NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JDWiker" data-source="post: 1705066" data-attributes="member: 10344">I wasn't involved with the final assembly of the book, myself, but "tight" is a pretty accurate descriptor. They cut out *a lot.* Hopefully they left enough so that anyone with a little imagination can create any setting they like.Here's the problem with a hit point threshold system (and I'm not saying I agree with it, only that this is how Wizards thinks): It's not the way we do it. And if we change it for this system (starship combat), we have to change it for all our systems (personal combat, vehicular combat, psionic combat, and so on).A fundamental flaw that has always existed in the d20 System (since the days of the white box) is that it built off the wargame model of "each unit can be killed with one hit, or at most, four." When you're dealing with a single model on the tabletop, with no more than 4 hit points, hit point threshold systems are not only unnecessary, but they add a level of complication for those poor wargamers who are trying to keep track of perhaps hundreds of models at the same time.But when you add more hit points at each level, the abstract hit point system begins to unravel. Characters can survive often a dozen hits without losing effectiveness--a transparent fact at low levels, but increasingly obvious as the character advances in level. So, eventually, you get characters who can fall 20 stories, get up, and charge right into combat. It's ridiculous, but it's an artifact of the system, and even if Wizards wanted to change it, too many of the grognards would complain too loudly. (Personally, I think it's worth alienating the "1st Edition was the One True Edition!" crowd, but I don't call the shots at Wizards.)Obviously, Wizards has toyed with a hit point threshold system before. Not only did Alternity include such a system, but Jonathan Tweet, the main 3.0 designer, designed Ars Magica, which uses not only a threshold system, but *fixed hit points.* (No "class," no "level," has more hit points than any other. The difference comes in how well characters can shrug off damage.  But I digress.) So, clearly, it's something they *could* do, but choose not to.It's something Wizards has done many times before. Look at Xenoforms for the Dark*Matter setting, for example.JD Wiker</blockquote>

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