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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Narrating Hit Points - no actual "damage"
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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7347641" data-attributes="member: 37579"><p>I tried it a little in 4e and found it tricky. When the vampire drained blood from the paladin, when the assassin stabbed the sleeping warlock, when the ranger fell in the pit of acid. It was harder to describe that as less physical damage. Plus, without also tracking the hit points of all my PCs, I never knew when they crossed over from the vague "fine" to the more serious "nearly dead" hp thresholds. </p><p></p><p>It also didn't work well with the flow of my description. I'd roll the attack, often with the damage dice, then check if it hit. If I received a confirmation I'd describe the blow, narrating the impact based on what I rolled, capping that with the damage itself. I find that if I say the damage first and then narrate, the players are doing math instead of listening. </p><p>The catch with the OP's method—where only the final hit is "real"—is that you can't know what to entirely narrate until after you declare the result. But when the PCs drops, everyone on the table starts thinking tactics and how to turn the fight around, and then I'm narrating to walls. The drama of the story has been trumped by the drama of the mechanics. </p><p></p><p>And I think everyone has seen the big epic crunching critical hits that have left a player character with 1 or 2 hit points, followed by a bitch slap of an attack that knocks them down. It's a little anticlimatic for the mega hit to just be a glancing blow while the pathetic goblin stab dealing minimum damage is the only blow that lands true.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 7347641, member: 37579"] I tried it a little in 4e and found it tricky. When the vampire drained blood from the paladin, when the assassin stabbed the sleeping warlock, when the ranger fell in the pit of acid. It was harder to describe that as less physical damage. Plus, without also tracking the hit points of all my PCs, I never knew when they crossed over from the vague "fine" to the more serious "nearly dead" hp thresholds. It also didn't work well with the flow of my description. I'd roll the attack, often with the damage dice, then check if it hit. If I received a confirmation I'd describe the blow, narrating the impact based on what I rolled, capping that with the damage itself. I find that if I say the damage first and then narrate, the players are doing math instead of listening. The catch with the OP's method—where only the final hit is "real"—is that you can't know what to entirely narrate until after you declare the result. But when the PCs drops, everyone on the table starts thinking tactics and how to turn the fight around, and then I'm narrating to walls. The drama of the story has been trumped by the drama of the mechanics. And I think everyone has seen the big epic crunching critical hits that have left a player character with 1 or 2 hit points, followed by a bitch slap of an attack that knocks them down. It's a little anticlimatic for the mega hit to just be a glancing blow while the pathetic goblin stab dealing minimum damage is the only blow that lands true. [/QUOTE]
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