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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Unwise" data-source="post: 6040614" data-attributes="member: 98008">Sorry to wade in on the age-old "what are HP?" discussion, but I had an interesting thing happen recently.I had a player get all upset about the concept of Hit Points and how it was unclear what the represented etc. I just put the onus back on them, I asked them what had happened to their character when they got hit or when they dropped. He was being rather arguementative so I just said "The orc successfully slashed you with his scimitar, why aren't you dead?". He had to come up with a reason why his character was still alive. He decided that he had taken the blow on the shield and it has nearly snapped his forearm and driven the sheild into his jaw breaking a few teeth.This sparked off some creativity amongst the group that really helped the RP of the session. It was quiet unique how each person envisioned 'damage' and rather character defining.The Dwarven Battlemind - He just takes the damage, but his armor and hide are so thick damage does not penetrate all that far. This character was described as being a bloody mess after every fight. He was missing ears and teeth, the cleric was regularly reattaching lost fingers and he was shoving bandages into gaping wounds, lifting shields with a broken splinted arm and driving forward by pure force of will.It really brought to the fore the toughness and super human willpower of the character. No finesse, just bloody determination. It ties in well with his huge con and will scores and superior will/fort feats.The eladrin swordmage - This guy described his character as parrying all of the 'hits' a little too late. So a neck shot was deflected so it just caught the edge of his shoulder. A mis-timed parry of a knee attack drives the enemies blade into his boot. When he dropped to zero HP all these little nicks and scratches caught up with him and he could not parry the final blow.The halfling theif - This guy had an interesting take on HP. He is a devout follower of lady luck. He just sees himself as lucky. Almost every time he gets 'hit' he gets away with it through some absolute fluke of luck. The lowering of HP represents him 'pushing his luck too far'. When he hits zero HP he just ran out of luck and the enemy finally hit him properly. He does not see his character as tough at all, he thinks that one or two good shots should drop him.This leads to some really nice roleplaying and character definition. I am a firm believer that it is up to the players to help the system make sense. If a character knocks a giant snake prone, they should come up with a way of representing that. For me this improves the feel of the game and also leads to some very cool descriptions.</blockquote>

Verification