Narrating Hit Points - no actual "damage"

[robus]

I can’t buy that successful attacks don’t actually cause injury to a character. A hit is a hit, but your hit points mean that you were able to deflect most of the energy making the result superficial, a bruise, a scratch, a cut, a nick. For poison or necrotic damage to work the weapon has to reach your body. When you’re taken to 0 HP then finally a major blow was landed as your resistance faltered/luck ran out.

But a hit is a hit.

 

[Charlaquin]

I know, I know, the verisimilitude of hit points has been an ongoing argument for decades...

This is something I would like to try when I start up my next game: All hit point "damage" is simply small, accumulated weariness.

Damage is not broken arms, sliced open bowels, or arrows to the back. It's the blow to the shield that takes a little more out of you, it's the sore muscle from stepping out of the way, it's the stitch in your side. Nothing physical, nothing that could be permanent, even without magic, and that can easily be visualized to recover after a long rest.

When one is reduced to zero hit points and needs to make death saving throws... There, that's when there is actual damage from that last blow. That time the arrow hit you, the sword cut you open. That's what requires magical healing or multiple long rests to recover.

Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

Yep, this is precisely what I do for PCs, and it works great for me. For monsters, I narrate HP as real damage and I don’t have them do Death saving throws.

 

[GMMichael]

This is something I would like to try when I start up my next game: All hit point "damage" is simply small, accumulated weariness.

So...what was damage in your previous game?

When one is reduced to zero hit points and needs to make death saving throws... There, that's when there is actual damage from that last blow. That time the arrow hit you, the sword cut you open. That's what requires magical healing or multiple long rests to recover.

Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

Sort of. I let players decide what their damage means. If they want to treat it as debilitating, they'll get rewards. If they want to just ignore it - that's a reward of its own.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

Hit points are the easiest mechanic in the world. They are whatever you need them to be.

You can narrate them as nicks and scratches or luck running out or entrails spewing forth to be put right with a mere cure light wounds. Whatever makes sense in the context of the attack and its results. But, yes, since hit point loss is not debilitating until you lose them all, a certain restraint in the narrating of gruesome wounds is implied.

 

[hbarsquared]

So...what was damage in your previous game?

I never really thpught about it when I first started DMing. A "hit" was a hit, and "damage" was some form of damage. I might narrate nicks and scratches when rolling 1-2 damage, but higher damage would be an arrow to the arm, or a knife in the leg.

There's nothing wrong with it at all, and never any complaints. Just something I've been thinking about, and wondering what other DMs like to do. I'd like to run a "grittier," narratively, game, and changing the way I describe damage might go a long way.

 

[Yunru]

At half hit points a creature's bloodied.
This is where most wild creatures and commoners would retreat.
Otherwise you'd have pub fights ending in death all the time

 

[5ekyu]

I know, I know, the verisimilitude of hit points has been an ongoing argument for decades...

This is something I would like to try when I start up my next game: All hit point "damage" is simply small, accumulated weariness.

Damage is not broken arms, sliced open bowels, or arrows to the back. It's the blow to the shield that takes a little more out of you, it's the sore muscle from stepping out of the way, it's the stitch in your side. Nothing physical, nothing that could be permanent, even without magic, and that can easily be visualized to recover after a long rest.

When one is reduced to zero hit points and needs to make death saving throws... There, that's when there is actual damage from that last blow. That time the arrow hit you, the sword cut you open. That's what requires magical healing or multiple long rests to recover.

Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

I tend to describe it as follows

Tiring down to 67% hp. It can be deflected, bruising, strain etc and even can be last second grunt roll dodge etc. Obvious some effort or effect but no serious damage.

Exception crits always get narrated as strike and hurt/wound.

Hurting 67% down to 33% they all get signs of pain or injury even if its "ducked by leg buckles as knee shifts"

Under 33% everything is serious whammy.

At 0hp the player narrates (aka "eat you kill") the final blow and fall.

The changes in narrative are usually obvious enough to tend to clue them in enough to relate to the players the character's experienced eye.

 

[pukunui]

I think "hit points = weariness" is all fine and dandy until you start using monsters with abilities that very clearly require a physical wound. I'm not just talking about spiders and snakes that deal poison damage. There are fiends that can deal infernal wounds that keep bleeding. There are creatures that can light you on fire. And so on.

 

[jgsugden]

There are a lot of flesh wounds and bruising blows in my games. That is the rough framework in which I describe every blow delivered in my game, except the lethal blow to non-PCs.

 

[Seramus]

Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

It's always been this way.

HP is like a sliding scale between exhaustion, running out of luck, and physical damage. Every character likes to portray it a little differently, and sometimes each individual attack is portrayed differently. Especially when it comes to NPCs. There are a few ability descriptions that rely upon being bloody, but you improvise as you go so the narrative continues to make sense.