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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeavenShallBurn" data-source="post: 4154596" data-attributes="member: 39593">Nothing against you Lurker but since I'm your polar opposite I am going to explain precisely where I sit with regards to versimilitude and HP and the reason why.Because it's magic he wasn't recovering the ability to duck and weave if he'd successfully ducked and weaved he wouldn't have taken HP damage, the blows would never have topped Ac and thus missed entirely or glanced harmlessly from armor.    Let's turn this around said Greatsword has a damage statistic, this doesn't do #$%# damage, it does a predictable 2d6.  So no matter who wields it the weapon itself does a maximum of 12 damage or if it crits a 24.  Even assuming a stat modifier appropriate to a lvl20 fighter that's at least two nearly maximum non-crit damage from the unmodified weapon.  The weapon must beat AC to deal damage and attacks that miss AC are described as insufficient to land  So if it has struck a "solid, damaging blow" and done nearly the maximum damage possible for the weapon then in order to meet these conditions the weapon must have created a telling wound.  Based on HP progression a blow that would have killed low level characters.  But clearly having 170HP left he can survive many more such blows.Because D&D is not a simulation of OUR reality, and concerns of IRL realism have no place in it.  Versimilitude and simulation CAN be about "realism" but don't Have to be, the term covers an entire range so long as the constructed simulation remains internally consistent with itself.  Which is the place abstract HP in every previous edition of D&D have failed when looked at systemically with no concerns as to whether it was modeling a "reality" like ours.  The answer is it's not.  It's modeling a place where a high level fighter is literally tougher than an elephant or a T-Rex and can single-handedly kill thousands of low-level characters because he's not an ordinary guy.  If he were he'd be a low-level NPC.  That 33rd level barbarian who just lost 120 hit points isn't covered in superficial bruises if they were superficial they never would have gotten past AC.  He's got half a dozen swords and some arrows sticking out of him, and he's doing just fine because he's so F**#ing metal that it makes Khorne weeps tears of burning pitch and wish he was that badass.  And when he reaches the castle wall he'll tear the gate apart with his bare hands, beat 170 low-level guardsmen down with an axe that weighs more than they do and stomp the evil king to death under his booted feet.I believe we have different visions of what constitutes "larger than life."  Simply put if I wanted the sort of low-power quasi-IRL experience you're talking about I would have re-enlisted.  D&D is at least in my view supposed to be about the flagrantly impossible heroics of myth at high level.  The low levels are what sets you up with a more grounded base and provides an example of how far past ordinary heroes go as they level up.  There's nothing wrong in what either of us prefer.  But we're using radically different imagery and themes, ones that might do with some illumination into the WHY.</blockquote>

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