Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I completely agree with the premise that any time a character/party engages in combat it should be dangerous.
There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the factors is that 5e takes the "resource drain" approach by throwing numerous mildly challenging encounters at the players before presenting them with a significant challenge. I completely oppose that style of play because it's a massive time sink and combat simply for the sake of "draining resources" is mind-numbingly boring. Combat needs to serve a purpose: start a conflict, resolve a conflict, progress the narrative, represent the inherent danger of an area, etc., etc.
My players know that each time initiative is rolled they need to be paying attention. However, they do occassionally get encounters that don't pose a real threat to them, but that's simply a consequence of the fact that not everything the characters encounter in a living, breathing world is level-appropriate. I.e. Sometimes a group of low-level thugs in the city try to mug the wrong people.
Regarding combat duration, I can't speak for other systems because I haven't played anything but D&D for years, but combat is usually resolved in a handful of rounds. Typically 3-6 (or 18-36 seconds in 'real' time).
Regarding Hit Points - Hit Points are an abstraction that combines a lot of elements: luck, skill, training, will to live, endurance, etc. They are not 'meat points.' This is why I tend to avoid narrating combat with stuff like "your arcing swing with the greatsword cleaves through the Orcs defenses to open a massive gash in its torso." That kind of wound would likely put the Orc down.
In my mind, it's only the strike that takes you to zero HP that does anything significant.
There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the factors is that 5e takes the "resource drain" approach by throwing numerous mildly challenging encounters at the players before presenting them with a significant challenge. I completely oppose that style of play because it's a massive time sink and combat simply for the sake of "draining resources" is mind-numbingly boring. Combat needs to serve a purpose: start a conflict, resolve a conflict, progress the narrative, represent the inherent danger of an area, etc., etc.
My players know that each time initiative is rolled they need to be paying attention. However, they do occassionally get encounters that don't pose a real threat to them, but that's simply a consequence of the fact that not everything the characters encounter in a living, breathing world is level-appropriate. I.e. Sometimes a group of low-level thugs in the city try to mug the wrong people.
Regarding combat duration, I can't speak for other systems because I haven't played anything but D&D for years, but combat is usually resolved in a handful of rounds. Typically 3-6 (or 18-36 seconds in 'real' time).
Regarding Hit Points - Hit Points are an abstraction that combines a lot of elements: luck, skill, training, will to live, endurance, etc. They are not 'meat points.' This is why I tend to avoid narrating combat with stuff like "your arcing swing with the greatsword cleaves through the Orcs defenses to open a massive gash in its torso." That kind of wound would likely put the Orc down.
In my mind, it's only the strike that takes you to zero HP that does anything significant.
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