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[Bohandas]

I always thought that strength adding to to-hit rolls was stupid too.

[EnigmaticHat]

I kinda tried to make a homerule about strength only affecting your to hit against opponents in heavy armor, and dex in all other cases, but never actually got around to implementing it in a game, and there would be all these edge cases anyway.

There's also the issue that in some cases your weapon will break before your opponent's armor does.  Or at the very least get seriously damaged and then you're a sad adventurer.

[Criptfeind]

(A bit late, but was following the conversation back a bit and saw this)

Well a big issue with point buy is it is easy to have people fall by the wayside.

That's a issue with point buy? That people can be, if no one works with each other to make their character acceptable relative to each other, be left behind. That's a bigger issue then rolling stats where people will definitely get left behind based on luck? (Edit: And if you're playing online people will cheat a ton for?)

[WealthyRadish]

I was driving home today, and had the pleasure of driving next to the most insane and stereotypical redneck driver I've ever seen.

The guy peeled out to make a questionable right turn into the lane next to me, flooring it to avoid the traffic coming behind him. He and his buddy riding shotgun were in this blue late '80s truck with a jacked up suspension and rust coloration, with a rattling engine that made a pop when he floored it.

To make things more interesting, there was some hotdog in a Volkswagen Jetta (a Jetta!) who evidently didn't like the redneck turning in front of him. He naturally guns it and cuts me off (I was going something like 48 mph in a 40 area, so he was probably 55-60) in preparation to pass the redneck. The redneck didn't take kindly to this challenge to his sexual orientation, so he also guns it and they now proceed to race in front of me.

Here I am laughing my ass off at what just happened, and I see the Jetta successfully pass the redneck. In a moment of pure passion, the redneck actually threw a case of Mountain Dew (I shit you not, I recognized the green pattern, it just had to be Mountain Dew didn't it?) OUT THE DRIVER SIDE WINDOW, landing in front of me. I assumed it's empty, and didn't have time to swerve without risking hitting someone, so I just slowed a bit and ran over it.

For frame of reference, I'm driving a beige late '90s Toyota Camry that rides really low to the ground, probably the most unassuming car on the road. To my wonderful surprise, the box actually still had cans of Mountain Dew in it. He wasn't just chucking trash out his window into the street, it was still full of sweet redneck nectar. After the initial explosion and the spray of mountain dew behind me, a ripped up can or some other debris got lodged somewhere and was now making a noise as I continued driving (it sounded just like a blown tire, which was what I was expecting).

I managed to pull into a turning lane ahead and jump out to check the tires, which were actually fine, despite smelling like Mountain Dew. Shortly afterward as I was making the turn whatever it was got dislodged from the wheel well or wherever, and when I got an opportunity to crawl under the car all I found was a scrap of cardboard from the box.

It all just seemed too perfectly redneck to be true, like a spiritual event on the road to Damascus, but with more country music and car damage.

[Orange Wizard]

It all just seemed too perfectly redneck to be true, like a spiritual event on the road to Damascus, but with more country music and car damage.

* Orange Wizard sheds a single tear.

That was so beautiful.

[Avis-Mergulus]

I wonder if he tossed the Dew like an impromptu ballast sack to decrease the weight of his car? Or did he just toss it cause he was pissed?

[Lagslayer]

Sounds like he was trying to hit the other vehicle with it.

[AlleeCat]

Ireland? Are you feeling OK? Maybe you should lay down for a bit.

[Flying Dice]

I always thought that strength adding to to-hit rolls was stupid too.

Eh, it's half of an equation that makes sense. AC is a combination of "How hard is it to hit me?" and "How hard is it to hurt me?" Obviously it would unbalance the way things tend to work out by allowing both STR and DEX to contribute to AB, but like a great many things in 3.5e they sort of mucked it up.

5e does it much better, basically fixing that aspect of the combat system. Basically how it works is this:

Melee weapons: Normally use STR for attack and damage. Finesse is a property attached to weapons (by and large those which could be used with Weapon Finesse in 3.5e, light, rapiers, &c.). Weapons with Finesse can use either STR or DEX for both attack and damage.

Ranged weapons: DEX for attack and damage. Thrown is a property attached to (obviously) thrown weapons, which can use either DEX or STR for both attack and damage.

Another reason why I'm increasingly enamored with 5e.

[BlackFlyme]

That sounds a lot better than what I'm used to playing.

Dex to ranged damage by default would be so nice. The only way you can add anything to ranged weapons is to either get a composite bow or choose a specific class that allows you to add damage.


My mom's attempts at French sound like mocking engrish. She also has a habit of telling her mom everything, even if it's something I'd rather her not tell everyone.

[Sergarr]

It doesn't actually fix the problem with "my weapon +5 works the same against a guy in a heavy armor and a guy who dodges really good", though.

What D&D really needs is to separate the total AC into two parts: the dodging AC (dodging) part and the armor AC part. Sorta like the D&D does already, with natural AC and total AC, only with more granularity.

So, for example, instead of AC 20, you would have DAC 5 and AAC 15. Any attack that roll higher than AAC but lower than AAC+DAC would count as hitting the armor. And then you can have all sort of fun interactions, like having armor-piercing weapons which reduce the AAC or a fast attack style which reduces the DAC at a cost of lowered damage and/or slightly increased AAC, and they would interact differently with characters who rely mostly on dodging or on armor to protect themselves.

It's not like the math for that would be too complicated, and it would help differentiate between the "strong" and "quick" archetypes better, so why isn't this already implemented is a mystery to me.

[Flying Dice]

Probably because it would be adding complexity into a mechanic which already consumes a great deal of time for relatively minor gain.

What it basically means is that you'd need to roll two attack rolls for every attack you make, one to see if you land a hit, and another to see if the hit does damage. Tell me that that wouldn't slow down combat even further, when it's already at the point where a single relatively simple encounter can take 2-3 hours to resolve.

And, frankly, if the players are half-decent at RPing and the DM is half-decent at storytelling, you can achieve the same effect through the fluff. Here are a set of simple examples:

High STR vs. mobility-based AC: The attack covered so much area that it managed to catch the target despite their attempt to avoid it.
High DEX vs. mobility-based AC: Duh. Attacker was more agile than defender.
High STR vs. resistance-based AC: Duh. Attacker was strong enough to overcome defender's defenses.
High DEX vs. resistance-based AC: The attacker was able to find a chink in the defender's defenses or maneuvered them into a disadvantageous position when they attacked.

It's one of those cases where the only reason for the mechanic to exist is to make up for bad RP, and it would add unnecessarily to already rules-heavy and slow-moving combats. It'd be a reasonable houserule for a campaign that was literally just a fight dispenser, I suppose. You could probably include it with other changes to make an interesting sort of gladiatorial arena round-robin game, actually.

[Neonivek]

If you catch them both off guard the person in armor will be harder to hit then the person who dodges.

If you use a sword that only needs to touch the opponent to have an effect, then it will be easier to hit the person in armor then it is hit the person who dodges.

The game assumes that when you "Hit" a person in armor you are landing a good clean blow... and a good clean blow is the same to everyone.

If you want "Tons of types of defense" then what you want to play is 4th edition.

[Redzephyr01]

Decided to check out the Raocow forums. I don't think I have ever seen a community that hostile outside of tumblr, 4chan, or Reddit. I was not expecting that at all.

[Sergarr]

What it basically means is that you'd need to roll two attack rolls for every attack you make, one to see if you land a hit, and another to see if the hit does damage.

So, for example, instead of AC 20, you would have DAC 5 and AAC 15. Any attack that roll higher than AAC but lower than AAC+DAC would count as hitting the armor.

I've already accounted for that issue. You only need a single attack roll, it's just that there's more granularity in the list of possible results. Granted, there are bound to be some edge cases where the system would start to behave weirdly, but it's better that what we have now.

Also, I think I've put them in the wrong order - it should be "when attack is higher than DAC but lower than the sum" that should result in a hit on armor.

If you want "Tons of types of defense" then what you want to play is 4th edition.

Sadly 4th edition is not a role-playing game. It's a wargame that pretends to be a roleplaying game, but it's actually a wargame. It's not useful for modeling adventures which doesn't revolve around "killing mobs", especially the higher-level ones.