D&D 5E Is 5e being too stingy on fluff?

[R_J_K75]

It's a good flavorful note too, instead of saying a monster is at half HP, it means you've managed to finally draw blood! Even if there's no mechanical importance it can give you the confidence to keep fighting instead of retreating "If it can bleed, then it can be killed! Let's keep at it gang!" That sort of thing.

I played in a 2E game where the DM kept track of everything, he never told you how much damage you took or how much damage you did, only that you hit or were hit. Now he'd let you know in a general sense of when you were getting low on HP or an opponent took significant damage or a critical, or in the event that we had no chance of hurting something he would drop us subtle clues. It really made for intense combat as he never said you crit, you took 18 points of damage, etc. It may seem heavy handed and took some of the fun away from the players by him rolling their dice for them, but because he was fair and descriptive it was actually really fun and added to the suspense. More trouble than Im willing to put in as a DM though.

 

[Undrave]

I played in a 2E game where the DM kept track of everything, he never told you how much damage you took or how much damage you did, only that you hit or were hit. Now he'd let you know in a general sense of when you were getting low on HP or an opponent took significant damage or a critical, or in the event that we had no chance of hurting something he would drop us subtle clues. It really made for intense combat as he never said you crit, you took 18 points of damage, etc. It may seem heavy handed and took some of the fun away from the players by him rolling their dice for them, but because he was fair and descriptive it was actually really fun and added to the suspense. More trouble than Im willing to put in as a DM though.

Seems like the bloodied condition is a good compromise then. Plus, you don't need to make DMs do the math, just include it in the monster start block next to their HP.

 

[R_J_K75]

Seems like the bloodied condition is a good compromise then. Plus, you don't need to make DMs do the math, just include it in the monster start block next to their HP.

That was probably 25 years ago so the game has evolved alot since. In those days there was alot more fluff than crunch in products most of the time. The particular campaign Im thinking of was The North: the Savage Frontier from the Forgotten Realms. Because there was more fluff in the books the game naturally was more descriptive and not just a series of dice rolls. A good portion of that campaign was overland travel in extremely harsh conditions. Alot of trade shut down in winter so youd better make sure you left on an adventure prepared with equipment, mounts, rations and spell components. If you ran out of any of those you usually ended up dead. This DM had a great ability to capture the feel of the setting, and did this by how he ran encounters.