Combat in Single-Player Campaigns

[Stormcrow]

I don't see how Conan has ablative DR10. He's certainly got some DR through Tough Skin, but not that much. Instead, he's got a lot of Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue, not to mention a lot of Hit Points and Health. He's also got a lot of traits that help him avoid damage in the first place: he doesn't take lots of sword-thrusts to the abdomen that he just shrugs off.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I don't see how Conan has ablative DR10. He's certainly got some DR through Tough Skin, but not that much. Instead, he's got a lot of Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue, not to mention a lot of Hit Points and Health. He's also got a lot of traits that help him avoid damage in the first place: he doesn't take lots of sword-thrusts to the abdomen that he just shrugs off.

While there's a simulationist school of gamers who hate to "black box" anything, and who insist that a dodge must be stepping aside, a parry must involve weapon-on-weapon contact, etc. – and, reversing description and mechanics, who insist that anything described as a cut must correspond to injury and thus contact, anything described as avoided must correspond to no injury and thus no contact, etc. – I find the game more satisfying if one doesn't do that.

Instead, many of a hero's "injuries" in a novel are successful defenses that mean no injury in the game, and just a symbol for "I've been in combat!", explaining why those wounds don't seem to matter one scene or chapter later. Likewise, when a hero who needs time to recover from combat in a novel despite no explicit mention of a particular wound, this is a symbol for "I've been injured!", and would mean missing HP in game terms. And you can read it the other way too: HP lost in game can be "black boxed" after combat as just the result of a strenuous fight with lots of frantic defending, while the hero who has lost no HP in game can be treated dramatically as having many injuries, none of them serious.

This helps avoid the need for strange traits that crank up injury-taking capacity, be those inhuman numbers of HP, ablative DR, or some other thing. For the most part, injury-taking capacity or its lack is rated by active defense scores.