I’ll probably ended up being a parrot to a lot of what VanGo is saying here.
Like with any TTRPG system, as you are learning it and figuring things out, you might come across things that perhaps you didn’t rule or run quite how it was intended. This is always ok, as you are there playing a game to have fun, and sometimes you just want to keep things flowing.
When you come back to the table after realizing you may have ran something differently, just present it to the players, and say, “What happened happened, even if we change it, this will just apply going forward.”
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Like VanGo said, the damage can be from them straining a muscle, the mental anguish of the arrow bouncing off the wall and nearly hitting an ally, or the perceived loss of status from a horrible shot. HP is not Health, but Hit points. It is a measure of staying in the battle and is a combination of bodily health as well as mental prowess and your ability to psyche yourself and others up. HP is better related to stamina, and lethal damage to actual health and serious blows. A “hit” isn’t really actually hitting you, but you having to either strain your muscles to narrowly avoid that potentially deadly blow, or the mental shock of that bullet whizzing by your head. If you take a look at some examples you’ll see it can related to footing or anything else, they can 100% do a bane or even take damage from themsevles.
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Yeppers, no roll, just like with exceptional success, the bane is automatically inflicted. It’s a devil’s bargain basically, taking a bit to still do a bit.
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Some things done by the GM (such as traps) can deal all their damage as lethal, however in the case of Lethal Strike you seem to be quoting, only a max will be lethal. So if Player A has 20 HP max and the attack deals 15 damage and up to 10 is lethal, the player is now at 5 HP, and only has 10 HP max until the lethal is recovered. The full amount of the “damage” is taken from HP, and then the HP maximum is reduced by the amount of the full damage that was lethal.
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what VanGo said
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Outside of stressful situations (of which combat is clearly one), I don’t often have my players roll for things, unless their are specific boons/banes (precog/spying) meant to be done outside of combat. If there is some sort of multi-targeting required, or other complication, then I might have them roll, but then usually will allow it to succeed via success with a twist, where the twist might be down the road. When I do this, I will say, “You can succeed, but the consquence will be this, do you accept?”, giving the player the option to just fail and move on without the benefit they were attempting for. That, or the more mysterious, “There will be a complication for you and/or the party later, do you accept?”
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Oops, answered this slightly above. To add on to it though, I also often do generic attribute rolls, and have boons and banes function slightly different outside of a stressful situation (namely combat). For example, when a player wants to charm a guard at the entrance to town, usually I will ask, “What are you hoping to achieve by doing this?” Or “what are you hoping will be the outcome” Then I’ll have them roll. In this case it will be a psudo charm, and more a generic roll to achieve what they told me they wanted. So outside of stress (or maybe a little stress but not as serious as combat) I take this approach when a player wants to roll a boon or bane. Players from other systems often want to roll roll roll, so I always remind them, don’t roll unless I ask for it. Tell me what you want to do, and you might not need to roll. In the case of secret doors, I might look at a player’s perks or stats and maybe give them that b/c of what they’ve invested for their character, or I might allow them to roll, and ahve degrees of success. They will still notice something, just might not have been that secret door. Maybe tell the character, “something feels a little funny about the walls.” To prompt them to maybe roll, and if they don’t they don’t, fi they do, they might just notice scratch marks of a passing creature, or some tracks in the dust of the floor, but not the secret door.
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Pretty much what VanGo said here.
The discord community is a friendly sort, no pressure to read everything people type or to participate. Can use it to just jump in and ask a quick question, the Discord is one of, if not the, fastest places to get an answer to a question on the rules or just advice. A few times we’ve had a GM pop in with a question whilst in the middle of a session.
Easy to be a lurker there, and be as uninvolved or involved as you want to be!