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Tink-Tink-Boom vs. the Death Spiral: The Damage Mechanic in RPGs
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<blockquote data-quote="Superchunk77" data-source="post: 7756178" data-attributes="member: 6684404"><p>I'm heavily vested in Savage Worlds so I prefer Death Spiral, naturally. Hit points, while mechanically simple to track, tend to break the immersion in the games I've played in. It has a lot to do with my players as well.</p><p></p><p>The narration of damage in Savage Worlds is just so much easier for me as the GM. I have mental images associated with the various conditions (Shaken, Wounded, Incapacitated) that I can narrate on the fly very easily. 5e games are way harder for me.</p><p></p><p>A good example is a PC shooting an arrow into an Orc (mook). </p><p></p><p>In Savage Worlds, the attack either misses, hits for no damage, hits and Shakes the Orc, or hits and kills it. For the Shaken scenario I would narrate that the arrow knocks the orc's helmet over it's eyes, or pins his vambrace to his shield, something like that. The benefit here is that the Shaken condition imposes some minor penalties on the orc until it can recover but doesn't rely on any sort of physical injury being inflicted. The other scenarios are self-explanatory, with kills being narrated by the PC.</p><p></p><p>In 5e, the scenarios are the arrow misses, hits and causes damage, or hits and kills the orc. The one shot one kill scenario is usually only likely on a critical hit. The hits for damage scenario is where the problems arise. If the arrow hit but didn't do enough damage to reduce the orc to less than half hit points, then you need to be careful about the narration of the attack. You could use the narration examples I noted above for Savage Worlds, but then the PC might wonder if his attack actually did damage, or is the orc "Blinded" or "Grappled" or one of the various other conditions. It just gets confusing. Then of course you run into things like boss fights where creatures have hundreds of hit points and you just need to grind away at them while they seemingly suffer no ill effects until hitting zero. I find this type of mechanic works better in video games than tabletop games.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Superchunk77, post: 7756178, member: 6684404"] I'm heavily vested in Savage Worlds so I prefer Death Spiral, naturally. Hit points, while mechanically simple to track, tend to break the immersion in the games I've played in. It has a lot to do with my players as well. The narration of damage in Savage Worlds is just so much easier for me as the GM. I have mental images associated with the various conditions (Shaken, Wounded, Incapacitated) that I can narrate on the fly very easily. 5e games are way harder for me. A good example is a PC shooting an arrow into an Orc (mook). In Savage Worlds, the attack either misses, hits for no damage, hits and Shakes the Orc, or hits and kills it. For the Shaken scenario I would narrate that the arrow knocks the orc's helmet over it's eyes, or pins his vambrace to his shield, something like that. The benefit here is that the Shaken condition imposes some minor penalties on the orc until it can recover but doesn't rely on any sort of physical injury being inflicted. The other scenarios are self-explanatory, with kills being narrated by the PC. In 5e, the scenarios are the arrow misses, hits and causes damage, or hits and kills the orc. The one shot one kill scenario is usually only likely on a critical hit. The hits for damage scenario is where the problems arise. If the arrow hit but didn't do enough damage to reduce the orc to less than half hit points, then you need to be careful about the narration of the attack. You could use the narration examples I noted above for Savage Worlds, but then the PC might wonder if his attack actually did damage, or is the orc "Blinded" or "Grappled" or one of the various other conditions. It just gets confusing. Then of course you run into things like boss fights where creatures have hundreds of hit points and you just need to grind away at them while they seemingly suffer no ill effects until hitting zero. I find this type of mechanic works better in video games than tabletop games. [/QUOTE]
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