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As the Umpire said, "I call 'em as I see 'em, no matter how unpopular that may make me!" ;) Well, it all depends upon the parameters of the discussion, I suppose. I was defending the hit point mechanic, which includes not only how it is used in Official D&D Products. It should be pretty...

So long as the GM knows this, and narrates events accordingly, there is no problem. Which, I note, you have also noted. I still rule thus; it is the default position in my game of choice. However, an actual hit need not be described as piercing the skin or striking flesh. A blow against...

And you may still be correct! Certainly, each person is allowed to set the bar of his or her own skepticism. And, the more complex a problem is, or the more a seeming solution creates problems of its own, the more careful you should be before simply accepting that solution as fact. Where the...

This answer is both faster & clearer than my blathering above, but essentially the same. RC

Why must a Slaying Arrow bypass the hit point mechanic? Why can it not just do more hit points of damage? "As always, play what you like" is an excellent tagline, btw! The problem is not hit points in your Scenario B, from my perspective. The problem is that you cannot determine, at the...

Well, that may be so, but you (the moderation staff) do an excellent (and, I am sure, sometimes rather difficult) job of preventing that sort of thing from occurring. Or dealing with it when it does occur. I just wanted to make sure that you were not implying that anything in this thread...

Which arrow? If you mean all of those arrows bouncing off of him.....If I ruled that the arrows could cause attrition, but not pierce his skin, then the easy answer would be "Unless struck in a specific spot, Smaug is immune to the poison on the arrows". Do you mean the arrow doing 1 hp to the...

Fortunately, no one is actually claiming otherwise. Right?

Can you use that word in Scrabble? :lol:

The healing salves of the green martians of Barsoom are a particular favourite..... Lucy's cordial, the gunk the orcs smeared on wounds, the orc drink, the elf drink....Yes, these are all healing potions or salves. Lucy's codial takes Edmund from near death to hale in a very short period...

Well, poison doesn't necessarily have anything to do with hit points, nor does a mickey (mouse) slipped into your drink. My system of choice is hit-point-based, and can handle that KO quite easily, using more than one possible mechanic, so I'm not seeing that as a strong argument against hit...

If hit points are taken to be a static measure of damage, then, yes, there is no sense in saying that hit point attrition occurs in this fight. But, as the last few hit points are the only ones where "real" damage is taken -- the others, you will recall, include various other factors, even in...

As design intent will become a focus for future editions, it seems rational to me to express which design intents you are happy with, and which you are not. That is at least as important as how well the intent is met.

Life is too short for games you are not enjoying. That doesn't mean everything has to be hippety-ho all the time, but if your overall experience is that you are not enjoying the game, you should make a change. RC

"Rolling initiative to determine who acts first" -- "at the start of a battle" need not apply. RC

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Given the information available to him, Umbran was correct to be skeptical. Likewise the initial responses to the research were correct to be skeptical. Anytime there is a complex problem, and you are given only a portion of the relevant data, you should be skeptical of any conclusions drawn...

Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies - transcript of the video The Straight Dope: What's up with the "cocaine mummies"? American Drugs in Egyptian Mummies “Since the initial work of Balabanova et. al., other studies have revealed the same drugs (cocaine, nicotine, and hashish) in Egyptian mummies...

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Please don't pull me into this....... RC ;)