Irony much? Lecture me on tolerance, then turn around and behave far more intolerantly than I.
Identify for me where I comment on tolerance with respect to you - as opposed to, say,
pemerton (just for example) - and I'll explain to you the difference between irony and hypocrisy.
There's been times - surprisingly frequent times, in fact - in my experience where the DM flat-out drives the story. Why? Because she has to, as that's what the players expect and-or want. "You set the adventure, Ms. DM, and we'll play through it!" It's not a preferred style of play, but it is a common one.
I added the emphasis to underline that what you say here seems to be perfectly in line with what I'm saying, too. Feel free to Devil's Advocate all you like, but I actually don't think we're in disagreement
You can't use subjective mechanics to represent an objective giant, though. Objectivity doesn't work that way. For the same giant to be consistent in its capabilities within the game world, it couldn't sometimes be a level 25 minion and sometimes be a level 7 solo, depending on who's looking at it.
Why not? An electron is an objective entity in the real world. Electrons really exist and we can measure their effect on the world. But we can't measure where they are and what speed they are going at the same time. If one observer precisely measures an electron's momentum, they will not be able to say where it is - it could, to them, be literally anywhere in the universe. If another observer measured precisely where that electron was, they would not be able to also measure its momentum - at all. To them, it could literally have any value. Subjectivity is a part of the "observing" process. To say that objective objects cannot be ruled by subjective mechanics is simply wrong. They might not often be - but there is absolutely nothing that says they cannot be.
Level (in 4E) and Challenge Rating (in 3E) are just meta-game descriptors. What the giant is - what it can actually do - must remain objective. And that's reflected in its stats - Strength, Will, attack bonus, stealth, etc.
Strength and so on might have some claim as objective attributes to some extent - but AC and hit points definitely aren't. They make no real sense as such, unless we break with the assumptions that the creatures in the game world are neither "biological" nor "physical" in the sense that we are accustomed to encountering those terms in the real world.
A level 8 solo has what? Like +13 to hit? And a level 25 minion is like +30? The specific numbers aren't terribly important. The point is that, all else being equal, when attacking the same target - a moderately experienced paladin with AC 25, for example - the solo will sometimes miss in situations where the minion would not. The solo can certainly survive against successful attacks that the minion cannot.
Key word there is "successful". What does a "successful" attack look like? If we insist that it represents a solid hit against the physical body of the target of the attack, it ceases to make sense almost immediately. While it's true that combatants can
sometimes ignore a major wound or two while focussed on a combat situation and consequently not drop, this is an exception, not a rule. The idea that either (a) the PCs do this on a regular basis every time they enter combat (once they have reached a certain level) or (b)
every hill giant (or whatever) the PCs fight does so flies in the face of the idea that these creatures are biological.
As for AC, the idea that an "attack" consists of swinging some sort of weapon in a great arc and it either dealing a solid blow or not is inconsistent with how hand-to-hand combat has ever worked. AC itself mixes up questions of agility (DEX bonus/dodge), protection (armour) and offensive blocking tools (shields). If you want to see how actual combat flows work,
this website has some interesting videos. The page I've linked to has a video of a flow drill, which is short but gives a bit of a visual idea how it works. There is also a long (over 1 hour) video of a
dagger seminar there that is well worth watching if you want to get some idea of how the parts all relate to one another in an actual fight.
But within the game world, to people actually watching this happen, only one of the two outcomes actually happens. The giant either hits, or it does not. It is either hurt by the paladin's retort, or it is not; and, if it is hurt, then it either drops or it does not.
If it is seriously hurt (beyond a papercut) the chances are it will drop, or be placed into a position where a sloid blow may easily be administered. Most hit point reducing "hits" (I prefer to call them "successes") will consist of gaining some significant advantage or reducing the opponent's capacity to respond. This does not need to be done with a "hit". Uncovering their favourite play and identifying a perfect counter to it might do - as might using up some of the opponent's divine favour, luck or stamina.
As long as there are multiple game-mechanical ways to represent the same in-game thing, you will have different results depending on which one you use. At that point, it is no longer internally consistent. Thus, to maintain internal consistency and objectivity, there must be exactly one mechanical way to represent any distinct thing; and if there is a different game mechanical representation between two things, then there must be some real, substantive difference between those things as they exist within the objective reality of the game world.
Apart from the fact that this is sheer dogma, it's also untrue of the real world. Stochastic systems are common, in fact, once you go beyond very simple physical systems. There are several mathematical ways to describe economic or medical systems, for example - all of which are, from a certain perspective, "true". They are all simply approximations modelling highly complex processes. Which model you use for a specific purpose will depend on what that purpose is. You are looking at the same system, but depending what you want to find out about it, you might use different models. A theoretical "uber-model" might exist that models for all possible questions, but that model will be far too complex for routine use (or even for successful approximation with the computing power we have available).
And I will say that, AFAICT, the D&D mechanics of every edition prior to 4E have been exactly that. This given ogre has exactly AC 13 (or 7) and 3 hit points.
And the difference between AC13, 3 HP and AC5, 6 HP (if an average blow does 4 damage) is what? In the latter case there are blows that might be "successes" but don't disable, in the former most successes will disable but successes will be fewer. Given what a more advanced fighter might regard as a "success" compared to what a less experienced fighter might regard as a "success", that sounds a bit like the same creature being fought by a more experienced (former case) and a less experienced (latter case) combatant.
Abstraction only goes so far, after all, though I'll admit that you can let it run away with itself if you really want it to. I've never seen it played where you couldn't tell whether or not a hit was successful, or where it wasn't clear if someone was successfully disintegrated, though.
Whether or not something is "disintegrated" is rather different. We imagine it as a directly observable phenomenon in the game world. Losing hit points is by no means observable in the same way. Even if we take the (somewhat extreme) position of insisting that every lack of hit points must have some visible, physical effect, losing 10 hit points is going to mean something quite different when done by a 15th level fighter than when done by a 1st level wizard/magic-user.
In short - hit points simply cannot be objective, physical things. They make no sense as such (but make abundant sense as something more in line with field theory, if you want a physical model for them).
Have you ever read through the 2E Monster Manual? The combat stats were a tiny bit in the corner, and then the rest of the page is ecology and mating habits and everything else.
Yes, but the non-combat stuff is invariably a collection of suggestions and inspiration, not anything related to system. Nothing wrong with that, but DMs are left to work out the systemic expressions for themseves. I.e. it's some suggestions for systems, not a system in itself.
