IC/OOC issues re: language

[Alex319]

This is something that has come up as I find myself writing songs to perform in-game, which often rely on rhyming and wordplay.

Many common expressions come from specific aspects of real life history, culture, or technology that would presumably not exist in Acarthia. For instance, consider a phrase like "such-and-such was slam-dunk evidence - it was the smoking gun." Since basketball and guns presumably don't exist in Acarthia, Acarthians would presumably not use these expressions. Some other examples are things like:

"The bad guys have built a Potemkin village"

"I'm running on half a tank" [this was said by an NPC, referring to her body point status]

Calling heavily armored melee fighters "tanks"

"He really hit that one out of the park"

Are these kinds of expressions things that would ruin immersion for anyone?

------

Another question comes up with how we talk about in-game mechanics, like how much damage a monster does. For instance saying something like "he swings sixes" - is that something you could say in character. Presumably things like how armor/body points work would be known in-game (e.g. how many hits it takes a certain monster to break through armor could easily be observed, and someone with healing arts can tell the difference between someone who is down 8 body points and someone who is down 9, and it is stated in the rulebook that all damage calls are recognizable in-game for what they are) and it would make sense to me that characters would use shorthand like "he swings sixes" as an easy way to communicate this information in a battlefield situation. Does this make sense or are there other guidelines on how to handle this?

 

[Graham Wolsey]

Anachronistic language should be avoided. Different players will have different opinions on how serious this is. Some players are more game focused than character focused and will slip up from time to time. It is easy to make a mistake with your language especially with expressions. In fact, even during games official plot things can have these anachronisms. While Tiatar was attempting to find a Gift of Life Formal Scroll we had to solve a series of riddles about locations on the campsite. One of the riddles seemed like the answer was Baseball Diamond. I sat there thinking really hard what the answer could be because "it couldn't possibly be baseball diamond those don't exist in New Acarthia", ultimately I just voiced my answer and we ended up checking the baseball diamond and finding the next clue. To me it is inevitable, but everyone should try to minimize when it happens as much as possible.

---

I am of the opinion that mechanics are observable and cognizable to PCs. We should be able to recognize and respond to what we observe. Hit points don't exist in the real world, but Healing Arts allows us to know of their existence and how many someone has at a certain point in time. A PC with healing arts and a flame bolt spell should be able to learn that a PC could die to "exactly one flame bolt". Similarly speaking of "dagger blows" or "weapon proficiencies" are awakward ways of conveying this information IC without resorting to "6 damage". "He swings with the strength of 6 dagger blows, or "he swings as a fighter wielding a long sword with 4 proficiencies." Is this awkward and a little immersion breaking? Yes. Is it probably needed because we can't say "that blow severed his femoral artery and the next crushed his spine" also yes.

I'll be interested to hear what plot thinks on this issue.

 

[meirya]

Personally, I loathe the "dagger blows" terminology and think it is grossly immersion breaking and cheesy. Characters are not going to speak or think numerically like that; those are mechanics used OOG to represent the severity of damage happening. The language you use IG as your character can vary by person; I think correlating with spells is a halfway decent way to do it if you really need to explain numerical damage IG.

Speech is hard because you're trying to communicate quickly and sometimes it's hard to remember to keep it in game and stay immersive. I think there's absolutely no excuse in written communication where you have time to think about things tho. I would encourage people to avoid anachronisms as much as possible.

I have a policy in the Mages Guild to use in game language completely with bestiary submissions as those are in game documents. I will rewrite or request a rewrite if I get submissions that talk in terms of "dagger blows". It is a major pet peeve of mine.

 

[Graham Wolsey]

I don't really see how 10 dagger blows is worse than 2 stone bolts. Both are pretty awkward. I would love to see a better system of discussion adopted, I think "not talking about it" is even more awkward though.

Another issue I have with complicating language overly much is that it often is very confusing for new players. Many players don't know the celestial spell system. Other ways of discussing damage are heavily context dependant:

"That blow could not pierce the hide of an Ogre"
"Even Pike would have had to take that hit"
"Even a golem would have been felled by that"

All these statements are much more IG than the above alternatives but result in a secondary jargon that is inherently unfriendly to new players. I wish there was a simple solution other than "ignoring it".

EDIT:

Ultimately, we suspend our disbelief in combat when the individual attacking us starts shouting "4 normal" at us, why is it so much more difficult to have that suspension in language. When I'm having a discussion about the ogre that attacked me and I say "he swung with the power to topple trees (5 normal)" that wouldn't be that immersion breaking for me personally.

 

[llywelyn]

I don't really see how 10 dagger blows is worse than 2 stone bolts. Both are pretty awkward. I would love to see a better system of discussion adopted, I think "not talking about it" is even more awkward though.

I would argue that "I needed a lightning bolt to take them down" is orders of magnitude better than "it takes 10 dagger blows to take them down." "A lightning bolt" is an IG concept that hides the damage abstraction in way that a "dagger blow" does not. Similarly, I'd argue that "I need a cure serious to heal her" is better than "she took 10 dagger blows of damage." Especially if we leave out precision—I don't need "exactly" one cure serious, I need a cure serious regardless of if it is 7 body, 8 body, 9 body or "exactly" 10 body. I could also say "I need a little more than a cure wounds for their injuries…" for 5 or 6 rather than trying to say "I need a cure wounds and a cure light."

"Two stone bolts" is of course not as good as "a lightning bolt" despite that they translate to the same thing, so in my mind the higher the number the more we get into abstractions of numeracy that are undesirable.

Basically: if you want to make it sound good in-game, a convenient way to frame it is "I can only count in terms of 'one', 'two', 'many', and 'lots'." So "they were really tough, it took me two stone blasts to take them down" is so, so significantly better in my mind than "it took 90 dagger blows." More than that, however, and we start getting into the "awkward language category," so we go to "I had to lay into them with many elemental blasts" or "it took quite a lot to take them down…" rather than continuing to count. Similarly, don't start stacking things in weird constructs (I needed one of these, two of these, and one of these…), leave it to a single item with a single multiple of "one, two, many, lots."

 

[firebee]

The other thing about "lightning bolt" vs "dagger blow" is, at least in my mind, "lightning bolts" are consistent in a way that "dagger blows" aren't. Obviously this is a function of how you visualize what is going on, but I might see a lightning bolt as so many joules of energy striking the target at the time that the packet lands, whereas you don't tend to knife fight by delivering a given number of interchangeable stabs -- "really" there's substantial variance in the effect of each one. The notion that a "dagger blow" is a thing that has a quantified effect as opposed to a thing that lands in your heart and kills you is more jarring to me, in that it calls to the forefront the artificial nature of combat, than similar language involving the magic system.

 

[Eadar]

Half a lightning bolt, 1/10th of a lighting bolt, 1.2 lightning bolts...

Standard longsword, 3 standard longswords...

A cure wounds, a cure wounds and a cure light...

Sounds exactly the same to me as dagger blows. You're using an IG description to describe an OOG mechanic. I understand dagger blow is a pet peeve for some, but honestly calling it by lighting bolts and cure X is the same thing.

Edit: GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP. For both of Alex's posts. Just concentrate on sportsmanship folks. People make mistakes, people are in battle time (IE, count fast), and it's up to you how immersive you want to be - just try not to mess up others immersion.

 

[llywelyn]

Sounds exactly the same to me as dagger blows. You're using an IG description to describe an OOG mechanic. I understand dagger blow is a pet peeve for some, but honestly calling it by lighting bolts and cure X is the same thing.

One doesn't have to think in binaries: It isn't either "we have no mechanism in-game that is a valid comparator" or "they are all equal" with nothing in-between. The essential goal is to make it so that you don't see too far behind the curtain into the game mechanics when discussing things in-game, but that doesn't mean that there aren't things that can be basically understood.

If you say "a tenth of a lightning bolt" you are being inane for the sake of being inane. But "I hit a goblin with a lightning bolt and they fell down, but I hit another one with a stone bolt and they didn't" fits with basic understanding of injuries existing on a scale without pulling back the curtain significantly on the game mechanics. Similarly, I have a certain number of spells memorized that exist at different levels of power. This level of power is perceivable in-game in everything from how many packets I can carry in my hands to that you know—in game—what I am casting when I cast it. This is not an abstracted number or a mechanic that is abstracting something that happens in game, this is actually an effect that is perceivable in-game and the spells exist as in-game concepts (everyone knows or can learn, in game, what a "lightning bolt" is, it isn't unidentifiable magical damage).

I don't know that a lightning bolt does 10 damage. I know that a lightning bolt takes a cure serious (at least if I have healing arts). See also, ARB 1.2 pg 63:

Asking “How many Body Points are you down?” is an out-of-game question; you should ask it quietly and then in-game you can say “Ah, I see that a Cure Light Wounds is all you need.”
​

Per the above: "2 body" is the the mechanical side of what is going on and should not be expressed in game for immersion purposes, but "you need a Cure Light Elixir" or "you need a little more than a cure serious wounds" is perfectly in keeping with the intention.

As to multiples: Outside of game we don't tend to talk about a car accident as being "twice as bad" as some other injury or some other car accident, but we do talk in terms of "yeah, I was in urgent care and they let me go with some antibiotics" or "that required stitches" or "that required surgery." When we do use expressions such as "twice as bad" we generally don't mean it to be thought of as an exact value: When someone says colloquially "twice as hot" they generally don't mean "twice the temperature kelvin."

This fits with concepts such as "cure serious wounds" vs. "cure mortal wounds," at least so long as you don't start attaching linear multipliers to them. Especially if you limit that sort of language to those with healing arts—you don't go up to a healer and say "I need a cure serious wounds" unless there's some reason (healing arts) you would have that specific information, instead you go up and say "I need healing" and they ascertain how much.

"Dagger blows" or "standard longsword strikes" peels back the curtain significantly farther in comparison and is basically an attempt to circumvent that you don't have an understanding of concepts such as "body points" in-game.

 

[Graham Wolsey]

If you say "a tenth of a lightning bolt" you are being inane for the sake of being inane. But "I hit a goblin with a lightning bolt and they fell down, but I hit another one with a stone bolt and they didn't" fits with basic understanding of injuries existing on a scale without pulling back the curtain significantly on the game mechanics.

That seems harsh. It feels demonizing to call it "inane". Sometimes specificity is needed to explain things that are "well-known" behind the curtain to plot. Everyone that was attacked by the creature knows how much it attacked for. It seems significantly more artificial to me to constrain discussions arbitrarily. Stone Bolt always does five, and a brand new fighter swinging a long sword always swings for two... always... as a matter of game "truth".

My respectful disagreement with your explanation is that I believe characters DO have an understanding of body points though they wouldn't call them that. They don't think of them as mathematical principles, but they know that a 20th level (legendary) fighter can be hit in the face more times than a 1st level (inexperienced) earth scholar. Fortanis is not earth. Injury is very different. In real life if I get in a knife fight with some guy it will be highly variable how many times I'm stabbed and where I'm stabbed before I die. In Fortanis if I fight the same guy twice it will take the same number of strikes to put me down each time, this is a truth of the world that is observable, cognizable, and if I am being true to the setting I should respond to as a PC that cares about tactics and strategy. This extrapolation isn't metagaming it is "world truth" that flows from the rules system as surely as a lightning bolt does 10 damage.

Demonizing culture that speaks in specifics also hurts new player mentorship. How would you explain to a new player who is unable to injure an ogre why they cannot hurt it? I have started by saying, "Ogres have thick hides that cannot be pierced except by magic and strong blows delivered by capable melee combatants." Inevitably, the follow up question is, "How hard do I have to hit it before I can damage it?" Here is where you need a system for talking about these things. "Less than a stone bolt but more than uh... there isn't a spell I can use to explain." To me it is much more illustrative (and is actually answering the players's question) to say "when you can split a log with a single strike you'll be able to pierce the hide of an ogre about the strength of 3 dagger blows" or "after you have trained with me to your first proficiency with that blade". In real life you can demonstrate these concepts through example and analogy, but the game system is just that a system and needs some artificial constraints built in to express in words how it functions.

EDIT: Consider this as well. Players are supposed to accept that "all members of certain races act alike". In real life this is horrible and racist in the extreme. In the game it is "true". All stone elves are without emotion. All Mystic Wood Elves dislike it when someone deprives another of their free will. These are true to the world there isn't variability. Fortannis is a much more static and regular place than Earth. Damage works that way to.

 

[Eadar]

"Dagger blows" or "standard longsword strikes" peels back the curtain significantly farther in comparison and is basically an attempt to circumvent that you don't have an understanding of concepts such as "body points" in-game.

My point is - its all circumvention. No one way is better than the other.

 

[llywelyn]

That seems harsh. It feels demonizing to call it "inane".

Inane - silly, stupid

Demonize - portray as wicked and threatening

It isn't "demonizing" to refer to the practice of using "decilightningbolts" to circumvent the fact that there is no actual in-game concept of "body" as inane, it is calling it silly or stupid. Calling something silly or stupid is not equivalent to referring to it as "wicked" or "threatening."

Sometimes specificity is needed to explain things that are "well-known" behind the curtain to plot. Everyone that was attacked by the creature knows how much it attacked for. It seems significantly more artificial to me to constrain discussions arbitrarily. Stone Bolt always does five, and a brand new fighter swinging a long sword always swings for two... always... as a matter of game "truth".

Those are "out of game" concepts. You understand out of game what those values are, in game there's no such reference, because there's no such thing as "body points" (ARB 1.2 pg 63). "I am seriously injured" is orders of magnitude better than "I am 10 body points down" under pretty much all circumstances. Trying to refer to those 10 body points as "10 dagger blows" or "10 decilightningbolts" is just a circumvention of the fundamental truth that you know that "body points" are bad but still want to communicate using the OOG concept and Gamist precision. Saying "I am one lightning bolt down" is similarly no good, but saying "I took them down with a lightning bolt" is an observation of a singular in-game effect operating in-game.

As firebee points out, "dagger blow" is a poor unit of measurement as to the nature of combat, if for no other reason than because as it stands the amount of damage you do with a weapon is ultimately determined more by the proficiency of the fighter than by number on the blade.

My respectful disagreement with your explanation is that I believe characters DO have an understanding of body points though they wouldn't call them that. They don't think of them as mathematical principles, but they know that a 20th level (legendary) fighter can be hit in the face more times than a 1st level (inexperienced) earth scholar.

Except that they also don't have a concept of "levels," nor do they have concepts such as "scholar" or "templar" or "fighter" as such. These are OOG concepts, see ARB 1.2 pg 48:

These classes are out-of-game categories to determine the amount your character will have to pay for their skills.
​

I don't describe someone in game as a "tenth level fighter." Ever. A "scout" in game could be any class inclusive of Scholar, Templar, Fighter, Adept, Rogue, or… Scout.

How would you explain to a new player who is unable to injure an ogre why they cannot hurt it?

"They are tough opponents with thick hides, requiring heavier weapons, greater skill, or magic in order to harm them. Your dagger will not be able to pierce their hide until you are much more practiced."

Or, as you put it:

I have started by saying, "Ogres have thick hides that cannot be pierced except by magic and strong blows delivered by capable melee combatants."​

Inevitably, the follow up question is, "How hard do I have to hit it before I can damage it?"

If you want to keep it in game and model good language: "if you were to use a two handed weapon you should be able to overcome their thick hides" or "Once you have trained a small amount with your blade you'll be sufficiently skilled to wound them, would you like me to teach you?"

Or, acknowledging that the framing of their question ("damage", "hard do I have to hit") is essentially out of game you could answer: <hand on head> It depends, but we've mostly seen that threes work fine, once you pick up your first weapon prof you'll be able to hit them. </hand on head>

EDIT: Consider this as well. Players are supposed to accept that "all members of certain races act alike". In real life this is horrible and racist in the extreme. In the game it is "true". All stone elves are without emotion. All Mystic Wood Elves dislike it when someone deprives another of their free will. These are true to the world there isn't variability. Fortannis is a much more static and regular place than Earth. Damage works that way to.

This really has very little to do with the conversation at hand, but it should be understood, as specified in the Racial Refresher which is quoting official policy:

Races in alliance are not like "Races" on Earth. They are closer to species. Or, following the footsteps of other fantasy works, "the race of elves." If I could go through and replace the word "race" in the books and resources with the word "species" I would, but it should be understood that we are not talking about something that maps in any sort of analogous fashion despite the word use.

Sometimes these elements are required to be followed by PCs specifically in order to maintain certain appearances in game, otherwise you—to use an example from LARPcast—end up with a bunch of Sun Elves who hate the sun being the first impression people have in the world of Sun Elves. Just because Dryads hate necromancy doesn't mean that there aren't dryads who are necromancers, it means that they need to be explained through mechanics that are not available to PCs (e.g., malwoken) in order to ensure that, from the PC standpoint, such variations actually are the exception.

 

[Graham Wolsey]

Except that they also don't have a concept of "levels," nor do they have concepts such as "scholar" or "templar" or "fighter" as such. These are OOG concepts, see ARB 1.2 pg 48:

These classes are out-of-game categories to determine the amount your character will have to pay for their skills.
I don't describe someone in game as a "tenth level fighter." Ever. A "scout" in game could be any class inclusive of Scholar, Templar, Fighter, Adept, Rogue, or… Scout.

No one refers to individuals by "level", that's why I suggested an inexperienced or experienced member of a class. On classes it is universal convention in game to speak about class and I have heard dozens of different PCs use it almost every game. Scores of different NPCs use the terms IG as well. I believe I have even heard you say it on occasion.

You mention that we "don't have an IG reference point". As I explained above that is incorrect. If two individuals fight one will fall over after the exact same number of blows every time after healing to full. It takes the exact same number of stone bolts, lightning bolts, dagger blows from an equally proficient individual etc. This is readily observable in the game world and is something that can and should be role played about. Just because you don't believe body points aren't observable forces in nature as much as gravity or electrons doesn't mean they aren't. My character doesn't know what an electron is, but that doesn't prevent me from making observations about the world that electrons have caused me to make.

 

[meirya]

ARB p. 48: "Classes are used to describe your character’s natural talents. This may or may not have anything to do with your character’s profession—for example, not all rogues are thieves and not all scholars are spellcasters... Choosing which class you wish to play should be based upon what skills you wish to purchase, as your class is out-of-game... These classes are out-of-game categories to determine the amount your character will have to pay for their skills. As such, they can change so long as the skills themselves stay the same."

Hence if one of my characters calls someone a "fighter", the character simply means that they are someone who fights. Their OOG class might be "rogue". If one of my characters refers to a "scholar", they are simply saying that the person is scholarly and academic, not that they have the OOG class of Scholar (it might be "fighter" for all I know). "Rogue" IG refers to anyone sneaky or tricksy, whether or not they are the OOG Rogue class. Etc.

This is easy to slip up on or get confused about, for sure. But per the rulebook, classes are explicitly OOG. If you talk to Shani about templars, she is going to have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.

On the subject of dagger blows, etc: The way I feel about "dagger blows" terminology is like the way Jesse feels about white sneakers. When I hear it, I have a bit of a twitch reaction and irritation and a grimace, and I lose immersion... but I'm not going to call it out on anyone because it's more that I think it's cheesy, unnecessary, and immersion-breaking, not because it's against any kind of rules. However, I won't accept it in any IG documents that I have any control over (e.g. Mages Guild bestiary entries) because I value immersion and I want quality, flavorful in-game documents. "Dagger blows" lacks any kind of flavor, IMO.

 

[Graham Wolsey]

Thanks for the discussion, I appreciate and respect your viewpoint even if I disagree with it. It has opened my eyes to how others feel about the term and I'll try to do better about it when people are around that dislike it. No hard feelings, I sometimes get into lawyer mode sometimes on forums and I hope we can agree to disagree and move forward.

 

[firebee]

Far as the notion that folks can observe IG that a more skilled fighter can be stabbed in the... well, not face actually, that they can be stabbed in the body consistently so many times before they fall down AND that their face doesn't really exist for the purpose of stabbing, what I think is complicated...

I think there's kind of a weaving involved between IG and OOG a lot of times, where OOG things like increasingly detailed discussion of the rules system or logistical tropes get brought in to a kind-of-IG conversation. There's practical and also artistic functions in it -- wordplay, which personally I love. I'm referring here to things like commentary about the wind and the shape thereof, the odd shape of the economy as it relates to the extreme rarity of tree nuts, anything that touches on the concept of a "standard dagger blow", etc.

At the highest IG level, though, such as occurs in IG documents and stories that are not meant to contain in-jokes, I think that the narrative about what "really" happened on Fortannis diverges in the details from what physically occurred on Earth, and the things that we do to resolve gameplay elements are not actually a part of that world. So something that is represented by a player hitting a player ten times with a boffer was not necessarily the character doing exactly the same thing with the sword -- the advantage represented by the boffer strikes might have been in positioning or the disruption to their opponent's concentration, which ultimately opened them up to a single blow that was fatal in the conventional way -- maybe they were even stabbed through the eye, which is something that would never cause a death if boffer blows were exactly equivalent to sword blows. How do we explain THAT, other than by letting our eyes slide over it when we're visualizing the other world?

It's similar to how in some chapters lockpicking is represented by untying knots in rope -- the idea is to have a challenge to fine-motor skills that determines whether the "real" lock was opened and how long it took, not that dread necromancers tie the gates to their lairs shut with oddly uncuttable clothesline.

In that sense, I don't think it's a completely terribad thing always to say "dagger blows", but I think it's a "puncturing the fourth wall" thing (that is maybe on the more hackneyed end of that genre?) and less of an observable physical fact that scholars could investigate (and wouldn't THAT experiment be fun). When we aren't intending to puncture the fourth wall, it would probably be better to say something else -- the alternative phrasings suggested here being a good start.

 

[SorinKatt]

I would like to throw a question into the Mix if I could. The conversation so far has been very thought provoking and while I am still trying to decide which direction I personally favor. I do know that I have been told explicitly by a few people that damage is an in game concept and that referring to damage is not considered game breaking according to the Alliance rules guidelines. Normally I would think I was misunderstanding this, but I have been told flatly that no saying "I swing for 4 Normal" is an in game and in character concept according to the rules. Right or wrong (I happen to not like that level of bluntness) is this actually true that the rules and official RP guidelines do not discourage this?

 

[llywelyn]

I would like to throw a question into the Mix if I could. The conversation so far has been very thought provoking and while I am still trying to decide which direction I personally favor. I do know that I have been told explicitly by a few people that damage is an in game concept and that referring to damage is not considered game breaking according to the Alliance rules guidelines. Normally I would think I was misunderstanding this, but I have been told flatly that no saying "I swing for 4 Normal" is an in game and in character concept according to the rules. Right or wrong (I happen to not like that level of bluntness) is this actually true that the rules and official RP guidelines do not discourage this?

Canonically we can say (ARB 1.2):

Damage calls and such are perceived as the sound of battle, and you can tell the type of weapon from the sound (ARB 1.2 pg 94):

In-game, the damage calls represent the sound the weapons make in battle. This allows you to hear damage being called and respond in-game: “It sounds like a battle is going on behind that building!” You can even tell whether a weapon is magical or silver by the sound it makes during the battle.
​

I would personally argue that "normal" just means "nonmagical" rather than any sort of "normal" as a token identifier beyond that.

The calls themselves are classified as "out of game" (ARB 1.2 pg 94): "These calls are out-of-game."

The concept of body points is out of game, even though Healing Arts gives you an exact number (ARB 1.2 pg 64):

Asking “How many Body Points are you down?” is an out-of-game question; you should ask it quietly and then in-game you can say “Ah, I see that a Cure Light Wounds is all you need.”​

In general, you can tell IG that someone swinging 10s is "attacking more effectively," and how much more effective (be that hitting harder or simply being more specific in their targeting) than someone swinging 8s. When someone is hit by a 10 you know that they were hit harder and by "how much" in a metaphorical sense. You know this information in and out of game and to a greater or lesser extent (acknowledging that we don't have "body points" or "fighter classes") in game, but as the New Hampshire owner said in a reply to this question:

With that said, it is encouraged to avoid pulling back the curtain too far. In the first example, I would discourage Charlie's player from the phrasing given in two ways. Firstly, I would refer to the blow instead of the swing, since recognizing the verbal is considered to represent the in game sound of combat in general, and most of that sound would come from contact of weapons against other weapons, armor, etc. Secondly, I would avoid referencing the specific damage numbers as often as possible, instead saying that the first blow hit with more force than Bob is known to possess. We are not Erfworld the LARP; our characters do not know their body point totals explicitly and should not walk around in game bragging about their slay damage. For that reason I would also encourage people to avoid using logic like: "Dana swings 10s with an unmagical longsword, so I know she cannot stun more than two of my limbs with her own skills," or "Eric throws 7s with his wand, so he has six 9th level spells, and I saw him cast three prisons at that lich, and he also warded his cabin and his bunk today, so he definitely only has one left."​

Or to quote ARB 1.2 pg 13:

Remember, the purpose of our game is to tell a story. You are a character in that story and the more real you make that character, the better the story will be.​

Since you don't really know "body points" it makes it, in my mind, hard to justify saying "I swing for 4 normal." Even if it isn't explicitly disallowed, I'd argue it is cheesy and seriously immersion-breaking.

​

 

[Jesse Grabowski]

Well said mein freund.

 

[Toddo]

The workaround I tend to use will give you a general idea of how hard someone hits without using numbers. I relate it to monsters I can dispatch.

Example:

Player 1: How skilled are you with that sword?
Player 2: I can kill a goblin with a single blow and if I exert myself I can kill a hill troll with a single strike, though it leaves me winded.

This way I've imparted that I swing in the 8-10 range and have a slay, without referencing mechanics at all.

Hope this helps.

 

[Klandaghi]

I've kind of always favored a method of thinking of:
a few points down "I'm scrapped up a bit." or "Nothing time can't mend"
Half Health or lower "I've been better." or "Wouldn't mind a heal if there isn't dire need elsewhere"
1/4 health or lower "I could use a heal."
0, You'll know

Really, unless I hear that healing arts is being used, I'd rather give a physical description then an number value associated.