540/540395p3.html)

But as to Gygax's interpretation of hit points, his first employee recently said:

"Hit Points (HP) are considered to be your ability to avoid/evade a mortal blow (which they were in OD&D)..." (http://kaskoid.blogspot.com/2015/10/what-we-really-meantpt-1-ac.html?m=1)

So the ability to "avoid/evade a mortal blow".

There you go.

[Naanomi]

As a point of clarity, Hit points don’t *have* to be meat, but they can be... I want my Dwarven Barbarian to have a dozen arrows sticking out of his torso, bleeding profusely, but still fights on. Lucky missed and dodging are for weaklings!

[Randomthom]

The old Star Wars D20 had an excellent way of dealing with this slight disconnect between Hit Points and the more cinematic experience of the one-shot-kill type ending you are describing. It abandoned HP for VP (Vitality Points) which increased with level and could also be spent by some abilities, and WP (Wound Points) which were static (equal to your Constitution score).

Normal combat would scratch away at someone's VP until it was gone then move on to WP. This represented the constant battering of someone's defenses until they are too exhausted to defend themselves properly.
A critical hit would bypass VP and go straight to WP. Crits had no multipliers in this ruleset and had to be confirmed (roll the attack, if it is a crit then roll again, if that also hits then the attack was a crit, if not then it was only a regular hit).

It was great, in theory a level 1 character with a blaster rifle and a huge slice of luck could kill Palpatine.

It could be translated into 5e but would need similar restrictions regarding crits and because of the nature of scaling damage in 5e, WP would need to increase occasionally.

[clash]

I have often dabbled with the idea of taking the hp = meat and hp = endurance/luck abstraction and actually splitting it.

For example, you have 2 stats endurance and hp where hp is some small slow incrementing potion of normal hp and endurance is the rest.

Just as a quick draft to illustrate the idea, lets make starting hp = con modifier and at each level hp increases by your con modifier. That is how beefy you are.

Starting endurance = your HD and increase by your HD at each level.

Then the normal process would be that when endurance = 0 any leftover damage carries over to hp and this method of taking damage is identical to the way it is now. When hp reaches 0 you fall unconscious etc

However, you could have types of damage or certain abilities that bypass endurance and deal damage directly to hp, like falling damage. Falling damage always damages hp. So now a level 6 barbarian with 16 con has only 18hp and has 47 endurance. That means when he falls for 20d6 dmg even for 35dmg with resistance he likely isnt going to survive.

Then you could have some type of one hit/one kill fighting ability that works against hp instead of endurance allowing for the awesome cinematic fights but it wouldn't work on tougher monsters.

[Vogie]

I could see a mechanic that charges up over time, then lets out all of that power in a single blow. In 5e specifically, I could see something like

Vorpal Attack
While in combat, if you have advantage on a weapon or attack roll, you may forgo your attack to store that advantage as an Insight Point. If you choose to attack with a spell or weapon, You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls for each insight point you have, and your insight points are expended on any attack or spell that causes a die roll. Once you have 3 or more insight points and you have advantage on an attack roll, you make a vorpal attack. You gain the following benefits:

You may expend all insight points to reroll one of the dice once for each insight point expended.
Your attack or spell ignores resistance this turn.
If you roll a critical on the attack roll, the damage is increased by 40 and the attack or spell removes one of the creature’s heads. The creature dies if it can’t survive without the lost head. A creature is immune to this effect if has legendary resistance, doesn’t have or need a head, or the GM decides that the creature is too big for its head to be cut off with this attack or spell.



This not only gives the One shot-One kill impact, but also, coincidentally, makes True Strike a viable spell option. :tongue: It wouldn't be brokenly good, as there's a chance that even if you store 3+ Advantage, thus having the ability to reroll 4+ times, you may STILL not get a critical hit.

[strangebloke]

First chance to reply in a while, so long post.


A couple of thoughts:

First, D&D is very bad at modeling a lot of different fiction, but it seems pretty crazy to expect it to mode everything. You just can’t expect something to encompass Kurosawa and Jackie Chan, Avengers and LoTR, Rocky and Zodiac.



I find the "X is common in fiction, therefore D&D should be able to model X" arguments to ring hollow. D&D (at least this edition) does not claim to be a universal character modeling game. Trying to make it one has the potential to dilute what actually works about it. Lots of things work in other forms of fiction that are bad in games.


Superman is also a popular and well known narrative trope that DnD doesn't model. I'm with a lot of others here in thinking that DnD just isn't the system to do this kind of thing in.

There's a lot of points like this, and I think they're wrong.

DnD can't model everything.

But I'm not talking DBZ, fullmetal alchemist, Avengers, or anything like that. I'm talking about LotR, ASoIaF, Usagi Yojimbo... All things that DND should be able to model, if not well, at least to the extent that you can build a character like this.

Once again, I'm not saying that all combat should end this way, merely that a single character might be built around this kind of singular, one-attack focus.


Reasons I don't like this archetype for this game:

* Party unfriendly. If it's too easy to get off its big attack, everyone else is playing second fiddle. If it requires help to get off its big attack, it's vulnerable or useless most of the time or it requires everyone else to play to its tune.
* Anticlimactic. If you're betting everything on one big shot, and you miss... The rogue, while closest to this, is designed to get off a sneak attack virtually all the time if it wants to.
* Punishing to the party if the enemies can use them. Being taken out of the fight with no answer on turn 1 sucks. And the party faces many more attacks than they make attacks.
* Anything that circumvents the HP mechanic produces strange incentives.

OHK or nothing is bad design--same with Save or Die effects. Note that those are few and far between this edition for good reason. And this is either SoD or it's brokenly good, there's really no in-between that achieves the proper flavor, as far as I can see.


How many of your PCs should die in one unanswerable hit? Things like this flow both ways in general...

Not sure if I've hit all of the mechanical concerns, but I think these are the big ones:

1. "It's either too inconsistent or too powerful": This is one of the things that needs to be accounted for in design. Maybe they need to make rolls to set up a perfect attack that is very unlikely to miss. An Assassin (one form of what I'm talking about that already exists.) can increase his damage by setting up a sneak attack (easy) or deal insane damage by first succeeding in a stealth roll before combat. With the example mechanic I put forward for the Samurai duel, it's likely to succeed, but it exposes you to take terrible, terrible damage. Or you have to win a Charisma check to win a battle of wills with your opponent in order to deal bonus damage the next turn. Either way, this can be accounted for, if you design carefully.

2. "It's unfun for the party if enemies use it."A PC dropping to zero hitpoints in a single hit is a totally acceptable outcome in my book. Such a circumstance is unlikely to lead to a TPK, or even a single character death, if the person in question only gets one attack every round or one attack every couple of rounds, unless you're using something like side initiative and there are a lot of mooks running around. Anybody can run up an drop a health potion down the guy's throat. In any case, I'm hardly suggesting that this be a default ability (like shoving or grappling) and there already are monster with abilities that are functionally one-shot abilities, like the banshee's wail, which is actually an AOE, and completely ignores HP total.

3. "Anything that circumvents HP is a big concern" I totally agree. The game's primary progression mechanic is HP. If you ignore that, the game becomes very weird. Where have I said that I'd be ignoring HP? All I'm talking about is a class like the Assassin whose awesome one-shot ability isn't based around stealth. Even a wombo-combo Assassin (or my theoretical one-shot archetype) won't deal enough damage to slay an ancient dragon in one hit, ignoring very specific circumstances.


My 2c:

- Rolling 1d20 for each attack and picking your favorite can never be overpowered; it is suboptimal, if anything. So, if you have three attacks, roll three dice, pick the best. Same thing for considering many attacks as one single attack.


I know you're agreeing with me, but I'm not so confident. The issue comes back to crits. If I roll six dice at once (would have had three attacks, had advantage) my crit chance is the same as it would be on my full attack action, but a crit on a mega-attack is way more powerful than a crit on a normal attack.

It was just one idea of how this could possibly work.


Why not a mechanic that let's you "charge up" potential damage over multiple rounds? You get high potential damage each turn BUT you have to maintain concentration or else you lose everything. Once you release and make the strike you count up all the damage. If it's more than the targets current hit points they die outright. If it's not you don't do any damage.

Yes, this seems like exactly what I'm talking about. Would work very well for a 'patient' fighter who is trying to build up to a single, game ending blow. The example I made was that if you take the dodge action and get attacked, you can deal extra damage to that target next turn.


So once in a while you get to do your archetype-defining thing. Smells like the Assassin subclass, which has the same problem and is quite over-valued.

Ideally, people would be doing their archetype defining thing frequently. Because that's what defines them. Paladins smite. Fighters action surge/get lots of attacks. Etc. Having a "when the stars align I can kill anything" ability is either busted (if the stars align frequently) or a ribbon (if they don't). And toning it down to "sometimes I can do a huge bunch...unless I miss and then I'm screwed" seems highly un-fun to me and kinda defeats the whole tone of the archetype.
Fighter Action Surge is very close to the levels of damage I'm thinking of here, and they use it 3-6 times a day.

The Assassin's ability doesn't come up much, but that's fine. The other rogues get small, solid, always-usable abilities at the same level. When it does come up, the Assassin feels awesome and that's great. If you don't like it, fine, but plenty do. I certainly wouldn't call the Assassin poorly designed. Weaker than the AT, maybe, but all rogue subclasses are.

You seem to think I'm suggesting some kind of ludicrously over-the-top Exodia kind of deal where a character can literally one-shot anything in the game. I'm talking about a build that isn't an Assassin that can still deal crazy one-shot damage, possibly enough to kill creatures 3-4 CR lower than his character level in one hit.

Thanks to the abstract nature of hit points (they measure things like luck and resolve) you can do a one shot one kill.

A 20th level action surging Samurai making 9 attack rolls, can easily be narrated as making just the single attack. The nine rolls represent his attack potential for a few seconds.

A success on an attack roll is not a discreet swing of a weapon and physically hitting the opponent. Unless you want to narrate every single successful attack roll as a discrete swing of a weapon and a hit of course.

But seeing as we are dealing with an abstraction like hit points, why limit yourself so?

In my games most creatures go down in one or two hits. Successful attack rolls are just their luck or resolve running out or near misses that they parry or dodge at the last second. The attack that reduces them to 0 hit points however is a solid hit that drops them.

Treating 1 hit = 1 attack is the only way that makes sense, given the ways the rules are written.

Number of hits is influenced by:
-Number of limbs attacking. (see TWF and Multiattack)
-number of physical magical blasts flying at a target (see scorching ray and eldritch blast and Melf's Minute Meteors)

Number of hits influences:
-Death Saving Throws
-Concentration Saves
-usages of certain triggered effects like Armor of Agathys.


Here is an idea --- a One-Shot Feat.


One-Shot Feat
Whenever you roll and crit, you can either have the target take the max crit damage, or you can have the target roll a CON saving throw. If they fail the throw they are reduced to 0 hit points. If they save they take no damage as the hit becomes a miss. The saving throw DC = 8 + your character's proficiency bonus + your character's Strength or Dexterity modifier (your character's choice).
This is exactly what I am trying to avoid! Ignoring HP is bad. Some high-level monsters have pretty bad CON saves. Should a level 6 PC be able to just nuke them?

This is, I would point out, exactly the shivering palm ability, except that you can use it every time you crit and you can get it at level 4.

This would also encourage getting more attacks, as opposed to getting one big attack.


swashbuckler

Yes, this is very close to the samurai example! I honestly hadn't thought of a swashbuckler as a samurai (mostly I think battlemaster or Kensei) but you're right that many of the abilities work perfectly. There are other, notable things that I think make this not work perfectly, but it is a better fit than anything else.

[smcmike]

But I'm not talking DBZ, fullmetal alchemist, Avengers, or anything like that. I'm talking about LotR, ASoIaF, Usagi Yojimbo... All things that DND should be able to model, if not well, at least to the extent that you can build a character like this.

All of these things are modeled pretty well by low level play.

High level play is weird, and much closer to comic books than human-scale fantasy.



Once again, I'm not saying that all combat should end this way, merely that a single character might be built around this kind of singular, one-attack focus.

I know you deal with this in more detail, but this is literally the rogue’s concept. It’s just limited by balance. There is some design space for a similar strength fighter, I guess.

[strangebloke]

I know you deal with this in more detail, but this is literally the rogue’s concept. It’s just limited by balance. There is some design space for a similar strength fighter, I guess.

This is literally, explicitly, what I am talking about, and what I have said many times.

Although, as I note in OP, higher spike options exist as well in the form of smites, shivering palm, and the assassin's death strike and assassinate abilities.

The issue is that all of those high spike option are very thematically narrow. Paladin and monk are two of the less thematically flexible classes, IMO, and Assassin only covers one kind of one-shot ability. (Assassination, obviously)

I'm really annoyed that everyone immediately seized upon some argument that I fundamentally wasn't making... Although I suppose I only have my own poor communication to blame.

In PVP, this stuff exists both at low-level and high level play. The difference is that at high levels it has to be many shots to drop an opponent, even if they're all delivered in one turn. (exceptions being, once again, the open-hand monk and assassin.)

[KorvinStarmast]

The easiest way to do a one shot kill mechanic is ignore damage altogether. On a hit, the target dies unless it makes a successful saving throw of whatever type. I suspect, though, that a lot of players won't want this ability once it's pointed out that some of the bad guys will have it too. Yeah, that's part of why HP are what they are at this point. One Hit One Kill was in Chainmail, and Arneson+friends realized that it wasn't what they wanted for the game they were coming up with during their pre D&D dungeon crawls.

[Asmotherion]

What you're looking for is a critical hit. Simple as that.

Probably on a build that focuses on many dice of Damage. A Barbarian or Assasin perhaps?

Otherwise, you can always refluff the magical damage as less "shiny" and more "brutal" for the sake of a character concept. A specific Paladin's or Hexblade Warlock's Smite can be less of an anime "Aura" and more of an actual boost to the impact, with mere hints of the elemental type of the damage type on the weapon and/or the wound. Add Booming Blade to the combo for more damage.

Instead of thinking "this class does this with magic, so it's not the same effect", approach the thing with reverse engenearing: Perhaps, special effects excluded, there is some "backround magic" involved in what those scenes depict as well, in d&d terms ofcource.

[KorvinStarmast]

The reason 5E doesn't do this like you are wanting is simply because over the last 44 years, the players have told the game designers this type of mechanic is not desired.

We used to call it "save or die". Yep.

I dunno about that. The hit point system is as old as D&D, itself, and has its roots firmly in the war games which were its predecessors. It is very difficult to divine intent so far back in time, and we can no longer ask Gygax, but it seems more likely that the HP system was adopted mainly because of its simplicity and continuity with older systems. And yes, I understand that unit-level hit points in wargames are also an abstraction, but they are a very different (and probably more sensible) kind of abstraction than what you're talking about. "Hit points are an abstraction" seems more like an ex post facto argument in defense of a creaky old system than an intentional design feature. You understand incorrectly. I did a bit of research and arrived at how it works in various editions (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/108501/22566). Some other folks have dug deep into "proto RPG" lore and found that XP and HP were originally bound together in some of Arneson's notes. For example, if you killed a monster with 80 HP you got 80 XP. (And GP to XP was similar but different ....) XP to level thresholds were different ...
Anyway, a fairly clear explanation (for EGG anyway) is here.
From the 1e PHB, in E.G.G's (overly verbose) style ...

These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and / or magical factors. {snip} Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The some holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes. Thus, the majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces. (PHB p. 34) I'd say that hasn't changed much.

[Sigreid]

Didnt read the whole thread but just about any higher level character can expect to one shot 5he mooks.

[strangebloke]

So, in an attempt to get this all back on track.

I have compiled all of the ideas I or other haves dropped throughout the thread to see if I can get more feedback on them specifically.

One Walks Away
"The battle fades away from your mind's eye, and you see only your target. Before you roll initiative or on your first turn of combat you may call out a foe within 30 feet of you that has not acted yet. If the target fails a charisma saving throw, you both act on the higher of your initiative or the target's. During this turn, you move first and the target moves second. You and the target may only use your action to target each other. All attacks and spells made in this special turn only take effect after the end of the turn. All damage you deal against the target as part of a melee weapon attack is doubled, and you are vulnerable to all damage dealt by the target. Once you have used this feature, you may not use it again until you complete a short or long rest."

-reworded it so that it's a bit less ambiguous. I think it's cool, but I don't know what would be the appropriate level for it. I'll also note that as it is currently written it's basically a way to sucker an enemy into a position in which they're weak. It's really clunky still, if cool.

Master's Stroke(fighting style?)
"As an action, you make a special weapon attack. For the attack roll, you roll 1 d20 for every attack you are able to make as part of the attack action, and take the best. Roll 1 additional d20 if you have advantage, or 1 fewer if you have disadvantage. If you hit, roll weapon damage and add the relevant ability score modifier. Multiply that damage by the number of attacks you can make as part of the attack action, and then add damage from any additional effects like weapon enhancement bonuses, spell damage, or feats."

-Blech at the wording here, but I toned it down a bit because I think others were right to say that it was a bit OP. (for reasons of crit-fishing) I haven't run all the math, but I think this compares favorably to default fighting style options, but falls behind fighting styles that have feat support. (like GWM/PAM)

Perfect Counter:
"If you do not take the attack action on your turn, as a bonus action you can plan your counterattack. Pick a target you can see. Every time that target attacks you before the start of your next turn, add 1d10 to your counterattack pool. On your next turn, if you hit your target with a weapon attack, you can expend dice in your counterattack pool and add them to the damage of that attack. You cannot have more dice in your counterattack pool than your current fighter level. If you plan a counterattack against an different target, the number of dice in your pool is reset."

-Maybe should only stack up to half the level. Either way, this is a very situational thing. Useful for someone who's trying to delay in a fight, but otherwise kind of silly.

[ZorroGames]

One shot kills.

Started back when there only was “D&D” in three little booklets.

So, been there done that and IMNSHO, that never has been satisfactory heroic fantasy.

Bard and Smaug? Bard did not actually just shoot once. He, IIRC, was down to his last arrow, it was “magical” in nature (never missed when it needed to hit, never lost, blah-blah-blah arrow,) and he had magical help from a talking Raven. Much more complicated than a “one shot” kill.

Never liked it and glad it isn’t in this edition.

[ZorroGames]

Two Hour War games has a great fight simulator in one of its games and the one hit win requires setting up the situation in earlier rounds. Other than complete mismatches one hit knock outs are cinematic at best.

[JNAProductions]

Master's Stroke is too good.

Assuming a level 11 Fighter, you'd ALWAYS want to use it over a regular attack, unless facing people you one-shot anyway.

For reference, let's assume you hit on an 11, for a 50% accuracy rate, with a greatsword, dealing 2d6+5 (12) damage.

Three attacks is one and a half hits on average, for a DPR of 18.

One attack with 3d20b1 hits 87.5% of the time, for 36 damage when it does, on average, for a DPR of 31.5.

Even at level 5 (Greatsword dealing 2d6+4, for 11 average) it's the difference between 11 damage and 16.5.

Doing some more math, for the level 11 Fighter, at every hitting point (2+ to 20s only), but NOT factoring in crits (which VASTLY favor the Master's Stroke)...

36 DPR if all three attacks hit, or 36 damage on a hit from Master's Stroke.



Hits On
Normal DPR
MS DPR


2
34.2
36.00


3
32.4
35.96


4
30.6
35.88


5
28.8
35.71


6
27
35.44


7
25.2
35.03


8
23.4
34.46


9
21.6
33.70


10
19.8
32.72


11
18
31.5


12
16.2
30.01


13
14.4
28.22


14
12.6
26.11


15
10.8
23.65


16
9
20.81


17
7.2
17.57


18
5.4
13.89


19
3.6
9.76


20
1.8
5.13



Master's Stroke is ALWAYS better, against a target with sufficient HP.

And, if you factor in crits, hitting on, say, 15, 19, and 20, you get...

Regular Greatsword
15: Each attack has a 25% chance of hitting and a 5% chance of critting, for 3*(.25*12)+3*(.05*19)=11.85 DPR.
19: Each attack has a 5% chance of hitting and a 5% chance of critting, for 3*(.05*12)+3*(.05*19)=4.65 DPR.
20: Each attack has a 5% chance of critting, for 3*(.05*19)=2.85 DPR.

Master's Stroke
15: Each attack has a 51.44% chance of hitting and a 14.26% chance of critting, for (.5144*36)+(.1426*57)=26.65 DPR.
19: Each attack has a 12.84% chance of hitting and a 14.26% chance of critting, for (.1284*36)+(.1426*57)=12.75 DPR.
20: Each attack has a 14.26% chance of critting, for (.1426*57)=8.13 DPR.

Master's Stroke is significantly too powerful.

[Willie the Duck]

So the ability to "avoid/evade a mortal blow".

There you go.

To reference Mike Mornard, one of the few surviving and active players to be at both Gary and Dave's tables during the 'still in design phase' mode of oD&D, 'hit points were hit points and they functioned like hit points.' By which I think he means that they always were, in effect, a video-game's life bar, and why are you guys overthinking this? :smalltongue: Of course, in the days when a 'super hero' level character with a 15+constitution had 8d6+16 hp, there never really was a character who couldn't be one-shotted by a particularly nasty fall or the like.



Treating 1 hit = 1 attack is the only way that makes sense, given the ways the rules are written.
Number of hits is influenced by:
-Number of limbs attacking. (see TWF and Multiattack)

Given that this portion of the rules have not changed since a time when 1 hit = 1 attack was very clearly not the case, I'm not sure I see where we can rule out any alternative making sense. I think that needs to be backed up.

[JoeJ]

Bard and Smaug? Bard did not actually just shoot once. He, IIRC, was down to his last arrow, it was “magical” in nature (never missed when it needed to hit, never lost, blah-blah-blah arrow,) and he had magical help from a talking Raven. Much more complicated than a “one shot” kill.

Never liked it and glad it isn’t in this edition.

I don't think that was as much Bard's ability as it was the fact that Smaug had one vulnerable spot that the thrush revealed to Bard. A solid hit there killed him. A hit anywhere else did nothing. In D&D a monster that can only die from a called shot might work once, but it wouldn't be a lot of fun to keep running into them.

[strangebloke]

Master's Stroke is too good.

--Math--

Master's Stroke is significantly too powerful.

Yes, you are right, it is too strong as a fighting style. You inspired me to do the math myself, and while I had a few differences in methodogies, I pretty much came to the same conclusion as you. MS without advantage is the same as GWM w/ advantage, if you assume a 50% basic hit rate and account for crits and the opportunity cost of not taking GWF. Moreover, it's kind of boring, since you're rolling 5 dice for one thing, and almost never missing.

So to achieve a similar effect, but keep it reasonable, how about this:

Master's Stroke(class feature)
"As an action, you make a special weapon attack. You gain an additional +5 to this attack roll. If you hit, multiply all damage by the number of attacks you can make as part of the attack action. You may use this ability 3 times. You regain all usages after each long rest."

As far as I can see, the way that I've written it above, the ability is about as good as advantage, except that it's slightly better, because it stacks with advantage, and a little worse, because you might overkill. So it's roughly comparable to fighting spirit, and should have approximately the same usages.



Given that this portion of the rules have not changed since a time when 1 hit = 1 attack was very clearly not the case, I'm not sure I see where we can rule out any alternative making sense. I think that needs to be backed up.

There's nothing explicitly that says 1 hit = 1 actual hit, but it makes a lot more sense to model it that way. That's all I'm saying. There's so many mechanics that tie back into "Whenever you hit" that it requires a gameification of a lot of mechanics to say that it's different. Using "HP is not meat" leads to some of this as well, but the tradeoff is a lot better, IMO. "HP is not meat" only causes weirdness for things like healing effects, and even then that's easily handwaved as a restoration of luck, energy, or what have you.

At the very least, if "1 actual hit is not 1 hit," it makes it very strange that a fighter can hit exactly 1 target at level four, and either 1 or two targets at level 5.

[the secret fire]

But as to Gygax's interpretation of hit points, his first employee recently said:

"Hit Points (HP) are considered to be your ability to avoid/evade a mortal blow (which they were in OD&D)..." (http://kaskoid.blogspot.com/2015/10/what-we-really-meantpt-1-ac.html?m=1)

So the ability to "avoid/evade a mortal blow".

There you go.

My assumption that the original HP mechanic was adopted out of expediency was meant to be charitable to the old boys. Knowing that they actually intended to create the great, bloated sack of disassociation that is D&D hit points lowers my esteem for the OD&D designers somewhat.

I still think the explanation offered by Arneson may be an after the fact justification for a "nice, simple" mechanic (whose only real virtue is expediency...) that the designers knew sucked, but preferred to a more complex and less disassociated system. I suppose I can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt here, though. That's disappointing.

[Kane0]

Well, battletech has two sets of HP for up to 11 sections of each unit on the field, and partially because of that can take a 4v4 fight a couple hours to resolve.
A single HP bar for each creature on the field seems much more convenient, especially considering you also want to reserve some time in your session for roleplaying.

[ZorroGames]

Well, battletech has two sets of HP for up to 11 sections of each unit on the field, and partially because of that can take a 4v4 fight a couple hours to resolve.
A single HP bar for each creature on the field seems much more convenient, especially considering you also want to reserve some time in your session for roleplaying.

Thank you!

[MeeposFire]

I dunno about that. The hit point system is as old as D&D, itself, and has its roots firmly in the war games which were its predecessors. It is very difficult to divine intent so far back in time, and we can no longer ask Gygax, but it seems more likely that the HP system was adopted mainly because of its simplicity and continuity with older systems.

And yes, I understand that unit-level hit points in wargames are also an abstraction, but they are a very different (and probably more sensible) kind of abstraction than what you're talking about. "Hit points are an abstraction" seems more like an ex post facto argument in defense of a creaky old system than an intentional design feature.

Actually if you look at the oldest Strategic Review and Dragon magazines you can find Gygax and others directly talking about the hows and whys of using hit points and what they mean. They are used because teh are flexible and easy/quick to use and in play easy to understand (though in a discussion in a forum they can cause a bit of a stir but actually used in game they are usually easy to use and understand).

I noticed somebody mentioned Star Wars using wounds but one needs to remember that it was unpopular in that system and was changed later in Sage to the condition chart. The chart was interesting in a way but they also essentially ditched that concept as well in that it has not been brought back in other WotC products (whereas other concepts first seen in Saga were used later such as second wind though the exact mechanics change).

[MeeposFire]

Well, battletech has two sets of HP for up to 11 sections of each unit on the field, and partially because of that can take a 4v4 fight a couple hours to resolve.
A single HP bar for each creature on the field seems much more convenient, especially considering you also want to reserve some time in your session for roleplaying.

Also do not forget the pilot also has their own health bar and if they die then the mech might as well be dead.

[Kane0]

Also do not forget the pilot also has their own health bar and if they die then the mech might as well be dead.

There are so many ways to win and lose in BT, the granularity is part of the charm. Unfortunately running large scale conflicts is simply unfeasible unless you adopt one of their alternate rulesets.

One-hit-kills are most definitely a thing though. They have specific terminology for that: Headcapper weapons.

[2D8HP]

As a point of clarity, Hit points don’t *have* to be meat, but they can be... I want my Dwarven Barbarian to have a dozen arrows sticking out of his torso, bleeding profusely, but still fights on. Lucky missed and dodging are for weaklings!


I think of Indiana Jones being shot in the arm, wincing and then looks in pain for 30 seconds of screen time, and then back to the action!


My assumption that the original HP mechanic was adopted out of expediency was meant to be charitable to the old boys. Knowing that they actually intended to create the great, bloated sack of disassociation that is D&D hit points lowers my esteem for the OD&D designers somewhat.

I still think the explanation offered by Arneson may be an after the fact justification for a "nice, simple" mechanic (whose only real virtue is expediency...) that the designers knew sucked, but preferred to a more complex and less disassociated system. I suppose I can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt here, though. That's disappointing.

Probably, he did grab "hit points" from his Naval combat game (where hit points were for ships).

ZorroGames, KorvinStarmast, and I think Willie the Duck (in this thread) were earlier players than me, so I defer to them, but from what I've read and my dim "kid'd eye" memories, early D&D was more ad-hoc and free-form than later D&D.

From Dungeons &Dragons vol. 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (1974)
page 36, which I'll quote from for context:

"AFTERWARD:
There are unquestionably areas which have been glossed over. While we deeply regret the necessity, space requires that we put in the essentials only, and the trimming will oftimes have to be added by the referee and his players. We have attempted to furnish an ample framework, and building should be both easy and fun. In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing for rule interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! On the other hand, we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you? Write to us and tell about your additions, ideas, and what have you. We could always do with a bit of improvement in our refereeing."



To reference Mike Mornard, one of the few surviving and active players to be at both Gary and Dave's tables during the 'still in design phase' mode of oD&D, 'hit points were hit points and they functioned like hit points.' By which I think he means that they always were, in effect, a video-game's life bar, and why are you guys overthinking this? :smalltongue: Of course, in the days when a 'super hero' level character with a 15+constitution had 8d6+16 hp, there never really was a character who couldn't be one-shotted by a particularly nasty fall or the like...


From what I've read of Mr. Mornard (which I find fascinating), I'm deeply impressed that you found a relevent quote of him that didn't run a foul of the language filter!


Yep.
You understand incorrectly. I did a bit of research and arrived at how it works in various editions (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/108501/22566). Some other folks have dug deep into "proto RPG" lore and found that XP and HP were originally bound together in some of Arneson's notes. For example, if you killed a monster with 80 HP you got 80 XP. (And GP to XP was similar but different ....) XP to level thresholds were different ... .


Oh! I'm deeply interested in how Arneson did things (I read Gygax's take on things in "The Best of The Dragon" when I was 12, but what little I read from Arneson was in an interview in "Different Worlds" that I lost decades ago.

I'd love to learn more.

I found some more HP history here:

On the creation and evolution of Hit Points, Hit Dice, and Experience Points. (http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-creation-and-evolution-of-hit-points.html?m=1)


and this;


Megarry's Blackmoor Character Sheets IV - Missing Info (http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2016/?m=1)

seems to indicate that Arneson's players didn't know what hit points they had!

[djreynolds]

You know, say a fighter is using GWM for 3 attacks and he does say 60hp, which is very possible... for story purposes you can consider this "one" strike

Strike one he slashes to the belly, strike two up hit with an overhand chop to the shoulder, and strike three he beheads his opponent, you could see it this way also

The reality is only a few classes can even attempt to accomplish a one strike a higher levels.

Its a good concept to try to implement for players.

The same fighter above, could say he is combining all of his attacks into one strike. Perhaps he could take a negative to hit, which is his level and then times all of his damage by his level.

An 11th level fighter would have -11 to hit, but would get x11 in damage. Say he has greatsword and rolls an 8+5=13, 13x11=143

[KorvinStarmast]

On the creation and evolution of Hit Points, Hit Dice, and Experience Points. (http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-creation-and-evolution-of-hit-points.html?m=1) and this; Megarry's Blackmoor Character Sheets IV - Missing Info (http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2016/?m=1) seems to indicate that Arneson's players didn't know what hit points they had! back in the 70's, we were thieves in some adventures in The City State of the Invincible Overlord, and we never knew how many hit points we had. The DM rolled them behind the screen, and told us how we felt. One thing was for sure: play didn't get bogged down. (We were trying to get to high enough level to earn the chance to join the Thieves Guild ... but my guy didn't quite make the cut. We had a blast.

[Willie the Duck]

My assumption that the original HP mechanic was adopted out of expediency was meant to be charitable to the old boys. Knowing that they actually intended to create the great, bloated sack of disassociation that is D&D hit points lowers my esteem for the OD&D designers somewhat.
I still think the explanation offered by Arneson may be an after the fact justification for a "nice, simple" mechanic (whose only real virtue is expediency...) that the designers knew sucked, but preferred to a more complex and less disassociated system. I suppose I can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt here, though. That's disappointing.

There was an author in the 70s-90s who wrote what I would call 'gun porn' novels. He went into excruciatingly descriptive detail about how the full-metal-jacketed 0.38 mm hollow-point slug flew silently through the air and impacted a quarter inch left of the center mass of the {racial stereotype or communist opponent}'s ocular socket, penetrating the anterior occipital lobe of their brain and exiting... etc. etc. etc. I imagine that Gary or Dave would consider this desire for realism in this arena to be just as tedious.

But that brings me to the point that the early game was a very very different game, with different goals. Fights were very quick, with very little decision-making on the player's part (other then 'is it time to run?') needed. You won or lost the fight mostly by deciding whether or not to fight in the first place, given the resources at your disposal and what you had run up against. Adding a complicated-but-realistic meatpoint system would have been completely absurd given the game as it existed at the time. It is the game and our expectations of what we are doing with it that has shifted.


I noticed somebody mentioned Star Wars using wounds but one needs to remember that it was unpopular in that system and was changed later in Sage to the condition chart. The chart was interesting in a way but they also essentially ditched that concept as well in that it has not been brought back in other WotC products (whereas other concepts first seen in Saga were used later such as second wind though the exact mechanics change).

Or Runequest, or GURPS, or even Traveller (which at least makes fighting more challenging after you've been wounded in a way that D&D usually lacks). There are plenty of examples of games with significantly more realistic combat or wound systems. Almost to a one, they have the issues of making combat extremely longwinded and risky for the players (as they will almost always be subjected to more potential one-shots or death spirals than any given enemy). Expediency and convenience are the name of the game for D&D and, surprise, surprise it is still miles and away more popular than all the other more realistic games combined because convenience is, well, convenient.


ZorroGames, KorvinStarmast, and I think Willie the Duck (in this thread) were earlier players than me, so I defer to them, but from what I've read and my dim "kid'd eye" memories, early D&D was more ad-hoc and free-form than later D&D.

If you look at oD&D ('74) and AD&D ('77-'79), you see clearly how one author with different goals can create vastly different games, even though much of the basic... mechanisms (hit points, rolls to hit, armor as AC instead of damage resistance, etc.) remain the same. oD&D was a very focused (in rules, not writing) set of rules that were supposed to get out of the way of either the war-gaming campaigning (which were very rules-based and a resource allocation game), or the Braunsteining (which was all free-form, and the only thing you needed the D&D bits for were things a DM would have trouble adjudicating fairly).



From what I've read of Mr. Mornard (which I find fascinating), I'm deeply impressed that you found a relevent quote of him that didn't run a foul of the language filter!

You'll note that it's 11 words long. If it were 12 I'm sure it would question one's ability to defecate unassisted. It's helpful to remember when reading Mornard that he kinda wants you to think he's a jerk or curmudgeon that wants you to get off his lawn. He's been calling himself 'Old Geezer' since he was like 45--that's an affectation if I've ever heard one. Now, I'm sure he honestly believes the way he and Gary and Dave (and Phil if you include Tekumel) played was genuinely better, and that gamers back in the day were bettersmarterfastermanlier, but he also is putting on a character or façade for effect.

[2D8HP]

back in the 70's, we were thieves in some adventures in The City State of the Invincible Overlord, and we never knew how many hit points we had[..]

[...]We had a blast.


So envious!

I had the later Judges Guild "City State of the World Emperor" instead.


[...]Some other folks have dug deep into "proto RPG" lore and found that XP and HP were originally bound together in some of Arneson's notes. For example, if you killed a monster with 80 HP you got 80 XP. (And GP to XP was similar but different ....) XP to level thresholds were different ... .



I'm getting obsessed with this, I can't find the:

HP damage done = XP

yet, but I did find:

"Using Chainmail rules on the first adventure, when you got hit the first time you were dead. We didn’t like that much, so the next time we played we had hit points. Within a month Dave introduced armor classes... " (http://shamsgrog.blogspot.com/2009/05/q-with-greg-svenson.html?m=1)

-Greg Svenson, one of Arneson's players

"Also, Dave told me and a number of other people multiple times that he never DID like the OD&D "hit point" system" (http://odd74.proboards.com/thread/11419/dalluhn-hit-dice-progression)

- Mike Mornard


[...]It's helpful to remember when reading Mornard that he kinda wants you to think he's a jerk or curmudgeon that wants you to get off his lawn. He's been calling himself 'Old Geezer' since he was like 45--that's an affectation if I've ever heard one. Now, I'm sure he honestly believes the way he and Gary and Dave (and Phil if you include Tekumel) played was genuinely better, and that gamers back in the day were bettersmarterfastermanlier, but he also is putting on a character or façade for effect.


:eek:


I CAN'T IMAGINE DOING THAT!!!


:redface:

[the secret fire]

...penetrating the anterior occipital lobe of their brain and exiting... etc. etc. etc. I imagine that Gary or Dave would consider this desire for realism in this arena to be just as tedious.

It was tedious...which is why Rolemaster died an ignominious death (though the stripped-down version of their system in MERP was actually really fun). All those charts were just too much. Of course, nowadays it would be easy to write an app to automate all of that number-crunching and chart-checking. Perhaps its time will come again.

You're right that the early game was much more fast-and-loose than what most roleplaying games have evolved into at present - much more like a fairly simple video game (with lots of player-knowledge metagaming thrown in, as well), actually. I understand why the OD&D designers decided on the simplistic HP system that they adopted. It's simplicity was its virtue, and I doubt they were foolish enough to think it had any other virtues. Shame that the system hasn't evolved past that point, though. They've made nearly everything else in the game more complex over the years.

[Willie the Duck]

It was tedious...which is why Rolemaster died an ignominious death ... Shame that the system hasn't evolved past that point, though.

Well, evolved is probably a good analogy, because like the game, it is non-teleological. You don't evolve 'past' something because evolution isn't going in a direction. But the greater point is that the game (once you get past the D&D logo) has mutated in that direction (multiple times) and died ignominious deaths. Games that can be simplistically described as "D&D, but with realistic combat" have been released to the market multiple times. And of those, well: GURPS is puttering along as a side project to SJ's bread and butter, Munchkin; Runequest/Mythras is popular in the UK, and has been heard of elsewhere; Rolemaster as you mentioned still exists in a primordial form, occasionally peaking its' head out to take another shot at the market. D&D proper, if it were to try to go in that direction, probably would not be in the top of the market, nor be in this amazing resurgence that it is in.

I don't mean to be harsh. I too have ideas about where D&D "should" go, if it weren't for those damn other people buying the game that have different ideas and whose opinions need to be heeded. The fact is, the game is and always has been a mongrel, frankensteinian beast that abhors purity or anyone's conception of elegant design, and probably still exists because of it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The fact is, the game is and always has been a mongrel, frankensteinian beast that abhors purity or anyone's conception of elegant design, and probably still exists because of it.

Hybrid vigor is a thing. Design for the sake of "elegance" often forsakes playability and fun for a lot of people who aren't game designers. Same goes for literature--literature written to be "good literature" usually sucks. It wins the awards, but very few people actually reads it because they want to or think it's fun. Schlocky genre fiction wins hands down in that category. Software's the same way--the most enduring software isn't that that holds perfectly to all the "patterns and practices" and is elegantly designed. It's often a hodgepodge of things, but it works.

Often, "elegance" and "unity of design" end up creating a fragile product. As long as everything's going the way you expect, things are fine. As soon as the game deviates from that "happy path" a bit, it comes crashing down. A fault-tolerant system will often have a mix of different elements because each element has different failure modes and together they're robust.

/thread diversion

[strangebloke]

I don't mean to be harsh. I too have ideas about where D&D "should" go, if it weren't for those damn other people buying the game that have different ideas and whose opinions need to be heeded. The fact is, the game is and always has been a mongrel, frankensteinian beast that abhors purity or anyone's conception of elegant design, and probably still exists because of it.

To extend the analogy, you can pull many breeds from a pack of mongrels, but only one from a pack of purebreds. DnD is pretty easy to turn into Gurps or Exalted or a JRPG, but it isn't easy to turn any one of those things into any other.

*cough*

this is really super off-topic, though. What did everyone think of the bits of homebrew I wrote up? Does anyone have any builds that can sort of simulate stuff that's been talked about?

I know lots of people have said, "Just narrate many attacks as one" but there are problems with that, not least of which being that if you can split your attack action between three foes, you really aren't attacking just once in a turn.

[2D8HP]

*cough*

this is really super off-topic, though.


Hey, if you just want variant rules suggestions then click the little triangle, and ask for the thread to be moved to the Homebrew Sub-Forum.

Meanwhile, we have a speculative game rules history discussion.


Edit:

Oh you edited your post:


Does anyone have any builds that can sort of simulate stuff that's been talked about?


Sure, higher level Rogue builds can "one shot" many/most "mooks", as may most other classes.

What you seem to want is to "one shot" a dragon, is that right?

Okay, here's my "homebrew" suggestion:

Cap hit points to CON for PC's, and then scale down monster HP accordingly.

[the secret fire]

D&D proper, if it were to try to go in that direction, probably would not be in the top of the market, nor be in this amazing resurgence that it is in.

I don't mean to be harsh. I too have ideas about where D&D "should" go, if it weren't for those damn other people buying the game that have different ideas and whose opinions need to be heeded. The fact is, the game is and always has been a mongrel, frankensteinian beast that abhors purity or anyone's conception of elegant design, and probably still exists because of it.

Sure, D&D is pretty much the lowest common denominator in the RPG market - the McDonald's of role playing games. I'm not convinced, however, that name recognition isn't its greatest asset at this point. The world keeps turning. A lot of people are already using free apps to help them run their games, and that removes most of the barriers to adding complexity to an RPG, as many things can be kept "under the hood" using simple algorithms. For many years, D&D's relative simplicity and lack of character-creation options (the class system, basically) made it the most accessible game on the market, a sort of RPG gateway drug.

That advantage may be fading, though. Simplicity is a great virtue when you have to do all the math with pen and paper, not so much when you don't. The tabletop RPG market hasn't yet faced much technological disruption; we'll see what happens when it does.

[strangebloke]

Sure, D&D is pretty much the lowest common denominator in the RPG market - the McDonald's of role playing games. I'm not convinced, however, that name recognition isn't its greatest asset at this point. The world keeps turning. A lot of people are already using free apps to help them run their games, and that removes most of the barriers to adding complexity to an RPG, as many things can be kept "under the hood" using simple algorithms. For many years, D&D's relative simplicity and lack of character-creation options (the class system, basically) made it the most accessible game on the market, a sort of RPG gateway drug.

That advantage may be fading, though. Simplicity is a great virtue when you have to do all the math with pen and paper, not so much when you don't. The tabletop RPG market hasn't yet faced much technological disruption; we'll see what happens when it does.

At the risk of pushing this discussion even more off the rails, I'll make this note:

The barrier to entry isn't in the bookkeeping. It's in learning the system at all. DND is well past the realm of what most people are capable/willing to understand. Gurps is on a whole 'nother planet. In a funny twist, 3.5 is actually probably eveneasier to learn than 5e, because there are fewer rules for generic characters. If you don't build to be good at grappling, don't worry about it! You'll just lose! (Obviously knowing the system better yields insanely great rewards, but that's a seperate point)


Apps help with bookkeeping, but they don't help you learn the system.

[the secret fire]

I know lots of people have said, "Just narrate many attacks as one" but there are problems with that, not least of which being that if you can split your attack action between three foes, you really aren't attacking just once in a turn.

The "many attacks as one" option again exposes the gap between player and narrative. It's fine if you have players who don't mind a mechanical/narrative disconnect, but the issue is still there.

[Willie the Duck]

The barrier to entry isn't in the bookkeeping. It's in learning the system at all. DND is well past the realm of what most people are capable/willing to understand.

There also has to be a significant swath of people saying, "I would continue to play this game and shell out money to the developers, but I won't because I dislike... [the example being the HP system]" and there just isn't that happening. All the apps in the world can make complexity as simple as you like, but if no one else cares that the hp system isn't the most realistic, then there will be no movement towards that model.




Sure, D&D is pretty much the lowest common denominator in the RPG market - the McDonald's of role playing games.

I find that analogy suspect. I would consider D&D more like Friends or The Big Bang Theory. Don't worry, that makes you a Arrested Development or Brooklyn 99 fan or the like.

[strangebloke]

Sure, higher level Rogue builds can "one shot" many/most "mooks", as may most other classes.

What you seem to want is to "one shot" a dragon, is that right?

Okay, here's my "homebrew" suggestion:

Cap hit points to CON for PC's, and then scale down monster HP accordingly.

5e homebrew dies a cold, cold death in the homebrew thread. Also, I'm just spitballing for ways people might handle this, not trying to balance a nearly-completed product. Also, it's great to have a historical discussion of what hit points even are, but I am right to say that it's off topic.

Your proposed variant is interesting, and would work. I've stated several times, though, that I'm not really talking about a change to all the classes. I just want an individual player to have that option.

A rogue acually works great for what I'm talking about. More specifically an Assassin or open hand monk. But those concepts are pretty narrow, conceptually, and don't cover everything I'd like them to.

[the secret fire]

Apps help with bookkeeping, but they don't help you learn the system.

Yes, exactly, which is why the class system, for all its critics, is probably the best thing about D&D, and the one thing I would be most loathe to change. D&D doesn't tend to get too bogged down in options, and likely owes its continued existence to that fact.

It is possible at this point, however, to add a lot of better, more complex mechanics to the underlying system without troubling the actual playing of the game at the table. Take skills, for example. I don't think anyone who has put much thought into the matter would say that it is an especially good system, but it has the virtue of being straightforward (except for stealth...) and using the same unified mechanic (the d20) which drives the rest of the game. That level of simple, mechanical unity is no longer necessary, though. The "d20 system" makes a lot of sense in a world where people are rolling little plastic dice and doing math in their heads. Maybe this world will persist for a while longer, but it won't hold on forever, and there is no particular benefit in having easy-to-tabulate mechanical resolution when players no longer have to (or want to?) do their own calculations because they're all carrying computers in their pockets.

What I'm saying is that we have already reached a point where considerably better and more complex models for in-game interactions can be added to a system without actually making it harder on the players. Rolemaster wasn't an especially difficult game to learn, but when played, it tended to drown in the swamp of its own tables (Artax! Fight against the sadness!!). I'm not saying that Rolemaster is set to make a glorious return or even that it should, but we are already at the point where it is possible to design a tabletop game that is easy to learn, but complex in how it plays out, with lots of fiddly interactions resolved by machines, as they already are in video game RPGs. This leaves a lot of design space for the modeling of in-game mechanics that simply wasn't there before. D&D's model of interactions is still quite crude compared to what it is now possible to implement (without increasing the learning curve).

I think the future of tabletop role playing games will probably involve a considerable amount of fusion between the still separate pen-and-paper and video game models, though perhaps I underestimate how much people love throwing dice.

[2D8HP]

Does anyone have any builds that can sort of simulate stuff that's been talked about?


It occurred to me that this was partially asked in the:

Can I finally make my Marksmen in 5th?/"Dont bring a sword to a Bow Fight"/Are ranged builds finally great in in 5th?/Are ranged builds finally broken in in 5th?/Ranged Builds 5th edition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545994-Ranged-Builds-5th-edition)

thread which had lot's of builds and arguing (yes, those are all names for the same thread, the OP kept changing the title!).

One of my last posts to that thread, suggested even more threads:


.
I like the "Champion", but given your taste for "crunch", I suggest the Battlemaster, or if you want to be more "Green Lantern-like", check out the Arcane Archer in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

The older Unearthed Arcana version

PDF is here (https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/2016_Fighter_UA_1205_1.pdf)


and the revised version

PDF is here (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwiSjMaclLzYAhUB1mMKHdK1B_MQFggeMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.wizards.com%2F2017%2Fdnd%2 Fdownloads%2FUA-RevisedSubclasses.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1AFA1g6r_WiTrXKiJZAgJa)


The "marksman/sniper/archer" build request is a well trod road, so here's some previous threads:


http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?574458-Best-archer-build


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?535782-Archer-multiple-shots-that-hit-hard-5e


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?543819-The-Toughest-Hardest-to-hit-Sniper


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?541484-Sniper-Build-Help


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?481944-Archer-Paladin-Viable-or-trash


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511287-Archer-Build


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?526204-Optimizing-an-archer-character


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?524156-The-Ultimate-Archer


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?499867-Help-with-an-archer-build


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?531403-Best-Archer-for-me


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?500883-Archer-damage-PC-help-please



http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444584-Build-Spotlight-Eldritch-Archer


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?409791-rogue-or-warrior-for-archer

[MadBear]

I think the future of tabletop role playing games will probably involve a considerable amount of fusion between the still separate pen-and-paper and video game models, though perhaps I underestimate how much people love throwing dice.

While I'm in no way qualified to project what directions RPG's may go in the future, I will say, that among my group chucking dice, is one a mechanic we all love. It's the reason that my groups top 5 games include:

- Zombicide (so many d6's)
- Roll for the Galaxy (tons of dice to chuck)

So while my sample size isn't really large enough to be statistically relevant, I will say that dice chucking is an integral part of our gaming experience.

[the secret fire]

Cap hit points to CON for PC's, and then scale down monster HP accordingly.

Or you could have "meat" HP = Con, and a pool of "stun" HP (normal HP, in terms of how the game is currently played) representing how much abuse you can take before succumbing to exhaustion...essentially robbing from the HERO system. This would go a long way to squaring the circle between player and character knowledge, and it would be an easy change to make in D&D that would open up the game to potentially more satisfying combat. I dunno if there would be copyright issues, though.

[2D8HP]

Or you could have "meat" HP = Con, and a pool of "stun" HP (normal HP, in terms of how the game is cu. rrently played) representing how much abuse you can take before succumbing to exhaustion...essentially robbing from the HERO system. This would go a long way to squaring the circle between player and character knowledge, and it would be an easy change to make in D&D that would open up the game to potentially more satisfying combat. I dunno if there would be copyright issues, though.


It's been decades, but I remember that from Champions!

As to copyright issues, if D&D may now have critical hits, fumbles, and skills (RuneQuest, and dozens of others) I doubt more borrowing would be a problem, but I'm not a lawyer, I'm just married to someone who dropped out of law school!

[PhoenixPhyre]

While I'm in no way qualified to project what directions RPG's may go in the future, I will say, that among my group chucking dice, is one a mechanic we all love. It's the reason that my groups top 5 games include:

- Zombicide (so many d6's)
- Roll for the Galaxy (tons of dice to chuck)

So while my sample size isn't really large enough to be statistically relevant, I will say that dice chucking is an integral part of our gaming experience.

My groups love lots of dice. Fireball, high level sneak attacks, etc. There's something viscerally satisfying about throwing handfulls of dice. And when the DM picks up a pile of dice the tension visibly builds.

Rolling dice is fun. Rolling lots of dice is even more fun. I use a helper app that includes a dice roller, but I roll for the creatures (except initiative) by hand because it's so much more fun.

[the secret fire]

To extend the analogy, you can pull many breeds from a pack of mongrels, but only one from a pack of purebreds. DnD is pretty easy to turn into Gurps or Exalted or a JRPG, but it isn't easy to turn any one of those things into any other.

Not sure I agree with that. Trying to turn D&D into GURPS would be an exercise in frustration. GURPS features, among other things, classless character creation and advancement, lethal (and fairly realistic) combat at all levels of play, and a quite reliable skills system. You'd need a massive heartbreaker of a D&D re-work to model what's going on in GURPS. You'd be similarly hard-pressed to try to turn D&D into Ars Magica, Call of Cthulhu, HERO, or damn near any non-d20-based system. You can do Exalted, sure, but that's because Exalted is intentionally derivative of D&D.

Ultimately, it is the d20 system at the heart of the game that keeps it locked into its current form, for better or worse.

[the secret fire]

It's been decades, but I remember that from Champions!

As to copyright issues, if D&D may now have critical hits, fumbles, and skills (RuneQuest, and dozens of others) I doubt more borrowing would be a problem, but I'm not a lawyer, I'm just married to someone who dropped out of law school!

I am a lawyer, and I still don't know. Copyright questions are notoriously sticky. If Apple can go forward with a suit over the shape of competitors' phones, anything is possible. Hero Games isn't Apple, though, and such legal shenanigans are probably much less likely in the RPG market.

[Willie the Duck]

Not sure I agree with that. Trying to turn D&D into GURPS would be an exercise in frustration. GURPS features, among other things, classless character creation and advancement, lethal (and fairly realistic) combat at all levels of play, and a quite reliable skills system. You'd need a massive heartbreaker of a D&D re-work to model what's going on in GURPS. You'd be similarly hard-pressed to try to turn D&D into Ars Magica, Call of Cthulhu, HERO, or damn near any non-d20-based system. You can do Exalted, sure, but that's because Exalted is intentionally derivative of D&D.

Ultimately, it is the d20 system at the heart of the game that keeps it locked into its current form, for better or worse.


Shame that the system hasn't evolved past that point, though. They've made nearly everything else in the game more complex over the years.

Am I wrong to think these two are slightly contradictory sentiments? D&D is D&D and can't change it's stripes, but it's a shame it hasn't? I guess that's not actually contradictory, but then are you suggesting it try to change, even though it can't?

[strangebloke]

It occurred to me that this was partially asked in the:

Can I finally make my Marksmen in 5th?/"Dont bring a sword to a Bow Fight"/Are ranged builds finally great in in 5th?/Are ranged builds finally broken in in 5th?/Ranged Builds 5th edition (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545994-Ranged-Builds-5th-edition)

thread which had lot's of builds and arguing (yes, those are all names for the same thread, the OP kept changing the title!).

One of my last posts to that thread, suggested even more threads:

I am intimately familiar with that trashcan fire of a thread. I posted in there something like 20-30 times.

I'm reasonably confident that there is no way to make a "Sniper" in 5e other than an Assassin. That's fine, really, Assassins make pretty good snipers. At least in the sense of Snipers-as-assassins.

But I think there are other, similar concepts that aren't very well-supported.



I think the future of tabletop role playing games will probably involve a considerable amount of fusion between the still separate pen-and-paper and video game models, though perhaps I underestimate how much people love throwing dice.

The key virtues of TTRPGS are:

1. Fellowship (having crunchy app-based combat rules neither help nor hurt here.)
2. Creative Freedom (Computers can only accept a limited number of inputs.)
3. The physical experience is itself fun. (Kinda hard to get some of these features into a game, but computers help here.)
4. Challenge/Difficulty (Neither helped nor hurt by computer support.)
5. Simulation (computers help here a lot)
6. Escapism (Computers sort of help here.)

...so overall I'm going with a solid maybe.

[the secret fire]

Am I wrong to think these two are slightly contradictory sentiments? D&D is D&D and can't change it's stripes, but it's a shame it hasn't? I guess that's not actually contradictory, but then are you suggesting it try to change, even though it can't?

So long as the tabletop RPG remains a strictly pen-and-paper affair, D&D probably shouldn't scrap the d20 system if WoTC wants it to remain at the top of the market. I'm saying it's a shame that D&D has remained locked into early-70s design decisions, but I guess that's what you get when you're the flagship and people get used to your product.

Change is coming, though...it always does. WoTC has made some halting steps into the digital market with D&D Beyond, but they don't seem to have their acts especially well together in this regard. Not sure what to expect from them going forward. It isn't hard to envision a world in which tabletop RPGs are released more like online video games, with a digital "engine" for action resolution underlying the book rules - an algorithm which can be tweaked, re-balanced and updated on the fly after user-sourced beta testing.

It's hard to say when the digital revolution will reach tabletop RPGs, but the soil is already ripe.

[the secret fire]

2. Creative Freedom (Computers can only accept a limited number of inputs.)

A good algorithm could cut down on a lot of DM overhead, though. I agree that player freedom and creativity wouldn't change much in a more digitized game, but for the guy who has to juggle an entire universe, I think computers could probably help quite a bit. Flipping through books in the middle of play is no fun, and I'm sure we've all been there. You'd still have to learn how the program works, of course, but UI has gotten pretty good in recent years.


4. Challenge/Difficulty (Neither helped nor hurt by computer support.)

I dunno. Many DMs seem to struggle with encounter balance in D&D. A system which incorporated actual play-testing data might go a long way to smoothing over some of the...ahem...rough spots with the CR system. The goal, as always, should be to have a game exactly as difficult as your table wants it to be, which takes considerable experience as things stand today. I think machine assistance could make this a lot easier.

[Knaight]

On topic:

The situations detailed fall into two main categories. One of them is a specialized kind of dueling basically built for one shot situations, whether that's two people starting with drawn swords positioned such that they'll be too close to dodge effectively when weapons or pulled or two people who arranged to have a gunfight where piddly defensive strategies like "range" or "cover" or "trying to stay hidden" or even "dodging" are all thrown aside for a quick draw ritual.

The other is a situation where an attack is built up over multiple rounds of observation, a single decisive strike that isn't necessarily any faster overall than a more conventional strategy of just attacking multiple times.

Both of these could work fine in 5e, with the first being a dedicated subsystem for certain kinds of dueling and the second being a power accessed through feats or similar. They could also use a fairly similar system - what comes to mind is something I'll call readied damage. Essentially, instead of making an attack you prepare somehow, generally through close observation (or just through a deliberate adrenaline rush letting you be a bit quicker), making an attack roll as per normal. Instead of this doing proper damage, you do readied damage. Then all of this readied damage can be spent simultaneously on a guaranteed hit.

For the duel, I'd use this instead of initiative. Both participants just push readied damage for either a certain number of turns or until one participant has enough for a kill. Then, if one person has a kill they immediately get that kill off. If the turn limit is up, both do some damage to each other (which can be either non-fatal wounds or just missing, depending on how the GM is fluffing HP). For the observation, this is just an alternative to attacking in normal combat, which either does a bit more damage eventually or which starts as an area attack of readied damage, to all collapse on a single target at some point.

Off topic:

To extend the analogy, you can pull many breeds from a pack of mongrels, but only one from a pack of purebreds. DnD is pretty easy to turn into Gurps or Exalted or a JRPG, but it isn't easy to turn any one of those things into any other.

You can pull D&D, or Exalted, or a JRPG out of GURPS just fine. Meanwhile D&D isn't going to turn into anything but a tiny fraction of GURPS, a pale shadow of Exalted, or an extremely dubious JRPG. It's a highly specialized game that does highly specialized things, and of that list it's GURPS that's the generic with a wide range of capabilities.

[Beelzebubba]

I have often dabbled with the idea of taking the hp = meat and hp = endurance/luck abstraction and actually splitting it.

For example, you have 2 stats endurance and hp where hp is some small slow incrementing potion of normal hp and endurance is the rest.

Just as a quick draft to illustrate the idea, lets make starting hp = con modifier and at each level hp increases by your con modifier. That is how beefy you are.

Starting endurance = your HD and increase by your HD at each level.

Then the normal process would be that when endurance = 0 any leftover damage carries over to hp and this method of taking damage is identical to the way it is now. When hp reaches 0 you fall unconscious etc

However, you could have types of damage or certain abilities that bypass endurance and deal damage directly to hp, like falling damage. Falling damage always damages hp. So now a level 6 barbarian with 16 con has only 18hp and has 47 endurance. That means when he falls for 20d6 dmg even for 35dmg with resistance he likely isnt going to survive.

Then you could have some type of one hit/one kill fighting ability that works against hp instead of endurance allowing for the awesome cinematic fights but it wouldn't work on tougher monsters.

I saw that (in a Dragon Magazine, IIRC) in the early 80's.

What's old is what's new again.

[Beelzebubba]

Let's see this rule apply to PC's too and see the players freak out.

'OK, you're dead. Cleric is out of high level spells, so...go watch a movie, we'll let you know when you're raised.'

:smallbiggrin:

[Angelalex242]

If you want this flavor, just hand all the melee characters Vorpal Swords, and call it a day.

No need to make this overcomplicated.