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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6289592" data-attributes="member: 4937">The PC's in my game have been in scores of combats in the 100 days 'in a combat zone' that constitute the game thus far.  Rarely do they suffer truly traumatic or horrific injury - being dropped blow 0 hit points.  That situation is called 'bleeding out', and the players joke with each other over who has bleed out the most and who has been the closest to death.  That has generally happened only 1 or 2 times to each character.  But quite literally, the only reason that they aren't all dead is heroic combat ability isn't the only super power they have.  They also have in the party characters who can close wounds, knit flesh, and restore blood with a touch.  The party would never be able to keep this up otherwise.  Even the ones that come out of the fight without views of their insides or some such, are still a mass of minor injuries, cuts and bruises that would take them at least days or weaks to heal naturally.  Take away that supernatural healing, and yeah, adding recovery time from this level of injury would mean the campaign would be not 100 game days in to it, but 300 or 500.   And generally speaking, anyone actually mangled would be in big trouble.  Without magic - without changing the rules of the universe - no character would have survived this long.I don't want this to degenerate into a damage on a miss thread, but there is a range of outcomes between landing a strong blow and a miss.  Boxers don't cause most blows to miss.  They slip most blows.  The blow lands, and it was thrown with force by a skilled combatant, but the target evades the full force of the blow both by pulling back and by slipping to the side so that only a fraction of the force is imparted.  The same thing applies to a knife.  It's better to evade the knife, that's what AC is for, but if you can't avoid being hit, then at least be hit by as little of the blade as possible.  Once you add armor to the equation to help you slip blows, then its perfectly plausible that what might have run you through the chest - what would have gone right through the breastplate of a less wary warrior - becomes only a prick, a bruise or a scratch.The hero doesn't think he can survive a sword through the breast.  He thinks that that even if they opponent gets through his gaurd, even if the swing isn't clumsy, he's going to slip the blow so that it is only glancing and at most he'll get a scratch. The high level character comes up to the low level gaurd.  The high level character is feeling good.  He knows he's got this fight.The high level character comes up against the low level gaurd.  He's bleeding from a half dozen minor wounds, he's got blood leaking into his eyes, his muscles are burning, he's light headed from blood loss, his knee is feeling about 85%, he knows he's going to lift his leather jerkin off tonight and find his torso a mass of purple wounds, and he thinks... I'm in trouble.  I need to get out of these fights before one of these jokers gets lucky and kills me.Conan is one cocky confident SOB, and with good reason.  I'm sure he doesn't say, "I'm the protagonist of this story", but he is also well aware of his panther like reflexes and speed, and the fact that he's killed lots and lots of people before and the guy standing before him with a shaky sword isn't any more special than the last 20 were.</blockquote>

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