Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1359304" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, I'd think you'd not want to express things in terms of absolute number of hit points of damage dealt.  A loss of 10 hit points might kill a 1st level character, but be a minor thing to a 20th level fighter.Also note that hit point loss does not corresspond to actual bodily damage, especially for higher level characters.  It's an amalgam of many things - actual wounds, minor scratches, muscle pulls, fatigue, luck, and the ineffible epically heroic ability to avoid dying when someone's trying to chop you into pieces.  It's a wearning down of overall ability to resist dying.This can make description a little tough, cinematically.  Not all "hits" actually invovle bodily damage that would show "on screen", so to speak.  Things get even more difficult when you factor in subdual damage.And, if you describe each hit individually, it can be very difficult for the player to figure out even vaguely where they stand - "I've taken two nastily purpling contusions and one gash across the chest.  What does that mean?"   Most players (reasonably rightly, I think) expect that a person has a decent clue as to how much more punishment they can take, and how much pain they are in.  A well crafted encounter can be tough, and characters can die if they don't know how much oomph they have left.  They may well get upset if they feel you didn't give them a clear enough description.  You might consider describing the combat cinematically, and giving the player a vage idea of the fraction of the hit points he has left, rounded to the nearest 10% or something. "The minotaur takes a mighty swing with his axe, and you have to lean over backwards to avoid the stroke.  You feel a twinge near your spine, and are down to about 80% of your total HP."</blockquote>

Verification