D&D General Letting a Game feel like a Game ~ Mechanics and Simulationism

[aco175]

There is a line, but at some point the line becomes dull. When you are first level and some orcs jump out and you engage in combat. Do you play the back and forth saying you hit a 12 and the DM is like, you just miss. Then you think you need a 13, but another player is saying he hits a 13 and the DM is all- you just miss. Then finally someone hit and everyone now knows they need a 14. Maybe new players can still have a sense of excitement with this back and forth, but I find it grows dull after a while.

If there is a reason to hide the 25AC of a main bad guy then ok. I tend to tell the AC of most monsters and bad guys. I tend to think the PCs would be able to see and sense what they need to hit and what kind of damage to determine the remaining HP a monster has. I tell the 10th level PCs the AC of 2nd level bandits- I just say they are AC 14 and have 12 HP. The players know they can go through them as the PCs would be able to tell by attacking them.

I tend to use red plastic circles from soda bottle tops to mark wounded monsters. most simple monsters will get a circle when they are around 1-hit away from dying. I think the PC would be able to tell when the monster is about finished and this is a good visual for the players. This allows the player to use a 2nd or 3rd attack on another creature. It would slow play by having the fighter hit and then roll damage to see if that killed the monster, no, let me attack him again. Did that kill him, no, let me use my 3rd attack on him as well. If the player can see the red circle and know that one attack can kill this monster, then he can plan and just move one from there.

I also will use a red circle to mark larger HP monsters with half HP. Say there is a giant with 100HP and the Pcs hit him 5 times and get him to 50HP, I'll throw the circle next to him to show the players he is getting beaten down. This would be something the PCs would see, so I use the visual to show the players.

 

[Don Durito]

I disagree. The difference between the two is more than just style. I don’t know how many hit points “severely wounded“ is nor how that compares to the damage options I have as a player. There is still a shroud of uncertainty. “10 hit points left” does tell me how the creature compares to my damage options in ways I can potentially exploit to make a more precisely expensed decision.

Yes. You can, but if you learn what severely wonded generally means according to the GM then you can take advantage of that too. The paladin player will still hold back on smiting someone if he thinks a straight hit will kill them.

I'm not saying it may not be meaningful, but it's a matter of degree. The difference is mainly that saying the number of hit points feels more gamey and less immersive.

 

[BrassDragon]

I look at it this way: dice rolling is one of the most visceral and immediate things a player can do in a tabletop RPG... I've never had a player at the table who didn't enjoy throwing down bones. But letting them roll without a target or a clue what they're rolling for diminishes the fun. It just does. What you gain in verisimilitude (debatable) and 'realism' (pfft) by obfuscating information from the players is worth not the price of their lowered engagement. So I always tell them the target number.

Not just the player rolling, others around the table stay involved if they know exactly what the stakes are and what the dice roll means as soon as they stop clattering.

To keep players from becoming too focused on rules optimisation and metagaming (at the expense of the fiction), I do keep hit point totals hidden and use the 4e/13th Age concept of showing a creature having a 'staggered' condition when under half HPs so they have a general sense of weakening targets.

 

[DND_Reborn]

But letting them roll without a target or a clue what they're rolling for diminishes the fun

You know, this is a good point. If you think about people gambling (close enough to dice rolling in D&D) they are always more excited if they know what they need to roll, or what card they need, or what "whatever" is needed.

This might just convince me to start letting players know the DC and AC they need... maybe... probably not, but maybe...

 

[billd91]

Yes. You can, but if you learn what severely wonded generally means according to the GM then you can take advantage of that too. The paladin player will still hold back on smiting someone if he thinks a straight hit will kill them.

I'm not saying it may not be meaningful, but it's a matter of degree. The difference is mainly that saying the number of hit points feels more gamey and less immersive.

When I’m running face to face, I do prefer a fuzzy description rather than use concrete numbers of hit points. Using a VTT is shifting that a little In the sense that I’m using the hit point bar. They can’t see the values, but they can see how big the bar is compared to the width of the token. I actually toyed with the idea of giving everyone 4 hit points on the token, each one representing 25% of the creature‘s hp. But then I decided that was too much work.

 

[el-remmen]

I can say that this thread has convinced me to experiment with letting the players know their target AC once they've successfully hit it once or missed it thrice.

 

[werecorpse]

As I said above once they are past low levels, and are a couple of rounds in to a fight I tell them AC and approximately what proportion of max hp the creature has left (As well as if a creature is resistant, vulnerable etc.) I also tell people conditions affecting the creature (stunned, blind, poisoned etc).

Note we always roll for damage.

I think that the suggestion that knowing this info means there isn’t uncertainty in a fight is mistaken. I’ve had plenty of times where the 8th level fighter works out that he will “finish off this badly injured quaggoth then run up and attack the drow acolyte” then he rolls two misses, or a single hit for minimum damage. It’s not certain what will happen once dice are added to the equation. Last fight I had a rogue opt to not shoot a moderately injured bugbear because it was inside the area of a clerics spirit guardians so he figured it would take enough damage to kill it before it could act. He was right, felt tactically vindicated and I suspect felt good about it. That is good Imo.

Now I could have kept stuff secret in both fights forcing the players who enjoy and want to partake in the odds/tactics play to work out roughly how many hp the bugbear had on their own, by say taking careful note of how much damage was done to other bugbears and making an assumption that the others were about the same but why make them do that math work?

I even tell inexperienced players who are learning the game stuff like “the hobgoblin is heavily armoured so hard to hit but it doesn’t look as agile as the goblins” so that the cleric might think to use sacred flame instead of attacking with her mace. When she does, if it works she gets a good feeling as she feels clever and that’s at least part of the aim.

if a player doesn’t really want to know stuff like AC or how wounded a creature is I find they tend to ignore the info provided easily enough, when I do provide it they still often choose the less optimal path because they forget/don’t pay attention to that stuff - they are just hitting the creature that is closest or using some other reason to choose which they attack (it threatens our mage, it will get away to warn others, it looks like a leader, it’s got a fancy magic hat etc)

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

I give the AC of the monsters only because I got really tired of answering the question of, "Does a 15 hit?" EVERY. SINGLE. TURN. Even though they rolled a 15 last turn and I gave them the same answer. All that's changed is it's sped the combat up ever so slightly. I find something akin to a monsters health bar a little too much, but honestly am intrigued to see how the table would react to it. Especially if it was a hulking, armoured bad guy.

 

[el-remmen]

BTW, I wanted to add since people are mentioning it as well. I think a DM is required to tell the players when their attacks appear to do less or more damage than normal (resistance or a vulnerability). If not by the rules as written, then by the rules of fair play. You don't need to say by how much specifically, but at the very least that it is happening.

 

[generic]

BTW, I wanted to add since people are mentioning it as well. I think a DM is required to tell the players when their attacks appear to do less or more damage than normal (resistance or a vulnerability). If not by the rules as written, then by the rules of fair play. You don't need to say by how much specifically, but at the very least that it is happening.

Although we might not agree on exact methods, I totally agree.

Imagine a game wherein the DM doesn't even describe how your weapons glance off the golem ineffectually.

That's neither fair to the players nor fun.