drjones said:
None of my playtests have shown this. The pally, the fighter, the wizard, the warlock, the ranger all pretty much drop like a sack of hammers if you have several even low level mobs concentrating fire on them. I even found myself going easy on the players in some cases where the monsters could have really stuck it to them tactically.
Going the other way the only targets the players had much trouble with were solider types where a lot of the PCs could only attack AC so they ended up grinding against each other. i think this is good though, soldiers should be good at stopping PC movement and not going down in 1 round and from what I have seen they do that well.
And why would you only use basic attacks unless you are forced to?
You are probably right: now the default assumption is the coin flip chance of hitting, making hp more like stamina points. So you are hit on a regular basis.
Still: i am concerned... i am mostly sure my concerns are unfounded... still i need some time to get used to it. Also I am concerned about the lack of bard, because I recently play a lot with girls, who favour them... (and also they are my favourite class... yes, i have been mocked enough for that, thanks^^)
So I believe in the new edition... but I think i still need some time to get used to it. I played 3.5 a lot. I always preferred LVL 2-7 and fights versus multiple enemies, I began to hate 3.x npc building... but without houserules (only variants from 3.0 DMG), 3.5 worked fine in these low levels. I just had to watch a bit over my players and remember them from time to time, that balanced chars are more fun than minmaxed (either with words or deeds - minmaxed monsters anyone).
My main concern is: loss of one important roleplaying part: no need for "healers" because of too abstract hp (they go up and down a lot - probably no possibility for lasting wounds). High HP for starting chars are an indicator.
When I first read bloodied, i thought about a condition, when you start receiving real wounds... With 24 HP at the beginning but with some penalties once you reached half of that, I would have been more pleased... Still, i think my concerns are mostly unfounded but they are there...