What Was Gygax Thinking?

[Sable Wyvern]

Whether you like it or not, it's still more descriptive.

You keep posting as if detailed, blow-by-blow descriptions of combat are an objectively good thing we should all be striving for.

When I'm running a combat with 7 PCs, 8 henchmen, and a dozen allied hobgblins vs 35 lizardmen and two giant lizards, I have no interest in bogging the game down by describing every swing and miss and injury. The excitement and interest is in manouevring, dealing with flanking forces showing up, trying to form and hold lines, while breaking the enemy's, etc ...

The default D&D combat mechanic is quick and simple and supports that style of fight extremely well. Changing to an armour DR system just so I can make a slightly faster objective assessment as to whether a swing missed or was absorbed by armour is of no value to me in that context -- especially given it's already pretty easy using the existing system.

 

[migo]

You keep posting as if detailed, blow-by-blow descriptions of combat are an objectively good thing we should all be striving for.

When I'm running a combat with 7 PCs, 8 henchmen, and a dozen allied hobgblins vs 35 lizardmen and two giant lizards, I have no interest in bogging the game down by describing every swing and miss and injury. The excitement and interest is in manouevring, dealing with flanking forces showing up, trying to form and hold lines, while breaking the enemy's, etc ...

The default D&D combat mechanic is quick and simple and supports that style of fight extremely well. Changing to an armour DR system just so I can make a slightly faster objective assessment as to whether a swing missed or was absorbed by armour is of no value to me -- especially given it's already pretty easy using the existing system.

In practice it's no different. For one roll it's still a description. D&D assumes a bunch of feints and parries (to an extreme degree in AD&D with 1-minute combat rounds). You're spending the time either way. But with wounds instead of hit points, or at least hit points with hit location baked in, with armor as damage resistance instead of folding it in with a defense score, you get more detail in the same amount of time with the same number of rolls.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

In practice it's no different. For one roll it's still a description. D&D assumes a bunch of feints and parries (to an extreme degree in AD&D with 1-minute combat rounds). You're spending the time either way. But with wounds instead of hit points, or at least hit points with hit location baked in, with armor as damage resistance instead of folding it in with a defense score, you get more detail in the same amount of time with the same number of rolls.

Determining hit location and subtracting local armour from the damage is in no way the same amount of time and effort as not determining a hit location and not needing to determine and remove the DR from the damage.

Armour as DR also treats hits as if they are punching through armour, instead of bypassing it, which isn't generally how you inflict injury on somone in heavy armour.

I'm ok with you preferring armour as DR, but your insistence that it's objectively superior for all use cases and your refusal to accept that anyone might possibly feel differently or have any valid reason for wanting something different from a game is baffling.

 

[AsenRG]

Obviously Gygaxian D&D isn’t for you, it sounds like you might enjoy Harn Master

You are probably right (or Mythras, or d6, or Talislanta, or any of a number of other systems). His preferences seem closer to mine, after all!


But, surprisingly for everyone, I'm not going to join this round of the mêlée that usually results from Armour as DR vs Armour as AC...

I got it covered.

If we are talking later edition it would an finesse weapon using DEX instead of STR
In Classic D&D it is a normal to-hit roll using Strength.
Without anything in the basket it would do 0 point of damage. Hope you have a strength bonus because basically, you are trying to slap your opponent into unconsciousness.
If weighted then they would be the same as a light club doing 1d3 damage.
If you are using two weighted baskets then under my MW rules you would get +1 to AC as you can use the off-hand basket as a defense.


So

Sounds good, but the baskets are actually used mostly to entangle. So in your system, that would be "every hit is leading to a grappling-style attack, but the hit is at +1 and the ensuing save is at -1, because getting your hand or leg out of a basket is just harder!"

I am pretty sure it is more about using multiple hanging baskets in order to train in fighting multiple opponents. BedrockBrendan would know.

No. It's a form where the baskets are held, one in each hand, and swung around in somewhat-complicated patterns...that only become clear once you start thinking about chinna/qinna.

The question is do you really need the mechanics to help you with your descriptions? If so than more detailed is helpful, if not than it is irrelevant.

I don't need them to help, I need them to not contradict my descriptions. Most armour-as-AC systems fail at this...with Classic Traveller being possibly the only exception that I can think of!

(Maybe one of the Mouseguard games had earned that distinction as well).

 

[T. Foster]

Unless you add a bunch of complicated crunchy conditions to account for different types of weapons and damage (blunt force impact vs piercing vs slashing) and how they interact with different types of armor, armor as damage reduction ends up being less realistic than D&D (or Classic Traveller) style armor as an adjustment factor in determining whether or not a successful (I.e. damaging) hit occurred.

Yes, under the latter it’s not always obvious whether a failed attack was a whiff or was dodged or bounced off the armor, but (1) most of the time - especially in larger-scale combats - it doesn’t actually matter, and (2) when it does (typically because of some armor-bypassing special effect) it’s pretty easy to determine it (failed to hit AC 10 = whiff, failed to hit AC 10+Dex = dodged, failed to hit AC 10+Dex+armor/magic = blocked), certainly easier and quicker to do that when it’s relevant than to have to every attack in every combat factor dodging + location + penetration + whatever other crunch factors the system at hand includes.

 

[AsenRG]

Unless you add a bunch of complicated crunchy conditions to account for different types of weapons and damage (blunt force impact vs piercing vs slashing) and how they interact with different types of armor, armor as damage reduction ends up being less realistic than D&D (or Classic Traveller) style armor as an adjustment factor in determining whether or not a successful (I.e. damaging) hit occurred.

That's simply untrue IME. Simple systems tend to deliver about the same level of detail regardless of AaAC vs AaDR, but the latter still tend to deliver more realistic results and interfere with my descriptions less.

 

[sharps54]

That's simply untrue IME. Simple systems tend to deliver about the same level of detail regardless of AaAC vs AaDR, but the latter still tend to deliver more realistic results and interfere with my descriptions less.

I mean the right answer is obvious, RoleMaster! It models being easier to hit someone in heavy armor but harder to do serious damage to them and it handles the description of the critical hit (or fumble) for you.

 

[T. Foster]

How did Phoenix Command handle hand-to-hand combat?

 

[AsenRG]

RoleMaster

That be a mighty weird way to write The Riddle Of Steel!

easier to hit someone in heavy armor but harder to do serious damage to them and it handles the description of the critical hit (or fumble) for you.

...but that part is just untrue, sorry. If anything, it's harder, because the guy in armour isn't buying most feints.

How did Phoenix Command handle hand-to-hand combat?

IME, quite well, but very slowly.
The temptation to fudge to avoid another round is strong in that one!

 

[Voros]

In B/X maybe. In AD&D Clerics got spells out of the gate and got bonus low level spell slots for above average Wisdom scores, easily attainable when the default attribute rolling method is 4d6 drop lowest and arrange to taste. AD&D also has Create Food and Water as a third level spell. So an AD&D Cleric with 15 Wisdom will be rocking 3 1st level spell slots at level 1, and at level 8 will be sitting on 5 1st level, 4 2nd level, 3 3rd level and 2 4th level spell slots, while the 5e Cleric has 4 1st level, 3 2nd level, 3 3rd level and 2 4th level spell slots at level 8.

Yeah spells diminishing other potential play aspects is hardly limited to 3e-5e.

Also see the section(s) about resurrections in the 1e DMG. Gygax clearly saw it as a legit tool for play.

 

[Marshal Lucky]

Yeah, there is probably something earlier, but I'm drawing a blank, although there is a lot of mythology about the pyramids having curses and traps on them so there is likely something in 1930s fiction when Egypt-mania was a big thing.

Raiders was 1981, so again post dates the D&D thief by several years.

Secret of the Incas has Charlton Heston dodging traps in an ancient tomb. Bond movies had it too. Indiana Jones was influenced by both.

 

[Marshal Lucky]

This is simply not an accurate comparison.

When I'm placing things in a dungeon, I have two basic guidelines:

1. I have a general feeling for how dangerous I want a given level to be, and place things using that as a rough guide. Finer balance than that is simply unnecessary.
2. I make sure there are one or more things on each level that are significantly more dangerous, and likely to obliterate a nonchalant party.

Utilising the kind of tools found in 3.x would be a lot of additional work, and I'm not seeing any meaningful payoff for that over what I'm already doing. In fact, I'm not sure it would even make sense, because CR is designed around creating encounters, and a lot of what I'm putting in aren't encounters, but communities of creatures. How many and in what circumstances they are actually encountered isn't something I can determine ahead of time.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use whatever encounter balancing systems you want, simply that it is false to say that OSR design philosophies are objectively worse, when they're not even attempting to achieve the same thing.

I handle it somewhat differently. Creatures are placed where one might reasonably expect them to be -regardless of level:

If there's a cave in the hills it could be the home of hill giants, whether the party is 1st level or 15th.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

I handle it somewhat differently. Creatures are placed where one might reasonably expect them to be -regardless of level:

If there's a cave in the hills it could be the home of hill giants, whether the party is 1st level or 15th.

For outdoor stuff, I work the same way, although there is a big difference between civilised lands, borderlands and true wilderness, so players can make some educated guesses as to how dangerous some hills are based on how far they are from patrolled areas -- at the very least, if there are hill giants in civilised hills, it's a fairly safe bet the locals know about it.

 

[Voros]

Secret of the Incas has Charlton Heston dodging traps in an ancient tomb. Bond movies had it too. Indiana Jones was influenced by both.

It's gotta go back further to that, some semi-forgotten serials and features I'm sure.

 

[robertsconley]

That's simply untrue IME. Simple systems tend to deliver about the same level of detail regardless of AaAC vs AaDR, but the latter still tend to deliver more realistic results and interfere with my descriptions less.

Then please educate us as to how Fantasy AGE generates more realistic descriptions and interferes with your descriptions less than various editions of D&D? I really would like to know what secret sauce magically conjures up these details solely due to the fact that Fantasy AGE uses Defense Rating and Damage Reduction instead of Armor Class.

Yes I am being sarcastic. Which people complain about Armor Class, that not the only factor. There is the lack of hit location, the lack of any intermediate injury effects, and so on. There zero difference in the amount of aid that Fantasy AGE provides in describing combat results versus D&D. But when one takes one more step and go to the level of complexity of say Runequest 2e. Then yes I agree 100% that the system does help far more with describing combat.

But just Armor Class versus damage reduction? No that is a distinction without a difference. Akin to arguing whether a Mercedes is better painted red or painted blue. If you like cars painted red or when all is equal damage reduction over AC. Then great but don't try to kid us that using red paint somehow makes the car run better.

 

[Toadmaster]

How did Phoenix Command handle hand-to-hand combat?

They had a whole stand alone hand to hand book, similar to how the guns worked but for hand to hand fighting, and a bit less complex (but still complex).

I have pretty much everything for PC and Living Steel, but haven't looked at it in years.

 

[migo]

Determining hit location and subtracting local armour from the damage is in no way the same amount of time and effort as not determining a hit location and not needing to determine and remove the DR from the damage.

If hit location is integrated, it doesn't take any more time. If it's not, it takes a bit more time, but it's well worth it for the extra detail, and potential to end the fight sooner. Take someone's sword arm out of commission so they have to drop their sword, and they'll probably flee or surrender. You know what the DR is, so you just need to subtract it from damage. Even with armor just making you harder to hit, it's still most efficient to roll damage at the same time you roll to hit.

Armour as DR also treats hits as if they are punching through armour, instead of bypassing it, which isn't generally how you inflict injury on somone in heavy armour.

If it's against bullets or crossbow bolts, yes. If it's with a sword, it's more about making contact and sliding to find a crack in the armor, and that is still represented by the reduction because the vitals are always the best protected, so it's less crippling where there's a crack.

I'm ok with you preferring armour as DR, but your insistence that it's objectively superior for all use cases and your refusal to accept that anyone might possibly feel differently or have any valid reason for wanting something different from a game is baffling.

It's objectively more descriptive. The argument to just describe it myself is bullshit. If I'm going to do the description myself, I'll play Wushu. If I'm playing a system with as much structure as D&D, I want the system to be producing the results.

 

[TJS]

Yeah spells diminishing other potential play aspects is hardly limited to 3e-5e.

Also see the section(s) about resurrections in the 1e DMG. Gygax clearly saw it as a legit tool for play.

I don't think anyone's claiming otherwise, but that doesn't mean that things that existed already to some extent haven't come more to the fore.

Just looking at Goodberry for example, as it came up earlier I noted when I looked it up that it was always a Druid spell, but not a Ranger spell. In 1st edition that meant Rangers had access to it of course but not until 10th level. It's not a Ranger spell in 3.5 and now in 5th edition it's a spell that Rangers get at 2nd level (rather than 8th).

So in 1st edition and 3rd edition if you had issues with Goobderry they only really occured if you had a Druid (or possibly a Ranger in 1st edition at high enough levels to probably not matter). In 5e you have issues if you have a second level Ranger.

Now Rangers are more common than druids (the D&D Beyond data a few years back had Druids as the least popular class - and that largely matches my experience across a range of editions - while Rangers are very popular.)

Therefore, if Goodberry is a problem, than making it a commonly available spell rather than an occasionally available spell (by giving it at low levels to a more commonly played class), makes the problem more common. (And even if you don't want to buy that Rangers are more common than Druids a problem spell that one class has access to is less of a problem that a problem spell that two classes have access to).

D&D may be the same as it ever was, but sometimes it is also more as it ever was than it ever was before.

 

[migo]

It was probably a deliberate design choice to make Goodberry available like that. People don't like keeping track of rations, so it gets replaced with an easy spell.

 

[TJS]

It was probably a deliberate design choice to make Goodberry available like that. People don't like keeping track of rations, so it gets replaced with an easy spell.

Quite possibly But 5e kind of has this problem in balancing the effectiveness of a character with the fantasy of playing an effective character. A lot of players want to play a really competent character but they want that character to have a chance to show off the competence of that character.

Take for example a Fighter who has the special ability "Whenever you roll initiative you automatically kill all the enemies on the opposing side". If your goal is to play an effective combatant you have certainly succeeded, but one may feel that success is a bit hollow, as in this case success means bypassing the whole area of the game where you would expect to show off that competence.

Wilderness exploration in 5e has always been a bit like that. You pick the options that make you most competent at wilderness exploration and you never actually have to do wilderness exploration because you automatically get where you want to go, with no chance of getting lost, and with enough food to feed the whole party foraged automatically - so in other words the DM might as well just skip to the destination.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

It's objectively more descriptive. The argument to just describe it myself is bullshit. If I'm going to do the description myself, I'll play Wushu. If I'm playing a system with as much structure as D&D, I want the system to be producing the results.

It's very clear that it's what you want. Where you're losing me is where you start acting like, if it's something you want, then it's also objectively better game design for it to be implemented in a way you like.

 

[TJS]

To be honest I don't understand why people are objecting so much to what Migo is saying.

It does seem there is a clear distinction.

On the one hand we have 1) damaging attack vs 2) attack that inflicts no damage.

On the other hand we have, 1) attack that hits and bypasses armour, 2)attack that hits and doesn't bypass armour, and 3) attack that misses completely.

It seems to me that in the second case there simply is an additional distinction to be made.

That doesn't make a game that uses Armour as damage reduction inherently better, it just means it has an additonal point of distinction. I would argue that D&D probably wouldn't be well served by drawing too much attention to the actual detail of it's combat as that just highlights the inherent absurdity of D&D combat beyond a certain point ("The Hill Giant hits you with his 3ft wide tree trunk, thankfully you're wearing chain armour so the damage is reduced to only 3 hp" - maybe we're better off eliding this somewhat?*)

*Lets not even mention hit locations.
GM: Ok roll for hit location.
Player: 20
GM: Ok head shot double damage.
Player: Aaahhh...head shot?
GM: That's right you rolled a 20 on your hit location.
Player: Aaah not that I'm complaining but it's a storm giant?
GM: So?
Player: Well my rogue is a halfling making a melee attack at ground level with a dagger. How exactly did I manage to hit him in the head?
GM: Would you rather I ruled that, due to the discrepancy in size, attacking a storm giant with a dagger is kind of like an ant trying to bite an elephant to death and therefore you're not capable of hurting it to any meaningful extent?
Player: Aaah no. I guess not.
GM: Good. Shut the fuck up then.

 

[TristramEvans]

To be honest I don't understand why people are objecting so much to what Migo is saying.

...

That doesn't make a game that uses Armour as damage reduction inherently better,

I think that's probably the reason

 

[TJS]

I think that's probably the reason

Yeah. I guess perhaps I should have said I don't know why people are objecting to the premise, when the issue is the conclusion.

 

[Sable Wyvern]

Yeah. I guess perhaps I should have said I don't know why people are objecting to the premise, when the issue is the conclusion.

Just in case there is any confusion, I have no problem with armour as DR. Mythras and WFRP 4e are two of the three games on my current shortlist to run next. I happen to find armour-as-DR feels slightly less realistic to me than armour-as-AC or armour-as-save, but I also find armour-as-DR generally makes it much easier to implement things such as piecemeal armour and hit locations.

My objection is to the notion that armour-as-DR is better because it makes describing blows easier (I'm not convinced it would make it any easier for me); to the notion that detailed blow-by-blow descriptions are necessary in order for a battle to fun and exciting (I feel that, especially in large fights, they would only serve to bog things down terribly); and thus to the conclusion that DR does D&D better than what "people" expect from D&D.

 

[Vile Traveller]

Secret of the Incas has Charlton Heston dodging traps in an ancient tomb. Bond movies had it too. Indiana Jones was influenced by both.

It's gotta go back further to that, some semi-forgotten serials and features I'm sure.

There are several Karl May books (19th Century) which feature traps in ancient South & North American structures. Also some Biggles books from his between-the-wars period.

 

[robertsconley]

On the one hand we have 1) damaging attack vs 2) attack that inflicts no damage.

As I illustrated you can readily determine the three results below using the AC system of D&D.

On the other hand we have, 1) attack that hits and bypasses armour, 2)attack that hits and doesn't bypass armour, and 3) attack that misses completely.

It is like debating Ascending AC of Sword & Wizardry versus looking up the to-hit number on a chart in OD&D. They are distinctions without a difference. Two ways of expressing the same concept and producing the same results.

Nor does it mean that one has to like either approach equally well. A blue Mercedes may have the performance and the fun factor. But you may enjoy it a hell of a lot more if it was a red Mercedes.

 

[Sharrow]

Quite possibly But 5e kind of has this problem in balancing the effectiveness of a character with the fantasy of playing an effective character. A lot of players want to play a really competent character but they want that character to have a chance to show off the competence of that character.

Take for example a Fighter who has the special ability "Whenever you roll initiative you automatically kill all the enemies on the opposing side". If your goal is to play an effective combatant you have certainly succeeded, but one may feel that success is a bit hollow, as in this case success means bypassing the whole area of the game where you would expect to show off that competence.

Wilderness exploration in 5e has always been a bit like that. You pick the options that make you most competent at wilderness exploration and you never actually have to do wilderness exploration because you automatically get where you want to go, with no chance of getting lost, and with enough food to feed the whole party foraged automatically - so in other words the DM might as well just skip to the destination.

Basically you pay good character building currency for the opportunity to not get spotlight time. That's not generally good game design.

 

[sharps54]

It's gotta go back further to that, some semi-forgotten serials and features I'm sure.

The Phantom of the Opera had a trap sequence in it.

 

[Fenris-77]

Even the oldest stories have very OSR gotcha traps in them. What's that one about the apple no one was supposed to eat?

 

[Vile Traveller]

Even the oldest stories have very OSR gotcha traps in them. What's that one about the apple no one was supposed to eat?

Just think how differently things could have turned out if god had piped up at that point. "Are you sure you want to bite into that?"

 

[Fenris-77]

Just think how differently things could have turned out if god had piped up at that point. "Are you sure you want to bite into that?"

See, this is why good designers telegraph their traps....

 

[ffilz]

To be honest I don't understand why people are objecting so much to what Migo is saying.

It does seem there is a clear distinction.

On the one hand we have 1) damaging attack vs 2) attack that inflicts no damage.

On the other hand we have, 1) attack that hits and bypasses armour, 2)attack that hits and doesn't bypass armour, and 3) attack that misses completely.

It seems to me that in the second case there simply is an additional distinction to be made.

That doesn't make a game that uses Armour as damage reduction inherently better, it just means it has an additonal point of distinction. I would argue that D&D probably wouldn't be well served by drawing too much attention to the actual detail of it's combat as that just highlights the inherent absurdity of D&D combat beyond a certain point ("The Hill Giant hits you with his 3ft wide tree trunk, thankfully you're wearing chain armour so the damage is reduced to only 3 hp" - maybe we're better off eliding this somewhat?*)

*Lets not even mention hit locations.
GM: Ok roll for hit location.
Player: 20
GM: Ok head shot double damage.
Player: Aaahhh...head shot?
GM: That's right you rolled a 20 on your hit location.
Player: Aaah not that I'm complaining but it's a storm giant?
GM: So?
Player: Well my rogue is a halfling making a melee attack at ground level with a dagger. How exactly did I manage to hit him in the head?
GM: Would you rather I ruled that, due to the discrepancy in size, attacking a storm giant with a dagger is kind of like an ant trying to bite an elephant to death and therefore you're not capable of hurting it to any meaningful extent?
Player: Aaah no. I guess not.
GM: Good. Shut the fuck up then.

Haven't you ever narrated the PC running up the storm giant to stab it in the face? :-)

I've always loved the giant counter in White Bear & Red Moon... It's a pair of legs...

I forget what we used for hit location the last time I actually ran a RuneQuest encounter featuring giants. I just remember players being glad the giant ONLY hit them in a limb... These days, against a giant more than 3m tall, I'd change the hit location die. For a really big giant, might as well just roll a d8...

Outside of RQ, I pretty much don't use hit locations.

 

[ffilz]

As to describing blows... Maybe I'm a horrible GM, but I almost never describe blows, maybe 1 in 10, maybe not even that many. Sure, with armor as DR, I will announce "tink" for a non-penetrating blow, though I don't use that so much these days because I'm not sure my players are used to the "term". I might describe a blow where just 1 or 2 points got through as a scratch. But that stuff is giving the players information about the amount of DR (not always obvious if magic is involved or chaos feature or a monster the PCs aren't familiar with) rather than narrating the combat. So yea, I spruce descriptions up a bit to help highlight the information, or maybe to call out a particularly good blow, or one that is a major turning point, but for my part, detailed narration of every blow in a combat doesn't make the game more interesting. And I'm always wary of narration not matching the game mechanics. I an enjoy pretty abstract systems AND more detailed systems, though RuneQuest is about as detailed as I go. I love Cold Iron which has armor as DR but it also has D&D style hit points, though being below 1/2 HP causes penalties, and a blow that results in > 1/2 HP damage causes a stun so it's not D&D good to the last drop style hit points. In both RQ and Cold Iron, the DR and other details they have work to make a fun game. D&D is also a fun game.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Even the oldest stories have very OSR gotcha traps in them. What's that one about the apple no one was supposed to eat?

They were very clearly warned lol. I'd say very fair GMing in that case

 

[T. Foster]

Yeah, the who “narrate combat results” thing is pretty foreign to my experience - I’ve never really done it as a GM and actually consider it something of a red flag when I’m a player and the GM does it. I already know from the die rolls whether I hit or not and how much damage I did, so I’d rather keep the action moving, and the GM taking time to describe how my “missed by 2” roll means “my feint lured the enemy into making an off-balance lunge so that I was able to slip under his overextended guard but by chance my blow glanced off his breastplate with a clang and a spark, but that I can see in his eyes that he recognizes how close it was and that I’m a skilled opponent who must be taken seriously because another mistake like that will likely be fatal” just slows down the pace of play, adds absolutely nothing to my enjoyment or engagement, and makes me think the GM is either a frustrated novelist, trying to show off their technical knowledge of fencing (which, note, I do not have, so I have no idea if the above sample description is actually reasonable or not - even when I’m reading fiction when the author goes into these sort of detailed blow-by-blow descriptions of combat I pretty much tune out) or, most likely, both.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Yeah, the who “narrate combat results” thing is pretty foreign to my experience - I’ve never really done it as a GM and actually consider it something of a red flag when I’m a player and the GM does it. I already know from the die rolls whether I hit or not and how much damage I did, so I’d rather keep the action moving, and the GM taking time to describe how my “missed by 2” roll means “my feint lured the enemy into making an off-balance lunge so that I was able to slip under his overextended guard but by chance my blow glanced off his breastplate with a clang and a spark, but that I can see in his eyes that he recognizes how close it was and that I’m a skilled opponent who must be taken seriously because another mistake like that will likely be fatal” just slows down the pace of play, adds absolutely nothing to my enjoyment or engagement, and makes me think the GM is either a frustrated novelist, trying to show off their technical knowledge of fencing (which, note, I do not have, so I have no idea if the above sample description is actually reasonable or not - even when I’m reading fiction when the author goes into these sort of detailed blow-by-blow descriptions of combat I pretty much tune out) or, most likely, both.

It is very personal taste sort of a thing, but I expect some amount just so I have an idea of how much I am hurting a foe. In a lot of games you might know the damage but not the health of the target.

 

[ffilz]

It is very personal taste sort of a thing, but I expect some amount just so I have an idea of how much I am hurting a foe. In a lot of games you might know the damage but not the health of the target.

And I'm happy to narrate enough to help with this. Reasonable information should be available, but it doesn't have to be detailed. So I will describe blows as tink, a scratch or a solid blow. In RuneQuest where limbs go flying, I may be dramatic, but I'm only saying a few words beyond the mechanical "the blow severs the right arm".

T T. Foster 's sample description actually risks running afoul of some random mechanic or something, or invites a player to expect some mechanical effect that the system doesn't provide.

BTW, things like that are why I also don't really like it when players try and kick sand in their opponents face or something. If the system doesn't have mechanics for stunts like that, there's a risk that the stunt is over effective and such maneuvers should be a standard part of combat.

 

[T. Foster]

It is very personal taste sort of a thing, but I expect some amount just so I have an idea of how much I am hurting a foe. In a lot of games you might know the damage but not the health of the target.

Sure, that’s fair. I will usually tell the players (who roll their own damage, so they know how much they did) whether the enemy seems badly wounded (generally meaning they’re almost out of hp) or is bloodied but still strong (meaning they’ve got a decent amount of hp left but have probably lost half or so of their total) or it was just a scratch and they shrug it off (plenty of hp left) or don’t seem affected at all (warning that the opponent is probably immune to that attack type). It’s really narrating “misses” that I consider to be a big waste of time.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

BTW, things like that are why I also don't really like it when players try and kick sand in their opponents face or something. If the system doesn't have mechanics for stunts like that, there's a risk that the stunt is over effective and such maneuvers should be a standard part of combat.

This is what I think rulings are for. I wouldn't want to play in a campaign where I am only limited to the mechanics of the system. If the system doesn't include kicking sand in a person's face, I would still expect that to be something you can try and that would be resolved with the best mechanics the GM can think of on the fly