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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9753917" data-attributes="member: 4937">That's not exactly what he says.  He instead says at higher levels hit points increases mostly not through greater durability but rather to other seemingly supernatural or metaphysical characteristics which will differ depending on the type of character - fighters get better at evading wounds, clerics get more divine provenance, wizards get sort of innate force fields or instinctive magical protection, thieves get luckier, etc.  He doesn't really specify what this supernatural fortitude has to be, just leaves it up to the group to specify how it is acting to mitigate wounds.  And mitigate is the key word here, because...Pretty sure that isn't exactly what he says either.  Rather the most common Gygaxian explanation is that like a 2nd level character was like 50% durability and 50% this supernatural other stuff, and that when they were "hit" they were actually hit as the language implied but they were hit significantly less seriously than they would have been from the same blow at first level.  Likewise, a 10th level character would be like 10% durability and 90% this supernatural other stuff.  In any event, each hit depleted both durability and this other supernatural quality proportionately, until you were out of supernatural quality covered in minor bruises and scrapes and wounds and then just as vulnerable as you would have been at first level, unable to avoid the killing blow.So you could, but you'd have to be really careful about both the flavor and the mechanics of the rule.  And in particular:That just sounds awful.  That's doing nothing interesting to improve the game at all IMO.  That's not a conversation that enhances the game and makes the player more feel like he's Dirk the Daring or whatever in a fantasy world doing great heroic deeds.  That sounds and feels like a game of spreadsheets.  Worse, that's highly highly unbalanced as it turns healing spells into literally every other resource in the game the way you imagine it, which makes clerics even more "godly" than ever and healers just get absolutely overpowered.</blockquote>

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