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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RigaMortus2" data-source="post: 5932441" data-attributes="member: 11586">I don't know how others play and describe combat, but I can honestly say, our group describes hits as hits, and misses as misses.  Example of game play:DM: The Ogre takes his great club and swings a wildly at you (the Fighter).  Does a 19 hit your AC?Fighter: Yes it does.*DM rolls damage die*DM: The great club slams into your chest, take 30 points of damage.*Fighter tracks hit point loss*Fighter: How does the Ogre look?DM: You guys have been wailing on him pretty hard, he is teetering and tottering back and forth.  You think with one solid blow, you might be able to drop him.Fighter: Ok, I am going to try and take him out.  I power attack for +4 damage.*Fighter rolls, and gets a natural 20, then confirms the critical hit**Fighter rolls damage)Fighter: 30 damage right back a* you.DM: That is enough to drop him, do you want to describe your finishing move?Fighter: Yes.  I feint as if I were going to swing and attack from him left, then spin around and attack from the right, decapatating the Ogre.After combat, the party assesses where they are health-wise and even though the Fighter took a 30 point "hit" he is still well above half his hit points.  The rest of the party is pretty hurt, so they all decide to rest up for 8 hours and get their spells back.Now, with the new mechanics (or 4e mechanics), the Fighter, who was just described as taking a great club to the chest for 30 damage, will regain all his hit points, as if he really wasn't hit at all.  It completely negates what happened in that combat, which could have been a very memorable battle for the players, it could have been a nail bitter, where one missed attack would have been the difference between a TPK and party victory.  It undermines and ruins the integrity of the encounter that just occurred.  And that is my biggest problem with it.Now, in order to keep combat consistant and "make sense", the players are required to keep track of what "hit point bracket" their current hit points are in (full, above half, below half, 1 hit point left, 0 or below).  And the DM is required to give the damage to the players first, see where the player falls as far as hit points AND THEN describe what the attack did based on current hit point total.  It just seems backwards to me.Can anyone honestly say they've always played D&D this way?Lets re-word our fight from above so it gels better with the true abstractness of what Armor Class and Hit Points represent.  I am going to be fair and play devil's advocate here, and not purposely word this moronically.DM: The Ogre takes his great club and swings a wildly at you (the Fighter).  Does a 19 hit your AC?Fighter: Yes it does.*DM rolls damage die*DM: You take 30 hit points of damage, what is your current total hit points?Fighter: That puts me at 70, I am still above half my hit points.  That was just a scratch (the Fighter jokes)DM: Ok, the Ogre's wild swing almost hits you, but you move out of the way just in time, luck and skill taking the majority of the blow that time.*Fighter tracks hit point loss*Fighter: How does the Ogre look?DM: You guys have been wailing on him pretty hard, he is teetering and tottering back and forth.  You think with one solid blow, you might be able to drop him.Fighter: Ok, I am going to try and take him out.*Fighter rolls, and gets a 2 on the die, for a total of 8.*Fighter: I suppose an 8 is a miss right?DM: It would be a miss, unless you have some sort of special ability?Fighter: Indeed I do.  I use my themed ability and even though I rolled poorly, the Ogre still takes minimal damage of 3.DM: Well, that would drop the Ogre, even though it wasn't that solid of a blow.  So it seems that you actually DO hit.  Do you want to describe what happens?Fighter: Yes.  I swing my sword at the Ogre, and I miss and hit a tree next to him.  The sword looks embeded in the tree.  The Ogre, seeing he may have an opportunity to attack me freely now, lets his guard down.  I quickly pull the sword out of the tree and slash him across his neck.  The Ogre falls to the ground and bleeds out next to us.Now, with the two example combats I posted above, both seem to "work" descriptively just fine.  But who can honestly say they play and describe combat in a similiar fashion to the 2nd example and not the 1st?In the first example, you roll, get results, and describe what happens and move on.In the second example, you roll, get results, get more information from the players or DM before determining the description, then describe.I personally have always played with play example 1.  I think it flows better and is one (or more) less steps to deal with when running combat.Edit: I forgot to mention one other thing on how our group currently plays.  We try to minimize metagaming when we play.  One aspect of that is sharing numerical values for hit points.  So you'll never hear the Fighter tell the Cleric "I have 10 hit points left, and my max is 50.  Please heal me.".  Instead, it is more descriptive such as "I am bloodied" or "I don't look well, at all".  With the abstractness of AC and HP, we can't play this way.  The DM needs to know what our hit points are at in order to determine the description of the attack roll.  Even saying "I am bloodied" gives too much away, as 4e turned the "bloodied" description into a game mechanic.  We don't share HP w/ the DM, because we don't want him to not attack a certain player because they might die on the next attack AND the reverse, we don't want him to attack a certain player BECAUSE he wants to take him out of combat.</blockquote>

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