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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paradoxish" data-source="post: 652215" data-attributes="member: 9623">Re: Re: Re: Does D&D combat break the fantasy?Remember that if your characters, at level 3, are "heroes" than so are those level 3-4 fighters guarding the place you're trying to get into. If they're level 4 than even more so. Looking at it from this perspective, it's like Aragorn dying from a single sniper shot when he happened to be looking away. Again, I blame your DM here. I think the situation you're in would be a lot more interesting if the guards were something like level 1 warriors - realistically tough and weak enough to be killed in one hit.I'm going to go back to saying that if you don't kill a person with one shot you can assume you didn't hit him in a vital area, like the neck. If a rogue in your group is unable to sneak attack the guard to death, for example, that should probably be represented by saying the guard was aware of the arrow a moment before it struck, dodging just enough so that it did serious damage without killing him. Hit points don't only represent toughness, but also the ability to avoid damage.As a slight tangent, this is also how I explain away the lack of injury in D&D. Getting down to 10 hit points doesn't mean your character is horribly wounded, but it does mean that he's grown tired and haggard from constantly dodging minor blows. He's beaten and bloody, with numerous minor cuts and scratches across his body, making it more and more difficult for him to adequately dodge blows and increasing the likelihood that the next strike will open up an already painful wound. Getting down to 0 hit points represents the "critical blow" that actually inflicts injury - possibly cutting sharply through a limb or across your chest, rendering you incapable of continuing the fight. Under 0 hit points is a grevious injury, one that will probably kill you.Using simple guidelines like this, I (personally) feel that I've been able to describe some really exciting, fantasy story-like combats in my game without having to alter the rules at all. Combats only seem unheroic and unrealistic if you make them so. As a quick anecdote: I once played with a DM that would describe every hit that did more than 10 damage as some kind of incredibly powerful blow, chopping up limbs or tearing through flesh. It starts seeming unrealistic when your arm has been chopped to bits ten or twelve times already. On the other hand, when a 10 hp blow on a fighter with 90hp is a mighty blow which the fighter managed to deflect into a mere flesh wound it makes more sense.</blockquote>

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