Narrative Damage

[Stalker0]

I'd say all these suggestions are fine.

Now, are you trying to REPLACE hp numbers with descriptions for your players or just adding some description?

There's a huge diff, and I would avoid keeping the hp numbers away from your players. Its a lot more bookkeeping for you, and when you get into the clerics healing you back up and whatnot becomes a big pain. I once thought of doing that, but it ended up badly. No matter how you describe the damage to your players, he's going to be mad finding out he only had one hp left and didn't know it.

 

[shilsen]

I'd say all these suggestions are fine.

Now, are you trying to REPLACE hp numbers with descriptions for your players or just adding some description?

There's a huge diff, and I would avoid keeping the hp numbers away from your players. Its a lot more bookkeeping for you, and when you get into the clerics healing you back up and whatnot becomes a big pain. I once thought of doing that, but it ended up badly. No matter how you describe the damage to your players, he's going to be mad finding out he only had one hp left and didn't know it.

It looks like Dave Blewer, the first poster, is considering tracking hp instead of having his players do that. I'm considering doing the same, but have so far just added some description. I'm not worried about the bookkeeping, since I'm really quick at these things, but am more concerned about the second problem you mention. I think the problem could be avoided by being fairly explicit about someone being on his last legs (when low on hp), but will have to see it in practice to decide.

 

[Endur]

I've seen GMs do this in the past. It usually works fine, so long as your GM has a good head for numbers.

This may slow down the game a bit, as the GM now has to keep track of numbers for the PCs in addition to numbers for the NPCs.

In these cases, the GM ends up rolling cure points as well (for CLW, etc.)

Tom

 

[Guilt Puppy]

My roommate is watching the Dungeons & Dragons movie as I type... That is narrative damage.

"I'm sorry about snails..."

 

[Dave Blewer]

Shilsen is correct, I am most certainly thinking of keeping track of the characters HP's in my next campaign. I shall then describe the effects of said damage, to give them some idea (hopefully a good one ) at what state they are in.

I am probably going to save the really horrendous damage descriptions for the last 1/4 of hps lost.

 

[ShawnLStroud]

Oh, Yeah! Descriptions...

I am, right now, running my game with a system like you describe... If you'd like, I'll break it out for you.

I track all of the damage to the PCs on a card I keep clipped to my DM's screen. On it, I have a small Hit Location chart (to determine where), and a list of the characters and their full hit points. When I have an NPC roll to hit a character I roll an additional D20 (mine is white) to determine location. Then I roll damage. If the damage is over a set limit (mine is 35%), then I describe REALLY disturbing damage.

In my game, the PCs normally need to take a bath after combat, or they begin to draw flies.

Hiding the amount of damage also causes MY players to play JUST a little more conservatively, since they really don't know how hurt they really are without stopping to see. Of course, if you stop to see how hurt you are in combat, you prompt an AoO.

My system (as fragmentary as the description I gave is) hasn't added too much complication to the game, and really doesn't add time.

Anyway, I submit this to you in order to show that your idea has merit.

 

[Speaks With Stone]

We aren't quite is stringent as you are describing, but we use small cups with marbles to track hps. We generally can glance at our own or someone elses's cup to see approximately how full it looks, but if you want to count it requires a heal check. You can count your own anytime, but we rarely do as a glance is all it takes.

I think that you could expand on this by using a lid on the cups or opaque bags, but I think the general idea is to keep folks from number crunching. If you can crunch the numbers as GM and you think that is where your time is best spent, go for it. Otherwise, I'd find something to approximate and stay focused on other things.

The players with your narrative accounts will soon learn what your descriptors mean and be running approximate numbers in their heads anyway. If they are willing to risk things with the real number, their approximates will probably not change things much. Besides as a player they should have a reasonably good indication of how hurt they are.

Just sounds like a lot of effort for little payoff, but feel free to play it and prove me wrong. I can take it.

 

[Baron Von StarBlade]

I used a system from my old mud days to describe damage. Now I would only do this for monsters but the party caught on and described themselves in those manners as well.

Healthy 100% of Total Hit Points
Slight Wounds 80-99% of Total Hit Points
Moderate Wounds 60-79% of Total Hit Points
Sever Wounds 40-59% of Total Hit Points
Massive Bleeding 20-39% of Total Hit Points
Near Death 0-19% of Total Hit Points
Unconscious < 0% of Total Hit Points

 

[ShawnLStroud]

...I think the general idea is to keep folks from number crunching. ...Just sounds like a lot of effort for little payoff

Because I'm petty, it's a HUGE payoff when the resident number cruncher says, in the middle of combat, "How many hit points do I have?" and I get to respond, "Do you want to know RIGHT NOW?"

As to the effort: Not so much. I prepare the card ahead of time, then just mark off where and how much damage per character. Our combats flow pretty steadily, and the players don't yet seem to "know" how bad things are... so they do what real people would do in the same circumstance.

The week our cleric darted forward to perform healing on the newly disembowled paladin while the opposition (an enraged barbarian Ogre) was still in the game, knowing that he could be demolished by said opposition, saying, "I know that this guy can kill me, but I gotta do it!" was a real turning point for the group.

Then again, if you were responding to someone else... Whoops!

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The biggest problem I can see with this (and it's really a massive problem IMO) is that it will eliminate a cleric's ability to guage which healing spells are necessary. As a player of a 5th level cleric, I wouldn't use a Cure Moderate when another PC is down 10 hp. I'd use a Cure Light. If the PC were only down 2 hp, I'd use two cure minors. If I wan't able to note hp totals, I'd be much more likely to use powerful healing spells to make sure that PCs stayed alive. As a consequence, healing power would be wasted and my cleric would have far fewer non-healing abilities. So the party would be able to endure fewer combats between rest periods and the job of playing a cleric would become less interesting (unless I found the "how hurt is he really--what's his hp total and what kind of percentage of that does 'badly bruised' represent" guessing game interesting).