this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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this is why you don't have to just "i hit for 3 damage"
motherfucker i roll between the bandit's legs and slash at their ankles with my tetanus daggers, barely missing the tendons but slicing moderately deep, and they feel the grit from the pockmarked blades salt their fresh wounds for 3 damage
this has the side effect of encouraging the DM to keep the turn # snappy lol
Personally I find adding a lot of flavor that has no mechanical impact kind of distracting and tiresome in a different way. Like, sure, it sounds cool you slashed their ankles or whatever, but if it doesn't do anything I need to discard that. I can't, in most systems, then be like "ok he just got stabbed in the leg he's off balance. I can take advantage of that!". It's just noise.
Some people have been like "You just don't have any imagination!" but it's not that. It's that the flavor stuff is often actively not true, and it's tiresome to hold two separate world states in mind at the same time. One where the fighter just stabbed the guy in the hand and threw sand in his eyes, and the other where he hit for 5 damage and his hand + eyes are fine.
(Contrast Fate, which explicitly encourages you to be creative about the scene, and lets you mechanically benefit as well.)
This is one thing I love about DCC (among several), that warriors can attempt a mighty deed along with their attack to get extra effects, like slashing their ankles, throwing sand in their eyes, swinging from a chandelier or anything else. Then the GM decides what effect it has. It makes warriors a lot more bad-ass than just whack whack whack.