What constitutes a "hit" in your mind?

[Thomas Shey]

Is every "to hit" roll actually physically contacting a character in the game? Or are they whittling down their opponent's energy and luck and only the last few "hits" are actually drawing blood?

It depends heavily on the game. Its abundantly clear that 13th Age strikes are a mix of trauma and something else (because of some opponents doing miss damage). On the other hand, all evidence I'd have is to do damage in Eclipse Phase (and most other BRP derived and adjacent games) actual connection with the target is needed to have some effect.

 

[Voadam]

Because if the weapon weren't poisoned, it would be a narrow miss, and simply putting poison on a weapon shouldn't make it more likely to inflict an actual contact hit as opposed to a narrow miss.

Nah, if it were poisoned in 0D&D through 2e and you make your save it narratively missed, no effect from the poison (3e has the weird circumstance of the second save 10 rounds later). Which is why clerics and thieves are a bit better at poison saves in OSR type D&D, they have more blessings of the gods and are luckier.

With a normal arrow and lots of hit points there is narrative room for a hit to be a lucky near miss or a scratch or fatigue from dodging or whatever.

There is some abstraction and composite ideas going on with hit points and AC and saves, so absolute one to one mechanics to narration is going to hit problems. By design these things cover multiple possible narrations.

 

[el-remmen]

Depends on the game. For D&D, everything ranging from a jarring parry that makes your arm feel momentarily numb to a grazing blow across the shoulder to an organ-puncturing or bone shattering blow.

It really depends on how many hit point the target has left and how many points it does.

 

[pemerton]

There is some abstraction and composite ideas going on with hit points and AC and saves, so absolute one to one mechanics to narration is going to hit problems. By design these things cover multiple possible narrations.

Yes, Gygax is very clear about this in his DMG.

For D&D, everything ranging from a jarring parry that makes your arm feel momentarily numb to a grazing blow across the shoulder to an organ-puncturing or bone shattering blow.

In D&D, organ-puncturing or bone-shattering blows seem to generally (not universally) excluded by the fact that recovery is so easy.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I often describe it as a scratch, scuff, bruise, dent, partial block or parry. The bleeding starts when the bottom half of the hp are being removed.

A scratch, scruff, or bruise is bleeding.

From Wikipedia: "A bruise, also known as a contusion, is a type of hematoma of tissue, the most common cause being capillaries damaged by trauma, causing localized bleeding that extravasates into the surrounding interstitial tissues."

 

[overgeeked]

Depends. Is it modern D&D with massive piles of HP? Then it's luck and energy. Is it old-school D&D or a D&D-like? Then it's actual blood drawing contact. Otherwise it depends on the genre and the system. Toon? You're squashing and stretching the toon until they fall down, but they get back up after a few minutes. Paranoia? All meat, all the time. Discworld? It's all contextual traits, so we're back to depends.

 

[TorgoTheWhite]

In D&D where hp represents a lot of stuff it is fluid and I am fine with thinking hits on the last 10 hp or so as all solid physical hits while earlier stuff is more close calls and efforts and burning through luck.

In stuff like Shadowrun and White Wolf and such there are damage tracks with death spirals so the level of damage and impairment done is going to be more narratively connected to being physically hit from the beginning though there is still some room to describe things as being shaken or thrown off for those dice penalties.

Ah yes! The WW made me understand why you realistically want to try to "social-combat" your way out of a gunfight when you can... lethal firearms, no joke when you are outnumbered, even when they are in the hands of plebs

 

[jian]

Basically, I tend to think that a hit is (narratively) a significant setback that shows us that our hero is potentially in trouble or at least endangered in this combat scenario. That can be an actual physical hit or injury - a smart blow to the breastplate that doesn’t cut but knocks him back, an unexpected pommel to the unguarded face, even a stinging draw cut to the unarmoured thigh - but it can also be tripping down a flight of stairs (coming up with sword in hand but a lot less cocky), being forced back by a storm of blows that he barely parries, shaking his sword hand to clear the impact from so many clashes, or an open look of fear in his eyes.

It depends on the game system. But I quite like the Setback Tokens in Cartoon Action Hour because it makes this clear - a Setback is whatever you say it is and after three Setbacks you’re out.