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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9840061" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Whereas the games that have decided you always/"always" hit are aiming at the folks who find that when they miss it's a feel-bad.  That those "wasted" turns feel sufficiently bad to them that it's better to eliminate or cut them down even further. And that this means the average round is more tense, each moving us measurably toward someone going down. No doubt a lot of this is inherently subjective/dependent on mindset, which approach feels better/more verisimilitudinous to a given player.Right.  Rolling a 1 for damage in D&D is similar to rolling a 2 in Nimble or whatever.The other part, speaking as someone who's sword fought as a hobby as well, is that every time someone attacks me and I need to actively defend myself that saps some of my energy to keep defending myself. In that regard, losing some amount of HP every round just measures how much energy/how hard I had to work that round. And I know  part of the point of this in OSR games like Into the Odd is that every round a given combatant gets attacked, basically, is moving them measurably toward a state of "can't defend well enough against that next attack and finally gets cut down".  Again speaking as a former fencer and LARPer, this feels kind of right insofar as it means the difference between a superior fighter and an inferior one is more a matter of skill, conditioning and stamina and less a matter of the better one having more "meat points"/being able to take multiple solid shots to his actual body.Yup.  I like the "Hit Protection" explanation for HP.  It's less actually being hit with a yard-long piece of steel (or substantially longer, for a giant, say), than the stamina and luck and skill to NOT be hit, and when those points run out, a telling blow gets through. In most games with HP this is the one that knocks you out/disables you, though some games or house rules let you keep acting or make a check to stay conscious or something, though you're extremely vulnerable at that point.</blockquote>

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