Health with multiple methods to reduce

[MGuy]

Of course it isn't surprising that your argument then further devolves into relying on concepts that are deeply flawed in their own right such as melee only threats and so on.

Celestia forbid that you fight a bear at *any* point in your character's adventuring career.

Of course it isn't surprising that your argument relies on not actually responding to the concepts being described.

He did respond. Frank just doubled down and he didn't need to change what he already said. PL said that there is no reason to not try to unify the system just because you can't smooth out each and every possible case. Frank mentioned a case where it wouldn't work. How do you suppose he should respond to that in any other way than repeating himself? I noted before that I am pretty sure it is accepted, at least here, that appropriately leveled challenges should be able to overcome fuck you abilities like flight. Frank himself as gone on at length about just that. Why are people all of a sudden giving credence to shitty challenges as if they should count?

[hyzmarca]

Put your archer on the wall that divides the enemy force in half.

This is not always possible, especially in a confined space like a dungeon or a fortress.

The complaint wasn't that wizards and fighters couldn't help each other out, the complaint was that when these two classes dogpile their efforts onto the same enemy/ies they work at cross-purposes. This led to the suggestion that vanilla damage and status effects be rendered completely transparent with each other such that you don't have anti-synergies -- which led to the counter-realization that you either need to make every effect in the game like that and excise the effects that can't conform to the paradigm or you just need to accept the fact that sometimes a wizard will throw down with a Silent Image or Dominate Monster that alters the battlefield in a way that doesn't in the short term give a flying fuck how much non-lethal damage the fighter-types dished out.

The solution to that isn't an attempt at a unified damage system. The solution to that is that the players actually talk to each other and come up with an efficient strategy.

[OgreBattle]

There are certain spells that can interact with a unified damage system and there are other spells that don't, I think we can all agree with that and move on.

As for levitation...

Action economy trade off and gradients of levitation mastery:
low level levitate leaves you flat footed and slow (20ft a turn, anyone not a dwarf can just outrun you and wait out its duration) as you are floating there as a medium sized balloon. It may also take a standard or move action to sustain (this may also incentivize wizards to levitate allies who have all of their actions to use) so using it in the middle of combat has trade offs. Higher levels of levitate have less penalties and eventually becomes flight. A wizard who wants to levitate around and not get their spell sustaining broken by arrow fire and plummet to the earth will need to spend other precious spell slots on shielding spells, then you get to fly around as Jim Lee's Magneto which is cool imagery.

If levitating and flying ranged attack enemies come online at level X, then PC's are expected to have a means of dealing with it:
Every warrior-type should be expected to carry a bow, crossbow, sling, javelin, throwing axes, and so on in a world where flying foes exist. So mechanics that incentivize exlusive weapon specialization should be removed, "I use a sword" and "I use a bow" are not good character concepts.

Jump Good:
PC's shouldn't be constrained by John McClane realism, so after level X you are all wuxia heroes that can double jump over castle walls, cut through stone, shoot blade beams, and so on.


Team Attacks:

If a wizard can expend minimal resources to lift a sword wielding ally off the ground for them to dive attack a foe for big damage, that would be cool. "I cover his sword in flames" is also something many fantasy games do that's uncommon in D&D. In the PS2 RPG Wizardry, magic users have spell slots but channeling magic into an ally's weapon is at-will.

Either this should be cantrip level stuff for wizards, or if it takes a precious spell slot it needs to have a bigger impact than casting 'wall of stone' or whatever they have at that level.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The solution to that isn't an attempt at a unified damage system. The solution to that is that the players actually talk to each other and come up with an efficient strategy.

Just to be clear: I don't mind the idea of a unified damage and status effect system in abstract. In fact, I think that it would be a very good direction for D&D. I'm just pointing out that you can't get every game effect to conform to that paradigm. You can make it such that stone to flesh or even phantasmal killer is transparent with sword slashes, but it would still be quite easy for a non-edge case wizard to subvert the underlying paradigm using common 3E D&D effects.

Ironically enough, once you start unifying the health and status effect systems, you'll probably actually have to increase the power of no-save/no-damage effects relative to the save-or-dies. Not by a whole lot, but note that spells like Wall of Stone and Silent Image and Create Pit are competitive with save-or-die spells in 3E D&D as she is played. After all, right now Stinking Cloud doesn't need to combo off of fighter sword slashes to be devastating and doing so will, all other things being equal, make it more effective.

[Username17]

There are certain spells that can interact with a unified damage system and there are other spells that don't, I think we can all agree with that and move on.

But if we all agree to that, then we have to accept that the central premise of the thread is wrong.

And then Phonelobster would have to shut his mouth hole. And we know that isn't going to happen.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

When did Frank get this bad at this?

[MGuy]

I thought sponge's point was that he wanted damages and not damage abilities to not work against each other. Levitate doesn't do hp damage but it doesn't have to if that is what sponge's point was because it doesn't necessarily work against other damage dealers on your team.

[hogarth]

It can feel useless though. The same way it feels useless when someone makes their save, has a unknown immunity, or otherwise mitigates the action through no special effort on their part.

That's my major complaint about casting a save-or-die spell: if it works, it's boring (because it's instantly game over) and if it fails, it's boring (because nothing happened).

[Username17]

I thought sponge's point was that he wanted damages and not damage abilities to not work against each other. Levitate doesn't do hp damage but it doesn't have to if that is what sponge's point was because it doesn't necessarily work against other damage dealers on your team.

If you levitate past a guard dog, you have defeated it. If you sneak past an owl bear, you have defeated it. For a really large number of enemies, avoidance is victory. And that means that stealth is a "save or die" from the structural standpoint of spongeknight's complaint. Running up and stabbing the owlbear "works at cross purposes" with sneaking past it. Sneaking does no damage to the owlbear, and when one of your asshole fellow party members starts attacking the owlbear with a spear you've lost all chances of it moving on without interaction.

If stealthing works, then the sword attacks are useless. If the sword attacks even happen, the evasion attempt fails. That's more extreme counter synergy than sword blows and petrification (which can at least be profitably pointed at different enemies in the same encounter). But it's not an inherent issue with the game, it's an inherent issue with the way things are and have to be. You can "fix" it, but you're an asshole if you want to do that.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

So, now tripling down on the "if you can't unify EVERYTHING then you can unify NOTHING!" thing. I mean you haven't even changed one damn bit of that lame "argument" have you?

And now going out to the doubling down on the "Bears are a totes legit encounter everything must be balanced around!" bullshit just because you can never fucking admit you are wrong over anything and you are more than happy to trash your fucking credibility by being wrong about every damn thing else just in order to never back down on anything period.

[MGuy]

Sponge can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that his intent was to speak about actually engaging these targets. I'll even say with confidence that he probably doesn't care about whether or not avoiding a fight at all clashes with actual fighting. He even specifies combat in his original post.

His idea is the same one PL talked about before, and I believe he built a system around. I haven't read all of what PL actually did with the idea (I believe he's had several revisions) but I'm certain there are plenty of things that don't have synergy in his system. Still he's probably made some effort to keep as many things unified as he could. Now, I don't particularly like the idea of kicking people in the shins making it easier to borrow money from them myself (and I said as much when this very same idea was presented before) but I don't think "Well anything you do that's not fighting clashes with fighting so GG" is a good counter argument against what he's speaking about.

Personally I've been tinkering around the idea of having some level of synergy between people who do HP damages in fights and people who don't. I've been toying with numbers to make it so that HP is tied directly to saves such that losing HP makes a character more vulnerable to save or dies/suck abilities. I believe I got the idea from one of the 5E threads. SoD/S are really most of the problem. Opponents being unable to get past Fuck You you must be 'this tall to ride' abilities is just a different thing, and the fact that the stealth minigame doesn't have much synergy with the fighting/diplomacy/traveling minigames is just not a concern I think anyone is trying to call attention to.

Sponge is free to correct me if I'm misunderstanding him though.

[PhoneLobster]

His idea is the same one PL talked about before.

sponge's ideas and other things people have been discussing cover a lot of ground.

But just one of them was the basic idea of unifying however many things that you can to single damage track. It isn't exactly a complex or, you would think, controversial idea.

It has some minority of features in common with my own unified damage track mechanics. Not all that much. But just a bit of basic conceptual overlap. sponge even went out of his way to explicitly rule out various similarities just to appease Frank.

However, Frank these days is about nothing but doubling down on his worst ideas and arguments, and viciously attacking anything that even vaguely resembles a challenge to any of his old badly considered positions and doing so by whatever means and screw it if he has to pull "Everything or nothing!" or "bears are totes legit encounters all of a sudden!" in the process.

[hyzmarca]

If stealthing works, then the sword attacks are useless. If the sword attacks even happen, the evasion attempt fails. That's more extreme counter synergy than sword blows and petrification (which can at least be profitably pointed at different enemies in the same encounter). But it's not an inherent issue with the game, it's an inherent issue with the way things are and have to be. You can "fix" it, but you're an asshole if you want to do that.

-Username17

'

Well, that's not entirely true. You can totally sneak past the Owlbear while it's busy fighting your party member. It's probably easier that way. And leaving a party member to die against an opponent that he was stupid enough to start a fight with is a perfectly viable strategy that doesn't invalidate his HP attacks, at all.

Sword attacks are distracting. There's actual synergy there.

[Kaelik]

So... did all the dumb fuck unificationists just skip straight past the part where they present any cogent argument at all for why unification is good?

[zugschef]

So... did all the dumb fuck unificationists just skip straight past the part where they present any cogent argument at all for why unification is good?

That's a good point. I've wondered that myself. Why exactly is this type of unification desirable?

[Username17]

So... did all the dumb fuck unificationists just skip straight past the part where they present any cogent argument at all for why unification is good?

Not only did they skip the part where they made any argument at all for why unification was a thing worth pursuing, what arguments they do make skip a shit tonne of other things.

Frank these days is about nothing but doubling down on his worst ideas and arguments, and viciously attacking anything that even vaguely resembles a challenge to any of his old badly considered positions and doing so by whatever means and screw it if he has to pull "Everything or nothing!" or "bears are totes legit encounters all of a sudden!" in the process.

So first of all, PL screams like a raped ape every time I point out literally anything at all that is a path to victory that does not have any obvious additive nature with stabbing people in the face. Every single time I bring one of these up, he goes off about how I'm advocating "everything or nothing" as if that means something. So his entire argument for why we should do any of this unification nonsense or even have a discussion about it is pretty much just a golden mean fallacy. Not doing some sort of 4e-style effect/damage combination thing is "extreme," so we should do it? It really honestly doesn't make any more sense when you try to break it into parts than it does when PL is just ranting insults.

And then there's the part where he claims that it is completely settled argument that bears and guard dogs are not valid challenges under any circumstances. Note: he's really not saying that there comes some power level when a bear alone does not a worthwhile encounter make no matter the sharpness of its claws. He's saying that bears aren't valid challenges at all under any circumstances. And more than that, he's saying that it's so completely obvious that bears have no place in tales of heroism that to even suggest otherwise is laughable and dishonest. It's really very strange.

The thing about the levitating over the bear example is that it is what is in D&D a low level solution to a low level threat. We could in principle be talking about using etherealness to get past "corporeal" opposition. Would PL attempt to mock me for daring to suggest that non-ethereal opposition could be valid encounter material? Signs point to yes!

It's difficult to even engage with the arguments of the unificationists, because they haven't presented any. Any and all objections are responded to angrily and flippantly. Spongeknight has admitted that his plans do not affect "no save and lose" effects, but hasn't presented any evidence at all that we should want "save or lose" effects to be removed and replaced with damage with rider effects.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

No one has presented anything in favour of a more unified mechanic? Aside from it being obvious and fucking basic accepted fact that unified mechanics in general where possible are beneficial, arguments in favor have been presented in this thread from the opening post.

ALL you have is STILL the fucking "but SOMETIMES it isn't applicable, so fuck off you cannot do it EVER" which is still the fucking "EVERYTHING or NOTHING" argument, which is basically a really stupid incarnation of you pretending that the perfect is the enemy of the good.

And sorry, bear encounters are not a balance point they can be an encounter, a really shit one, but we do in fact have a long history here of deriding closet trolls and melee only brutes as a poorly designed concepts, even before you add in easily overcome animal intelligence, but YOU have now decided they are a fucking balance point to defend your stupid perfect is the enemy of good argument, so now I guess we have to accept the dumb melee only fighter and the closet troll and also, apparently "dumb wild animal slaughter, the RPG".

You want to tone troll and project about angry flippant content free responses? Try presenting something other than that yourself.

[Kaelik]

No one has presented anything in favour of a more unified mechanic? Aside from it being obvious and fucking basic accepted fact that unified mechanics in general where possible are beneficial,

I'm reminded of Tzor talking about how everything he says is so obviously true that he doesn't even need to present arguments or evidence.

arguments in favor have been presented in this thread from the opening post.

Maybe if these arguments are so evident and present, you could like, fucking make them? Or like, post them again? But rephrased? Maybe even break them down into a formal argument? Because when everyone who disagrees with you tells you they are unaware you even have made an argument, it might help if you made one. Instead of ranting for three paragraphs about bear encounters, an issue which only remotely relevant if you make some kind of argument for the conclusion first.

[zugschef]

No one has presented anything in favour of a more unified mechanic? Aside from it being obvious and fucking basic accepted fact that unified mechanics in general where possible are beneficial, arguments in favor have been presented in this thread from the opening post.

Please enlighten us why "unified mechanics in general where possible are beneficial."

[PhoneLobster]

Please enlighten us why "unified mechanics in general where possible are beneficial."

Really?

Fucking hell.

You like to avoid needless complexity? You want to have compatibility and intuitive learnable rules? You ever heard of the whole "until there is nothing left to remove" thing?

Then where possible you want to use, or at least refer to and interact with, the same mechanics.

Further, and relevant to the OPENING POST on this thread, the portion of spongeknights material where he wants to unify, just some, SoD type effects into the games main damage/defeat track in order to enhance synergy, compatibility and co-operation among party members because those things would either damage the same track or depend on damage on the same track is and damn well should be utterly uncontroversial and utterly FUCKING OBVIOUS.

You can sit there and whine repetitively like Frank and his stupidest lackeys if you want to about how some sort of full party levitate buff somehow works at cross purposes to the party warrior because... BEARS no less. But it at no point undermines the incontrovertible fact that there ARE potentially large sets of options that COULD be altered in the way that sponge has proposed and it WOULD achieve exactly what he intends by increasing co-operative benefits between the actions of party members by giving them some god damn synergy.

And doing it by using an existing major mechanic, and unifying more abilities to be compatible with it, is a very damn good way of doing it. Because you don't actually need to add significant complexity to do it, to some extent you are removing complexity, while still achieving not just similar, but potentially improved outcomes.

If you don't fucking understand that, what the fuck do you understand? What thread have you been reading up to now? What gaming den have you been reading for the last 10 years?

At what fucking point has "I can say nuh uh, and bears, and that means you have to restate your entire argument, and tell us why common unified standardised mechanics are a good thing, after which I will just say nuh uh and bears TIMES INFINITY!" been a valid position around here?

Just how fucking low will Frank and this forum choose to sink?

[Username17]

Really?

Yes. Really.

Look, since you absolutely fucking refuse to say anything coherent or make any positive argument for any of your positions ever, I'll formalize it for you.

You have action "a" which moves you towards victory condition "A." And you have action "b" which moves you towards victory condition "B." And as a player, you are given the choice between taking action a and action b.

I don't actually care whether victory condition A or B is "enemies are dead," "enemies are friends nowz," "enemies are avoided," "enemies run out of funds," "enemies are exposed on national television," or whatever. It's absolutely not important to this discussion what a and b or A and B are. We're not even committed to this being fantasy or cyberpunk or super heroes or whatever.

So your claim is that taking action a should move you towards victory condition B in addition to moving you towards victory condition A. That's not a completely implausible claim, and I can certainly imagine circumstances where you could make an argument for that, for some As and Bs. But you have to actually make an argument for it. And it probably has to be case by case, because the general objection is "If a moves you towards A and B, how is it a meaningful choice to do a instead of b?" And that's a really strong general objection. You are not allowed to say "Because I'm obviously right, duh!" That's not a real argument. That is a shitmuffin argument. If that's all you got, you've lost the argument.

The default stance is that if a player chooses a instead of b then they move towards victory condition A instead of victory condition B. Because that's the choice they made by selecting a instead of b. And if you want things to work differently than that, you gotta make an argument as to why. And it's got to work in both the game mechanical sense and the story sense, which means you pretty much need to make two arguments. Which is two more than the zero arguments you are putting forward right now.

-Username17

[Mistborn]

So am I the only one who thinks not having everyones abilities always stack linearly towards victory might be a good thing? It makes focus firing less rewarding and allows more diversity in tactical options.

[deaddmwalking]

In the OP, there were options a1 (incremental melee damage) and a2 (instant death) that both move to Condition A (opponent is reduced to zero hit points and killed). Since both are moving toward the same victory condition, unifying a1 and a2 is not only possible, but potentially desireable.

Imagine an opponent with 100 hit points. Each round one character contributes 10 hp of damage. The other character may attempt a special attack that kills the opponent with a 10% chance of success. Character X is dealing hit point damage, Character Y is using a SoD.

It is obvious that whether Character X deals 0 or 90 damage, his contribution is rendered meaningless by Character Y's successful attack. Only if Character X does the full 100 hp of damage does the incremental attack actually contribute to the victory condition.

If, on the other hand, Character Y can only use his SoD based on the opponents total remaining hit points, Character X can potentially contribute even if Player Y is ultimately successful. If Player Y can use his SoD on an opponent with up to 10hp/lvl and is currently sixth level, the opponent could not be defeated without the contribution of Character X.

This is both obvious and there are good arguments for why this is potentially desireable. Having your contribution reduced to having zero impact gives a feeling of 'small in the pants' which isn't good.

I'd guess that the stand against SoD style attacks being converted to hit point relevant attacks is partly a stand against trying to allow characters that don't have real abilities to appear as decent options. But Character X could be a wizard with one attack mode and Character Y could be another - or even the same character with an attack that just came online.

There are still potential issues. In the example above, Character X's contribution ceases to matter after the target is reduced to 60 or fewer hit points. While his first 4 hits clearly contribute, he could potentially make 5 more attacks that do not.

Frank is right that there will be different victory conditions outside of hit point eradication - addressing SoD does not move you appreciably closer to the end goal.

Imagine a magic missile wizard as our Character X. Character Y has set a trap that will remove the opponent from combat (either a pit or a hanging snare). It doesn't matter how much damage character X deals - as soon as Character Y lures or pushes the opponent into the trap, the opponent will be defeated.

Ultimately to really decide if this is something you want to push generally, you may have to review your victory conditions.

In our Heartbreaker, there is a status condition of 'wounded' that gives you a penalty on your saving throws. Enough hit point damage can impart the condition 'wounded' making other abilities more effective. Sometimes it is faster to continue using hit point attacks on a wounded character (in fact, usually) but there are times using an ability becomes a better option because of the penalty. I wouldn't go so far as to say it 'solves' the problem, but it helps. Similarly, putting a scaling HP cap on who you can target with a SoD may help - it won’t eliminate the problem, but it may reduce it to the point that nobody feels 'small in the pants'.

[deaddmwalking]

So am I the only one who thinks not having everyones abilities always stack linearly towards victory might be a good thing? It makes focus firing less rewarding and allows more diversity in tactical options.

I don't think you're the only one. Honestly, I don't think anyone wants to eliminate multiple victory conditions. Essentially, the argument has been made that if two or more people are moving toward the same victory condition (specifically 'murdered') ought they not move along the same track.

I think there's room for that based on personal preference.

The larger question is about 'save or suck'. If Finger of Death either deals hit point damage (Paizo's 'solution') or has a hit point threshold (the 'solution' I discussed above), that works with minimal changes to the game. In 3.x, sleep has a hit point cap, so already works that way. The larger question then - should that be the model for all 'end combat' spells. Like, should there be a hit point cap on dominate?

Hit Dice caps and Hit Point caps work slightly differently in that you can erode hit points to make a spell effective against a target otherwise immune. Off hand, I think replacing HD limits with HP thresholds is ultimately a good idea.

[zugschef]

Only if Character X does the full 100 hp of damage does the incremental attack actually contribute to the If, on the other hand, Character Y can only use his SoD based on the opponents total remaining hit points, Character X can potentially contribute even if Player Y is ultimately successful. If Player Y can use his SoD on an opponent with up to 10hp/lvl and is currently sixth level, the opponent could not be defeated without the contribution of Character X.

How is that a unified mechanic?