Well, cutting down trees takes time and effort, and if that's all he does every day, he isn't going to be able to feed himself. (Unless he sells the wood, in which case he's a woodcutter. Hopefully he won't marry that mean woman who doesn't like kids.)
Spellcasting takes very little time and effort.
Says who? So chopping down a tree takes time, whereas spellcasting doesn't, I'll give you that. But in that one instance, casting a spell could be just as draining as cutting down a tree.
Similarly, anyone could swing around a greatsword all day, at no penalty. And there's NO REASON they can't. It even takes as much time as casting a spell. But swinging around a 6-foot hunk of sharpened metal takes time and effort, just like casting a spell. In fact, because casting a spell can be done less, one could say that it takes *more* effort, and the reason they *can't* cast more is because if they did, then they *would* experience mechanical penalties.
In my mind, something you only have the mental ability to do once per day is going to obliterate your body and mind so much so that it requires rest to heal. That's not effortless. That's considerably *more* effort than the time would indicate.
Just as a side note, in Nyambe: African Adventures, diseases are given SR. An excellent idea, imho, and one which I use. Some things are just harder to cure, even using magic.
I use this rule too, and I'd encourage those who use disease instead of monsters as the mitigating factor to do so, lest
cure disease makes the first cleric with it into a saint.
I don't know about that. Watching the news (or reading it online) I fairly regularly come across stories like the Norwegian fishing boat captain who, seeing rather large shark coming after his catch while the men were pulling it into the boat, jumped into the water, dragged the shark onto the beach and killed it with a knife. And then there are stories like the scottish regiment in Iraq who were surrounded by enemies who outnumbered them 2 or 3 to one, pinned down by enemy fire, and out of ammunition so they fixed bayonets, charged, and routed their enemies at the cost of only a couple minor injuries.
If you don't feel the need to assume that 100 hit points represents the abilitiy to take 10 full-strength blows from a greatsword and are willing to suppose that some of them represent minor damage, luck, etc, I don't find D&D characters to be as unrealistic as commonly supposed. Certainly, there are people as touch as a 2nd level expert.
In any situation in D&D (exept maybe skill checks) there is a 5% chance of collossall, lucky success, and a 5% chance of collossall, unlucky fate. With how many millions of people in the world, how often do you think that 5% chance comes up daily? We have the Darwin Awards. We have that guy who cut off his own arm to save his life. These aren't
impossible for low-level mooks, but they are rare, special, and significant...just like the shark-wrestler and the scottish regiment.
Certainly it's a matter of taste and there's no way either of us can be proven to be right.
But I generally veiw the entire world around us as 1st levelers in D&D terms...I don't personally know many folks who could survive getting a six foot hunk of metal embedded in their face, and those that do...well, they got lucky.
