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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7167752" data-attributes="member: 4937">I disagree.  D&D has absolutely no rules that provide for being stabbed through the stomach with a sword.  In D&D, by the rules, it doesn't happen.  Moreover, according to Gygax himself in the 1e AD&D DMG in his discussion of hit points, the color of being stabbed through the torso by a sword should only happen on player death.   High level PC's are somewhat tougher than low level PC's, but not so much tougher that they can resist multiple otherwise lethal wounds.   Rather, per his discussion the 8 hit points of damage that might represent being run through when the damage is delivered to a humanoid with only 4 hit points, represents instead only a superficial scratch when dealt to a humanoid with 40 hit points.  The color of the wound changes relative to the amount of hit points the character has remaining, and the color of a  fatal or debilitating wound only happens when the hit points run out.It is entirely inaccurate in the traditional approach to hit points to suggest therefore that D&D either suggests that high level PC's ever get stabbed through by a sword and are capable of shrugging it off, or conversely that high level PC's are ever damaged without taking at least some wound (however minor).   But in any event, "being stabbed through the stomach with a sword" isn't something even in the rules of D&D as a predicate to the outcome "being stabbed through the stomach is usually fatal", so it would be improper to suggest that it runs on a heroic model where being stabbed through the stomach with a sword isn't usually fatal.   How heroic or how gritty D&D actually is, is more a matter of level and color than any thing in the rules itself.Or to put it another way, how you think about the rules is at least as important as the rules themselves.  If some DM colors attacks on a PC as being run through with a sword and the PC shrugging off that damage, then you are right - for that approach to the rules, D&D is running on a heroic model that doesn't imitate that getting stabbed through with a sword is a serious event.   But while that is on some level a perfectly fine approach for a table to take if everyone consents to it, it's not something D&D's rules have actually encouraged.To the extent that D&D has a 'heroic model', it's more in that D&D does not model the unheroic aspects of being wounded at all, or at least, doesn't strongly encourage the DM to do so.   The majority of deaths from a sword wound don't result from the wound at all, but rather from blood loss in the minutes and hours following the wound, and infection in the wound during the days following.  But few if any RPGs actually deal with that level of detail, regardless of how much of a 'heroic model' they are trying to present.   As such, I don't think you can say that D&D is consciously going for a 'heroic model', so much as - just as with lingering poison or disease and its side effects - D&D eschews certain sorts of realism that creates onerous bookkeeping in favor of ease of gameplay.</blockquote>

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