yes but you admit you have to miss 2 or 3 times. which means that regardless you are going to stand there fighting them for a few seconds, you don't automatically know that you can't hit said person by just looking at them and honestly by the times 2 rounds has gone through a fight is usually mostly over.
Here's how I play it as the GM. (Which is virtually identical to how I play the same thing as a player.)
My NPC rolls an 18 and misses the tank. Here is my NPC's reaction:
"Holy s&$$! I just gave it my best shot and did everything nearly perfectly but my attack bounced off him like a dog turd! Crap! Do I want to keep trying to hit this dude when there's a perfectly juicy target over there wiggling his fingers at me?"
NPCs know when they've performed their attack well, just as a QB knows when he's thrown a ball well or a pitcher knows when his fastball was right on the corner.
They are athletes who know what they are doing.
But other GMs can play how you like. My NPCs play like they have an actual lick of sense.
last i checked the big bads couldn't hit the party not the other way around. O.o
The argument was reversed to the PCs. If you look up above, I started talking about the PCs, since you should treat the two the same way.
So my comments have all been that if the big bad can't know what he rolled, then the PCs can't either. And then I proceeded to point out how unsustainable it is that PCs can't know what they rolled. By proving the reciprocal is unsustainable, then I've proved the original position is unsustainable.
Short form of argument, if refusing to allow the PCs to know what they rolled would be bad GMing, then it's bad GMing to hold the NPCs to a different standard.
By pointing out that a single big bad is a bad idea, I'm again proving the reciprocal, since if there are multiple bad guys, then they are indeed even more like the PCs, aware of each other's rolls as well. So after the NPC fighter misses on a 19, the rogue should know he's not going to hit and he should go after someone who looks squishier and bypass the fighter.
First of all a clarification: I DO believe that a "tank" as to pose some kind of a threat to no being ignored.
My point is just on the level of uncertainty on the assessment of 1) the difficulty of hitting him 2) the difficulty of hitting someone else 3) the level of threat posed by the tank 4) the level of threat posed by someone else. Also, there is the issue of the way in which said stuff will vary during combat.
Also, extreme cases, such as you rolling extremely high on the first two hits, WILL give you the idea that the target is at least EXTREMELY difficult to hit. I'm just contesting the notion that you will be able to tell that your 5% chance is different from a 15% before a really long series of hits and misses. If you are saying that a 15% chance is still to low to bother with the enemy, I'll agree with you in most scenarios, even though there are a bunch of other things to consider.
I don't consider it to be 'realism' to play as too stupid to figure out that I, who am a fighter and hit things for a living, am up against something I can't hit after a couple of swings. In real life, I know if I messed up or if I did a good job on something. For example, if I go to throw a basketball at a hoop and I go 5 feet wide, I know that, I don't think 'Oh darn, I thought that would go in, let me try the exact same thing again'. I know if I bounce it off the back of the rim and bounces out of the hoop as well instead of going through. I am able to judge my actions in response to feed back. If I'm a fighter and I completely miss the dragon, then I know I performed poorly. But if I skitter my sword off it's scaly hide two or three times and I never seem to get any penetration, then unless I have a 5 INT, I should be able to realize that my sword is not going to penetrate that scaly hide and I need to do something else. By that token, I also know that if I execute a nearly perfect thrust and the sword bounces off his forehead (roll a 19), then I know I am not going to do any damage unless I get lucky and hit an eye or put it down the back of his throat.
The idea I can bounce it off his forehead (19 roll) and think 'Oops, I messed up' is ludicrous, to me.
The point is in fact that your 19 could have been a 17 or 16 and you would not really know the difference, especially if you factor other bonuses which may obfuscate your perception (like you have a bonus to to hit which you are not used to). Then again you assume there is a static AC, but this is a rule of the game, not something I would regard as realistic (a much more realistic approach would be switching to d10 and rolling for both offense and defense, but it would unbalance the game and would be too slow). Even if you ignore realism and stick to the mechanics of the game, there are quite a few option that can render your assessment unreliable: if you rolled a 20 and the enemy uses a parry (parry, crane style, deflect arrow or something like these) should you run for your life and think that you have no chance to hit?
I'm exaggerating, but there are also plenty of other (each circumstantial but never the less possible) reasons for hitting or missing. Maybe you rolled poorly: you look at how your pal his doing and he is missing too, so you conclude that both of you can't hit. In reality he is good (alignment) and of a particular race and he is fighting against an enemy with a protection from good and favored defense against his race (far fetched? think of it from the BBEG perspective, which was the basis of our argument). This is before factoring sheer luck, which is realistic and can actually come into play in the form of bonuses or hero points.There are plenty of reason for which your assessment can't be so precise as you make it to be: of course as the fight progresses you will have an idea of how strong your enemy AC is, but it's true that bonuses and AC varies from round to round. That you get a +4 to to hit from greater heroism is clear to you as a player, but can your fighter know that it's +4 and not +2 or +6? Can you assess that your to hit does not vary at all when you grow to large size due to opposed effects eliding each other?
Since I've said repeatedly that it would require at least one attack, yes, I agree with that sentiment. I don't think it requires 2 or 3 times, it depends. If I roll a 19 the first attack, then I know I can't hit this guy, it bounced off his forehead.As to the fight being over, that's kind of silly. If I can't hit the guy for 3 rounds, the fight isn't over. Unless you mean there's been a TPK because he can hit us while we can't hit him, and we've been required by the GM to sit there and slog it out for 3 rounds of 2-3 attacks each round missing.
Honestly, the only way I'm not going to twig to the fact I can't hit him after the first round is if (A) the GM is forcing me to not know what I rolled to hit, or (B) I completely flub my rolls by rolling 5's on all my attacks. And if I rolled 5's, I know I messed up my own attacks. But if I see my pal, who's just as good as me, bounce his sword off the thing's forehead, then I still know I can't hit him either, even if I rolled 5's.
Most of this, I've answered just now: as for the fight not being over in 3 round it's true, but I'd like to point out again that not everything will be the same as the beginning. Buffs and debuffs will have come into play, the fighter probably is more of a threat than before, and the wizard has already done his job and it would not be tactically sound to go after him now.
I'm not saying that you don't know anything at all, of course: you can make some informed decisions, I'm just disputing the level of it. 2-3 swings are not enough to assess your ability to hit an enemy except for rare cases, and the more the combat goes on, the less data from previuos rounds will matter.
Also, if your tank buys you 3 rounds of full attacking rage it's still good!
Then again, I've been in fights longer that 4, even longer than 7-8 rounds. But the actual hit&miss took less time: in my groups when you begin to fight for real it's a matter of 3-4 rounds at most. The rest is not useful to gather the kind of data that you are taking into account.
As for knowing what you roll. When playing basketball, there are numerous times where I let the ball go and I already know if it's going in or not. I know when I'm just getting lucky and when I actually made a good shot. Maybe I can't tell the difference between a 17 and 19, but in game terms I can definitely tell the difference between a 19, 11 and 3.
I believe you can tell even better, something like 1 - 2/5 - 6/10 - 11/15 - 16/19 - 20. Still, slightly less than 20% of error, and you play basketball in a fairly relaxing environment. You often hear how fighting people barely know what happened at all, even experienced ones, and they still live in a world with no magic.
I'll give all the respect you want to the high level fighter, as I'm sure his capabilities are on a entirely different plan from even the best fighters IRL, but I'm not going to believe that he will be able to reach the level of precision in assessing his performance that you all are giving him.
A 19 cannot be 'a 17 or even a 16'. A 19 is with a sword a threatened critical hit if it connects. The fact that I threatened a critical (ala hit him in the forehead) yet did no damage at all is a valid feedback that tells me I have no chance of hitting him.
All this comes from trying to put too much realism into the game, which is a major jerk GM move. Every GM I've had who tried to put too much realism into a fantasy game was doing it to jerk around the players, because they sure didn't apply the same code to the NPCs. They somehow knew exactly what defenses the PCs had up before they even cast spells (such as the BBEG switching from fireballs to lightning bolts in the second fight, after we put up energy resistance to fire before attacking him the second time).
I will reiterate, unless you roll all the dice rolls, and don't let the PCs know what they rolled, then the PCs know what they rolled to hit, and know if they did good or bad. This is assumed within the system, it's why certain rolls are specifically called out to be made by the GM behind his screen.
Given that, the NPCs should be given the same information to make informed tactical decisions.
And that would be a terrific tactic too James, and one I heartily agree with, and one that wouldn't work if the characters are treated as too stupid to understand what they are doing.
A friend of mine used to say that the rules of the game are the physics of the game world. They describe how that game world functions at the most basic level, and therefore the characters should be fully aware of them, at least at the functional level. Just as we humans are functionally aware of things like gravity, conservation of motion (things in motion tend to stay in motion, like the drink in your hand when trip), and so on. Some characters have a greater understanding of the rules of the universe (Steven Hawking vs Steven Colbert for example), but they should understand the physics that affect them directly, at least at the level of competence for their job and life.
All these arguments that you don't know how well you did when you attacked simply create the chaos of 'nobody understands the world'. In such a world, you might as well change your attack every round since you can't count on something that worked once working again anymore than something that didn't work not working again.
So out of curiosity do you know if you rolled epicly on stealth? how do you know how well you've hidden? do you also roll for perceptions? Do you just argue that you auto know if you've missed things in the dungeon because you rolled poorly?
I maintain no one ever knows how well they did a job to within a 5% accuracy. You might get a general idea but you don't say "Well that was 5% short of my maximum! better give up!"
Outta curiosity have you ever taken martial arts? If you make a really good swing and fail you don't auto give up and most people don't auto give up. They readjust and try a different type of attack. They go from different angles and look for weak points.
I don't argue they're different i argue that the idea of pcs knowing how well they did to a 5% resolution is a ridiculous assumption.
It is not required for the GM to play the NPC as knowing within a "5% resolution." All they need to know is that they did everything they could about as well as possible, and it still missed. Which is exactly what players know and react to.
Not every NPC will react the same way either, the whole situation has to be role played. The smarter the NPC, the more likely they will adjust their tactics based on their in combat feedback.
While it may be a stretch to assume that an NPC knows to within 5% how effective their attack was, it strikes me as insane for them to have no idea whatsoever. If I slip and fumble my attack (which is a very common interpretation of a roll of a 1) then I'm going to know that I didn't have much shot at hitting my opponent.
Also, the attack round is not meant to represent a single exchange of blows in combat, and it never has been. The attack roll represents the likelihood that during the six seconds of a combat round, an attacker has managed for one of his several thrusts, parries or slashes, to get through the defender's defenses. It is completely reasonable that in a six second period of exchanging blows the attacker could come away thinking "geez! I can't hit this dude!" Six seconds is a long time in combat.
Of course every GM can play how they like. I think the majority of GMs take the approach that an NPC knows roughly how effectively they have pressed their attack, and thus knows how hard it is to injure the other fellow.
You know, just as real combatants do in real life.