As I said earlier...

I am guessing he doesn't know what he wants.

Well I'll know it when I see it but "play something else" isn't much help, understood but not much help. Sorry lost track of yhis,thread and missed questions. Will answer when not on a damned phone.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1002235Well I'll know it when I see it but "play something else" isn't much help, understood but not much help. Sorry lost track of yhis,thread and missed questions. Will answer when not on a damned phone.

There are specific recommendation to what else you could be playing. For example GURPS, Runequest, The Fantasy Trip, etc.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1002235Well I'll know it when I see it but "play something else" isn't much help, understood but not much help. Sorry lost track of yhis,thread and missed questions. Will answer when not on a damned phone.

Which is why my answer is "come to terms with D&D as it is" or "realize you cannot and thus don't play this particular campaign" or "talk the players into playing something else."  I really like 5E, and think it can be modified to get something approximating what you originally said you want, but ... It is going to involve some serious compromise on your part to accept a different way of looking at play that is more like D&D, rather than fighting the spirit of the game.  If you can't do that, then despite my belief, I agree with the rest that you would be better of picking something else.  That's the circle you have to square.  You can make D&D more low magic and more deadly and more resource intensive.  You can't turn it into GURPs or Runequest or something similar.  At that point, you might as well buy a copy of the 5E PHB, cut the cover off, and attach it to Runequest.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1002235Sorry lost track of yhis,thread and missed questions. Will answer when not on a damned phone.

Now that I can respect. As someone who normally takes the weekend off, there are any number of threads I've undoubtedly lost track of and people wondering why I never responded.

Just note, that while, to you, it might look like everyone else has said, "play something else" and aren't being much help, to everyone else, it kinda looks like you didn't want to engage with the people trying to help, and mostly just wanted to complain that this 5e healing rules that broke your verisimilitude existed.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1002256Now that I can respect. As someone who normally takes the weekend off, there are any number of threads I've undoubtedly lost track of and people wondering why I never responded.

Just note, that while, to you, it might look like everyone else has said, "play something else" and aren't being much help, to everyone else, it kinda looks like you didn't want to engage with the people trying to help, and mostly just wanted to complain that this 5e healing rules that broke your verisimilitude existed.

Reading back through I can see your point. I certainly didnt mean to come off that way, although I suppose its natural not to take the time to respond to what amount to 'dead end' replies.  Let me go back and find the specific questions and try to reply to each.

Quote from: Brand55;999952Have you ever looked at Hackmaster? It really sounds like an HP/wound system like the one that game uses might be more up your alley. It's a lot more bookkeeping but it is technically more realistic.

Yes Ive looked at a number of other systems but as fairly determined to make D&D work for this campaign. It was my first and besides my group being pretty set on it I like the way getting back into it feels, even if it is going to require some teeking.

Quote from: CRKrueger;999958You're always going to have a problem with D&D Grove, here's the problem...
1. You like to narrate what's going on.
2. D&D is abstract as hell.

Your only options are:
1. Learn to square the circle and narrate early HP loss as something other than real damage.
2. Separate Meat and Stamina/Skill/Luck and make the system more concrete, so you can narrate as normal (like you're doing in the Healing thread).
3. Pick a system with Hit locations/Wounds etc.

Probably sound advice, Im almost convinced of the same thing but will hang on a bit longer for a miracle or sudden inspiration.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1000023I partially delay my descriptions until things are resolved.  In part, because it better fits the way hit points work, but also because it creates uncertainty in the players.  If someone goes down below zero from a surprise blow, I'll say something more like, "As the drow slams his blade into your chest, you collapse."  And leave it there for now.  Character might be dead, might be dying, might have just been some kind of quick acting nerve poison on the blade.  The other players don't know.  They might waste a ranged healing spell on a dead person, if the timing lines up right.  

Save the "killing descriptions" for those times when the massive damage rules (or whatever else you are house ruling or adjudicating) makes it obvious.  The 1st level wizard gets hits for 20 points by a critical from a great sword.  Sure, the head gets detached from the body.

Edit:  Left out my main point -- something else you may be struggling to deal with, 5E is not often an immediately deadly game.  By the rules, there just aren't many times when a character gets hit, and they are definitely dead, right now.  It's deliberately designed that way to create uncertainty and fear in the players with relatively few character deaths.  (And for some groups, that works very well.  It does for mine.)  If you want to move closer to earlier D&D in that respect, your best bet is to either remove or sharply curtail death saves, to make the hit that takes you to zero a possible immediate killer.  You might, for example, have cascading death saves, where if you fail you have to keep rolling until you either succeed at one or die.  Or only allow one death save, pass or fail, to see if you are alive.

Thats a good idea actually, thanks... will consider.

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.

Nothing wrong with that either but my players are pretty used to and appreciate a more narrative form of game delivery. We get off on all the detail and dramatic flair. It would be a big let down for us to give that up.

Quote from: Skarg;1000094Seems 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]".

Thats a cool notion, the dramatic combat effects descriptions I mean... detail in the effect but not necessarily the damage.

When I started to let loose and narrate some weak hits as misses and some misses as weak hits, HP made more sense to my players as a resource.

Quote from: Voros;1000128So 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.

Ive ready them obviously but frankly they dont come anywhere close to having the effect Im looking for.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1000221Thus far, in your other statements we've mostly gotten what you don't like, and between these two statements, I am not getting a good grip of what you would like the world of your game to look like. Can you please give us an example of a game you have played where you liked the wound system, and how you narrated the blow-by-blow in it? I think that might help us find something that meets your needs.

A good example would be Iron Crown's Rolemaster. A ridiculously complicated game but it handled wounds very well. Your HP loss caused slow deterioration of performance and then you were also subjected to possible critical wounds that caused specific hindrances. These both fit into the natural path of healing at different rates. What you described at the time of getting hurt had a real game effect and required healing along a logical line. If you got smashed in the head by a hammer
 the effects in the game at least sort of mimicked that.

Twilight 2000 as I recall wasnt bad either, although I could be confusing it with something else. The system was much simpler but losing hits caused you to suffer effects like movement and action hindrances and healing these was days, weeks or more which fit the general idea behind the damage taken. Getting shot by an AK left you slow, hurt, in pain and probably a couple weeks or more from recovering even with medical attention.