OldBird's page

We've been through two combats and STILL they won't even tell me their names or...

Awesome. They don't want to be referred to by name, then have your character give them nick names that refer to a character attribute (so, "Red" for a guy/gal with red hair, or "Stinky" for the last one to snidely respond to your attempts to get a name.)

I'm also fond of "Boots", "Dandy", "Squeaky", "Cooter", "Bubba" and "Gus."

(Suspension of Disbelief)

This story is about 4e, <snipped for brevity> ... Can DMs describe non-fatal hits as purely near-hits and flesh wounds? Sure. Can falls into lava rivers be described as last second handholds? Usually. Can we think of creative reasons why undead take extra damage from positive/radiant attacks that hit according to the rules, but don't hit in-game? Yeah.

But ya know what? Every DM I've ever played with [including myself], in the heat of a tense battle, has a tendency at least once in a while to describe hits as hits. This often leads to patently absurd situations where my brain trips head-over-heels, gets up and then says "Oh yeah, this just some doofy game."

This is/was an issue for me in every shade of D20/DnD. I handled it in my last campaign by merely describing what the character might have felt, but not mentioning hit point damage. That, I just jotted down on a tracking sheet I kept for the purpose. The rule in that campaign was, if you wanted to stop and see how bad you were while in combat, you opened yourself up for an AoO. The players seemed to like the system as long as I explicitly described wounds and/or effects. Of course, YMMV, but it allowed me to minimize my issues with HP, while at the same time adding some flavor and challenge to the game.