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<blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 672602" data-attributes="member: 1645">In real life, people (and animals) avoid fights -- even fights they'd expect to win -- unless they have quite a bit to gain (or quite a bit to lose).&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; Because even winning might involve getting hurt, maimed, or killed.As I said before, escalating Hit Point totals are just one way to model bad-ass-ness (and defensive bad-ass-ness at that), and that model distinctly affects combat decisions.&nbsp; Other models would promote other behaviors.With high Hit Points, you have a wide margin where you're not threatened, then a narrow margin where you're legitimately threatened but not necessarily dead.&nbsp; If you have 90 Hit Points, for instance, you can expect to take 20 spear thrusts.&nbsp; You're not the least bit threatened by 10 spear thrusts (unless you expect 10 more), and you have next to no hope of surviving 30 or 40 spear thrusts.If, instead, the combat system gave you a 1-in-20 chance of being disabled by a spear thrust, then you'd still expect to take about 20 spear thrusts before falling -- but you'd never take it for granted that you could ignore the first 10.&nbsp; Also, you wouldn't be quite so guaranteed to go down after 30 or 40.Under either system, our hero can mow down hordes of scrubs, but he'll react quite differently to a hold-up in one versus the other.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mmadsen, post: 672602, member: 1645"] In real life, people (and animals) avoid fights -- even fights they'd expect to win -- unless they have quite a bit to gain (or quite a bit to lose). Why? Because even winning might involve getting hurt, maimed, or killed. As I said before, escalating Hit Point totals are just one way to model bad-ass-ness (and defensive bad-ass-ness at that), and that model distinctly affects combat decisions. Other models would promote other behaviors. With high Hit Points, you have a wide margin where you're not threatened, then a narrow margin where you're legitimately threatened but not necessarily dead. If you have 90 Hit Points, for instance, you can expect to take 20 spear thrusts. You're not the least bit threatened by 10 spear thrusts (unless you expect 10 more), and you have next to no hope of surviving 30 or 40 spear thrusts. If, instead, the combat system gave you a 1-in-20 chance of being disabled by a spear thrust, then you'd still expect to take about 20 spear thrusts before falling -- but you'd never take it for granted that you could ignore the first 10. Also, you wouldn't be quite so guaranteed to go down after 30 or 40. Under either system, our hero can mow down hordes of scrubs, but he'll react quite differently to a hold-up in one versus the other. [/QUOTE]

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