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In the heat of battle, is hit point loss a wound?
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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5933548" data-attributes="member: 22424"><p>Strictly IMC:</p><p></p><p>Hit points represent a combination of many things: simple physical toughness, skill, luck, divine provenance, script immunity...</p><p></p><p>The loss of hit points represents some whittling away at all of these things. But, in particular, <em>the loss of even 1 hit points represents <strong>some</strong> measure of physical injury</em> - even if it is as little as a paper cut.</p><p></p><p>This is quite important, since it makes it clear how poison and the like work - if the character is able to reduce the damage to 0, he isn't affected, but if even 1 hp damage remains then there is at least a nick for the poison to enter his system.</p><p></p><p>That said, greater damage doesn't necessarily mean a greater injury - whether as a raw number ("the ogre hits for 20 damage!") or as a percentage of the target's total ("oh no, I've only got 100 hp left!").</p><p></p><p>The only wound I narrate as being particularly bad is one that kills a character outright - so if a PC gets dropped straight to -10, then he gets beheaded, run through, or otherwise suitably terminated. Otherwise, they'll be bruised or battered, or bleeding from a dozen cuts. But even the blow that takes them below 0 merely reflects the cumulative effect of several things, not necessarily a single particularly nasty blow.</p><p></p><p>(The problems with this abstraction are, of course, twofold: there are those cases where a character's raw toughness shouldn't be able to save them and skill doesn't apply (though luck, divine provenance, and script immunity <em>always</em> do); and the <em>cure light wounds</em> spell, and the like, don't scale right. I deal with that by not worrying about it.)</p><p></p><p>Oh, and FWIW: I'm not a big fan of Fighters doing damage on a miss, either. Though depending on the specifics of the situation I may well accept it - and it's not an automatic deal-breaker for me in any case.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="delericho, post: 5933548, member: 22424"] Strictly IMC: Hit points represent a combination of many things: simple physical toughness, skill, luck, divine provenance, script immunity... The loss of hit points represents some whittling away at all of these things. But, in particular, [i]the loss of even 1 hit points represents [b]some[/b] measure of physical injury[/i] - even if it is as little as a paper cut. This is quite important, since it makes it clear how poison and the like work - if the character is able to reduce the damage to 0, he isn't affected, but if even 1 hp damage remains then there is at least a nick for the poison to enter his system. That said, greater damage doesn't necessarily mean a greater injury - whether as a raw number ("the ogre hits for 20 damage!") or as a percentage of the target's total ("oh no, I've only got 100 hp left!"). The only wound I narrate as being particularly bad is one that kills a character outright - so if a PC gets dropped straight to -10, then he gets beheaded, run through, or otherwise suitably terminated. Otherwise, they'll be bruised or battered, or bleeding from a dozen cuts. But even the blow that takes them below 0 merely reflects the cumulative effect of several things, not necessarily a single particularly nasty blow. (The problems with this abstraction are, of course, twofold: there are those cases where a character's raw toughness shouldn't be able to save them and skill doesn't apply (though luck, divine provenance, and script immunity [i]always[/i] do); and the [i]cure light wounds[/i] spell, and the like, don't scale right. I deal with that by not worrying about it.) Oh, and FWIW: I'm not a big fan of Fighters doing damage on a miss, either. Though depending on the specifics of the situation I may well accept it - and it's not an automatic deal-breaker for me in any case. [/QUOTE]
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In the heat of battle, is hit point loss a wound?
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