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While I think that looking to various historical examples for inspiration can be helpful in building a fantasy world, I don’t believe that systematising them within a Victorian colonialist paradigm serves any useful purpose.

To be fair, liches (regardless of their in-game rationale of being powerful MUs) follow the same pattern as, say, nagas or sphinxes - monster HD with baked-in caster levels: what would be later known as “integrated caster levels.” And dwarf clerics don’t fall within the “non-(human or...

I think that @Hussar ‘s grammatical ambiguity could be parsed as non- (human or demi-human), i.e. the first appearance of a “monster” with class levels was I6 Ravenloft. Not sure if that’s accurate, but I think that’s what they meant.

Understood. I don’t ignore anyone, but I’m ignored by a few and that can sometimes be confusing.

You’re ignoring the context of my response - which was questioning the consistency of a meat- only model for hit points. I don’t dispute that a 20th-level character has more (nonspecific-meaning) hit points than a 1st-level character.

You should capitalize it, add a qualifier, and put it in inverted commas with an exclamation: "Your favorite poster, "SNARF!"" I'm glad you're back. Whenever I see your name struck through, I'm a bit concerned that you won't return.

To be honest, I feel that when you invoke Die Hard, Rambo, Indiana Jones, superheroes and video game "blood spatters" in your defense, you've already moved away from hp=meat into another (cinematic) space.

I'm not in disagreement. It's why I wrote But I think that attempts to define how precisely much is actual "meat" and how much is "Yippy Ki-Yay - I'm actually okay" are doomed to fail. I don't like this "half of your hit points are physical" thing, as it introduces unneeded specificity into a...

Although less ambiguous, it is no less internally inconsistent. Either: 1) A 20th level character with 200hp can literally sustain 20x the physical damage that a 1st-level character with 10hp can or 2) A hit point means something different at 1st-level and 20th-level Plus "Wounds" now heal...

Hit points measure nothing but hit points. They are always nebulous with respect to actual effects in the imagined world. There is no point at which trying to equate hit points with some other phenomenon (wounds, skill, fatigue, luck ... whatever) does not collapse under its own internal...

I don't consider myself a proper grognard, as I don't grumble about developments in the game, I just ignore everything post-2008. I tried not ignoring them a couple of times, but found that unsatisfying. I don't harbour any illusions about my relevance to the modern game. I stopped being...

[Deleted -wrong thread]

I haven't communicated very well - I'll try again. I'll use an asterisk (*) to connote what might be considered an ideal or archetypal manifestation of the class - i.e. not a mechanical suite within the rules (i.e. PHB Paladin), and not one which has a particular cultural manifestation within...

I think this approach can only be cogent within a certain - campaign specific - context, where the milieu is tailored to reflect the classes and they are purposefully and mindfully grounded in the campaign world. And I don't think it can work - i.e. it is not logically tenable - with broad-remit...

Sure. But I think there's a huge difference between delineating an NPC to accurately accord with a specific vision - and one which is consistent with the way PCs are constructed - and requiring that the NPC partake of and be a function of an overarching imagined mechanical sub-reality which...

This makes it sound like "fighter" and "feat" are a real thing in-universe, as though they were "plumber" and "vocational qualification" - and I think that's a stretch for most people. Granted, prestige classes can blur the line between a suite of mechanical descriptions and an in-universe...

This, I'm in agreement with. And I think for the DM, 3.X is defined more by what you have to exclude in order to realize a vision, than by grasping at ways to make existing ideas fit.

Five hit points at first level means something entirely different from five hit points at 20th level. We accept the dissonance which hit points should inevitably evoke because we are all familiar with the way they work. The damage caused by a longsword is already hugely variable: 1d8 has no...

Believe it or not, I am actually familiar with the various arguments surrounding hit points. The thrust of my question - why is it acceptable to change the meaning of damage in one dimension (character hit points) but not in another (weapon damage) still stands. Besides preference, that is.

I think it would be more accurate to say that some of us prefer that the game make sense in certain dimensions, but are willing to overlook the fact that it doesn’t make sense in other dimensions. Why don’t monsters make death saves when they reach 0 hit points? What does a hit point even mean...