Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Calion" data-source="post: 7128311" data-attributes="member: 73976">I'm always frustrated by answers like, "You're the DM, you can do whatever you want!" to questions like these. Of course I can. But that doesn't tell me how to run my game in such a way that maximizes both verisimilitude and playability. Except that that's pretty clearly not the case, as I explained in the post that resurrected this thread. The mechanic of hit points pretty clearly tells you which of those things happened, if you care to calculate it. The gameworld has logic. If I have a +2 to AC through Dex, and an attack misses my AC by 1, that's an attack that would have hit someone wearing identical armor, but with inferior dexterity. Therefore, it's quite reasonable to interpret that as a near miss due to dodging the attack. The mechanics give a window to the functioning of the gameworld. We can throw that out, of course, and take a "whatever you want" approach, but in my experience that leads either to bland narration, pure gamespeak, or, more often, difficulties in play. If I say, "the arrow barely misses you! Take four damage," and then say, "the arrow goes by your head, missing you," there will be confusion, at least. A narrative technique that makes sense with both the mechanics and plausibility solves these problems. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk</blockquote>