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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 5838623" data-attributes="member: 27252">I wasn't trying to belittle your maths skills, just trying to establish the real numbers involved here. Even if you are basing it on the Crit equalling double damage (which is mathematically possible to fell a 15HP character with a sword!), you're still talking about a pretty slim chance (about 0.08%) of ever doing that, and like I say, this is just for an assumed average fighter. Well, the core problem here is in the method of characters gaining set HP per level, rather than rolling Hit dice types, which will also tend to levy out on averages over the course of several levels. I'm curious about the devastating psychological impact of having the HP total reduced from 13 to 12! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" />....but anyway, the min-maxing element of the game should be factored in. The point is that by having starting Fighters start at, essentially, 10+con bonus HP, you actually do reach the most popular number of average sword blows to fell a Fighter - being 3 - according to the poll here. And it pretty much mathematically holds out through 10-13 too. If a Great Sword (d12?) is utilized by a STR 18 (human max!), I'd imagine they could do a lot of damage! However, STR 18 ought to be pretty rare, and I'd probably impose a minimum strength to use a Great Sword too, incidentally. Even then, the average score in this instant would be 6.5 + 4 = 10.5 - only just about enough to fell an average starting level Fighter (10 HP), without any Con bonus. Should our proposed starting character face such an opponent, he'd be sensible to consider his options! However, such an opponent doesn't equate to the average Orc, does he? If a Wizard has a D4 Hit dice (av. 2.5 per level), this could be argued to be a bit low still - but then they aren't meant to be Fighters are they? I agree that some sort of cap to the number of HD possibly gained should be used, and can even see an argument for Wizards getting a slightly higher HD type to make the discrepancy with other classes less. But if you have a HD+Con Bonus being applied over 10 levels, say, then the average L10 Fighter (D10) is going to have 55HP + Con bonus (0-40HP). This is not that devastating, especially considering that the more dice rolls you get, then more likely you are to approach the average score (exceptionally high or low scores get increasingly unlikely).  An average L10 Wizard, by comparison, would get 25HP + Con bonus (again 0-40HP). If you let it escalate after this point then you'd certainly get huge problems, but this is where HP caps ought to take effect.  Mathematically, the proliferation of High Strength blows is difficult to calculate. It depends on how many fights the character has!</blockquote>

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