[Roman]

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

Well, the "hit point power creep" is a trade-off for certain gameplay advantages - like avoiding that 1st level PCs can easily die from a single blow.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record I will reiterate that I support the starting bonus to hit points that characters get at level 1. That does enhance survivability. The larger hit die and the favored class hit point boni, however, don't really make a large difference to low level hit points and instead provide hit point boosts that scale with level, only providing significant hit points at higher levels. These, rather than the starting bonus, are the primary contributors to hit point inflation.

The racial changes are marginal, but they improve the thematic feel of the race.

Well, these would be borderline LA +0/+1 races in 3.5E, so the racial changes are not entirely insignificant. I do agree, however, that the improvement to the flavor of the races they provide are very significant - I would say significant enough to outweigh the power creep these changes engender.

A change to hit points will not be too apparent in most games after a certain level. The discrepancies that the system allowed between hit points are too big to be "psychologically" visible. Of coursse, a statistical analysis of battles will still show that the extra hit points helped survivability, but as a player, you will only feel the effect at low levels.

Well, some wizards, for example, may have 100% more hit points for a given level around level 10. That is a very considerable difference as far as I am concerned and not limited to low levels.

I think one of Pathfinders goal is the improvement of the gameplay experience. Changes to the rules and changes to power levels are to be expected then. You can't have the one without the other, so the question is: Do you agree with the goals?

Fair enough, but the power level is changed for a good purpose in some cases. For example, in the case of the races it is changed to provide greater flexibility and much better mechanical support for the flavor of the races, while in the case of the starting hit point bonus it provides a needed boost to character survivability at low levels. Power level can also be changed gratuitously, however, such as with the higher hit dice, which are neater when standardized, though standardization was not really necessary and does not solve any major gameplay issues and in any case could have been done to lower hit dice d4, d6 and d8.