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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5628007" data-attributes="member: 21169">I think 3e should have made hit points 100% physical, rather than a combination of physical and non-physical much like the account in the 1e DMG. Gary didn't like the idea of a high level fighter being superhuman, supernaturally tough. Writing in the 1e PHB (page 34), he says it is 'ridiculous' to think that a high level fighter with 85 hit points is as physically durable as four huge warhorses, and so he needs to explain the excess hit points as representing skill, luck, etc.But 3e accepts that a non-magical PC can possess superhuman powers. A high level raging barbarian can leap far further than the world long jump record. There are all the extraordinary abilities mentioned upthread such as the druid's immunity to poison and unaging body, the ranger's hide in plain sight, the paladin's immunity to disease and the barbarian's DR 5/-. If this is all permitted then it seems no stretch at all to regard hit points as another extraordinary ability, representing superhuman toughness.Perhaps there is a particular problem with the fighter though. He is the most mundane of all the classes, even more than the rogue. More grounded in reality than the paladin and monk, who are highly magical, even more down to Earth than the barbarian, who at high level resembles Cuchulainn, and the ranger, aka Aragorn.More and more, I think my personal preference is for the 'naïve interpretation' of hit points, ie that they are purely physical. This results in fewer contradictions, and less dissociation – both the player and character know that a fall is survivable, for example. I have no problem with the idea of the fighter being superhuman. In fact it's rather weird that there should be this one mundane class in the game, while the other ten classes whoop it up.</blockquote>

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