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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 12:26PM
#51
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Date Joined:
Sep 17, 2012
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I tend to narrate most hits as physical damage and the players seem to enjoy it just fine. Most of their characters are covered in scars from the past battles they've survived. In terms of describing an attack that "should" do more than just damage the character I will usually describe it just that way.
In regards to the two examples given in the OP I would have narrated something along the lines of the hobogoblin taking a barrage of arrows that drove him to the ground. Considering that he didn't attack in the next rounds, I would have described him initially as unmoving as he hits the ground, but slowly picking himself up as the battle progresses. In future attacks, I may even subtract a few points of attack modifier just to represent his near death status. As for the wizard who only takes a single HP damage from an arrow, easy? I would have described a shot where the arrow deflected off his skull, tearing his scalp and maybe even taking a chunk of hair with it. Limited damage, but still representing the strike in a reasonable way.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 2:40PM
#52
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Date Joined:
Aug 26, 2008
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Many other posters have said this, I'm just tossing in a bit more of my flavor. Hit points are mostly just a metagame tool to reflect damage, and how that translates to your game is up to you. There is no inherent value to a hit-point, since someone with 10 hit-points is going to be hurt very badly if they get hit for 23 hit-points worth of damage, while someone with 170 hit-points won't seem to be hurt very much at all by that same amount of damage. This is how I do it:
- Before you're bloodied, the damage you take never (or very rarely) causes actual physical harm. The loss of these hit-points reflect physical exhaustion. You block a heavy blow with your shield which makes your arm ache, your armor absorbs a blow, your barely dodge or block a strike, etc.
- Once you're beyond you're bloodied value, I begin to describe damage as actually causing harm. Cuts, bruises, bloodied noses, etc. The closer you come to having zero hit-points, the more serious it may be.
- Serious damage that is enough to incapacitate someone (such as a deep stab, badly broken bones, hand gets cut off, etc) is usually reserved for when a character is dropped.
It's important to note that we have a cleric in the party. This makes it very easy to have physical damage removed magically when you spend surges during a rest (in role-play terms, the cleric goes around and casts minor healing spells so mend serious injury, so if you almost died the fight before and as such have a bleeding stab-wound in your leg, that is magically closed). This way, you aren't running around the next two or three encounters like the bridge-guarding Knight in Monty Python, spouting blood from stumps. If there is no magic healer (i.e. you have a Warlord as your party's healer, who's healing is really morale-based), you may need a different system.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 6:04PM
#53
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Easiest way to understand it is that a character who's downed isn't necessarily dying or badly hurt, they just look like they may be.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 7:59PM
#54
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Any suggestions for combat description would be much appreciated.
I'm going to disagree with many of the suggestions here; I find that treating damage as anything other than actual injuries is a comical exercise, at best.
D&D is a magical universe; so things like biology don't work exactly as they work in the real world. One of the results of this is that creatures of great experience and power have a remarkable ability to simply repel deadly objects and energy...until their inner reserves run out.
So that 50 fire damage I just took? It'd be a lethal third-degree burn in real life, but because there's something magical about my character's body, it's a mere sunburn. After I kill that dragon and take a five minute breather, it's not even that.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 8:41PM
#55
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Date Joined:
Apr 29, 2006
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Hit points are whatever you want them to be, whenever you want them to be. By extension, damage can be described however is most evocative and makes the most sense to you at the time you are describing it, with no precedence for your descriptions required nor necessary. You can, for example, describe all attacks against you as near misses or grazes except for the times when it would make more sense to describe them as direct hits, then later that same session do the exact opposite, and still be Doing It RightTM.
Further, different preferences of describing hit point and damage can coexist at the same table at the same time to absolutely zero detriment to the methods that others are using. You can, for example, have a wizard that's Made Of Iron with a half-dozen arrows sticking out of his body while the fighter is dodging and parrying every blow until his Plot Armor runs out, and still be Doing It RightTM.
This is the full narrative benefit of having abstracted hit points. The only approach that is "wrong" is the one that makes the game less fun for you and your group.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 9:11PM
#56
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Date Joined:
Apr 16, 2009
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I find that treating damage as anything other than actual injuries is a comical exercise, at best.
That is the strangest statement I've seen on the subject yet.
I once RPed a 4E bard's "Vicious Mockery" as "Hey, I think that hose is about to burst!"
The target was driving a mechanical loading machine (in Eberron) and using it in combat against one of my allies. I scored a hit. The guy started worrying about what hose I was talking about. He lost a bit of confidence in his machine. It made perfect sense.
A while later I used Vicious Mockery to frighten some minions into fleeing. Dead, fleeing, either way they are out of the combat but in some scenarios there are advantages to NOT leaving dead bodies lying around.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 4:14AM
#57
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Any suggestions for combat description would be much appreciated.
I'm going to disagree with many of the suggestions here; I find that treating damage as anything other than actual injuries is a comical exercise, at best.
And I think anyone who would rather have pep talks put limbs back on than learn how contextualization works is a blithering fool, at best.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 8:56AM
#58
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I find that treating damage as anything other than actual injuries is a comical exercise, at best.
That is the strangest statement I've seen on the subject yet.
It's a minority opinion, to be sure, but then nobody's ever accused me of doing everything by the book. 
Any suggestions for combat description would be much appreciated.
I'm going to disagree with many of the suggestions here; I find that treating damage as anything other than actual injuries is a comical exercise, at best.
And I think anyone who would rather have pep talks put limbs back on than learn how contextualization works is a blithering fool, at best.
If you read the rest of my post, you'll notice that I didn't suggest that pep talks have regenerative powers. I didn't mention that I treat 'martial' and 'inspiring word' as misnomers, but if you're interested in how others imagine the game world rather than just throwing insults around, I do.
So way to jump the gun and rant at a fellow gamer. Way to represent the hobby.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 3:00PM
#59
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Date Joined:
Aug 26, 2008
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So that 50 fire damage I just took? It'd be a lethal third-degree burn in real life, but because there's something magical about my character's body, it's a mere sunburn. After I kill that dragon and take a five minute breather, it's not even that.
There's certainly nothing wrong with this. It's just not how I prefer it.
When Aragorn charges the field, were swords bouncing off his skin? or hammers landing on his head so hard it should crack his skull like an egg, but instead bounces off magically? No. He's blocking blows, ducking and weaving, and avoiding damage. The same goes for almost every epic fantasy story or film ever made. This is reflected in both AC/Defenses and Hit-points.
There's nothing wrong with having a 20th level character walk bare-ass naked into an army, and taking stabs to his gut that magically seal up once the sword is pulled out. He's inherently magical in your campaign, it's fine. But a great many people don't like that style, including myself. In fact, I find that style to be comical in anything other than a Vampire: the Masquerade game.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 5:03PM
#60
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So that 50 fire damage I just took? It'd be a lethal third-degree burn in real life, but because there's something magical about my character's body, it's a mere sunburn. After I kill that dragon and take a five minute breather, it's not even that.
There's certainly nothing wrong with this. It's just not how I prefer it.
That's cool; I don't mind others describing damage however they wish. If my players want to come up with a more 'realistic' explanation for how they somehow took a load of typed damage without actually getting burned/frozen/poisoned/whatever, or how their PC only 'looks like he might be dead' while rolling death saves, or how the warlord can inspire a dying character to spring into action from ten meters away without magic, they're free to do so.
Ditto "Eh whatever, I just don't think about what it all means in-game," which is IME the most common attitude.
As to simulating movies in D&D, I find that trying to do so is an exercise in futility, for this reason and others. A lot like how action movies just don't simulate real life well; it's apples to oranges. D&D, like action movies, is a genre unto itself.
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