Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4645046" data-attributes="member: 54707">You've got a real point there PP, but in this particular sense combat is very different from boxing. Because in boxing the intention is to hit someone without killing them, or being killed, meaning you intentionally put yourself at risk with the hope that your skill, strength, stamina, training, etc. are superior to that of your opponent. There are attempts to block, and absorb, and to avoid, and evade. But you have to voluntarily expose yourself to being hit. The point of a fight is to fight and you can't fight unless you get in there and mix it up. Then again you know that being pummeled isn't generally lethal and that even a smasher to your sweet spot isn't gonna kill ya, though it may drop ya. In short boxing is for sport, and the objective is to win, and therefore when you are boxing you voluntarily expose yourself to a certain kind of danger, but generally speaking (unless something goes wrong) not to lethality.Combat, and close combat with hand to hand weapons is totally different. You cannot afford to "expose yourself recklessly with the intent of winning" because even if you succeed then the other guy can still kill you simultaneously or wound you so badly you die anyways. You get up and dust yourself off from a lost match or a fist-fight, you don't get up from being dead. So risk to reward ratio is entirely different. You win by surviving while the other guy doesn't, you don't win on points or by TKO or by knock-out. If you get knocked out in combat you're dead. Or at least captured. Not just woozy. So combat means you don't take the same kind of chances in the same way as you do with a fight. And that's what I mean by saying D&D is set up for fighting techniques, not killing techniques. When you kill in combat you want it to be over as close to instantly as possible, in a fight you don't necessarily mind it going on awhile. So things like strength, which render stamina advantages and power advantages are great for fighting. But they aren't necessarily good for killing because you want killing to be quick (not how fast you stab but how fast you stab a killing point), so that the other guy can't kill, maim, cripple, or severely injure you or your buddies in the time you take to kill him. The point of a combat is to kill, not to be hit, take a blow, or be killed. the point is not to go toe to toes with a man, but to have him toes up immediately. The best combat is when the enemy dies and you aren't even injured. There is no incentive to fight in combat, but every incentive to kill and to actually avoid fights (fight meaning close encounters which expose you and your buddies to as much danger as your opponent).So in combat knowing how to kill is far more important than anything else (if the real objective is to kill the opponent. I've seen guys stabbed dozens of times by people who didn't know what they were doing and the victim still lived. I've seen guys shot or stabbed just once by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and it was over before the victim hit the ground. So I'm not disputing strength is helpful to some degree, but that's what I mean about the difference between real fighting and real killing, and between game fighting and game killing. I'm not necessarily saying that killing in D&D, or any other game, should be like killing in real life, but what I am saying is that killing in D&D is really nothing like killing in real life. And really nothing like real combat either.(By the way, that doesn't mean it couldn't be more like real killing either, but the game would have to trade up "fighting" for "killing" and fantasy combat objectives for more real combat objectives.)P.S. As an interesting side note, it has long occurred to me that this is one reason Fighters are called fighters in D&D, and not Warriors, or Soldiers, or something that immediately implies killing, or potential to kill. Because D&D "fighters" go about combat like fighters, not like killers.As for the other PP, HW, try here: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/pawsplay/1399-asymmetry-d-d-design.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/pawsplay/1399-asymmetry-d-d-design.html</a>PP makes some good points about Asymmetry in Design</blockquote>

Verification