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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8213802" data-attributes="member: 2629">What you want is the narrative of a cinematographically interesting fight.  That is all possible in the narrative without any mechanics required.  I don't narrate every attack, but I tend to do so when it is a meaningful hit, or when the die rolls are fun (high/low damage roll or attack roll). Although mechanically the monster may have just moved 5 squares, rolled a crit and then an 11 and 12 for their damage rolls.  However, I'll tell the players, "One of the orcs turns his cold gaze on the paladin, snearing something incredibly foul in Orcish, before charging straight at the paladin in a frenzied rage.  As the paladin raises his shield to block the orc's seemingly wild strike, the orc surprisingly dives low, using the blind spot behind the paladin's shield to hide, and swings the axe beneath the shield.  It catches the paladin's armored thigh, splitting the plates and drawing a deep gash in the leg that nearly knocks the paladin off his feet.  The orc then rises back up, directly staring the paladin in the eye as his foul breath crosses over the shield, and prepares to swing his axe down in what he clearly thinks will be a vicious killing blow."  Matt Mercer of Critical Role fame provides combat descriptions far better than mine.  If you go back and watch early episodes of Critical Role, and then more recent ones, you'll see that his players get better and better at doing it themselves for the blows their PCs are landingWhen doing this, I (and my group) often ignore the mechanics of the game.  One dwarven barbarian in my game was run by a player that had a Mortal Combat fetish, and whenever he took down a foe he'd describe just how we killed the creature, and it rarely had anything to do with the axe attack that he rolled from a mechanics perspective.  And I let that story element change the battle scene.  In one memorable moment, he rolled a hit with his axe for 18 damage which was enough to kill the soldier he was fighting.  However, he described it as grabbing the guy by the throat and shoving his face into the adjacent blade barrier spell, swinging him back and forth between the buzzing blades, trying to catch as many blades as he could.  This reduced his victim to tiny bits, as if he was run through a chipper shredder like in Fargo.  I said, "OK, you're covered head to foot in blood at this point, and everything within 5 feet of you is slick with blood."  The gory visage ended up giving him a bonus on a key intimidation role he made later, and the slick footing ended up tripping up another bad guy that tried to charge the barbarian a moment later.  I also don't keep the monsters static in combat.  Even when there is no obvious reason to move the monsters, if I can do it and not provoke an OA, I often do it just to keep things more hectic.  It has a lot of odd benefits.  At times, I end up sabotaging PC plans that I did not anticipate, and at others I open up a gap that a PC needs to get in the perfect attack.  Both of those things tell a better story.</blockquote>

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