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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8507564" data-attributes="member: 16814">Sure, this is an interesting question.  Let's move it slightly and see what happens.  The player declares that their PCs is advancing on a foe.  On the foe's turn, the foe successfully attacks the PC and inflicts damage, but only 2 hp.  Does the player have an expectation that their declared fiction of "advancing" not means that the GM must narrate a benefit to the PC from this attack?  Mind you, this benefit wouldn't be accounted for in the PC build options at all -- it's just the expectation that the prior narration and the fact that there's no required fiction from the damage result but 5e* requires meaningful description here?Generally, when you make a modification to a monster using the 5e rules, it's 1) tied to existing mechanical structures such that it usually has some cost and 2) can adjust the CR of the creature, which feeds into encounter balance and design.  As such, you can create a monster that pushes players after they take an action, but the only ways to do this via the rules are to institute an reaction ability or a legendary ability or a special feature of the monster.  However, the moment we do this, we've decoupled the narration in the example from the "advancing" that was doing the work here, and we've made sure that the decision is planned as an intentional arrow -- now the mechanics are creating the narration, we aren't in the same spot of having to look for something to do because we can't make the hp loss difference meaningful.</blockquote>

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