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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8503602" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, it required a very disciplined GM to carry it off. The technical problem, as you say, is that D&D style resolution systems don't work well this way, especially combat. You cannot, with any consistency at all, call hit points 'meat', so there's no definite narration to go with damage, which breaks the informational value of the GM describing the fiction. At best the GM must describe things in only a very specific set of fairly stylized ways. It totally breaks down at higher levels where you have PCs and monsters with 100's of hit points. Either 10 points of damage against a 15th level fighter is literally nothing but a scratch, or PCs at that level literally withstand lethal wounds and keep fighting (how do you describe that, and how does that jibe with earlier descriptions of lower level combat).I'd note there was a fairly cool online episodic novel, Age of Adepts, where 'high level' meant EXACTLY that, the main character and other "higher grade creatures" were literally depicted as utterly supernatural beings who had transformed their very flesh into magical forms by various means (the exact means determining their powers) so that, for instance, Greem would literally become a being of pure Fire Elementium, with a demon's heart and covered in 'lava shields' that would absorb vast amounts of damage in combat. The depictions of characters in that story though are a lot more 'gonzo' than anything in even super high level D&D. I guess some interpretations of 4e might come close. In a system like that, you might use pure fiction to describe everything, but D&D just doesn't generally give you those hooks.</blockquote>

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