Vicar In A Tutu
Explorer
Hi, I have a couple of questions regarding how to narrate some actions to my players (I'm the DM). First, a warrior-type wearing fullplate is attacked by a wolf. I say to the player: The wolf bites you, take 5 damage. The player responds: I'm wearing fullplate, how can the wolf damage me with its bite, shouldn't the wolf take damage instead, destroying its teeth? I explain that the wolf managed to bite a soft spot, or inbetween the plate armour, etc. But this grows stale after several bites, the player naturally starts wondering why he is wearing that crappy armour which seems to be full of gaps and holes.
A similar situation: The warrior wearing platemail is attacked by a zombie. The zombie does a "slam attack" (what is a slam attack, btw, we treat it like a punch or similar attack) and damages the fighter for 8 hit points. Again the fighter asks: how can the zombie punch through my armour, is it a super-strong zombie? Looking at the zombie-stats I can tell that the zombie is not particularly strong, so I explain that the blow was not impressive from a physical stand-point. (The "natural" thing to do for the zombie would be to grab and simply overbear the fighter, draining his fatigue, undead are great in the sense that they can continue wrestling / marching / whatever all day without being fatigued.)
How do I explain (in narrative) the fact that the warrior is taking damage from attacks that would seem rather harmless?
A similar situation: The warrior wearing platemail is attacked by a zombie. The zombie does a "slam attack" (what is a slam attack, btw, we treat it like a punch or similar attack) and damages the fighter for 8 hit points. Again the fighter asks: how can the zombie punch through my armour, is it a super-strong zombie? Looking at the zombie-stats I can tell that the zombie is not particularly strong, so I explain that the blow was not impressive from a physical stand-point. (The "natural" thing to do for the zombie would be to grab and simply overbear the fighter, draining his fatigue, undead are great in the sense that they can continue wrestling / marching / whatever all day without being fatigued.)
How do I explain (in narrative) the fact that the warrior is taking damage from attacks that would seem rather harmless?