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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 8252748" data-attributes="member: 53980">Fair enough, I misremembered.That said, I disagree that the rules block any such thing.The rules allow you to do anything you want. Of course, here's the point where you would most likely invoke the ?Oberroni? Fallacy (just because the DM can make the game good, doesn't mean it's good). Let's put that aside for the moment, however, and examine how that approach allows D&D to work for a broader spectrum of fantasy.Let's assume you want your game to feel like Black Company (lots of death and injuries that are seriously incapacitating for extended periods of time). I want mine to feel like The Wheel of Time (death is rare for important characters, and while injuries can be seriously incapacitating, healing magic usually renders this moot). Maybe doctorbadwolf wants a game like Journey to the West (serious injuries are usually nothing more than a temporary inconvenience for the main characters). You can make any of those work for D&D.You would need to enforce those injuries as you see fit.I could probably get away with using the optional Lingering Injuries system.doctorbadwolf wouldn't really need to make any adjustments, except to maybe start the campaign at a fairly high level.Of course, you're probably thinking that you don't want to enforce injuries. Here's the thing though. D&D is a fantasy game that is intended to support a broad range of campaigns. Yes, experienced through the medium of D&D, but nonetheless a broad range. The sweet spot of grittiness is going to vary by group. Some people love Warhammer Fantasy RPG. Other people (even those who might enjoy a gritty game) find it too gritty. Heck, you're lucky if your group can come to a general consensus about how gritty the game ought to be.I would argue that a game that intends to have broad utility (which D&D strives for but WFRPG doesn't) is better setting the grit low. It can always be adjusted higher. People have been doing this in D&D for years with things like critical hit and fumble tables. It just makes the game deadlier than default (which is presumably the point). A while back, in 5e, the character of a friend of mine fell off a cliff (thrown from the back of a giant goat), and the DM called for a saving throw to see whether he broke any bones. He failed and the DM determined that he had shattered his leg. We resolved it fairly quickly with a good heal check and a LOT of healing magic, but it would have taken him weeks to recover naturally, and he would have been hobbled in the interim.Whereas tearing the grit out of a game like WFRPG would render it basically unplayable, IMO. Too many things interact with the health and injury systems. You'd have to rewrite half the game to make it work, IMO.As such, I think its a bad criticism to claim that D&D doesn't support a broad range of fantasy as a result of the hit point system (frankly, I think it's mistaken to claim that D&D doesn't support a broad range of fantasy, given my own experience). You can always add grittiness. It's much harder to remove if it's baked in. I'm in no way saying that D&D is the best at this kind of game. The more versatile a game is, the less specialized it will typically be. However, it can do the job, and for a game like D&D that tries to be versatile, embedding grit into the rules would run counter to that versatility. D&D's broad appeal is in part, I believe, because it's expected that it will be tinkered with to achieve the ideal experience that a given group is seeking. The designers can't provide that, since every group's ideal experience will differ. I'm of the opinion that D&D provides a good place to start. You probably disagree, and that's fine.</blockquote>

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