Damon Griffin
First Post
Re: Re: AC per level
While I agree this is what hit points were/are supposed to represent, I have always thought it was a very bad way to handle things; hit points should have been designed as a measure of physical damage only.
There have always been a number of flaws in the "PhysDamage + Luck + Intuition + Dodge" reasoning. Perhaps the most obvious one is that when I'm asleep, my intuition and ability to dodge are reduced to nil, but my hit points don't drop to reflect that, just my AC. Things like sneak attacks and the coup de grace make some effort to address this, but I believe they just perpetuate a bad system. "Uh, we don't have a mechanic for changing the amount of damage the target can withstand when sleeping, caught flat footed or helpless, so let's just raise the amount of damage the attack does in those situations."
Like nute said, AC is about not getting hit at all.
When a 1st level fighter gets hit once for 8 h.p. and a 12th level fighter gets hit several times for a total of 40 h.p., it's all very well for the big guy to say "'Tis but a flesh wound" but guess what? The life-threatening 8 h.p. taken by his less buff comrade can be completely healed with a single application of cure light wounds, while his own "flesh wound" is going to require either a cure critical wounds or multiple applications of a lesser healing spell, making him a much bigger drain on the cleric's spells for the day.
Odd that person who apparently sustained less serious damage requires stronger healing magic -- or are we supposed to believe that the cure...wounds spells also repair "damage" to luck, intuition and the ability to dodge?
Using hit points to represent luck, dodging, etc. doesn't work particularly well because, although the damage sustained is in proportion to the amount of total punishment the character can be subjected to and survive (as a result of luck, dodging, etc.), the damage cannot be repaired in proportion to that. Now, if the cure...wounds spells were rewritten so that they healed a fixed percentage of the target's full h.p. total, plus +1 h.p. per caster level, it might make more sense. Off the top of my head, with no playtesting whatsoever, I might suggest that cure light, moderate, serious and critical wounds could cure 10%, 20%, 40% and 80% respectively, of a character's h.p. total, plus the hit point bonus for caster level.
That means the 1st level fighter in the above example is probably going to need a cure serious wound while the 12th level fighter can get by with a cure moderate wounds. Sounds more reasonable, but the difficulty this creates is that it means low level characters are going to need access to higher level healing spells a lot more often than higher level characters...that makes it tough on the PC cleric who doesn't have those spells yet. Multiple applications of CLW will work, but he's going to be using those spells up at a much higher rate, so PC mortality will increase.
But then if you adopted this system (or almost any system that treated h.p. as a measure of physical damage only) then there'd be no need for 12th level characters to have 100+ h.p. Lowering the rate of h.p. increase for characters means rethinking the damage caps for higher level spells, modifying almost every entry in the Monster Manual, and...just way too big a can of worms.
Not wanting combat to be any more complicated or time consuming than it needs to be, most of the groups I've played with have just left things as they are, but almost all of them agreed that the D&D hit point system was a fairly large design flaw. Since the presence of that flaw didn't keep us from playing the game, we'd usually just shrug and get on with it.
ColonelHardisson said:
While I agree this is what hit points were/are supposed to represent, I have always thought it was a very bad way to handle things; hit points should have been designed as a measure of physical damage only.
There have always been a number of flaws in the "PhysDamage + Luck + Intuition + Dodge" reasoning. Perhaps the most obvious one is that when I'm asleep, my intuition and ability to dodge are reduced to nil, but my hit points don't drop to reflect that, just my AC. Things like sneak attacks and the coup de grace make some effort to address this, but I believe they just perpetuate a bad system. "Uh, we don't have a mechanic for changing the amount of damage the target can withstand when sleeping, caught flat footed or helpless, so let's just raise the amount of damage the attack does in those situations."
Like nute said, AC is about not getting hit at all.
When a 1st level fighter gets hit once for 8 h.p. and a 12th level fighter gets hit several times for a total of 40 h.p., it's all very well for the big guy to say "'Tis but a flesh wound" but guess what? The life-threatening 8 h.p. taken by his less buff comrade can be completely healed with a single application of cure light wounds, while his own "flesh wound" is going to require either a cure critical wounds or multiple applications of a lesser healing spell, making him a much bigger drain on the cleric's spells for the day.
Odd that person who apparently sustained less serious damage requires stronger healing magic -- or are we supposed to believe that the cure...wounds spells also repair "damage" to luck, intuition and the ability to dodge?
Using hit points to represent luck, dodging, etc. doesn't work particularly well because, although the damage sustained is in proportion to the amount of total punishment the character can be subjected to and survive (as a result of luck, dodging, etc.), the damage cannot be repaired in proportion to that. Now, if the cure...wounds spells were rewritten so that they healed a fixed percentage of the target's full h.p. total, plus +1 h.p. per caster level, it might make more sense. Off the top of my head, with no playtesting whatsoever, I might suggest that cure light, moderate, serious and critical wounds could cure 10%, 20%, 40% and 80% respectively, of a character's h.p. total, plus the hit point bonus for caster level.
That means the 1st level fighter in the above example is probably going to need a cure serious wound while the 12th level fighter can get by with a cure moderate wounds. Sounds more reasonable, but the difficulty this creates is that it means low level characters are going to need access to higher level healing spells a lot more often than higher level characters...that makes it tough on the PC cleric who doesn't have those spells yet. Multiple applications of CLW will work, but he's going to be using those spells up at a much higher rate, so PC mortality will increase.
But then if you adopted this system (or almost any system that treated h.p. as a measure of physical damage only) then there'd be no need for 12th level characters to have 100+ h.p. Lowering the rate of h.p. increase for characters means rethinking the damage caps for higher level spells, modifying almost every entry in the Monster Manual, and...just way too big a can of worms.
Not wanting combat to be any more complicated or time consuming than it needs to be, most of the groups I've played with have just left things as they are, but almost all of them agreed that the D&D hit point system was a fairly large design flaw. Since the presence of that flaw didn't keep us from playing the game, we'd usually just shrug and get on with it.
