Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5708428" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I think our experiences do differ. Of course normally when you're just duking it out with some Joe Hobgoblin nobody is elaborately describing and rationalizing every bit of damage. You get hit, you go 'oof!' go on. But yes, for a character taking a relatively small amount of damage from say a weapon blow, I'll describe it as an effective attack in some fashion "the hobgoblin strikes a solid blow against your shield, your arm is tiring and you're guard begins to drop" or if the attack bloodied the character then maybe "the hobgoblin's axe slides inside your guard and grazes your leg", etc. In other words attacks that haven't caused you any actual condition are simply wearing you down, digging into your store of luck, etc. If an attack does say bloody you, then chances are you got some kind of minor physical injury. Remember, there's no real debilitating effect there. If you're knocked to 0 then you've suffered some more severe result and you're disabled, like maybe "the hobgoblin lands a hard blow on your helmet, your vision goes dark." Did he break your skull, score a KO, or what? We don't know and we don't have to try to nail that down right that second. Let the narrative decide.This is a key point in the way I envisage play and the way I thus have it work at the table. Character's abilities are 'plot coupons' that the players are allowed to use more or less frequently. If the warlord uses Inspiring Word on the character above, then there you go, it was a blow that knocked the character down hard enough they couldn't just get back up without help from a buddy. If the cleric hits him with a healing word, well then maybe it was a massive concussion and he was lying there dying. The players are as much entitled to decide that as I am.If the PC survives the encounter? Well, then again if he's down at that point the same considerations apply. If he's conscious and has HS he can spend then he or his buddies bind up any wounds, they all rest up, refresh themselves, and they're ready to go again, albeit with their reserves depleted some. Maybe that represents some small wounds that are bound up, fatigue, etc. It doesn't really matter. The resulting narrative makes sense and represents a fun sort of action adventure feel where characters take it on the chin, go down, and then get back up, shake it off, and do it all over again, until finally they string themselves out to the point where they're just too slow and tired and beat up to hold off that one last deadly blow.Of course if you take really huge massive damage and go splat! in one shot, well, OK the hobgoblin cleaved your helm from top to chin, brains dribbled out, and your story is over, pending raise dead perhaps. If you go down a death save yourself to oblivion, well, you bled out or whatever.It is no less workable or abstract than the AD&D style thing where your 10th level fighter had 70 hit points and 10 guys stuck longbow arrows in him. Did you REALLY narrate that as the character walking around with 10 arrows passing through his body? I hardly think so. Either some sort of divine intervention happened, or the character fended off the attacks somehow, and/or he took some minor damage. The only real difference is that 4e gives you more tools and more reasons to vary the narrative.Frankly for us in AD&D? We just ignored the whole thing because it was all utterly illogical and there was no point in explaining it. Now there is. That seems fun to me. So yes, our experiences differ and I found the AD&D version rather wanting. Especially since you HAD to have clerics by its logic and/or crates of healing potions. Try to do Conan style S&S in AD&D, it just fails miserably. It works fine in 4e (though less resilient characters would make it work even better, still, you CAN easily enough do that by reducing HS and HP by some factor if you really want to).</blockquote>

Verification