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How do you roleplay your PC actions in combat?
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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6665344" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>IMXP <em>resolution </em>is always described by the DM.</p><p></p><p><em>Attempt</em> is described by the player, but there are players who are interested in doing that, and players who simply want to say "I attack" and see the result.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think this is both a typical results of doing a lot of combat, and a problem of HP-attrition. If you spend most of your gaming time in combat, then you run out of possible descriptions more quickly. Also, no matter what the book says about HP being an abstraction for anything, the vast majority of DMs IMXP always describe damage as <em>wounds</em>: in the first couple of rounds of combat in a new campaign, the DM will always narrate a high damage roll with lots of blood and sound of broken bones, and a low damage roll as a "scratch"; then inevitably, and quite soon (often already in the first fight), repeats herself. Games that focus on things other than combat most of the time don't get easily tired of combat descriptions.</p><p></p><p>Before switching from HP to a wound-based system, it might be worth trying embracing the HP-attrition <em>fully</em>, and avoid references to physical wounds until the final blow. For instance, instead of having to narrate e.g. a 5hp damage, followed by a 2hp damage, followed by an 8hp damage, followed by 1hp damage, followed by a 3hp damage*... just don't narrate anything about those detailed blows until the last, so instead of having to use 5-6 damage description per monster per fight, you only need to use 1 description per monster per fight!</p><p></p><p>*The worst offender IMO is the "poke death" syndrome, when you kill a monster with a last blow that deals 1hp, and the DM has already filled the description of gory details about how that critical hit of yours smashed through the ogre's chest for 20 damage, and the Wizard's fireball set it to fire for 15 damage, etc. then someone kills it off with a 1 damage strike...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6665344, member: 1465"] IMXP [I]resolution [/I]is always described by the DM. [I]Attempt[/I] is described by the player, but there are players who are interested in doing that, and players who simply want to say "I attack" and see the result. I think this is both a typical results of doing a lot of combat, and a problem of HP-attrition. If you spend most of your gaming time in combat, then you run out of possible descriptions more quickly. Also, no matter what the book says about HP being an abstraction for anything, the vast majority of DMs IMXP always describe damage as [I]wounds[/I]: in the first couple of rounds of combat in a new campaign, the DM will always narrate a high damage roll with lots of blood and sound of broken bones, and a low damage roll as a "scratch"; then inevitably, and quite soon (often already in the first fight), repeats herself. Games that focus on things other than combat most of the time don't get easily tired of combat descriptions. Before switching from HP to a wound-based system, it might be worth trying embracing the HP-attrition [I]fully[/I], and avoid references to physical wounds until the final blow. For instance, instead of having to narrate e.g. a 5hp damage, followed by a 2hp damage, followed by an 8hp damage, followed by 1hp damage, followed by a 3hp damage*... just don't narrate anything about those detailed blows until the last, so instead of having to use 5-6 damage description per monster per fight, you only need to use 1 description per monster per fight! *The worst offender IMO is the "poke death" syndrome, when you kill a monster with a last blow that deals 1hp, and the DM has already filled the description of gory details about how that critical hit of yours smashed through the ogre's chest for 20 damage, and the Wizard's fireball set it to fire for 15 damage, etc. then someone kills it off with a 1 damage strike... [/QUOTE]
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