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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4034155" data-attributes="member: 42582">Excellently put. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to design rules that (i) produce a mechanically balanced play experience for a good range of typical play groups and (ii) don't impose metagame limits on the PCs, which have no ingame rationale.I think this is far too harsh a judgement. Sometimes the gameworld is more satisfying if we all know that the constraints on PCs are purely metagame. For example, I quite like the idea that, in the gameworld, falls from horses can be fatal even for powerful warriors, but we also know that no combat the PCs engage in will be ones where single blows kill powerful warriors (because, as a matter of combat mechanics, those warriors have the "plot protection" that hit points provide), and we know that this state of affairs has a purely metagame rationale (we want the fights to be interesting and even nail-biters, rather than non-events).No - the point of the OP (unless I'm very mistaken) is that we want hit points (and the protective role they play) to be important in a certain range of situations, but at the same time we expressly deny that they are part of the gameworld physics, and thus in situations in which hit points don't matter (eg background details about the deaths of NPC warriors) we don't feel obliged to fit the world to the hit point mechanics.I don't think that what you are saying is true of every game system - eg in RQ and RM, the rules are meant to be the physics of the gameworld. But you are identifying one alternative, and (to me) attractive, way to approach the rules.But the question is: should we regard it as part of the rules of the game that (for example) hit point mechanics are to govern not only all the PC's actions involving physical danger, but all such activity in the gameworld full stop. D&D has never in fact made it clear what the rules are in respect of the second alternative.Assuming that only the GM has the relevant narrative control. But even then, the rules tell us (for example) that the GM cannot ignore the hit point rules whenever the PCs engage a physically dangerous situation. So it is GM Fiat only within certain parameters - and D&D already has this.But D&D already has an arbitrary amount of stuff done by the GM that is outside the players' control (eg the initial shape of the dungeon, the shape of the cosomology, the latest plot hook, etc) that I don't see why more or slightly different necessarily hurts things.But it's true of historical figures. And I think it (or something comparable) is true of some of the heroic figures in Appendix A of LoTR. To me it's an unsatifsying feature of your way of playing D&D that I can't, as GM, set up a backstory in which a hero, after a great victory, does die from falling of his horse - such a story could be the precursor for all sorts of interesting gaming.I don't think that the OP was suggesting stripping away PC plot protection via hit points and all the mechanics that interact with them. I think the idea was rather that, when this sort of plot protection is not at stake (like in setting up campaign backstory, or resolving NPC matters off-screen) there is no reason to adhere to systems whose metagame purpose is quite different (ie to regulate the PC's derring-do).I think this is the key point of the OP.Agreed - although I'm not sure if one should say "players" there, or "PCs". And your earlier post was good too.</blockquote>

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