Ok, so this is a huge throwback to AD&D manuals I read as a kid, but there was a section in the DMG for bonus xp given to players who just go above and beyond. This is more than just "The rogue gets 1000xp bonus for good rolls on disabling all the traps." It's more like, "The paladin rallied the townspeople (using their Cha check) and the townsfolk reinforced the village against oncoming bandits." So the player gets an extra 500xp from the ensuing battle.
Does anyone use rewards like this?
On a related note, does anyone use spontaneous damage to simulate realistic fatal/nonfatal damage? Had a friend who claims (3 other witnesses confirm) he triple-critted his lvl 3 rogue in an encounter with 2 hill giants. He basically snuck around, jumped to a giant's back, brained him with a dagger through the skull, vaulted to the other, then blinded one eye and landed (mostly) unharmed. The fight started with 1 dead and 1 half-blind giant.
To get to my point, I LOVE playing manipulative assassin types, but I find daggers are lackluster in damage. If a player legitimately snuck up behind even a key character and delivered an attack, would you grant them nearly or even totally fatal damage?
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
Love granting xp for interesting/entertaining/saved the day/clever thinking. Helps influence players to want to do so.
IF they roll the damage = his hit points then yep the character is dead right out of the gate, whether he is important or not. If they don't roll that much damage, then nope not dead.
I always feel like if you can get into a position where you have a knife to someone's head/neck/vital organ/super squishy bit and they STILL don't know you're there, it's a pretty safe bet that you will be dropping some truly catastrophic damage. I just don't feel like a crit or sneak attack is the only time to grant instantly lethal damage.
If a wizard drops a fireball in a cabin doorway, it's a safe bet the place is coming down in an inferno. If a monk delivers an amazing combo of attacks via flurry of blows (all hit, spends all Ki, and rolled damage is over 80% of max), I feel like someone is either dead or instantly incapacitated. In the past, if someone lays out a well-executed attack strategy, I'll typically bump off a couple enemies as a bonus (or whatever is reasonable).
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Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
A crit is an indication of actually hitting that vital organ while a normal attack isn't. Also most people (the kind that PCs generally find themselves attacking) are wearing armor which makes reaching those vital areas impossible and monsters have an anatomy that the pc isn't normally familiar with enough to get those kinds of blows in.
Essentially sneak attack damage is there because the target was unaware, crit damage is there to explain hitting a vital organ.
Granted you are free to say that someone automatically dies, but that would normally apply to normal people so....
If you walk up and sneak attack the baker you are going to kill them outright because they have like 2 hp.
If you walk up and try to sneak attack the plate wearing city guard who has trained against such things his entire life, even unaware you probably aren't going to be able to take the time to get to a vital organ.
Hence the people who die fast have no class levels. This can be anyone, even the king or a council member.
A crit is an indication of actually hitting that vital organ while a normal attack isn't.
Not really. The abstraction of HP makes it so that the only attacks which are actually meant to be described as genuine wound caused by weapon are those which reduce a creature to zero hit points, and even then it's not assuredly of "you got stabbed in the liver" severity in description.
In fact, as long as a character doesn't end up dead, the game doesn't actually enforce any particular attack result meaning any particular sort of thing - they can all be lucky narrow misses, blows absorbed by armor, minor scrapes and bruises, and so forth, even if you end up on the floor making death saves because you ran out of HP.
Hp is an abstract concept, so 1hp is not a minor knife wound so much as an incremental step toward unconsciousness/death. Unless we are talking about fully plated individuals, there is typically some large gap in armor: no helmet, no mail coverage over joints, etc. As a result, enemies not actively engaged in combat are susceptible to at least 1 good shot to these exposed areas. Surprise rules and Sneak Attacks do a good job accounting for this. But the classes with no bonus should be allowed at least max damage.
Pulling from a background in Longsword fencing, i can say that the hp system is actually very realistic. Search Youtube for "German Longsword" and you will find 1000 videos of fights lasting only seconds (1-2 rounds at the most). The fights end with potentially fatal strikes to vital areas or draws where both are hit in equally nasty areas. Also, armor has been grossly downplayed by Hollywood. A thick gambeson will easily stop an initial cut or thrust and absorb a respectable amount of blunt force. Mail (chain/ring) will actually stop just about anything, including spears or arrows.
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Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
It makes more sense to say a crit means you hit something vital with your attack than a crit makes you a little more tired.
Not to mention you completely ignore the op. The point was specifically sneaking up behind someone and basically putting a knife to their throat and whether or not that should kill someone outright regardless of their hp totals as far as I understood him.
Hence a crit would account more for actually doing that, but since the person is still standing, didn't quite work for whatever reason.
You are free to say "you sneak up behind the guy and with your crit make the guy really tired" or some other description, but that really doesn't make sense at all given the situation.
Further any time poison is used you technically are actually inflicting wounds on the person even if it's only 1hp because that's how poison works.
The abstraction of hp works in the middle of combat when poison isn't concerned. But it less applies when you specifically sneak up and intend to kill someone.
In fact how in the world would you ever explain a sneak attack in abstract terms of not actually hitting the person causing a wound? Especially with poison involved.
My point was really more, the 1 hp guys are the type that end up dead from a sneak attack while those with significantly more survive for some reason. That could be explained as hitting the armor or something else causing you to not quit get that vital organ you were hoping to. In otherwords actually using the abstract nature of hp that you guys seem to think I forgot about.
I could certainly see how Sneak Attack (rogue specific) works for an opportunistic backstab at an exposed area. However, the above hit the nail on the head. If you are in a position to deliver a fatal wound with a statistically inferior weapon (i.e. dagger), then fatal is fatal. When you are unseen and within arms-reach, you can essentially choose your target.
The opponent may get a sixth sense of danger (this does happen after all), so I can see making an attack roll. Maybe on a hit with 50% or more rolled damage, the weapon is an auto-crit?
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Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
In fact how in the world would you ever explain a sneak attack in abstract terms of not actually hitting the person causing a wound? Especially with poison involved.
Imagine you are watching a movie or TV show. In this show, you see a bad guy with an obviously poisoned knife sneaking up on the good guy on a train. At the last possible second, the good guy spots something moving in the reflection on a window, and the bad guy stabs at him with the poisoned knife. However, it only cuts the good guy's jacket, and then the two are locked in a dangerous wrestling match, each trying to turn the poisoned knife on the other, with numerous of those moments that always show up in this kind of scene where someone actually manages enough control of the weapon to stab at the other person but they narrowly wiggle out of the way - until someone finally doesn't, and the fight is over.
That scene, or scenes like it, is how you explain the added damage of a sneak attack and/or poison - because just knowing that knife is poisoned tells your brain that each and every one of those almost-stabs is "he nearly just killed that guy" more so than it is "he completely missed so the poison isn't actually making this seem more dangerous."
And that's how abstract hp actually work, with the only time that it actually "makes more sense to say X" being when someone actually ends up dead and it finally making more, rather than equal or less, sense to say they really did get stabbed.
So if I'm understanding the arguments above, hp is a good measure of potentially non-lethal damage or combat situations where likelihood of near-misses is the same as mortal wounds?
I suppose it is just DM discretion regarding instant-death attacks. Assassinations can be possible through a simple placement of a knife, but the grand puppetmaster (the DM) needs to determine whether it actually happens.
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Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
Problem is poison has affects, not just increased damage, that may require actually penetrating the skin, so you can't just rule it as cutting the jacket, because that doesn't explain why the poison is affecting you. Sure that could work with poison that is pure damage, but not the ones that cause affects, unless you really think its possible to become stunned/slowed/etc. from a cut to your jacket. Does jackets get a con check too?
So if I'm understanding the arguments above, hp is a good measure of potentially non-lethal damage or combat situations where likelihood of near-misses is the same as mortal wounds?
I suppose it is just DM discretion regarding instant-death attacks. Assassinations can be possible through a simple placement of a knife, but the grand puppetmaster (the DM) needs to determine whether it actually happens.
By default HP is an abstraction of many things occurring during battle. When you "hit" someone with a sword attack, it doesn't mean that you physically stab them, it could mean the blow hit their armor and was hard enough to cause them to lose their breath for a second or two or possibly broke a rib. Its really only at the end, the last few hp that your life is in danger. (This also explains why in 5th there is no nonlethal damage, because all damage prior to that final hit isn't lethal, it just hurts a lot or exhausts you or something like that.
As far as I'm aware there is nothing in the 5th edition of d&d to allow you to sneak up and auto-kill a 100 hp monster/person. To be fair, almost everyone you encounter should have like 2 or 3 hp, not 100, so assassinating almost everyone in the village is possible, just probably not the archmage, or the dragon pretending to be human, or the highly trained fighter, etc. Of course the dm is free to allow this if they want.
Problem is poison has affects, not just increased damage, that may require actually penetrating the skin, so you can't just rule it as cutting the jacket, because that doesn't explain why the poison is affecting you. Sure that could work with poison that is pure damage, but not the ones that cause affects, unless you really think its possible to become stunned/slowed/etc. from a cut to your jacket. Does jackets get a con check too?
Now you seem to be being intentionally obtuse. Of course a different situation would be likely to have a different description - but even when dealing with poison that has non-damaging effects, an attack doesn't actually have to be described a specific way. Since poison can, cinematically speaking, be delivered by nothing more than the faintest scratch, one doesn't have to have been skewered by a poisoned dagger to be affected by the poison on the blade.
Getting hit with a poisoned weapon and succeeding at your save can, thanks to the abstract nature of D&D's combat resolution system, mean the weapon didn't actually wound you. And I think that is the direction that most descriptions of attacks should lean, unless the group in question has done some serious house-ruling to the recovery system, so that what gets described as a result of an attack today isn't making less sense given the target's state the following day.
If you are making a con save, it really doesn't make any sense the weapon didn't hit you. Sure, it could have just scratched the skin, but still, that is a hit to you. I'm not saying you have to get full on stabbed, but at the very least you did penetrate skin.
Further the whole point is that sneak attack + crit, really is best described as actually hitting skin. Sneak attack - crit, maybe does allow it to be more abstract as to what happens.
There is just no believable way to say you get poisoned but the blade didn't hit you at all. Even just making a con save is a sign something is actually in your system.
Also just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they are being obtuse. It means they don't agree with you. It makes absolutely positively zero sense that you got poisoned from a blade that didn't hit you and made a con save for poison that wasn't in you to begin with. That makes no sense at all whatsoever.
Just to clarify, when did poison come into the conversation? I was only talking about damage cause solely by a weapon.
To clarify another point, we keep using the term "sneak attack", but I just want to understand, are we talking about a Surprise Attack or a rogue's Sneak Attack? A fighter can get a good roll to sneak behind an enemy and deliver a "sneak attack" during the surprise round.
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Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
I was simply making a point that Poison by its very nature, demands the target to actually have some type of damage to the flesh, even if it is just a small cut, as normally hp is abstract and doesn't mean you make physical contact with the person on a successful hit. Though certain rules, abilities, magic items, poison, etc. may by their very nature require actually connecting/cutting the target. So in general a rogue's sneak attack does not necessarily make contact with the person, in the abstract nature of hp. Though I would personally say it makes most sense for a sneak attack to actually connect, the rules don't specifically require it per se. So I realize you were specifically only talking about damage from a weapon, and in that regard the attack doesn't imply by necessity that the attack actually hit the opponent. Basically, in D&D, losing hp is not losing health per se. You don't have say 100 health. Hit points are an abstraction that includes things like endurance, fatigue, etc. Not just the life force a person has. So when you get into the Rogue's sneak attack and critical hits is more when I'm claiming you get to physically hurting someone, though a rogue's sneak attack need not actually land a hit. I brought up poison as an exception to this abstractness of hp, as Poisons require you to actually make contact with the skin. I basically was trying to be thorough and point out while generally speaking attacks don't actually hit the opponent by necessity until they start getting low on hp, that there are some exceptions which do require a hit earlier in the fighting cycle. None of this means you are more likely to instantly kill someone, as I think that should be avoided.
Sorry about my confusion, only a rogue can sneak attack. Anyone else simply sneaks up and attacks. I feel like what applies outside of combat should also generally apply inside of combat as well. I feel like giving other classes additional damage or auto-kill properties for sneaking and attacking infringes on the rogue's only real combat trick. And that really should be something the rogue is good at via sneak attack damage. If you have people auto-die outside of combat, you will find your players always attempting to get people outside of combat, and sneaking up behind the person to auto-kill them. or allow it to happen in combat, but that means the wrong is probably going to be auto-killing a lot of bad guys. Or you allow it outside of combat, and not inside of combat which just seems odd.
Oh yeah I had really only intended the instant-kill concept to be a result of either out-of-combat attacks or very well coordinated damage from the party (skirmish a giant into a canyon, trip him with a ditch, then drop a boulder on him).
In actual combat, rogues exclusively benefit from sneak attacks. Fighters hold the line and wizards send the firepower.
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Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
Oh yeah I had really only intended the instant-kill concept to be a result of either out-of-combat attacks or very well coordinated damage from the party (skirmish a giant into a canyon, trip him with a ditch, then drop a boulder on him).
In actual combat, rogues exclusively benefit from sneak attacks. Fighters hold the line and wizards send the firepower.
The primary problem I see with out of combat insta-kills is that the party will attempt to remain out of combat long enough for an invisible party member to sneak up and insta-kill the person.
I am a little late to this party so bear with me while I get caught up. To answer the original question, I also award spot awards of bonus XP for clever ideas, good role-playing (not acting or speaking in character), or even just making a great die roll at a critical time to save the day or rally the troops etc. I think it is a great incentive for players to think like their characters and step outside their comfort zones. I tend to award these based on the player, so what might be a brilliant idea from player A and earn a bonus would not be a brilliant idea from player B if player B has shown some exceptional creative problem solving in the past let's say.
The issue I have with HP is the sudden death syndrome of the whole thing. At 1 HP you are fighting like a champ at 0 you are dead. So I use a grit and flesh variant that presents a gradual decline it takes a little more work but my players know that when they hit 0 they are really dead and it makes them focus.
As for the insta-kill thing, I have only seen that rule back in the old first edition days for a defenseless foe. I am not sure if it is still in the rules but I still use it because it makes sense.
Well that is all I go.
J
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As for me, I choose to believe that an extinct thunder lizard is running a game of Dungeons & Dragons via Twitter!
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Ok, so this is a huge throwback to AD&D manuals I read as a kid, but there was a section in the DMG for bonus xp given to players who just go above and beyond. This is more than just "The rogue gets 1000xp bonus for good rolls on disabling all the traps." It's more like, "The paladin rallied the townspeople (using their Cha check) and the townsfolk reinforced the village against oncoming bandits." So the player gets an extra 500xp from the ensuing battle.
Does anyone use rewards like this?
On a related note, does anyone use spontaneous damage to simulate realistic fatal/nonfatal damage? Had a friend who claims (3 other witnesses confirm) he triple-critted his lvl 3 rogue in an encounter with 2 hill giants. He basically snuck around, jumped to a giant's back, brained him with a dagger through the skull, vaulted to the other, then blinded one eye and landed (mostly) unharmed. The fight started with 1 dead and 1 half-blind giant.
To get to my point, I LOVE playing manipulative assassin types, but I find daggers are lackluster in damage. If a player legitimately snuck up behind even a key character and delivered an attack, would you grant them nearly or even totally fatal damage?
Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser
Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale
Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
Love granting xp for interesting/entertaining/saved the day/clever thinking. Helps influence players to want to do so.
IF they roll the damage = his hit points then yep the character is dead right out of the gate, whether he is important or not. If they don't roll that much damage, then nope not dead.
I always feel like if you can get into a position where you have a knife to someone's head/neck/vital organ/super squishy bit and they STILL don't know you're there, it's a pretty safe bet that you will be dropping some truly catastrophic damage. I just don't feel like a crit or sneak attack is the only time to grant instantly lethal damage.
If a wizard drops a fireball in a cabin doorway, it's a safe bet the place is coming down in an inferno. If a monk delivers an amazing combo of attacks via flurry of blows (all hit, spends all Ki, and rolled damage is over 80% of max), I feel like someone is either dead or instantly incapacitated. In the past, if someone lays out a well-executed attack strategy, I'll typically bump off a couple enemies as a bonus (or whatever is reasonable).
Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser
Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale
Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
A crit is an indication of actually hitting that vital organ while a normal attack isn't. Also most people (the kind that PCs generally find themselves attacking) are wearing armor which makes reaching those vital areas impossible and monsters have an anatomy that the pc isn't normally familiar with enough to get those kinds of blows in.
Essentially sneak attack damage is there because the target was unaware, crit damage is there to explain hitting a vital organ.
Granted you are free to say that someone automatically dies, but that would normally apply to normal people so....
If you walk up and sneak attack the baker you are going to kill them outright because they have like 2 hp.
If you walk up and try to sneak attack the plate wearing city guard who has trained against such things his entire life, even unaware you probably aren't going to be able to take the time to get to a vital organ.
Hence the people who die fast have no class levels. This can be anyone, even the king or a council member.
Not really. The abstraction of HP makes it so that the only attacks which are actually meant to be described as genuine wound caused by weapon are those which reduce a creature to zero hit points, and even then it's not assuredly of "you got stabbed in the liver" severity in description.
In fact, as long as a character doesn't end up dead, the game doesn't actually enforce any particular attack result meaning any particular sort of thing - they can all be lucky narrow misses, blows absorbed by armor, minor scrapes and bruises, and so forth, even if you end up on the floor making death saves because you ran out of HP.
Hp is an abstract concept, so 1hp is not a minor knife wound so much as an incremental step toward unconsciousness/death. Unless we are talking about fully plated individuals, there is typically some large gap in armor: no helmet, no mail coverage over joints, etc. As a result, enemies not actively engaged in combat are susceptible to at least 1 good shot to these exposed areas. Surprise rules and Sneak Attacks do a good job accounting for this. But the classes with no bonus should be allowed at least max damage.
Pulling from a background in Longsword fencing, i can say that the hp system is actually very realistic. Search Youtube for "German Longsword" and you will find 1000 videos of fights lasting only seconds (1-2 rounds at the most). The fights end with potentially fatal strikes to vital areas or draws where both are hit in equally nasty areas. Also, armor has been grossly downplayed by Hollywood. A thick gambeson will easily stop an initial cut or thrust and absorb a respectable amount of blunt force. Mail (chain/ring) will actually stop just about anything, including spears or arrows.
Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser
Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale
Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
It makes more sense to say a crit means you hit something vital with your attack than a crit makes you a little more tired.
Not to mention you completely ignore the op. The point was specifically sneaking up behind someone and basically putting a knife to their throat and whether or not that should kill someone outright regardless of their hp totals as far as I understood him.
Hence a crit would account more for actually doing that, but since the person is still standing, didn't quite work for whatever reason.
You are free to say "you sneak up behind the guy and with your crit make the guy really tired" or some other description, but that really doesn't make sense at all given the situation.
Further any time poison is used you technically are actually inflicting wounds on the person even if it's only 1hp because that's how poison works.
The abstraction of hp works in the middle of combat when poison isn't concerned. But it less applies when you specifically sneak up and intend to kill someone.
In fact how in the world would you ever explain a sneak attack in abstract terms of not actually hitting the person causing a wound? Especially with poison involved.
My point was really more, the 1 hp guys are the type that end up dead from a sneak attack while those with significantly more survive for some reason. That could be explained as hitting the armor or something else causing you to not quit get that vital organ you were hoping to. In otherwords actually using the abstract nature of hp that you guys seem to think I forgot about.
I could certainly see how Sneak Attack (rogue specific) works for an opportunistic backstab at an exposed area. However, the above hit the nail on the head. If you are in a position to deliver a fatal wound with a statistically inferior weapon (i.e. dagger), then fatal is fatal. When you are unseen and within arms-reach, you can essentially choose your target.
The opponent may get a sixth sense of danger (this does happen after all), so I can see making an attack roll. Maybe on a hit with 50% or more rolled damage, the weapon is an auto-crit?
Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser
Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale
Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
So if I'm understanding the arguments above, hp is a good measure of potentially non-lethal damage or combat situations where likelihood of near-misses is the same as mortal wounds?
I suppose it is just DM discretion regarding instant-death attacks. Assassinations can be possible through a simple placement of a knife, but the grand puppetmaster (the DM) needs to determine whether it actually happens.
Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser
Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale
Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
Problem is poison has affects, not just increased damage, that may require actually penetrating the skin, so you can't just rule it as cutting the jacket, because that doesn't explain why the poison is affecting you. Sure that could work with poison that is pure damage, but not the ones that cause affects, unless you really think its possible to become stunned/slowed/etc. from a cut to your jacket. Does jackets get a con check too?
If you are making a con save, it really doesn't make any sense the weapon didn't hit you. Sure, it could have just scratched the skin, but still, that is a hit to you. I'm not saying you have to get full on stabbed, but at the very least you did penetrate skin.
Further the whole point is that sneak attack + crit, really is best described as actually hitting skin. Sneak attack - crit, maybe does allow it to be more abstract as to what happens.
There is just no believable way to say you get poisoned but the blade didn't hit you at all. Even just making a con save is a sign something is actually in your system.
Also just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they are being obtuse. It means they don't agree with you. It makes absolutely positively zero sense that you got poisoned from a blade that didn't hit you and made a con save for poison that wasn't in you to begin with. That makes no sense at all whatsoever.
Just to clarify, when did poison come into the conversation? I was only talking about damage cause solely by a weapon.
To clarify another point, we keep using the term "sneak attack", but I just want to understand, are we talking about a Surprise Attack or a rogue's Sneak Attack? A fighter can get a good roll to sneak behind an enemy and deliver a "sneak attack" during the surprise round.
Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser
Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale
Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
I was simply making a point that Poison by its very nature, demands the target to actually have some type of damage to the flesh, even if it is just a small cut, as normally hp is abstract and doesn't mean you make physical contact with the person on a successful hit. Though certain rules, abilities, magic items, poison, etc. may by their very nature require actually connecting/cutting the target. So in general a rogue's sneak attack does not necessarily make contact with the person, in the abstract nature of hp. Though I would personally say it makes most sense for a sneak attack to actually connect, the rules don't specifically require it per se. So I realize you were specifically only talking about damage from a weapon, and in that regard the attack doesn't imply by necessity that the attack actually hit the opponent. Basically, in D&D, losing hp is not losing health per se. You don't have say 100 health. Hit points are an abstraction that includes things like endurance, fatigue, etc. Not just the life force a person has. So when you get into the Rogue's sneak attack and critical hits is more when I'm claiming you get to physically hurting someone, though a rogue's sneak attack need not actually land a hit. I brought up poison as an exception to this abstractness of hp, as Poisons require you to actually make contact with the skin. I basically was trying to be thorough and point out while generally speaking attacks don't actually hit the opponent by necessity until they start getting low on hp, that there are some exceptions which do require a hit earlier in the fighting cycle. None of this means you are more likely to instantly kill someone, as I think that should be avoided.
Sorry about my confusion, only a rogue can sneak attack. Anyone else simply sneaks up and attacks. I feel like what applies outside of combat should also generally apply inside of combat as well. I feel like giving other classes additional damage or auto-kill properties for sneaking and attacking infringes on the rogue's only real combat trick. And that really should be something the rogue is good at via sneak attack damage. If you have people auto-die outside of combat, you will find your players always attempting to get people outside of combat, and sneaking up behind the person to auto-kill them. or allow it to happen in combat, but that means the wrong is probably going to be auto-killing a lot of bad guys. Or you allow it outside of combat, and not inside of combat which just seems odd.
Oh yeah I had really only intended the instant-kill concept to be a result of either out-of-combat attacks or very well coordinated damage from the party (skirmish a giant into a canyon, trip him with a ditch, then drop a boulder on him).
In actual combat, rogues exclusively benefit from sneak attacks. Fighters hold the line and wizards send the firepower.
Characters:
Grishkar Darkmoor, Necromancer of Nerull the Despiser
Kelvin Rabbitfoot, Diviner, con artist, always hunting for a good sale
Bründir Halfshield, Valor Bard, three-time Sheercleft Drinking Competition Champion, Hometown hero
I am a little late to this party so bear with me while I get caught up. To answer the original question, I also award spot awards of bonus XP for clever ideas, good role-playing (not acting or speaking in character), or even just making a great die roll at a critical time to save the day or rally the troops etc. I think it is a great incentive for players to think like their characters and step outside their comfort zones. I tend to award these based on the player, so what might be a brilliant idea from player A and earn a bonus would not be a brilliant idea from player B if player B has shown some exceptional creative problem solving in the past let's say.
The issue I have with HP is the sudden death syndrome of the whole thing. At 1 HP you are fighting like a champ at 0 you are dead. So I use a grit and flesh variant that presents a gradual decline it takes a little more work but my players know that when they hit 0 they are really dead and it makes them focus.
As for the insta-kill thing, I have only seen that rule back in the old first edition days for a defenseless foe. I am not sure if it is still in the rules but I still use it because it makes sense.
Well that is all I go.
J
As for me, I choose to believe that an extinct thunder lizard is running a game of Dungeons & Dragons via Twitter!