What constitutes a "hit" in your mind?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Is every "to hit" roll actually physically contacting a character in the game? Or are they whittling down their opponent's energy and luck and only the last few "hits" are actually drawing blood?

 

[Agamon]

I think it's game-dependent. It kind of follows the "What are hit points?" questions, and whether there are multiple types of hp tracks, whether your hp pool grows significantly as you gain skill, and how quickly said hp come back all are important to consider.

 

[CleverNickName]

Every now and then, whenever a character scores a "hit" on a target, or when their character gets "hit" by an opponent, I will ask the player to describe it for the table. I don't do this all the time, just every so often to get the players' input on the narrative. And not always in D&D either; we also play Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu.

The players always describe a hit as physical contact. Always.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I'm in the "it depends" category.

If HP are comparable to an average weapon's damage (HP could be reduced to zero with one or two hits) and don't increase over time; then a combat result where HP is lost is described as physical contact. Especially if armor is used for damage reduction; which allows for a result where the attack successfully hits, but no HP loss is incurred, in which case the attack is described as physical contact.

If HP are significantly greater than an average weapons's damage (HP can't be reduced to zero in one or two hits) and/or increase over time; then a combat result where HP is lost is often described as a "near miss" instead of actual physical contact. Only the last hit, the one that reduces HP to zero, will be described as making physical contact. There are some exceptions, where a hit may be described as a "scratch" just to vary descriptions a little, but I have a really hard time imagining someone getting physically hit 35 times with a sharp chunk of metal and still being perfectly fine.

 

[Voadam]

In D&D where hp represents a lot of stuff it is fluid and I am fine with thinking hits on the last 10 hp or so as all solid physical hits while earlier stuff is more close calls and efforts and burning through luck.

In stuff like Shadowrun and White Wolf and such there are damage tracks with death spirals so the level of damage and impairment done is going to be more narratively connected to being physically hit from the beginning though there is still some room to describe things as being shaken or thrown off for those dice penalties.

 

[Laurefindel]

A « hit » for me signifies that the target’s defences were penetrated and caused a loss of something. Often, that something is health, sometimes a loss of health does not fit the narrative. At any case, a hit is an attack that yielded a consequence for the target.

 

[Dausuul]

Is every "to hit" roll actually physically contacting a character in the game? Or are they whittling down their opponent's energy and luck and only the last few "hits" are actually drawing blood?

As far as I'm concerned, a hit is a hit. It may only leave a scratch, but it connects.

First, it's incredibly asinine to use the words "hit" and "miss" to describe mechanics and then say that, well, actually, a hit is usually a miss. Second, there's the issue of rider effects like poison and life drain. It makes no sense for these effects to trigger unless the attack made contact.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I think it's game-dependent. It kind of follows the "What are hit points?" questions, and whether there are multiple types of hp tracks, whether your hp pool grows significantly as you gain skill, and how quickly said hp come back all are important to consider.

It's table-dependent as well as game-dependent and absolutely follows the "What are hit points" question.

In a D&D-style hit-points and armor-class system, what I'd like, but don't think I could sell my players on, is a "hit" being an attack close enough to feel or otherwise sense. So it's a hit if an arrow that whizzes by the ear of an unarmored character, close enough for the character to feel its passage. But it's a miss if the arrow hits the armor of a heavily armored character and bounces off without the character noticing the impact.

But there's a strong intuition that there must be blood, and a sense of disappointment if a successful attack only causes a bloodless loss of hit points. Players are disappointed when monsters don't bleed when hit - so much so that they'll embrace having their own characters bleed as the price of avoiding this disappointment. Put this on top of GMs being disappointed when PCs fail to bleed when hit, and the bloodlust becomes an unstoppable natural force.

 

[Agamon]

It's table-dependent as well as game-dependent and absolutely follows the "What are hit points" question.

In a D&D-style hit-points and armor-class system, what I'd like, but don't think I could sell my players on, is a "hit" being an attack close enough to feel or otherwise sense. So it's a hit if an arrow that whizzes by the ear of an unarmored character, close enough for the character to feel its passage. But it's a miss if the arrow hits the armor of a heavily armored character and bounces off without the character noticing the impact.

But there's a strong intuition that there must be blood, and a sense of disappointment if a successful attack only causes a bloodless loss of hit points. Players are disappointed when monsters don't bleed when hit - so much so that they'll embrace having their own characters bleed as the price of avoiding this disappointment. Put this on top of GMs being disappointed when PCs fail to bleed when hit, and the bloodlust becomes an unstoppable natural force.

That's an interesting take, I've never known a player that is disappointed without blood with every hit. It's still a game, they know hp were removed, requiring blood in the description seems arbitrary, as well as unrealistic (unless they're fighting a blood elemental or something).

Personally, I've always had the blow connect; having a near miss and a near hit be practically the same thing is odd, and awkward in play. But if it's an insignificant loss of health, I often describe it as a scratch, scuff, bruise, dent, partial block or parry. The bleeding starts when the bottom half of the hp are being removed.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

For me, a “hit” depends entirely on how the system defines what happens after the roll. I don’t think there’s one single answer that applies everywhere.

The “to hit” roll itself is just a binary check: did the attack overcome the target’s defense? If yes, you move on to damage. The margin of success usually doesn’t matter, so the roll doesn’t say how the attacker succeeded—just that they did. The real meaning comes from what the system does with hit points, or whatever resource stands in their place.

In a game like D&D, hit points are so abstract that I don’t see a reason to pin them down. They can be wounds, stamina, luck, grit—it doesn’t really matter, because the game doesn’t separate those ideas. So when I play that kind of system, I treat a hit as “a successful attack that reduced the pool,” without worrying too much about whether it literally drew blood.

In contrast, I like when a system actually separates those effects. If it distinguishes between stamina and health, or has wound tracks, then the attack results are a lot more explicit. I don’t have to interpret whether the hit was exhausting or injuring—the rules already tell me.

Daggerheart is a good example of how I prefer it to work. An attack roll checks evasion: if it succeeds, the defender didn’t avoid it. From there, damage is translated into wound severity—minor, major, or severe—based on thresholds tied to the character’s class, heritage, and armor. Armor points can even downgrade the severity. That whole chain of resolution makes it crystal clear: the blow landed, here’s how serious it was, and here’s how armor changed the outcome.

So in my mind, a “hit” only really makes sense when you look at how the system resolves it. If the game uses an abstract HP pool, I treat it as a simple success state. If the game offers more nuance, I let that structure tell me whether the hit was a glancing blow, a draining effort, or a serious wound.