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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 4454752" data-attributes="member: 1106">Not so.  Regardless of HP, compared to your average card game or board game, an RPG is extremely specific.  It's only if you compare it to other RPGs that you can make the case that D&D might be abstract.  Comparing it to other types of games makes your argument a furphy.  Try again Mourn.A D&D party is not an army.  Heroes are not soldiers, and don't take orders from their peers by default.  There is no archetype to back it up, which is why the name is so terrible (actually meaning something else that doesn't apply).  For a core class, it's bad design (although it would be fine as something clearly optional, confined to a supplement).HP may be an abstraction, but it follows world logic.  Once you accept it as a construct, it's consistent.  Minions having 1 HP depending on who their facing is inconsistent, and challenges verisimilitude.  It also manages to make HP in general even more of an arbitrary game construct than it was before, which is quite a feat (and not one to be proud of).  There are other ways they could have achieved the same result without causing such suspension of disbelief issues, so this is lazy design IMO.It's a death of a thousand cuts.  No, 3E and 4E didn't invent min-maxing, but they have made it much more of the central focus of the game for the reasons I've mentioned before.  We didn't have "builds" back in 1E, or at least, not anywhere near what's about now.  You can rail against this by splitting hairs, but it still doesn't make it any less true.Why, there's a hair being split now!  Never mind that wizards might not have much control over what spells they find, making your argument mostly irrelevant.  Must....defend...4E...at...any....cost....</blockquote>

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