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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8506864" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>And it's the next reply!</p><p></p><p>Actionable simply means I can take an action leveraging that fiction. Let's take your description of the orc: "The sword slides into the orc's abdomen and cause a huge gash, large amount of blood coming out." This isn't actionable fiction. The only thing this does is do the encoding of the hp status of the orc, but it does so in a way that isn't really tied to the status of the orc. This orc, without any treatment, will carry it's huge abdominal wound for the rest of the day, fighting a peak efficiency! There's no need to treat this orc's wounds. If the part fails to do anything else, this orc is untroubled by it's wound further. No party member can say, "Quick, Wizard, cast hold person on that orc, his wounds will kill him shortly!" The party can't choose to retreat, and wait out the orc to die from it's wound. The description of this wound is fatal -- orcs don't live with huge abdominal wounds, except perhaps as a great and notable exception due to precise luck. </p><p></p><p>No, this description really only works because it's 1) entertaining, 2) is an encoding of the relative state of the orc's hp, a mechanical concept that's not directly tethered to this outcome, and 3) because everyone at the table understands that this description is purely flavor. Because of 3), no one will declare actions to try to take advantage of this wound as a wound, they will instead take the description only in light of 2) and take actions that consider only that this orc is low on hitpoints and within how everyone understands the game to work mechanically.</p><p></p><p>You can contrast this with some other systems that don't use hitpoints and that do make such descriptions quite meaningful in the fiction as levers that can be used in future actions.</p><p></p><p>This thing that 5e does (and D&D in general) isn't at all bad, though! It's intentional, and has been from the beginning. The lack of required fiction for hitpoints means that the GM is free to provide fun flavor for the table and encode the mechanical information therein according to how a given table chooses to do so ([USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER] is clear he has such a code). It also means that the system isn't tied down to details that do require such specific fictions from the results. A number of games came about to address this non-specificity in results that D&D has, games like Rune Quest and Rolemaster, which have specific fictional outputs that matter from wounds. It's not a dig, it's just looking at how the D&D game works and noting that it doesn't really care for specific fictional outcomes from combat outside of a few special effects and what happens at 0 hp.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8506864, member: 16814"] And it's the next reply! Actionable simply means I can take an action leveraging that fiction. Let's take your description of the orc: "The sword slides into the orc's abdomen and cause a huge gash, large amount of blood coming out." This isn't actionable fiction. The only thing this does is do the encoding of the hp status of the orc, but it does so in a way that isn't really tied to the status of the orc. This orc, without any treatment, will carry it's huge abdominal wound for the rest of the day, fighting a peak efficiency! There's no need to treat this orc's wounds. If the part fails to do anything else, this orc is untroubled by it's wound further. No party member can say, "Quick, Wizard, cast hold person on that orc, his wounds will kill him shortly!" The party can't choose to retreat, and wait out the orc to die from it's wound. The description of this wound is fatal -- orcs don't live with huge abdominal wounds, except perhaps as a great and notable exception due to precise luck. No, this description really only works because it's 1) entertaining, 2) is an encoding of the relative state of the orc's hp, a mechanical concept that's not directly tethered to this outcome, and 3) because everyone at the table understands that this description is purely flavor. Because of 3), no one will declare actions to try to take advantage of this wound as a wound, they will instead take the description only in light of 2) and take actions that consider only that this orc is low on hitpoints and within how everyone understands the game to work mechanically. You can contrast this with some other systems that don't use hitpoints and that do make such descriptions quite meaningful in the fiction as levers that can be used in future actions. This thing that 5e does (and D&D in general) isn't at all bad, though! It's intentional, and has been from the beginning. The lack of required fiction for hitpoints means that the GM is free to provide fun flavor for the table and encode the mechanical information therein according to how a given table chooses to do so ([USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER] is clear he has such a code). It also means that the system isn't tied down to details that do require such specific fictions from the results. A number of games came about to address this non-specificity in results that D&D has, games like Rune Quest and Rolemaster, which have specific fictional outputs that matter from wounds. It's not a dig, it's just looking at how the D&D game works and noting that it doesn't really care for specific fictional outcomes from combat outside of a few special effects and what happens at 0 hp. [/QUOTE]
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