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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arch-Fiend" data-source="post: 7843058" data-attributes="member: 7016641">so its more of a guideline than a rule (thought if we start bringing up how the book basicly claims everything about it are guidelines rather than rules we wont be able to argue about anything)im aware the game makes concessions of compromise between reality and gameplay. back in the day poison wasent hp damage but ability damage, and while there was initial damage there was also secondary damage every minute afterword, but that too is a compromise between reality and abstraction. massive overwhelming pain is something that immediate effects of poison can represent though, some venoms are very fast acting and disablingly painful, which is probably the best argument for poison damage applied to mental durability or even more so the will to live if will to live is interpenetrated as the will to preserve your own survival due to some distraction and thus being at risk of fatal blow.sure the idea of meat doesn't make much sense when its presented in a senseless way narratively. however if the added details of your characters arm "is left hanging by only a few threads of sinew" are removed and downplayed into "leaving a massive gash in your arm spouting blood" then the description given for the damage is likewise more abstract. the issue with the way your dm described the damage being taken by your barbarian is that it clearly added an element that could not be interpreted as anything but disarming yet the mechanics showed no signs of it. in that instance what happened was ludonarrative dissonance, and ive never claimed hitpoints as physical durability could not create ludonarrative dissonance. ive argued that hitpoints as physical durability as default has the least instances of ludonarrative dissonance, but one could easily fail to describe hitpoints in this way without falling to the same trap as representing the effect of damage in other ways. one can not treat 12 physical damage against a 1st level character and 12 physical damage against a 20th level character the same way. typically i don't really describe physical damage as disabling or lethal until the rules actually give a reason for it. 12 damage to a character with 13 hitpoints is a critical wound, 12 damage to a character with 300 hitpoints is a minor wound, never disabling or lethal until some other element of the game implies it is.</blockquote>

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