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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9689961" data-attributes="member: 29398">From the perspective of the abstracted gameplay, however, it doesn't matter if you dodged the swing completely and took no damage or blocked the swing with your shield and took no damage.Now, one could argue that these two outcomes should be mechanically different; that the shield itself, for example, should have its own "hit point" number that erodes each time the shield blocks a swing until on hitting 0 the shield falls apart.  D&D doesn't fine-tune things to this degree, however.Here, though, the fire doesn't in fact miss you.  You're caught in it, with the only question being just how badly it happens to burn you and-or how lucky you are in what cover (if any) you're near or whether you happened to be facing toward or away from the center.  Resolving that "how badly did it burn you" question is what the save is for (and, in 1e, the save also determines whether everything you're carrying also has to save).Here too the abstraction could use some fine-tuning; and a different, though perhaps more cumbersome, way of modelling the same thing might be to roll damage separately for each individual caught in the fire instead of having everyone take the same amount (or half), while skipping the save-for-half piece.  For 1e purposes, if the damage roll for an individual is above average then whatever that individual is carrying also has to save; if below average, it does not.  And fire-resistance devices and spells will also, of course, have their say.</blockquote>

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