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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Professor Phobos" data-source="post: 4040709" data-attributes="member: 18883">But you see my point, yes? If Superman is our analogy...you still can't kill Superman if he's asleep. Why should a 20th level Fighter be able to survive terrible injury...unless he's asleep? If you can not die from a single dagger thrust when awake and aware due to your hitpoints representing actual physical resiliency, why can you die from one if you're helpless? Shouldn't a would-be coup de gracer have to stab you again and again and again?Description. Fluff text. Genre assumptions. Ah, measurement. Well, I don't really bother with them for the most part as I have no head for distances and tend to just be fast and loose about 'em, but where are they necessary outside of combat and a handful of edge cases? And what's wrong with inches, miles, kilometers?Call of Cthulhu is expressly set in the real world, plus the Mythos. If I give them a corpse of a large, strong, healthy man with a .22 caliber bullet in his eye (I believe the .22 maxes at 16 hit points of damage; if our friend has 17 or 18 HP, he cannot die from it)....that's entirely possible in the real world. It's not possible mechanically.Don't think of abstract as firm versus vague. Think of it more like simple versus complex. Presumably most game worlds are vastly more complicated than their rules allow- D&D has no rules for insomnia, but presumably some people can't sleep. D&D has no rules for breaking your neck due to a bad fall- but presumably people break their necks sometimes. Even powerful, experienced, heroic people. Just not PCs- because unless the game is about sleeplessness in some way, there's no real reason to have rules for it.I have a lot of faith in my ability to describe the game world vividly, with enough information for players to make decisions. If I'm vague or I leave out an important detail, it's easy enough to say, "Whoops! Sorry!"Also, it's not like game mechanics are used descriptively all that often. Players need access to their own to have an idea of their capabilities, but it isn't as if I go around saying, "Orc 1 looks like he has a 19 strength!"</blockquote>

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