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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6141890" data-attributes="member: 17106">HP clearly scale differently in each edition. That said, I don't remember any meaningful difference between what kind of challenges a fighter could handle between 2e and 3e. I definitely don't remember killing any trolls with one hit.I think you may be talking about base versions in the MM, which would make sense. After all, the 3e monsters were designed such that the MM version is the weakest example of the monster and they advance in HD and size from there. In any case, in both games the level of challenge is titrated by the DM. I suspect 3e makes this much easier to do (which is a real difference), but I never DMed 2e so I don't know. Most of this discussion has been player-side.IIRC, 3e initiative was essentially putting on paper what many 2e groups actually did. 2e initiative was extremely confusing as written. I can't recall for sure, but IME we either did initiative the 3e way, or the DM tracked it and no one else knew what was going on. Again, I think the issue is that 2e was very old, and got modded a lot, and that 3e probably resembles those mods more than the original 2e core books. Which indeed, is the natural way games evolve. (4e, by contrast, is a pretty fundamental change in direction from most of the 3e houserules and revised 3e-style games out there).In Robin Laws' world, I think the typical fighter player is an "ass-kicker" type who just wants to kill some bad guys. I also see a lot of deep character exploration with fighters, perhaps because they're easier to relate to than clerics or wizards. I do not see a lot of min/maxing.In general, I've had the same experience with both games, which is that fighters and their martial brethren are the most played classes and have the most combat impact. IME 3e marginally expanded the mechanical support for out of combat actions, but it is quite weak in both.As very basic principle, a bird in hand is worth two in a bush. Thus, a +1 to damage or a boost to hit  points that you pretty much know you're going to get meaningful use out of is more useful than a limited use ability that you may or may not actually use and which may or may not be beneficial.Another basic principle is that of mutually assured destruction. Magic is generally controlled by the DM asserting implicitly or explicitly that uses of magic that are disruptive to the game and game world will be stopped by someone in the game world. There's always someone more powerful than the PCs, as any DM advice book seems to note. In general, fighters just do what they do without having to think about these considerations (unless they start killing innocent people, in which case the same applies and someone stops them).There's also the social aspect. Fighters are the ones who end up in leadership positions (keeps, if you go back far enough), not necessarily because they are better at it but because people respect them, whereas people are turned off by magic. That's not in the rules, but it's definitely a part of D&D.Basically, people playing the game in a rational way generally take actions that reward martial prowess and discourage the use of magic, which creates a tension around magic. That's the same in 2e and 3e (and I expect in earlier editions).</blockquote>

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