What if smacking a guy with a sword wasn't so binary?

[Amechra]

Basically, this is a little bit of musing based off the fact that HP is an abstraction, and that I heard that one of a Fighter's features in one of the Next playtests allowed him to deal damage even if he missed, so...

HP represents not only a person's ability to fight, but also their endurance; in other words, as you are being swung at with swords, you not only get physically injured, but you also lose a little bit of oomph, tiring you out so that your enemy can lay down a final blow.

So, what if any given weapon (or just hand it out via classes) dealt its minimum damage to whoever you are attacking if you missed (not counting stuff like Power Attack; maybe set it to <minimum die roll+Strength Modifier+any enhancement bonus+permanent bonuses from feats>?)? And then, for example, maneuvers could be rewritten to remove saves, and just have their full effects on a hit, and their partial effect on a miss?

Thoughts?

[Sohala]

Interesting.

I am not sure about the full strength, certain feats (and no, I don't have any off the top of my head), maneuver damage, and sneak attack damage (even though it was unmentioned). They just all seem to require a certain level of precision to actually achieve.

Creatures with natural armor should probably get damage reduction if they don't have it already or you just convert natural armor to damage reduction, to account for tough hide with the damage changes.

Then you have miss chances from say fog. Will the misses from this also deal damage or will there be two types of misses, armor class and miss chance?

[Amechra]

I really think that, when you get down to it, Miss Chance should be folded into AC.

I really don't see why they need to be separate rules...

I really just put in full strength as an example; don't have to be like that.

And really, maneuvers was a bad example; you could have an attack that inflicts Frightened on a hit, and Shakened on a Miss, for example.

[Sohala]

I really think that, when you get down to it, Miss Chance should be folded into AC.

I really don't see why they need to be separate rules...

I could see most of them converted to AC, blind is my hang up on the idea though. I suppose it would just give a rather large amount.

I really just put in full strength as an example; don't have to be like that.

And really, maneuvers was a bad example; you could have an attack that inflicts Frightened on a hit, and Shakened on a Miss, for example.

Of course, of course, just with a lack of examples, I assumed the ideas would be a base to start the discussion on.

Frightened and shakened are very good examples of downgrading. One says 'RUN!', the other says 'Wow, that was close.'

[awaken_D_M_golem]

So results like ...

crit + effect
crit
hit + effect
pick hit or effect
hit
subdual hit + effect
subdual hit
damage on miss, or miss + effect
miss
"critical" miss

[Amechra]

Pretty much... though the options would have to be both simple and distinct (no decision paralysis for you, my friend!)

[Unbeliever]

I think there still needs to be the idea of a "miss."  And, consistently dealing damage regardless (or nearly regardless) of your attack roll, just feels weird.  It'd be fine if it was a particular build -- if you put feats, etc. into slowly wearing your enemy down regardless.  It'd also be fine the way 4E did it (in my limited experience with it) where there were some powers that did damage on a miss. 

But, I don't like it as a general matter.  It just goes against the basic logic of the game.  I also don't like shining a spotlight on the wonkiness of hit points if I can avoid it. 

[veekie]

You just need to differentiate between a graze and a clean miss. Clean misses are expected to be fairly uncommon for any serious fighters, I expect the full BAB attack bonus should almost always manage a graze at least.

So, make a second AC threshold, below which is a clean miss.

[Amechra]

Alright, if you would hit their Touch AC, you get a graze effect?

Works for me!