I think you'd have to redesign the system with a different ethos where going after the stats will be a key part of the dynamic. It could work...but that's going to result in quite a few follow on changes as well.
Compare 4E to 5E completely redesigned game. Looking at 5E flaws, its hit point bloat and drawn out combat. Go with lesser amount of hit points and more brutal combat, makes for a more strategic game.
Do you see the flaw in this logic though? Not everything that speeds up combat is good for the game, even if speeding up combat is your goal. As an extreme example, reducing every PC and monster to 1 HP would make combat tremendously faster and very brutal/strategic, but it would also make the game a lot worse.
But a less extreme approach might simply be to reduce monster HP and increase their damage output. That would speed up combat without you needing to bolt on other damage systems and increase the DM's bookkeeping in any way.
Degrading performance is a fun idea when specifically dealing with very large and/or complex creatures. Warhammer 40k and its fantasy counterpart balance "encounters" against monstrous creatures and vehicles by giving them degrading stats to keep them from being too much better than a regiment. However, in the tabletop RPG space, an example of degrading stats might be a submerged giant octopus, and players are fighting its tentacles. Destroying a tentacle reduces the number of attacks the creature has on its turn as well as where it can attack.
Then there is the "bad" type of degrading stat block: The Strahd Zombie. When a Strahd Zombie takes damage, it can lose limbs and max hit points as those limbs animate and become autonomous. Some of these limbs are purely props and other times they are creatures that can attack. However, Strahd Zombies are usually fought in packs. This slows combat down immensely compared to the much more interesting use of degrading stats on a large monster.
Which is to say, degrading stats can make for a fun encounter without slowing down the game if used on large and huge creatures. They just don't work well with your standard run of the mill mob.
I think you'd have to redesign the system with a different ethos where going after the stats will be a key part of the dynamic. It could work...but that's going to result in quite a few follow on changes as well.
Compare 4E to 5E completely redesigned game. Looking at 5E flaws, its hit point bloat and drawn out combat. Go with lesser amount of hit points and more brutal combat, makes for a more strategic game.
My experiences with 4E was that it had considerably more drawn out combat than 5E, thanks to everything but minion enemies having big piles of HP and player characters having very slow damage scaling that absolutely did not keep up with monster durability. Also, combat tended to be extremely boring due to there being almost always only one optimal strategy for a given character to apply to every fight.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Opportunity attacks are part of the reason for stagnant combat. The action economy doesn't always help either, Mearl's is right on bonus actions. How multi-class was set up is a problem. The current issue as I see in 5E is the combat is long, way too long. 5E decided to go with "everyone wins a trophy", here's your 60% hit chance, so lets increase the hit points cut down on the damage and make sure everyone gets a hug at the end of combat. Meanwhile, shorter and more lethal combat would have made people much more happier.
Adding realistic damage seems to pop up every generation, not every version, but every player generation.
To make it practical you need a computer. While back in 1e the home computer was used and people wrote up a program using 5.25" floppy disks; the computer still slowed the game down. Now you have phones that have more computing power then those 1st home computers, but realistic damage has always slowed the game down as inputting the actual damage is a slow spot.
Combat become bogged down, then people start to forget their next action/ and it snowballs to a fight is a long drawn out boring crawl. Historically, the speed is fine when you begin the start and test it simply. But then it is no different then current damage. Once you add enough for realistic somehow, once it is all set up, what makes it realistic, just slows the process.
As I said, it is not the calculations/output. but the input is always the magic bottleneck.
Well its more about WotC giving everyone a trophy at level 1, telling them they are the best, and oh my your character should never die. And go figure, after 7 to 8 sessions players quit. Less is more. But how else are you going to drive people to online character creation tools without having overly complex character creation. And what DM doesn't like seeing 3+ bonus dice being rolled to make sure they always win a skill check. Advantage is a good mechanic to keep. But most of 5E does not lead to longer term campaign play, not at all. Let alone lifetime campaigns.
Opportunity attacks are part of the reason for stagnant combat. The action economy doesn't always help either, Mearl's is right on bonus actions. How multi-class was set up is a problem. The current issue as I see in 5E is the combat is long, way too long. 5E decided to go with "everyone wins a trophy", here's your 60% hit chance, so lets increase the hit points cut down on the damage and make sure everyone gets a hug at the end of combat. Meanwhile, shorter and more lethal combat would have made people much more happier.
Nothing is stopping you from tossing out monsters with higher AC, greater damage, and/or fewer hit points. It really is not all that hard to rebalance encounters - in fact, it is kind of expected as a core DM competency.
Every single D&D system, out of the box, is imperfect, as D&D is not a game with a one-size fits all solution to problems. It is expected - and generally stated in the DMG - that DMs will build encounters to match their players’ expectations for difficulty and length. If you are having problems with monsters not getting hit, having too much HP, not doing enough damage, etc., the solution is not to change the entire system… it is simply to get better at using the existing system so it matches your expectations.
Well its more about WotC giving everyone a trophy at level 1, telling them they are the best, and oh my your character should never die.
The new DMG literally says that death and TPKs are an important and potential part of the game. The idea Wizards does not encourage player death is a pure fiction.
Now, they do acknowledge some groups might want less risky games and encourage that style of play as one of many acceptable options. Which, despite what all the “old school was so hardcore” folks want you to think.. was also explicitly given as advice in the AD&D DMG, which had a full set of recommendations on how to make the game less deadly.
I don't know how your tables work, but level 1 characters die very easily. Also, combat can take a lot longer with lower hit chances. I once had a combat with a roughly 30% hit rate for the pcs due to the monster, and it was pretty tedious rolling and missing so many times.
Well its more about WotC giving everyone a trophy at level 1, telling them they are the best, and oh my your character should never die. And go figure, after 7 to 8 sessions players quit.
WotC never said "your character should never die." Quite the opposite in fact. DMG, "Ensuring Fun For All":
"D&D is a game that has in-world conflicts and mayhem. Certain core elements of the game are difficult to ignore. For example, taking damage isn’t a limit you can work around easily. Similarly, character death is something that happens from time to time, though the game has ways to counteract or avoid it (see “Death” in chapter 3 for suggestions)."
And that entire chapter gives you multiple ways to kill off characters - even the whole party! - while still being fair, and also while keeping the story moving. If you don't want to use any of the advice the game is giving you, that's not a book issue, that's a skill issue.
I am going to have to say, "No" for all of the reasons already mentioned. If you want faster, deadlier combat, there are other more efficient ways of doing that.
The death spiral that would result, would absolutely turn people away.
Ability Damage affects the PCs disproportionately. It will mean death sentences for the PCs, while the monsters - were always meant to die.
It means a ton of extra book-keeping (5e's mission was to reduce the book-keeping required by previous editions).
There is no HP bloat in 5e. A few classes got a minor boost in hp/level in 5e from earlier editions, but then 5e2024 increased the damage output of almost every class and many of the monsters. It is already easy to wipe out a PC in a single round. Unless you're talking about a Totem Barbarian who is resistant to everything, everyone else can be dropped by level appropriate encounters if they get hit. One of my complaints of 5e2024 is that they increased the damage output of too many classes/monsters, while not increasing hp - making everything into a glass cannon.
I could go on, but I think I will just sum things up with, "No - ability damage is not a good idea - it was tried (in a limited form) and abandoned by previous editions for a reason."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
Not a good idea. Players already gripe when I hit them with a stat drain from undead. Back in 1E stat drain was not than powerful as 8-15 in an ability did not change anything. 16 is str was just a +1 damage. Now it is pencils out and gripe.
If you want a more 1e feel, not more dice to your HP after 10. You just get your con bonus. So both and level 10 and level 11 barbarian would have 10d12 plus con.
Traveller does damage to Endurance then to Strength or Dexterity, eventually when all of your physical stats reach 0, you are dead. Traveller is a very fun game, but combat is terrible and quickly results in dead characters. The result is players trying to avoid combat as much as possible therefore making it a game about skills instead of fighting. That is all on purpose though.
I would prefer D&D to keep its current style of combat but also think DM's should find other ways to encourage skill use so that the game is a bit less combat focused.
Okay, you're actually combining several different concepts here, which I'm going to separate out:
1: The game isn't sufficiently lethal
You can absolutely TPK your characters in 5e. You just will have trouble doing it within the encounter building guidelines... but remember that they're guidelines, not hard and fast rules. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing changes to death mechanics to narrow the gap between "0 hp" and "actually dead", at least at higher levels (I mean, high level characters have all these options for raising the dead... might as well give them the opportunity to use them).
2: Death Spiral mechanics increase lethality
Having played in games that have a death spiral mechanic... a lot of them actually reduce lethality, because they encourage running away. If someone's at 1 hit point but figure they can still turn things around with a last mighty effort, they are likely to try it... and if their last mighty effort fails, they die. If, however, you're at -5 to hit and damage (or whatever), you know that your last effort is going to be useless... so you might as well run away. The exception to this is death spiral mechanics that reduce defenses -- but there's no reason to bother, since being at low hit points already reduces your defenses.
3: Attribute damage is a good way to implement a death spiral
Attribute damage was as thing in 3.x. It's gone, and good riddance, because recalculating all your secondary abilities after taking attribute damage was a giant PITA. If you want a death spiral, do something like the fatigue mechanics.
Others have said Traveler has the mechanic you are looking for.
I'm going to say Shadowrun has the mechanic you are looking for. To a different degree HERO games - Champions and Fantasy HERO have the mechanic you are looking for.
Instead of trying to cram something onto D&D, try playing the other games which already have the rules built in. Quite possibly easier to play one of the above than trying to convince people to adapt to a D&D homebrew.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Okay, you're actually combining several different concepts here, which I'm going to separate out:
1: The game isn't sufficiently lethal
You can absolutely TPK your characters in 5e. You just will have trouble doing it within the encounter building guidelines... but remember that they're guidelines, not hard and fast rules. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing changes to death mechanics to narrow the gap between "0 hp" and "actually dead", at least at higher levels (I mean, high level characters have all these options for raising the dead... might as well give them the opportunity to use them).
2: Death Spiral mechanics increase lethality
Having played in games that have a death spiral mechanic... a lot of them actually reduce lethality, because they encourage running away. If someone's at 1 hit point but figure they can still turn things around with a last mighty effort, they are likely to try it... and if their last mighty effort fails, they die. If, however, you're at -5 to hit and damage (or whatever), you know that your last effort is going to be useless... so you might as well run away. The exception to this is death spiral mechanics that reduce defenses -- but there's no reason to bother, since being at low hit points already reduces your defenses.
3: Attribute damage is a good way to implement a death spiral
Attribute damage was as thing in 3.x. It's gone, and good riddance, because recalculating all your secondary abilities after taking attribute damage was a giant PITA. If you want a death spiral, do something like the fatigue mechanics.
Regarding #1 - an easy way to reduce the buffer between 0HP and dead is to attack downed characters. Every instance of damage is a failed death save, while crits are two failures, and plenty of monsters have multiattack. A lot of us don't do that because of concerns of fairness, but it's definitely an option for folks who want more lethal games.
Regarding #2 - the problem is that the OP wants HP damage to cause ability damage, which will reduce both offense and defense in this game since every ability score is tied to a save.
Regarding #1 - an easy way to reduce the buffer between 0HP and dead is to attack downed characters. Every instance of damage is a failed death save, while crits are two failures, and plenty of monsters have multiattack. A lot of us don't do that because of concerns of fairness, but it's definitely an option for folks who want more lethal games.
I want to do that without relying on beating on unconscious people, and in a way that's harder on higher levels than low. For example, a house rule I considered is to just discard the instant death rules -- instead, for every 10 points excess damage, apply one failed death save (so 30 points of overflow damage = dead); this is in addition to the normal 1 failure for any attack on a downed character, but replaces the bonus for critical hits.
This sounds like complexity for the sake of complexity and that is never a good idea. Complexity can be good and can be fun but that complexity is built up from multiple underlying ideas that have been relatively speaking simplified. A big reason why 4E failed is that it had too much complexity from areas that complexity wasn't needed.
If for example you look at weapon attacks in D&D, it's a complex system built up from multiple simple ideas.
Attacks use two rolls, an attack roll and a damage roll. You perform the damage roll only if you pass the attack roll.
Melee uses Strength and Range uses Dexterity, except thrown weapons use Strength and versatile weapons can use Dexterity.
Other effects can add to the attack and damage rolls beyond the primary attribute, like spells, enchantment bonus, proficiency.
etc...
This idea is making players have to constantly recalculate things, and it's pointless, it slows the game down and just drains the enjoyment. Mechanics that are added should remain simple and complexity should come from the synergy of multiple simple ideas rather than just being complex for complexity's sake.
Others have said Traveler has the mechanic you are looking for.
I'm going to say Shadowrun has the mechanic you are looking for. To a different degree HERO games - Champions and Fantasy HERO have the mechanic you are looking for.
Instead of trying to cram something onto D&D, try playing the other games which already have the rules built in. Quite possibly easier to play one of the above than trying to convince people to adapt to a D&D homebrew.
Sorry, I am not suggesting that the OP go play Traveller instead, I was just using it as an example of a game that uses attribute damage and death spiral mechanics.
Though I do recommend the game to everyone in general.
Others have said Traveler has the mechanic you are looking for.
I'm going to say Shadowrun has the mechanic you are looking for. To a different degree HERO games - Champions and Fantasy HERO have the mechanic you are looking for.
Instead of trying to cram something onto D&D, try playing the other games which already have the rules built in. Quite possibly easier to play one of the above than trying to convince people to adapt to a D&D homebrew.
Sorry, I am not suggesting that the OP go play Traveller instead, I was just using it as an example of a game that uses attribute damage and death spiral mechanics.
Though I do recommend the game to everyone in general.
Oh no no I wasn't suggested that you were telling the OP to play something else. _I_was suggesting the OP play something else.
Often times when this sort of thing comes up and somebody (me) suggests playing a different game, some other people call that action rude and unsupportive of the OP. I was basically outing myself as the "villain" and using your post as evidence.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
It does raise the interesting possibility of the digital DM.
I use Improved Intiative for combat tracking. It pulls in the monster stat blocks, I put in the PC stat blocks and for me, I just glance at everyone's HP/ AC and I push the attack buttons to generate attack rolls (with modifiers). Then I record damage to players or NPC's as they happen. I have very little math to do while running combat because it's all built in. It even has timers for status effects such as "Until the end of the PC's next turn" that it automatically tracks for me.
Using something like that where I was able to do the story telling, NPC control, etc, and The Computer did all the work of tracking +'s and -'s and kick out the net modifiers and roll results, I could see this working. I'd still want to tell a player what their net modifier was before they rolled just to avoid people being surprised.
But having played games with lots of modifiers to combat (SR comes to mind from playing 1st ed back in HS), there are so many things to forget/ calculate/ factor that I really don't want to go back to that on my own. I'm here for cool stories and interesting moments, not to do lots of math while people wait (mostly) patiently.
Do you see the flaw in this logic though? Not everything that speeds up combat is good for the game, even if speeding up combat is your goal. As an extreme example, reducing every PC and monster to 1 HP would make combat tremendously faster and very brutal/strategic, but it would also make the game a lot worse.
But a less extreme approach might simply be to reduce monster HP and increase their damage output. That would speed up combat without you needing to bolt on other damage systems and increase the DM's bookkeeping in any way.
Degrading performance is a fun idea when specifically dealing with very large and/or complex creatures. Warhammer 40k and its fantasy counterpart balance "encounters" against monstrous creatures and vehicles by giving them degrading stats to keep them from being too much better than a regiment. However, in the tabletop RPG space, an example of degrading stats might be a submerged giant octopus, and players are fighting its tentacles. Destroying a tentacle reduces the number of attacks the creature has on its turn as well as where it can attack.
Then there is the "bad" type of degrading stat block: The Strahd Zombie. When a Strahd Zombie takes damage, it can lose limbs and max hit points as those limbs animate and become autonomous. Some of these limbs are purely props and other times they are creatures that can attack. However, Strahd Zombies are usually fought in packs. This slows combat down immensely compared to the much more interesting use of degrading stats on a large monster.
Which is to say, degrading stats can make for a fun encounter without slowing down the game if used on large and huge creatures. They just don't work well with your standard run of the mill mob.
My experiences with 4E was that it had considerably more drawn out combat than 5E, thanks to everything but minion enemies having big piles of HP and player characters having very slow damage scaling that absolutely did not keep up with monster durability. Also, combat tended to be extremely boring due to there being almost always only one optimal strategy for a given character to apply to every fight.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Opportunity attacks are part of the reason for stagnant combat. The action economy doesn't always help either, Mearl's is right on bonus actions. How multi-class was set up is a problem. The current issue as I see in 5E is the combat is long, way too long. 5E decided to go with "everyone wins a trophy", here's your 60% hit chance, so lets increase the hit points cut down on the damage and make sure everyone gets a hug at the end of combat. Meanwhile, shorter and more lethal combat would have made people much more happier.
Well its more about WotC giving everyone a trophy at level 1, telling them they are the best, and oh my your character should never die. And go figure, after 7 to 8 sessions players quit. Less is more. But how else are you going to drive people to online character creation tools without having overly complex character creation. And what DM doesn't like seeing 3+ bonus dice being rolled to make sure they always win a skill check. Advantage is a good mechanic to keep. But most of 5E does not lead to longer term campaign play, not at all. Let alone lifetime campaigns.
Nothing is stopping you from tossing out monsters with higher AC, greater damage, and/or fewer hit points. It really is not all that hard to rebalance encounters - in fact, it is kind of expected as a core DM competency.
Every single D&D system, out of the box, is imperfect, as D&D is not a game with a one-size fits all solution to problems. It is expected - and generally stated in the DMG - that DMs will build encounters to match their players’ expectations for difficulty and length. If you are having problems with monsters not getting hit, having too much HP, not doing enough damage, etc., the solution is not to change the entire system… it is simply to get better at using the existing system so it matches your expectations.
The new DMG literally says that death and TPKs are an important and potential part of the game. The idea Wizards does not encourage player death is a pure fiction.
Now, they do acknowledge some groups might want less risky games and encourage that style of play as one of many acceptable options. Which, despite what all the “old school was so hardcore” folks want you to think.. was also explicitly given as advice in the AD&D DMG, which had a full set of recommendations on how to make the game less deadly.
@Portential
I don't know how your tables work, but level 1 characters die very easily. Also, combat can take a lot longer with lower hit chances. I once had a combat with a roughly 30% hit rate for the pcs due to the monster, and it was pretty tedious rolling and missing so many times.
WotC never said "your character should never die." Quite the opposite in fact. DMG, "Ensuring Fun For All":
"D&D is a game that has in-world conflicts and mayhem. Certain core elements of the game are difficult to ignore. For example, taking damage isn’t a limit you can work around easily. Similarly, character death is something that happens from time to time, though the game has ways to counteract or avoid it (see “Death” in chapter 3 for suggestions)."
And that entire chapter gives you multiple ways to kill off characters - even the whole party! - while still being fair, and also while keeping the story moving. If you don't want to use any of the advice the game is giving you, that's not a book issue, that's a skill issue.
I am going to have to say, "No" for all of the reasons already mentioned. If you want faster, deadlier combat, there are other more efficient ways of doing that.
The death spiral that would result, would absolutely turn people away.
Ability Damage affects the PCs disproportionately. It will mean death sentences for the PCs, while the monsters - were always meant to die.
It means a ton of extra book-keeping (5e's mission was to reduce the book-keeping required by previous editions).
There is no HP bloat in 5e. A few classes got a minor boost in hp/level in 5e from earlier editions, but then 5e2024 increased the damage output of almost every class and many of the monsters. It is already easy to wipe out a PC in a single round. Unless you're talking about a Totem Barbarian who is resistant to everything, everyone else can be dropped by level appropriate encounters if they get hit. One of my complaints of 5e2024 is that they increased the damage output of too many classes/monsters, while not increasing hp - making everything into a glass cannon.
I could go on, but I think I will just sum things up with, "No - ability damage is not a good idea - it was tried (in a limited form) and abandoned by previous editions for a reason."
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
Not a good idea. Players already gripe when I hit them with a stat drain from undead. Back in 1E stat drain was not than powerful as 8-15 in an ability did not change anything. 16 is str was just a +1 damage. Now it is pencils out and gripe.
If you want a more 1e feel, not more dice to your HP after 10. You just get your con bonus. So both and level 10 and level 11 barbarian would have 10d12 plus con.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
Traveller does damage to Endurance then to Strength or Dexterity, eventually when all of your physical stats reach 0, you are dead. Traveller is a very fun game, but combat is terrible and quickly results in dead characters. The result is players trying to avoid combat as much as possible therefore making it a game about skills instead of fighting. That is all on purpose though.
I would prefer D&D to keep its current style of combat but also think DM's should find other ways to encourage skill use so that the game is a bit less combat focused.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Okay, you're actually combining several different concepts here, which I'm going to separate out:
1: The game isn't sufficiently lethal
You can absolutely TPK your characters in 5e. You just will have trouble doing it within the encounter building guidelines... but remember that they're guidelines, not hard and fast rules. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing changes to death mechanics to narrow the gap between "0 hp" and "actually dead", at least at higher levels (I mean, high level characters have all these options for raising the dead... might as well give them the opportunity to use them).
2: Death Spiral mechanics increase lethality
Having played in games that have a death spiral mechanic... a lot of them actually reduce lethality, because they encourage running away. If someone's at 1 hit point but figure they can still turn things around with a last mighty effort, they are likely to try it... and if their last mighty effort fails, they die. If, however, you're at -5 to hit and damage (or whatever), you know that your last effort is going to be useless... so you might as well run away. The exception to this is death spiral mechanics that reduce defenses -- but there's no reason to bother, since being at low hit points already reduces your defenses.
3: Attribute damage is a good way to implement a death spiral
Attribute damage was as thing in 3.x. It's gone, and good riddance, because recalculating all your secondary abilities after taking attribute damage was a giant PITA. If you want a death spiral, do something like the fatigue mechanics.
I'm going to be the one to come out and say it.
Others have said Traveler has the mechanic you are looking for.
I'm going to say Shadowrun has the mechanic you are looking for. To a different degree HERO games - Champions and Fantasy HERO have the mechanic you are looking for.
Instead of trying to cram something onto D&D, try playing the other games which already have the rules built in. Quite possibly easier to play one of the above than trying to convince people to adapt to a D&D homebrew.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Regarding #1 - an easy way to reduce the buffer between 0HP and dead is to attack downed characters. Every instance of damage is a failed death save, while crits are two failures, and plenty of monsters have multiattack. A lot of us don't do that because of concerns of fairness, but it's definitely an option for folks who want more lethal games.
Regarding #2 - the problem is that the OP wants HP damage to cause ability damage, which will reduce both offense and defense in this game since every ability score is tied to a save.
#3 is indeed a PITA as mentioned.
I want to do that without relying on beating on unconscious people, and in a way that's harder on higher levels than low. For example, a house rule I considered is to just discard the instant death rules -- instead, for every 10 points excess damage, apply one failed death save (so 30 points of overflow damage = dead); this is in addition to the normal 1 failure for any attack on a downed character, but replaces the bonus for critical hits.
This sounds like complexity for the sake of complexity and that is never a good idea. Complexity can be good and can be fun but that complexity is built up from multiple underlying ideas that have been relatively speaking simplified. A big reason why 4E failed is that it had too much complexity from areas that complexity wasn't needed.
If for example you look at weapon attacks in D&D, it's a complex system built up from multiple simple ideas.
Attacks use two rolls, an attack roll and a damage roll. You perform the damage roll only if you pass the attack roll.
Melee uses Strength and Range uses Dexterity, except thrown weapons use Strength and versatile weapons can use Dexterity.
Other effects can add to the attack and damage rolls beyond the primary attribute, like spells, enchantment bonus, proficiency.
etc...
This idea is making players have to constantly recalculate things, and it's pointless, it slows the game down and just drains the enjoyment. Mechanics that are added should remain simple and complexity should come from the synergy of multiple simple ideas rather than just being complex for complexity's sake.
Sorry, I am not suggesting that the OP go play Traveller instead, I was just using it as an example of a game that uses attribute damage and death spiral mechanics.
Though I do recommend the game to everyone in general.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Oh no no I wasn't suggested that you were telling the OP to play something else. _I_ was suggesting the OP play something else.
Often times when this sort of thing comes up and somebody (me) suggests playing a different game, some other people call that action rude and unsupportive of the OP. I was basically outing myself as the "villain" and using your post as evidence.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
It does raise the interesting possibility of the digital DM.
I use Improved Intiative for combat tracking. It pulls in the monster stat blocks, I put in the PC stat blocks and for me, I just glance at everyone's HP/ AC and I push the attack buttons to generate attack rolls (with modifiers). Then I record damage to players or NPC's as they happen. I have very little math to do while running combat because it's all built in. It even has timers for status effects such as "Until the end of the PC's next turn" that it automatically tracks for me.
Using something like that where I was able to do the story telling, NPC control, etc, and The Computer did all the work of tracking +'s and -'s and kick out the net modifiers and roll results, I could see this working. I'd still want to tell a player what their net modifier was before they rolled just to avoid people being surprised.
But having played games with lots of modifiers to combat (SR comes to mind from playing 1st ed back in HS), there are so many things to forget/ calculate/ factor that I really don't want to go back to that on my own. I'm here for cool stories and interesting moments, not to do lots of math while people wait (mostly) patiently.
"Teller of tales, dreamer of dreams"
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