Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5935980" data-attributes="member: 42582">There's more going on than just starting power level, but there's still a certain sort of challenge at first level, just because (i) the main form of confict is combat, and (ii) a single hit will do about the same amount as damage as your hit die, meaning (iii) a single round of combat with a single foe can be deadly.I don't think it's a challenge of skill, though. Luck plays a huge part. Once you get to 2nd level and get that 2nd hit die (at least if you're a cleric or fighter!), the role of luck starts to decline (though obviously is still there).I know the hit point ranges and damage ranges. I was talking about the narration. If a 1st level ranger with (let's say) 12 hit points gets hit by a broadsword for 8 hp (max damage on 2d4), s/he walks away smiling with 4 hp. From which I infer that s/he wasn't smacked in the face full strength. She dodged, weaved, or otherwise ablated what (in the fiction) was the full potential of the blow (thus wearing down her metaphysical reservoir of luck, divine favour etc).Another way to put it is that while, mechanically speaking, it is possible for a 1st level ranger to survive a full-strength (8 hp) broadsword hit, what this means for the fiction is that, because s/he has 12 hp, that ranger will never actually suffer a full-strength blow to the face from the first broadsword attack of the day.And as a side-note, it's this non-simulationist aspect of hit points (they render it impossible, at the mechanical level, for stuff to happen in the fiction that clearly is possible within the fiction - ie, within the fiction there is no reason why that 1st level ranger couldn't be one-shotted by a skilled or lucky broadsword attack) that makes me puzzled by so many people's outrage at martial dailies and encounter powers in 4e.Or, conversely, if they re-simulation-ise hit points by going for "hp as meat" - so that ranger really does get smacked full strength in the face by a broadsword, but having a face made of steel walks away anyway without even a dint to the teeth!</blockquote>

Verification