Quote from: estar;1000015My rule of thumb in narrating combat are

1) If the roll miss and it is greater or equal to 10 + Target's Dex bonus then it is a hit but doesn't penetrate armor. Since 5e has stats for monsters it easy to figure out what the Dex bonus is. For classic D&D I wing it based on the monster description.

2) If less than 10 + Target's Dex it is a complete miss, dodge, etc.

3) When an actual hit is scored I look the ratio of damage to the max hit points. The greater the proportion the more "severe" the hit.

4) At low hit points I start describing exhaustion, fatigue, etc.

5) Below 12 or so hit points, I start using the lower total the max hit point for figuring out the ration. So when fighting a 100 point opponents 5 points hits would be described as minor stabs, and cuts. Until around 12 or 10 hit points then I up the description of the severity of the wounds.

I do this because it add a bit of dramatic flair that the players enjoy.

And that works perfectly right up until they doze off and wake up the next morning with all those "severe" hits, effects of exhaustion and fatigue, minor stabs and cuts and whatever else they suffered, gone. Not healing, not on the mend but GONE. Then it appears that all that describing you did the day before was in error. Could happen once in a while ie. guys go to bed swearing he broke his foot but wakes up and it seems it was just sprain but in D&D as is, it happens constantly, like everytime you take a hit.

Quote from: rgrove0172;999883Sorry Gronan but thats just not how I like to run the game. Nothing wrong with it of course, it is a GAME afterall of numbers, dice, statistics and such but I really enjoy (holding breath, closing eyes, waiting for the backlash) the story that all that statistical math and probabilities stuff generates. I have lots of wargames that dont require anything other than "You force him to back up one hex" or "the unit is now depleted, flip the counter over". I just see Roleplaying games as something much more in the interpretation department. I try to keep the game mechanic stuff to a minimum and relate everything I can in a more flavorful style. Its just a preference, once I know a lot of GMs enjoy, my players pretty much expect it.

Then D&D shouldn't be what you use:). In D&D, HP are HP and represent HP, as Gronan says, and the mechanics work best when you treat them that way.

There's many other systems that can do what you want, though;).

Quote from: RunningLaser;1000036Thinking back on all the years we've played d&d, we never really got into detailing where you hit someone or the effect.  Rather we knew that 1-5 points was akin to a light hit, where things getting up towards 15 points and beyond were huge wallops.  Varies by level of course.   The DM would narrate it as "The bugbear smashes you with a mighty blow for 15 points of damage!"  We would just use theater of mind to imagine where the hit took place and what not.  Was easier that way.

Not trying to be snarky, seriously but that doesnt really help much. That Mighty Blow you imagined and whatever went out the window when they healed 15 minutes later naturally with a good HD roll in a short rest. Thats kind of my point. Describing or imagining any sort of injury at all is pointless until they die, an even then if they come back fairly quickly, again without magic, you were still off target.

Quote from: Batman;1000049"Your blade slips through, scoring a hit! The cut, however, is superficial at best."

"Your strike slames into the foe, however much of it was absorbed by it's armor."

"*clang*! Your spear scores against against the goblin, its shield barely catching the end and saving itself from death."

"the weapon slames into the monster, knocking the wind out of it as ot staggers to rec9ver."

Those are good, try repeating them over and over and over and over in every fight for every hit. It gets weird.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1000051If I may ask, what system(s)(if any) have you been using instead of D&D in the meantime, what do they consider hit points (or their equivalent), and how have you narrated them?

Geeze, wouldnt know where to start. Done a lot of gaming in 35 years but most of them allowed for some sort of meaningful injury in combat other than death and a somewhat realistic rate of healing. If you described a hit as 'smashing into your ribs, and you feel something crack" you would probably not be at full health for several days or longer and face some sort of deficit until then. It was much easier but yes, typically much more complicated.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1000077Not trying to be snarky, seriously but that doesnt really help much. That Mighty Blow you imagined and whatever went out the window when they healed 15 minutes later naturally with a good HD roll in a short rest. Thats kind of my point. Describing or imagining any sort of injury at all is pointless until they die, an even then if they come back fairly quickly, again without magic, you were still off target.

It's going to be a step up in complexity, but you can always take a look at HackMaster 5th edition.  Hit points represent health of the character with damage being actual physical harm done.  Wounds are tracked individually- a 5 point wound healing on it's own with rest takes 5 days for the first point, 4 days for the second, 3 for the third, ect- taking a full 15 days to heal from that injury.  This doesn't take into account things like muscle tears, broken bones, ect.  Critical injuries can end one's adventuring career fast- permanent injuries and the like.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1000074And that works perfectly right up until they doze off and wake up the next morning with all those "severe" hits, effects of exhaustion and fatigue, minor stabs and cuts and whatever else they suffered, gone. Not healing, not on the mend but GONE. Then it appears that all that describing you did the day before was in error. Could happen once in a while ie. guys go to bed swearing he broke his foot but wakes up and it seems it was just sprain but in D&D as is, it happens constantly, like everytime you take a hit.

And if I cared enough about it from when I ran a 5e campaign I would change the rest rules. Do player notice the generous recovery rules? Sure they do. Does it matter to me as far narration of combat, no. In the end the players enjoy the game more with my combat narration then without even with the full recovery rules. That is good enough of a reason for me.

In addition it not likely this will be only problem a group has with D&D 5e if there are issues. D&D has a bunch of abstractions that make what it is. Pile enough house rules  and at some point you will be better of using a different RPG or designing one yourself. Which what I did with the rules I use for my Majestic Wilderlands campaign.

Quote from: tenbones;1000052Here is an interesting experiment that would require a lot of GM trust. It's something I've thought about but never have done:

What if the players had no idea how many HP they had? The GM kept those numbers and merely narrated combat effects based on the ever-dwindling values only the GM knew about? Would take a little extra work but I bet I could pull this off if I ran D&D.

Thoughts?

If you're not good at improvisation you could create a table based on the percentage of health a character reaches with canned descriptions that you could tailor to the situation.

Personally I have enough to do as a DM so it's better to me to avoid the extra work of tracking a player's mechanical responsibilities.

At some point, you either have to accept the system for what it is and enjoy it that way.  Or if you can't, don't play it.  Sure, you can house rule and tweak and bend, but that works best when what you start with is not too far from where you wanted to be.  A bend that goes from, "completely unacceptable to me," to, "I can grit my teeth and do it, but it won't be fun," is not sufficient.  A bend that gets to, "Eh, not bad.  I can deal, roll with the flow, and enjoy it for what it is," makes a decent compromise.  Either it is bent into something you can accept and enjoy, or it isn't.  

Frankly, some of these topics remind me of this:  The Expert

Seems to me the place you asked about this before was the thread about healing in 5e. My answer remains the same, as it has since ever seeing how many hitpoints high-level characters get, and how low the damage from weapons tends to remain, which is that it doesn't map very literally at all, and so I can't relate to it except as a weird mechanic, and so I stick to games with literal damage systems instead.

If I wanted to do what you seem to want to do, which is give descriptive details about what supposedly actually happened in the game world when someone with 73 hit points loses 9 of them to a physical attack, I'd probably watch a bunch of surreal kung-fu movies to fill my mind with how that can be translated to actions. "The blade cuts through your shirt and leaves a long scratch dripping blood", or "you're knocked flying ass-over-teakettle into the pillar on the other side of the room, where you are shaken but not stirred. You get up and prepare for another exchange [of super-cool blows that look deadly but do almost nothing until you run out of HP]".

Quote from: rgrove0172;1000080Geeze, wouldnt know where to start. Done a lot of gaming in 35 years but most of them allowed for some sort of meaningful injury in combat other than death and a somewhat realistic rate of healing.

I started with AD&D 1st edition, around 1985 I switched to Fantasy Hero 1st edition and then GURPS in 1987. I never looked back until around 2009. Due to a combination of circumstance I was able to secure a limited license from Judges Guild to publish my Majestic Wilderlands.  

The problem was most of it was written for GURPS. At the time I was known for having written the two Points of Light books which the fans of classic D&D and Judges Guild really liked.  So I learned to play OD&D as that what my audience was interested in. And because I wanted to write good books, I took it seriously and learned how to do well and still run campaigns the way I have been for decades.

My experience with GURPS is that vast majority of combat had a standard pattern to how they played out. Just like in real life there was a right way and a wrong way. The right way didn't always succeed but your ass will be handed to you if you try to pull off the wrong way. But circumstance change, so while it wasn't often, there were circumstances where the full panoply of GURPS combat options would be needed in play.

The way I dealt with it is that the typical OD&D combat round is an abstraction of the typical GURPS combat round. But when circumstances were such that more detail were needed, I just made a ruling. To spice up the typical combat round, I learned to creatively narrate the result of the die.

GURPS is still my favorite RPG, but after refereeing, playing and writing for OD&D (and D&D 5e) for the past couple of years) both have some serious advantages in areas of usability and being able to be modded with new stuff like classes, items, and monsters. And you get a lot more done with the time spent gaming.

So rather than try to bash OD&D or 5e into something that worked more like GURPS, I learned to work with their abstractions. And where it couldn't be bent, I just lived with it. For example in GURPS it is a contest of skill to try to disarm and it is not likely to succeed against a warrior of equal or greater skill.

With OD&D a fighter can disarm but contest of skill (or attributes) are not vary D&Dish. So instead the attacker makes a to-hit roll and in lieu of damage can opt to disarm. The target makes a saving throws. Only if the save fails the opponent is disarmed. The greater skill of the attacker is reflected in increased odds of hitting, the skill of the defender is reflected in what he needs to roll for a saving throw. It highly abstracted compared to how the GURPS disarm rules work. However in the end it amounts roughly to the same odds of it succeeding given the two opponent relative skill.

I suggest you run D&D 5e 'as is' for a campaign. That you read Matt Finch's Old School Primer to get a feel of how rulings not rules works.

The first place I ever encountered the concept of hit points was when, as BJ Blazkowicz, I got shot in the face by a prison guard. Later on, stepping on a plate of chicken made me feel better.

So I guess I just don't worry about it too much.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1000074And that works perfectly right up until they doze off and wake up the next morning with all those "severe" hits, effects of exhaustion and fatigue, minor stabs and cuts and whatever else they suffered, gone. Not healing, not on the mend but GONE. Then it appears that all that describing you did the day before was in error. Could happen once in a while ie. guys go to bed swearing he broke his foot but wakes up and it seems it was just sprain but in D&D as is, it happens constantly, like everytime you take a hit.

So use the alternate healing rules. This seems to be a lot of bother about something you can easily change yourself, not only are there optional rules in the DMG but you are encouraged to change the rules to fit your campaign. So do it.

Quote from: rgrove0172;999860"Your swing is a good one and he really has to dodge out of the way to avoid it, looks like you are pressing him hard, defenses are weakening!"

I mean, seriously? Does anyone actually do that?

Sure, I do. I only describe serious wounds in the last hit die or so worth of hit points (for classed/leveled/humanoid kinds of characters -- monstrous foes often get different treatment since their hit points more often represent physical toughness). Everything up to that point is described as bruises, nicks, fatigue from defending against your furious assault, et cetera. My players tend to use my descriptions to gauge how powerful an enemy they're facing. If they're dealing out quite a bit of damage and the guy they're fighting is just getting cuts and bruises, they know he's probably got a lot of hit points. Giving him an actual wound of some sort signals that he's near the end of the line.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1000079Those are good, try repeating them over and over and over and over in every fight for every hit. It gets weird.

I got dozens, with ideas for specific weapon types.