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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9823221" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with this.I agree with this too.In the example that originally started this tangent - a person ignoring the warrior attacking them in melee in order to strike at a dangerous foe 30' away - I don't see any difficulty reconciling that with the hp mechanics. The person is being attacked by the warrior. They are parrying/dodging/deflecting those blows, which thus do only glancing damage at best - the mechanics that produce this fiction are the AC rule and the hp rules. Meanwhile, the person focuses most of their attention and effort on the dangerous foe further away. We know that this isn't suicidal for the person in question, because the AC and hp rules tell us as much.In my imagine, Conan can certainly hold off a couple of bandits, or even knights, while he throws a knife at a sorcerer standing on the other side of the room! It's no surprise that characters in D&D are similar in respect of what they can do.I have a different view from this, though. I find the idea of high level D&D PCs as being pin-cushioned in arrows, or being stabbed multiple times through their vital organs, and yet continuing on unhindered, a bit too silly for my taste.I prefer the approach that Gygax sets out (with a modest degree of clarity) in his DMG: hit point loss is a game mechanic that tracks how badly the injured character is being set back in their endeavours; but how that "being set back" is narrated can be highly flexible.Putting all the above together, I therefore disagree with this:Once a PC has reached mid-level, if they are at full hp then they typically can't be murdered in their sleep. In mechanical terms, they take (say) 8 hp of damage from their (say) 40 hp remaining. In the fiction, they wake at the last possible instance and roll out of the way, and so suffer only a glancing wound (or graze, or whatever it makes sense to narrate). As a result of this they are somewhat set back (as indicated by having only 32 of 40 hp remaining). But they are not stabbed through the heart!For the GM to exercise fiat and just declare the PC dead; or introduce a different resolution mechanic; would be - in my view - a pretty controversial attempt to alter the rules of the game on the fly!NPCs are a different matter, in my view. As a general rule (eg unless we're talking about a NPC who is important to a player's position - like, say, a family member or friend), NPCs are the domain of the GM, and so the GM can't be unfair to the players by narrating things like deadly stabbings in the night.The only concern here is verisimilitude - eg if this king is so puissant as to be able to (say) hold his own against the 12th level PC fighter, how was an ordinary person of merely ordinary strength and skill able to stab him?I strongly prefer the Gygaxian approach - with hp loss corresponding mostly to ways of being set back other than brutal physical injury; and with a PC's high hp being a reflection of their skill, luck, divine protection and the like - to the alternative that you suggest. I find your alternative a bit too bizarre.Gygax discussed this in his DMG. Those attacks get narrated as pin-pricks from the blade, or quasit's tail, or whatever, that inflict little physical injury but are sufficient to introduce the poison into the PC's bloodstream.This is a good point: the gods may not want the character to die; and so prompt some sort of response, or deflect the blade, or whatever.</blockquote>

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