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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6293448" data-attributes="member: 29398">Having just waded through all this (and voted 'no' to all in the poll), a few observations:1. Hit points are, without doubt, a purely gamist construct...and a pretty good one when compared to what else is out there.  That said, there's no need to make them any *more* gamist than they already are; and a few tiny shreds of realism can be injected by splitting hit points into body and fatigue points, making natural healing of any kind take time measured in days rather than minutes, and making magical healing...well, magical.  You need a spell, or a potion, or a device (though 3e blew the device call with the wands...sigh...) and all of these are limited and - in the case of potions and devices - should be quite difficult and-or expensive to renew.2. Having converted and run several 4e modules and read numerous others one thing stands out about the design: 4e really likes the dramatic set-piece battle.  Probably does it better than any other system I've seen.  Problem is, where most old-school adventures might try to have one or two of these the 4e adventures like to string them together one after another; and the design-level assumption seems to be the party will be in very good to perfect shape for each one, which in a 1e-style game just doesn't happen once the Clerics run out of spells (and they don't get many).  This results in one of two things: either the adventure ends up being way deadlier than intended, or ends up taking way longer in game-time than intended.  Or (in my own experience) both.3. Hit points seem to work best when everybody has fewer of them.  There's a bi-i-ig difference between a 1e 1st-level character with 8 h.p. and a 4e 1st-level character with 25, when each gets hit by a shortsword swing for 6.  Weapon and spell damage hasn't scaled up much if any over the editions - a longsword has always done d8, a fireball d6/level, etc. - but hit point totals have both for PCs and their foes.  To me that's a flaw; and very much contributes both to the h.p.-as-luck-not-meat line of thinking and to a sense of - if not immortality - a certain lack of fear of minor encounters.  Any encounter, no matter how minor, should be cause for at least a bit of concern.Lanefan</blockquote>

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