Jack7
First Post
I see hit point inflation (and I'm doing something now I should have done a long time ago, I'm gonna do away with hit points in my game) as turning battles into grinding bar-room brawls instead of intense, dangerous, lethal, combat encounters.
I've got no interest in fighters who win combats through no better, more efficient, or more clever means than by slow attrition because that is the way a system is designed to promote the idea of combat.
Combatants should be efficient and effective killers, not brawlers, (especially fighters, in any other situation professional combatants are trained and practice to kill, not to "attrit away hit points") and monsters should be dangerous and highly lethal, not fat piñatas that it takes an hour to break open.
When I opened up the 4E Monster Manual and saw Orcus had 1,525 hit points, and that a Blue Dragon had 1,290 hit points I said to myself, "hell, these aren't creatures, or even beings, these are BOLOs and M1 Abrams."
If I wanted to fight a supercarrier or an imaginary walking tank with a thin sliver of something I hold in my hand I'll do it with Jedi mind powers and a lightsabre. At least I'd have some kind of cartoony chance of success.
But if I've got to put down a Demon with 1,525 hit points by no better method than hit point attrition (no matter the actual method of attrition) then as far as I'm concerned hit points have run their course of usefulness.
I've got no interest in fighters who win combats through no better, more efficient, or more clever means than by slow attrition because that is the way a system is designed to promote the idea of combat.
Combatants should be efficient and effective killers, not brawlers, (especially fighters, in any other situation professional combatants are trained and practice to kill, not to "attrit away hit points") and monsters should be dangerous and highly lethal, not fat piñatas that it takes an hour to break open.
When I opened up the 4E Monster Manual and saw Orcus had 1,525 hit points, and that a Blue Dragon had 1,290 hit points I said to myself, "hell, these aren't creatures, or even beings, these are BOLOs and M1 Abrams."
If I wanted to fight a supercarrier or an imaginary walking tank with a thin sliver of something I hold in my hand I'll do it with Jedi mind powers and a lightsabre. At least I'd have some kind of cartoony chance of success.
But if I've got to put down a Demon with 1,525 hit points by no better method than hit point attrition (no matter the actual method of attrition) then as far as I'm concerned hit points have run their course of usefulness.
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