[Roman]

Originally Posted by Wulf Ratbane

Your argument assumes agreement that "hit point inflation" is a bad thing, and goes on in the same vein using terms like "power creep."

Well, yes, I do consider hit point inflation to be a bad thing for several reasons:

1) It makes the players more powerful relative to monsters (and relative to non-converted NPCs from older adventures) than they were in 3.5E --> challenges are less challenging (remember, no accurate guidelines provided as to how to take this into account) --> backward compatibility suffers
2) The hit point inflation is, for the most part, not targetted at at the levels, where low hit points are a problem (as in, low levels - only the starting hit point bonus is targeted at that)
3) Simulationism suffers even more with greater hit point numbers (granted, hit points were abstract enough and numerous enough already that this is not a significant issue, but it needs to be mentioned for the sake of completeness)
4) Greater numbers for everybody mean unnecessarily more calculation
5) This gives a power boost to classes that really don't need it (e.g. Wizards), relative to other classes (e.g. Fighters)

And hit points <> power, at least not as you are using the term.

Come on - you know what I mean...

My definition of power is: Power = ability to influence or resist influence of the environment

There's nothing you can do to combat this perceived "power creep" among such folks. Folks raised the exact same complaints when 3e threw away the old 9 HD caps.

You may be right, but removing unnecessary power creep might help.

For the most part, more hit points does nothing more than prolong combat.

But it prolongs combat in a good way-- hitting for twice as long into twice as many hit points, as opposed to missing for twice as long into the prior amount of hit points.

Yet lots of folks are asking for a level-based bonus to AC. The last thing I want to see is a lot more attacks that miss.

Consider again the example I gave above, my 2nd level PCs vs. the big spider. I could have had the exact same final result (dead spider) by leaving the hit points alone and raising its AC so that the PCs land a blow 1/6 as often.

Same end result-- very different feel from the players' perspective.

I am not sure I really want to prolong combat... in fact, I mostly don't want to do that. Still you would be right about the relatively benign prolonging of combat if the higher hit points applied also to monsters, but they only affect the PCs...