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There are plenty of monsters as powerful as four men -- or as powerful as four "units" of men -- who die by one well-placed shot. We don't expect them to die to the first attack against them, but one well-placed shot can kill them.

Many of your points about "levels" are quite specific not just to D&D, but to certain narrow elements of D&D's level progression. First and foremost, that 20th-level wizard is going to beat the 1st-level fighter in hand-to-combat because of his hit points. If we remove that one element of the...

In fact, the power curve and the rate of advancement don't mean anything without the other. But power isn't one-dimensional either, and certain elements of the power curve strain credibility, while others seem perfectly natural. It doesn't seem odd at all for Robin Hood or Legolas to...

I think we agree that hit points provide "plot protection" and all players to behave heroically, within limits. But they have numerous downsides too; otherwise they wouldn't be a source of decades of debate about how "unrealistic" they are. People clearly like the "plot protection" element of...

In real life, the winning side suffers casualties, and, if anything, the brave men leading the charge are most likely to be the ones taking lethal wounds before the enemy is routed. In a game where our heroes fight a dozen small-unit skirmishes per level -- where they can't help but be in the...

I don't know how the various Star Wars RPGs handle sensing disturbances in the Force, but I always got the impression from the films that detecting that the Force was strong in someone was roughly as easy as noticing that they were actually using the Force -- unless they were actively and...

I stand by my point that hit points do prevent one-shot kills of competent characters, but that this was discovered over time to be a good thing for most games; it was not the original intent of the mechanic, which was really just a way for a "hero" to be as powerful as four 0-level guys, and a...

My pet theory is that the great strength of many D&D mechanics is that they obfuscate the plot-protection PCs receive. No one wants PCs to die from one bad roll, but most people don't want the PCs to get unfair help either -- so we have random hit dice, which seem much less random for PCs...

Even if critical hits do Con damage, that means a knife can't kill anyone. In fact, a sword can't either -- or is damage doubled before it's applied to Con? You might want to borrow a mechanic from Buffy, used for staking vampires: multiply damage by some big factor (e.g. five), but only apply...

For a roleplaying game, where we want to keep the PCs alive, hit points have the not-necessarily-obvious advantage of keeping combat predictable and safe, but they're not at all realistic -- and they don't offer as much plot-protection as they should either. They really should be "holy smokes!"...

I agree completely. I want a game where Eowyn and Merry can slay the Witch King of Angmar with a couple of fateful blows, where Legolas can slay a fell beast with a single arrow, where Bard can slay Smaug with a single arrow, where a samurai can slay just about anyone with a single stroke...

You find the +1/2 level bonus to be the most implausible element of 4E's progression?

This is why I asked, What elements of the progression are unrealistic? Really, there's nothing "unrealistic" about a 10th-level thief in AD&D -- except his 10d6 hit dice. And there's nothing "unrealistic" about a 10th-level fighter either -- except his 9d10+3 hit dice. His +10 to-hit isn't...

Arguably issues of initiative and reflexes should be based on a perception stat rather than an agility stat. Warriors and athletes should have both, of course, but they are different traits -- and they're not the same as intelligence in the abstract reasoning sense. Absent-minded professors...

In what sense is a 5th-level character realistic, while a 10th-level character isn't? What elements of the progression are unrealistic? In many ways, characters (in 3E, at least) aren't competent enough, given how the d20 combat system and non-combat skill system work. Should a typical young...

I hope you see the problem though, if by the rules a mob of 100 peasants won't even inconvenience a 15th-level Fighter, but by your DM ruling the high-level Fighter stands no chance. Fighting large numbers of "mooks" isn't exactly an off-the-wall scenario the game-designers couldn't expect, but...

If you do this, realize that you're throwing away the existing math and shifting the game's balance in ways you might not predict. (Toward low-BAB monsters with multiple attacks, I suppose...) This opens a whole can of wyrms, of course. Do luck and divine providence get used up? Sure, I...

I agree with the fundamental point that numbers count for a lot when it comes to grappling. After all, a college heavyweight wrestler can trivially beat a high-school middleweight wrestler, who can himself trivially take down and pin an ordinary guy, but a half-dozen more-or-less ordinary guys...

Well said. On the other hand, a talented individual with the right experience can become so good at something that he is effectively superhuman. Trick shooters really can shoot coins out of the air, zen archers really can hit targets from horseback while blindfolded, rock climbers really can...

That's a change I'd endorse, but I suppose it once again raises the question of what we're trying to do. I almost suggested merging the fighter and thief into a single fighting-man class. It certainly matches the source material -- Conan; Fafhrd and Grey Mouser; Aragorn, Faramir, and the other...