D&D is the worst system that exists imo. It has huge fundamental flaws, core mechanics that make no sense (one example: big guy has high AC so bigger person is harder to hit with an arrow than small one.), and then decades of pointless redundant crap thrown on top of it for good measure, scores of feats and spells and classes that are all almost identical but not quite. Literally any other system is superior, and most other systems are just fine. I'm flabbergasted that it's still in use. When I was a kid it was considered a joke. My theory is that in 90's in EU it was regarded as a joke but in USA it persisted and after internet it spread back.
The only metric that matters for a game system is whether people enjoy it or not, and by that metric D&D is a massively successful system that's succeeded in table top and video games. Normally people know that it's a game and not real life, it doesn't have to 100% make sense if people are enjoying themselves. Don't be a stick in the mud.
But would people enjoy another system more? Do people only enjoy DnD because it's the first reasonable system in the genre they tried and don't know how much better it gets?
The grognards aren’t going to like it no matter what but I’m not sure how much this really matters for everyone else once you get to the point that human story telling, lore, etc. is doing most of the things which a player really cares about. Most people I know have generally been moving towards fewer die rolls because everyone thinks it’s about the story, not the simulation. When I think of the other systems I’ve heard people play the appeal was something like a different setting, not fine tweaks on how you handle combat.
cRPGs are interesting because you get less of that color but have the capacity to actually do all kinds of calculations - get rid of a single HP value and track body parts individually, process damage based on location, use complex non-linear calculations, all are orders of magnitude less work than the video effects will run. I think we’ll see more divergence there between what humans enjoy running versus playing if they don’t have to do the math.
I'm going to make a horrifying admission: I still game and run Hero System, a classless, point-buy, effects-based system dating back to the late 1980s' Champions.
The thing that always brings me back to Hero - aside from the infinite flexibility - is the fact that the mechanics separate Accuracy and Penetration. DND in all its incarnations always bugged the hell out of me because of how - *HOW* - a piece of steel means I SOMEHOW MISSED. In Hero, and in all "Armor as Soak" system mechanics, you hit, then the effect has to penetrate.
Good Lord why is this so hard to find in an RPG system.
Anyways, over the . . decades . . I've formulated a bucket list of extreme streamlining for Hero, since newer players aren't super keen on all the "math"[1]. And also, honestly, some of the mechanics beg for streamlining[2]. But Hero Lite, as I've been calling it, has been pretty damn sweet, even if my wife sometimes calls it a "simulator for bleeding to death". So, like real life, then.
And the players just need to track their STRONG (STR/BODY), STAMINA (END/STUN), and how many ACTIONS they got left. We use poker chips. Also sometimes someone's foot gets blown off. I have index cards for that, and also for stuff like "Grenades You Brewed Up in the Pool Supply Store".
Anyway, need to get ready for tonight's Star Wars HERO game. Far more important than mechanics is story, character, and tone. And yknow, everyone has fun, that's all that matters.
[1] For pete's sake it's not a lot of math. It's arithmetic with fractions. Is that hard?
[2] STUN and ENDURANCE have no business being two different attributes. Just use STUN, halve ENDURANCE costs, and call the stat STAMINA.
Is this not a question of how complicated you want to make your game?
I always thought of DND AC as a combination of accuracy and effect. High AC might just mean you get hit but it doesn't do anything, or it could mean you dodge everything, or the attacker whiffs, or some other intervention happened. I've seen DMs do similar.
You want it more complicated, home brew some rules to make it more complicated, right?
I for one don't mind mathy/complicated games, but, as you say, fun should reign.
I guess my real question is, "Why Don't Any of the Lite Systems Use Soak?". You already got two rolls, a hit roll and a damage roll. Make the hit roll actually a roll to hit, and have damage that has to exceed a threshold.
But ok, I don't want to sound like an ignoramus. I get it[1]. It changes the game pretty fundamentally, and totally throws levelled systems under a bus.
Dig it: if your soak and "hit points" go up consistently, it's not going to be long before a lot of damage sources are just meaningless. That cuts into the drama of the game, it actually makes it a different genre; worth noting here that Hero started out as Champions . . a superhero game.
Now my counterargument to THAT - and yes, I am arguing with myself, it's Friday - is that some of the boss monsters in the DND5 module I ran for 4th level PCs had over 200 HP. Two Hundred God Damn Hit Points We're Going to Be Here All Night. So, which is more meaningless: doing 11 HP of Magic Missile to a 200 HP behemoth, or doing nothing at all because he's soaking 11 points of damage? Well, by definition the second one. But the first one can get damn boring if the GM lets it turn into a HP counting contest[2].
And a good GM never lets it come to that.
The encounter is never just a flat grid and a monster, it's a lava river, a waterfall, cliffs, flying mounts, a vat of toxic goo, freezing cold, the deaths of friends. There's also a real time component in addition to the game time: at one hour playtime, the players hear a distant army. Two hours, the ork scouts spot them. Three hours, they see the mass of the army. Etc, etc - the point is, the world moves on with or without the PCs, but the path it takes changes with the actions of the players. Gives the players a sense of danger, urgency, and reinforces the suspension of disbelief since the baddies aren't sitting in a cave waiting to be murdered.
[1] And let's be honest, people that want lite games are going to Fate anyway.
[2] Which - if I'm playing - my Bearbarian Druid is going to win, because damn, that build NEVER runs out of hit points.
My DM will often check the bonus the armor offers and, if the attack was close enough to hit that it was blocked by the armor's bonus, describe the attack as being stopped by the armor. Shields (spell and equipment varieties) work similarly. Otherwise it's dodged.
AC simplifies "harder to hit at all" and "harder to actually damage" into a single stat, which is frankly a positive. It's about simplifying combat enough that you can keep things moving. I've played enough TTRPGs to appreciate simplicity in combat: some developers truly believe that people want to sit around watching other people roll dice and do math for ages. If, for some reason, you only care about hitting a target, and not penetrating their armor or actually damaging them, the DM can always adjust the effective AC accordingly.
And I'd argue that the feats and spells are largely fine. Sure, there's not dramatic variation but that's because in a simple system there's only so much you can do, and DnD has a spell that mechanically covers every such niche. Combine that with the desire to have some mechanically similar but differing in roleplaying implications, and you've got DnD's spellbook.
> AC simplifies "harder to hit at all" and "harder to actually damage" into a single stat, which is frankly a positive.
Agreed. In practice, if you're shot while wearing a bulletproof vest, the bullet isn't penetrating the armor, but it's still doing concussive damage to your skin and organs-- you can even still die from internal bleeding. This varies by caliber, range, penetrative ability of the round, etc.
For D&D, this would be the difference between being shot by an arrow while wearing plated mail, versus taking a cannonball to the chest. The calculation needs to be "was the attack successful" and the technicalities handwaved away. You take damage from the arrow depending on whether it pierces a gap in the armor. You take damage from the cannonball depending on whether it hits you or misses.
> some developers truly believe that people want to sit around watching other people roll dice and do math for ages.
It's cheap and quick to do any number of calculations in CRPGs, but it's a snorefest when you bring that approach to IRL gatherings after everyone's been drinking. At that point you might as well try to play FATAL.
I think a crucial thing in tabletop is not that it's objectively better/easier. Tabletop is also primarily a social activity. So network effects really matter. Getting a friend into tabletop is often D&D; you can write stuff for them and let them pick up on their own pace while they try out wacky fun stuff like be 2 feet tall and roll intimidate vs a dragon.
I don't doubt there are other, easier, more fun tabletop systems. But a system your friends are playing vs a system you'll have to make new friends in is a comparatively massive bar to entry.
"Phoenix Command is essentially a realistic wound ballistics simulator created from the authors' computer models and presented as tabular data in book form."
AC is a reasonable abstraction for the combination of hitting the target and penetrating the armor. Some editions even had touch AC for situations where penetrating the armor was unnecessary.
The real nonsensical part of the D&D system is hit points. Someone hits you in the face, and you take "damage" and lose hit points. As long as you have some HP left, this "damage" is completely harmless and does not affect your ability to fight. If you are a high-level character, you can be punched in the face many times with no adverse consequences. Until you reach 0 HP, which suddenly makes you unable to take any action.
I remember hearing that the AC/HP system was originally borrowed from some miniature wargame involving ironclad warships. It definitely makes more sense in that context than with living creatures.
Also, if I remember correctly, the class/level system was the part of D&D that was considered obsolete in the 90s. Back then, almost everyone was using a system where you developed each skill and ability independently. Then 3e resurrected D&D and classes and levels became popular again.
D&D never made 100% sense, but it has flavor, probably just because of that. AD&D (1st edition) in particular was a vast collection of bizarre and picturesque things which were a disaster design-wise but which we still remember fondly to this day.
(I am in the EU btw. No one I know ever considered it "a joke").
Yeah, this complaint is nonsense. It mechanically nullifies the damage and we colloquially call it a 'miss' because it applies whether someone has armor or not, but how to interpret that depends on the situation.
For example, an Arcane Trickster throwing up a reaction 'shield' spell doesn't cause the hit to miss either, it just was blocked(as it added 5 to AC).
The problem with armor class is that it sort of blends in two concepts of completely missing an attack, and the attack simply not doing any damage.
Generally I've had DM's that understand your characters AC: if you have high AC because you're quick and nimble, it would be some sort of dodge, but if you have high AC because you're huge and wear plate armor, the attack "miss" is treated as if an arrow simply bounced off your armor.
But yeah, the system is generally broken. That's sort of why the devs of Baldurs Gate 3 had to homebrew a lot of fixes, and in general just gave up on a lot of mechanics and can't really implement anything past level 12.
> big guy has high AC so bigger person is harder to hit with an arrow than small one
I'm not aware of any version of D&D where just being bigger makes you harder to hit. In the current (5th edition), I believe size has no effect on chance to hit. In some earlier editions, being bigger makes you easier to hit, and being smaller makes you harder to hit (e.g. 3rd edition: https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm).
