Well, last night I got myself confused about how combat works.
Take this Dread Wraith:
Against this character I made on Dnd Beyond (Where we will be making all of our characters because they DO THE MATH FOR YOU.)
So, from what I understand from the manual, if the creature wants to attack this Ranger it will roll a d20. Let's say that's a 12.
Now what? Does the Ranger roll to block? Is my creature roll supposed to be higher than that one? I think I need to subtract 2 from my wraith's roll because of the strength modifier but what does the 6 do that's not in parentheses?
I AM SO CONFUSED.
So I messaged Ben.
Thank god for Ben.
He patiently explained that I'm only rolling against the AC either direction. So whoever is attacking is attacking against that armor. I can decide, based on the roll, what the hit looks like but the hit or miss is decided entirely by meeting or exceeding that number or not.
Okay, cool...
OOOOOHHHHH. Nothing I found online explained that in that simple of terms. It just, doesn't mention the number. Which made me thinking I must be missing something.
Thank you Ben, next question...
Cause that makes sense right? Your armor protects you from attack, and you strength protects you as a wrestler, or whatever.
I stand by this. THERE'S A NUMBER RIGHT THERE DOING NOTHING. Why aren't we using it?
I still don't know what a Hit Dice is. The manuals use the phrase but don't actually explain it. But that's a question for another day.
The base numbers are a hold over from old versions where you just rolled 3d6 to get scores - so a 10 is average. Originally the only modifiers were Str, Dex, and Con and they needed lookup tables. There also weren't skills back then. The other modifiers were added in 3rd Ed (I think) along with standardizing the formula. I think all the original numbers do now is give you a minimum - you can't operate with a stat at 0.
ReplyDeleteThe grappling rules have been dumb in every edition, as far as I'm concerned.
Attack roles have also always been weird. Each class used to have a separate lookup table depending on level and target AC. That was standardized in 2nd Ed giving "THAC0" (to hit AC 0). The base AC was 0. Better armor went into the negatives. That was all thankfully fixed in 3rd Ed by making the base 10 and improvements added instead of subtracted.
The rationale given behind no defensive roles was that hit dice (see below) cover this. Fighters have more hit points not because they are necessarily more sturdy but because they are more adept at mitigating damage in fights. Which brings up different headaches when dealing with sneak attacks - why is a fighter better at mitigating damage from an attack they didn't know was happening?
.. I have issues with combat in D&D in general. It is nicely streamlined but seems very disjointed from reality.
Hit dice, in earlier editions at least, were the base die rolled for hit points. It was different for each class/monster. So your Dire Wraith with 171 hp (18d10 + 72) has a hit die of d10. I still think randomizing hit points is bad. 5E seems to use hit dice as tokens somehow also but I only know 3rd Ed and lower.