doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
This I very strongly disagree with. Referencing AC and damage numbers isn’t any more out of narrative than announcing the check result and then announcing how much harm everyone takes. “The guy got a 21, he hit you for 6 cold damage” is just as in-fiction, just as determined by what just happened in the fiction, as the description you cited.D&D makes it really quite hard to adhere to these principles in the context of combat resolution: the real-world reasons for doing various things are rubbed in our faces all the time, and it's hard to present them as having fictional causes and fictional effects.
Hopefully, in both cases, there is more description than that. “X harm in an area” and “That’s a hit, 6 cold damage” are both boring gamey talk, that sometimes happens because the moment doesn’t demand more in-fiction description, but both can also be instead juiced up with some “The tough throws a small round object at your feet! A wave of concussive force and sound hits you, you take 4 harm as the attack staggers you. It may occur to you, in the oddly quiet haze that follows an explosion and sudden terrible pain, that you’d be dead if that had been a frag.”