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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Laurefindel" data-source="post: 8548821" data-attributes="member: 67296">Oh yeah, the “deadliness” or “grittiness” of my games vary from campaign to campaign. Actually, the more abstract your definition of hp is, the easiest it becomes to validate that 0hp = defeated.In an aforementioned 80s action movie game style, defeated probably means killed and lost in the background. In a Bud Spencer and Terrance Hill type of game, defeated means you pickup your cowboy hat and dart out of there while massaging your jaw. In a kung-fu panda kind of game, defeated means being somehow incapacitated, beaten and humbled (or humiliated). In a game a of thrones type of game, defeated means killed, or gutted and left to die. But the rules themselves don’t have to change.Until I decide to play a game where combat has more profound physical and mental consequences, we enjoy D&D combat as sport. We want to play the combat through and through without aborting if halfway through because realistically, that’s what should happen. At 0 hp, that’s when the owlbear has enough and the PCs successfully made their show of strength. When the brigands say “screw it”, drop their weapons and dart out. When the guard is knockout and unable to sound the alarm. When the goblins panic and flee in a disorganized rout. When the orc chieftain collapses, looking at the PC in disbelief, his hands on his wounds… It works well in a narrative where PCs can spend all their hit dice to go from dying to full health in a one-hour break.fights to the death are frequent enough in our games to bring tension when it’s needed, and some opponents (mainly undead and fiends) systematically fight until they - or their opponents - physically can no longer continue. But otherwise, the PCs are usually in control of deciding whether they deliver a killing blow or not. When the players are given the choice of being murderers or not, the total body count tends to diminish, even if some of the vanquished opponents could technically come back to haunt them in the long run.</blockquote>

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