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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 112133" data-attributes="member: 545">I was insufficiently clear.In D&D there is a peculiar incentive to throw all your party's attacks at a single target until it drops, and then repeat until you win.  Basically it is because of the HP mechanics.  I find that it both unheroic and unrealistic.  If you were to try those tactics in real life, you would certainly lose.The Iliad has line after line of introducing brave and noble men, Greek and Trojan, telling us about the beauty of their lands--perhaps one whose family fields produce particularly sweet wine, and then one warrior tosses a javelin through the other dude's throat.  Repeat.Mort D'Arther has a very mortality for those who do not happen to be Arthur or Lancelot or Gawain.  Edit out Arthur on second thought.  We meet more than a couple brave knights who bravely get killed. There is a story of a brave knight who aids a beautiful enchantress carrying a sword.  He asks for the sword as a reward.  She attempts to dissuade him, saying he may have the sword, but if he takes it he will have great adventures and die by his brother's hand.  The knight gamely responds, "Sign me up!"  When he is dying by wounds inflicted by his own brother, he is sad but just doesn't get philosophical about it.  Dying is the expected price to pay for memorable adventures.The Disney version of these two books makes them both about Lancelot and Odysseus.  They are really more about Hector, Achilles, Arthur, and other brave warriors, named and unnamed, dying bravely than any particular soldier living to go home. If you played in that style, your average PC would live maybe 2 adventures.  And none of that sissy coming back from the dead.Can you see why I find CoC more heroic than D&D?  The mortality is a generally closer to my expectations.As I said before, YMMV.</blockquote>

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