DRAKONAIS'S PROFILE

Haha that's right Avee. And yeah, while I was pretty sure I'd be in the clear using a word from the dictionary, his advice boiled down to "Even if you'd win in the end, you wouldn't want to spend the legal fees to get there."

Thanks for voting guys! Really appreciate your help.

LockeZ, I think the expectation bit is spot-on. As long as the player has a grasp of what to expect, it's not an unpleasant experience. I feel like the 5% chance to 'Miss' is something of an artifact -- the intention to add some variation to the outcome of an attack is a good, but the result (to deal zero damage) isn't. I've personally witnessed people play old RPGs of mine and get dealt a 'Miss'. It felt bad to watch them struggle and I didn't really have an explanation for why that should be a random punishment.

And GRS, I definitely prefer the chance of half damage over missing. Honestly, even 1 damage is preferable, even though it's effectively a miss. There's something so heartbreaking about doing zero damage.

In every game I've played since childhood, nothing has frustrated me more than a basic attack missing the target. I don't believe it adds anything enjoyable to the experience. It doesn't mean my tactics were necessarily at fault, it only means that a random roll of the dice have, at best, caused a turn of delay, and at worst, caused me to take more damage than I was counting on and lose the battle.

I'm definitely not opposed to variable damage in the mix, and for to some attacks doing less damage to certain enemies (especially when those resistances are opaque). In the game I'm working on currently, it's impossible to miss -- if you time the hit correctly, you can only do EXTRA damage. Enemies can still miss their attacks against you though.

What do you think? Is there a good reason to have simple attacks miss?