Psion said:
In short, I don't think backwards compatability is the only or primary consideration when considering the revision, but I think it should have been factored in much more heavily than it was.
Why?
I can certainly understand why you would house rule this matter. Because it is clearly important to you.
But I know that the words "blood war" have never been uttered at my table. I would imagine this is true for the major majority of games. I certainly can not see WotC coming up with a new functional and improved DR system (for the sake of discussion, lets pretend it is better, because that is the perspective WotC would have) and then going "Wait, we can not do this, it will not mix well with the blood war."
So I guess my point is: something that is important to you (or to me) due to how it fits the setting, history and flavor of a campaign, does not automatically gain the status of being weighed more heavily in a revision. Or, just because "I will house rule because X" is a true statement, it does not automatically follow that WotC made a poor design choice because X.
On a tangent, can you clarify for me how this goes against canon? I know next to nothing about the blood war. So maybe this grinds the ideas behind it into the ground. But so far I do not see it.
I understand that there are supposed to be great battles with "fields covered with mounds of corpses". But, as drnuncheon asked, what kind of corpses? Does the blood war specify how long the battles lasted? If they lasted 30 seconds, then, yeah, this messes that up. But if they lasted hours or days (as I imagine a war in the lower planes) then it really beomes a non-issue.
I understand that they may have more chance to retreat if they are more survivable. But why did they not do that under 3E when they got wounded? Why were they there fighting to begin with? I can imagine that fear of the guy that sent them there to fight may be one reasonable example of an explanation. Did they only fight with claws, teeth and weapons? What about spells and SLAs?