Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="D+1" data-source="post: 1842623" data-attributes="member: 13654">Some of those sorts of questions are legitimate, some are not.  "How good is your reflex save?"  In the middle of combat - not appropriate.  Outside of combat as casual conversation among PLAYERS it's fine.  "How many hit points are you down?"  Depends on your play approach.   There are those DM's who insist on tracking all damage, hit points, etc. personally.  [I couldn't STAND that myself as DM or player, but whatever floats your boat.]  If that's the case you still need to provide players with plentiful, meaningful assessments of their own physical condition.  A PC with 80 hit points who's down to 5 will KNOW they are in extremely serious physical trouble.  If you're not giving them that information you need to start.If you are like most DM's and the players track their own damage and hit points there's a little more gray area but it's not hard to work out.  If the PC is a cleric about to cast healing spells AFTER combat there ought to be no problem at all with just dealing with straight numbers.  If it's the middle of combat that information should be more vague.  Let them relate their hit points as a rough guess in 10% increments.  That ought to be enough.IMO players have the RIGHT to know EXACTLY the numerical status of their characters at virtually all times, excepting only those times when the information is SPECIFICALLY being hidden from the PC or falsified.  When and how they relate that information to other players is highly variable.  If it's going to affect the players decision on spells, skills, etc. there should be no reason why they can't just be told straight up what the numbers are.  Healing, maximizing skill usage or spell effects - just let them talk numbers.  But when that sort of thing is being done in time-critical, confusing, or strictly roleplaying situations THAT'S when they need to be told to be more diplomatic in how they relate such information.By the reduced speed and overall nimbleness of his movements, reduced accuracy, repeated cries of pain, clutching wounds, favoring damaged limbs, etc.  I never give out hit point totals or other numerical information on NPC's or enemies, but I still give reasonably accurate assessments of what the CHARACTER should be able to ascertain.  For me, bad guys often fall into a fairly general assessment as far as their woundedness goes - not very (@25%), about half (50%), heavily wounded (75%), close to death/hanging on by a thread (less than 10% or HP of 5 or less).  For PC's as I said before I'll relate it in about 10% increments.YES.No heal checks.  The individual PLAYERs should be allowed to know the EXACT condition of their own characters.  What do you want to do?  Limit their knowledge of hit points to "Damaged" and "Not Damaged"?Generally I do too, but sometimes a little of that is not a problem.  Someone else mentioned it already but a player often knows what a PC doesn't and a PC knows what a player doesn't - and more often than people seem to want to think it IS appropriate to cross the line.  One player may simply not have guessed the best course of action when his character would and should have.  So sometimes I'll allow other players to offer advice like that.  Other times it seems more appropriate that they NOT be alllowed to interfere for better or worse in another players decisions for his character.Actually in my campaigns AoO's seldom come up because I allow this freely.  One of the most BASIC elements of combat, it seems to me, would be knowing how to simply move from A to B without being WHACKED by the enemy.  It only happens when I see it when nobody else does, when players willfully ignore it (generally for roleplaying reasons), or if it simply cannot be avoided.  This aspect of the 3E system IS a tactical wargame and I see no reason why CHARACTERS would routinely be that stupid.</blockquote>

Verification