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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7750933" data-attributes="member: 6873517">Well Gygax clearly thought so. IMO I leave it up to the character's theme and use it to reinforce that. I said this elsewhere but the way I'd narrate damage would depend on the character and the nature of the campaign. My example was my Dex-based paladin and the Con and Toughness-oriented abjurer in a game I play in. These two characters have roughly equivalent ACs and hit points but we narrate them quite differently, though. My paladin is a skill character who wears light armor, a shield, and speed, so presumably yeah, damage being taken is reflecting things that should have been hits on a lesser warrior getting turned into grazes or near-misses, at the cost of increasing fatigue. That character's theme is oriented around time and fate, so that would factor in, too. The abjurer has motley medium armor and uses magic to defend himself along with being really tough---he's got an affinity for rats, so he's often described as being as tough as a rat. He's clumsy, though. I'd narrate his hit point losses as magic being spent (especially if he uses Shield or the Arcane Ward), pieces of his armor being knocked off, or him just toughing it out, particularly if it involves things that rats would resist, like diseases or poison (except, of course, for rat poison). I won't say we narrate every attack, but a cool one definitely, so a fun miss or hit will get narrated whereas a boring or mundane one will just be left to disappear into the void. Is this going to satisfy all people? Probably not. But it works for us, making the game feel alive and reinforcing the themes of the characters without bogging down in pointless detail.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7750933, member: 6873517"] Well Gygax clearly thought so. IMO I leave it up to the character's theme and use it to reinforce that. I said this elsewhere but the way I'd narrate damage would depend on the character and the nature of the campaign. My example was my Dex-based paladin and the Con and Toughness-oriented abjurer in a game I play in. These two characters have roughly equivalent ACs and hit points but we narrate them quite differently, though. My paladin is a skill character who wears light armor, a shield, and speed, so presumably yeah, damage being taken is reflecting things that should have been hits on a lesser warrior getting turned into grazes or near-misses, at the cost of increasing fatigue. That character's theme is oriented around time and fate, so that would factor in, too. The abjurer has motley medium armor and uses magic to defend himself along with being really tough---he's got an affinity for rats, so he's often described as being as tough as a rat. He's clumsy, though. I'd narrate his hit point losses as magic being spent (especially if he uses [I]Shield [/I]or the [I]Arcane Ward[/I]), pieces of his armor being knocked off, or him just toughing it out, particularly if it involves things that rats would resist, like diseases or poison (except, of course, for rat poison). I won't say we narrate every attack, but a cool one definitely, so a fun miss or hit will get narrated whereas a boring or mundane one will just be left to disappear into the void. Is this going to satisfy all people? Probably not. But it works for us, making the game feel alive and reinforcing the themes of the characters without bogging down in pointless detail. [/QUOTE]

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