Combat thesaurus (or 101 ways to say "You hit for 3 damage")

[redrick]

I can get a little flustered running combat. I like to narrate the hits and misses with something more than "a 13 misses", but I find that I always narrate them the exact same way. So, "you hit", just turns into "you stab his leg." Every time. The only way to kill anything in my world, apparently, is to stab it in the face. So I'd love to have a little cheat sheet I can peek at every now and then to remind me of all the other delightful ways fantasy combatants can violently harm each other. (Without, of course, removing anything that wouldn't grow back after a long rest.) Maybe sorted into damage categories. Like:

High Damage:

• Your quarterstaff smashes into his side and you hear the sound of shattering ribs
• Your sword punches through the knight's breastplate just under the right shoulder

Medium Damage:

• Your blade slashes across his chest, leaving a long, shallow gash

etc.

Bonus points for good ways of narrating death by the vicious mockery bard cantrip in D&D 5e. ("The goblin looks at his ridiculously unfashionable pants, sobs in self-loathing, trips and knocks himself unconscious.")

 

[LostSoul]

D&D combat is too abstract to provide descriptions. "You lose 13 HP" is all you want to do. If you say, "You stab him in the leg and he takes 13 HP damage", does that mean that he moves more slowly now? Nope. So don't do it

Accept the system or make your own.

 

[redrick]

Well that doesn't seem like the only approach to take. Maybe I should have just made this post in the D&D forum because it might be more D&D-centric than I initially assumed. Plenty of games use abstract damage systems, don't they?

But, regardless, any abstract mechanical system certainly allows me plenty of room to narrate specifics without somehow rejecting that system. I don't have to be playing a game with a complex wound and maiming system to imagine that characters are interacting with more than numbers on a piece of paper. Sure — a hit point is an abstraction. But so is speed. So is a round. So if a character has been wounded in his leg, maybe he is moving a little slower, or favoring one leg a little bit more. Maybe that's why the next hit is a killing blow. You're not stabbing a 50hp monster with a dagger so many times that it bleeds to death from all the pinpricks. You're wearing it down so that it becomes increasingly vulnerable, allowing your strikes to become increasingly effective.

Here's a few more, in case anybody else feels like biting.
Low Damage

• You block his mace with your shield, but the force of the blow reverberates through your body
• You wrench away as an arrow grazes your side
• The goblin yelps as a bolt of fire singes his calf

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) in the spirit of the thread, "It's just a flesh wound!"

2) the problem is, in part, that 3hp does not mean the same thing to all characters at all times. 3hp to a 1st level wizard is potentially life-threatening...as well it might be to a high-level Fighter who has been in a rough combat.

 

[LostSoul]

Re-reading my post now, I see that it's quite hostile. Sorry about that.

My point is that some abstract combat systems (such as D&D) can become inconsistent if you narrate exactly what happened from HP loss. For me personally I'd rather avoid narration if it doesn't have any impact on resolution. It ruins my immersion because I have to imagine taking/giving a wound, like broken ribs, that don't impact the character in any way.

However I recognize that not everyone feels that way, and I can see that narration like this could be a lot of fun. So I'll stop threadcrapping and offer something of value:

Low damage:
1) (sword vs. studded leather) your sword cuts through his leather but deflects off its metal with enough force to leave a nasty bruise.
2) (ranged) your arrow (magic missile, etc.) flies straight at his face, but at the last second he dodges and it leaves a shallow graze.
3) (bludgeoning) you hit him solidly in the leg but the force of your blow is absorbed by armour and muscle, leaving a nasty bruise but failing to break any bones.
4) (non-shield block) he makes an awkward parry that sends shocks of pain up his arm.

Medium damage:
1) (piercing) you stab at his heart but he twists at the last second in desperation; your blade deflects off a rib, drawing blood.
2) (ranged) your arrow penetrates through his armour and breaks the skin, deep enough to draw blood but no more.
3) (bludgeoning) you pound him heavily in the gut but adrenaline keeps him from doubling over.

Heavy damage:
1) (slashing) a powerful slash rends armour and cuts through muscle to the bone.
2) (bludgeoning) you slam him in the face and knock some teeth loose.
3) (piercing) you sink your blade deep into his flesh.

 

[redrick]

My point is that some abstract combat systems (such as D&D) can become inconsistent if you narrate exactly what happened from HP loss. For me personally I'd rather avoid narration if it doesn't have any impact on resolution. It ruins my immersion because I have to imagine taking/giving a wound, like broken ribs, that don't impact the character in any way.

It's a good point that I hadn't really thought about. By trying to describe combat too much, am I just drawing all of our attention to just how little the abstract combat rules actually model reality. Too many close-ups on the giant, rubber and foam shark which is just never gonna look real, so better to use it as sparingly as possible.

Anyway, for my game is it is right now, I'd say that's not the main thing dragging the immersion down. And, for smaller combats, or for just the major creatures in a given combat, I can even keep track of the narrative damage in my head such that the wounds carry over somewhat consistently into the rest of the combat. Easier for NPCs, obviously, because they're either going to be dead, unconscious or fled by the end of the combat, or the players won't be alive to ask them how they're performing all those acrobatic actions with their broken shinbone poking out of their trousers.

2) (bludgeoning) you slam him in the face and knock some teeth loose.

This, for instance, could be really fun with an NPC who lives to fight another day. Less fun for the player character who has to factor his toothless grin into all his social interaction. (Though, for a cooperative brawler type character, I could see the fun of taking some teeth out of a PC in a noteworthy combat. Hockey players do great things with false teeth! A gnome in the Cherny Mountains is rumored to make spectacular dental prostheses.)

the problem is, in part, that 3hp does not mean the same thing to all characters at all times. 3hp to a 1st level wizard is potentially life-threatening...as well it might be to a high-level Fighter who has been in a rough combat.

It's a fair point, and if I were to really work this out in detail at the table, I would try to think of high damage, medium damage and low damage as a percentage of remaining hit points as opposed to some independent "15 damage = brain splatter, 10 damage = blade cuts through to bone, 5 damage = deep bruise," etc. After all, that minimal damage dagger wound could finish off the mighty giant, and, to wade into the HP are not meat debate, low combatant health is a statement of total vulnerability as much as it is pints of blood loss, number of bones broken or number of fingers chopped off.

thanks for all y'alls input.

 

[Janx]

We been doing it the descriptive way for years.

Players already know that damage does not cause impairment. thus, the descriptions are merely indicators of scale of damage relative to the HP total or HP remaining of the enemy. In other words, if the hit almost kills him, it gets described as more serious.

We'll describe misses as:
he deftly dodges to the side, avoiding your thrust
he parries your blade and steps in to counter-attack
your blow slams into his shield, but he stands firm

We'll describe light hits as:
your wild swing finds a gap in his armor, drawing a little blood
the glancing blow causes him to take a step back
his head rings from your blade slamming into his helmet
he falls back a step, deflecting some of the force behind your attack

Heavier Attacks might get such descriptions as:
you cut a powerful gash through his armor
he reels from the blow and may not be able to take much more of this punishment
you slash him fiercely, continuing to turn his shining armor into a canvas of red

 

[Celebrim]

You can describe hits all you like, but in general its not really worth it. No matter how vast your vocabulary, you'll quickly exhaust it and worse, you are giving the player exactly no new information by describing an abstract hit nor is the player giving you any new information by describing how he attacks. It's very quickly just meaningless gibber taking up bandwidth.

So many systems want to prioritize highly narrated 'cinematic' combat scenes. I often get the feeling that they are written by people who read more RPG books than they actually play. I want to grab them and shake them and go, "Did you actually play your system before trying to sell it? For how long? Four hours? Eight hours if we are lucky?"

Tolkien doesn't bother to narrate combat (much). Neither should you. Mostly he just writes, "There was a terrible conflict.", gives the reader a few tidbits about how well it went for different characters ("Sam failed to completely duck a sword blade, and had a nasty gash in his scalp in consequence, but his eyes were shining. He had killed his first orc.") and then gets on with the story. If you actually bothered to record your session and novelize your IC statements, you'd find that all that time spent turning, "14 damage", into whatever IC statement you like, didn't for the most part make the story read better. Novelized action text when it is well done almost never relies on every individual cut thrust and parry being described. Shakespeare generally just wrote: 'they fight' He well understood that what works visually doesn't work on paper. Burroughs and Jordan likewise use similar techniques to Tolkien, even though they have a more RPG like emphasis on combat situations.

In short, just don't go there. It's fine to use a bit of color to convey information to the characters in game they wouldn't already have: "The <whatever> is staggered from the blow.", "One more deep blow from Sir Gorenthar prove too much for the beast. It lets out a mighty sigh and collapses onto the blood slippery floor like a falling timber. With a shudder it ceases to move entirely." or even, "You sword pierces his armor between his curraise and his faulds, grievously wound him. He seems stunned that you have landed such a telling blow, and screams out, "You'll not buy the rest of my blood so cheaply." But otherwise if narrating something back to them tells them nothing they didn't know themselves by saying, "14 damage", you are wasting game time.

 

[billd91]

We been doing it the descriptive way for years.

Players already know that damage does not cause impairment. thus, the descriptions are merely indicators of scale of damage relative to the HP total or HP remaining of the enemy. In other words, if the hit almost kills him, it gets described as more serious.

We'll describe misses as:
he deftly dodges to the side, avoiding your thrust
he parries your blade and steps in to counter-attack
your blow slams into his shield, but he stands firm

We'll describe light hits as:
your wild swing finds a gap in his armor, drawing a little blood
the glancing blow causes him to take a step back
his head rings from your blade slamming into his helmet
he falls back a step, deflecting some of the force behind your attack

Heavier Attacks might get such descriptions as:
you cut a powerful gash through his armor
he reels from the blow and may not be able to take much more of this punishment
you slash him fiercely, continuing to turn his shining armor into a canvas of red

What he said.
This can be very helpful feedback for the PCs. Numbers tell them very little about the relative damage they're inflicting on the target, but description may help them make the difference between a TPK and fight they can flee to live another day.

 

[Hand of Evil]

There is a thread roaming about that had some good tables for what you are looking for, I will see if I can find it.