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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 7840710" data-attributes="member: 21169">It's a hypothetical example he uses at the beginning of the article.that little business of the strange fact that a dragon breathing 30 points of damage at a helpless low-level magician and ditto high-level fighter frazzles the one but fails to kill the other. In White Dwarf 6 I queried whether gaining experience ought really to have this asbestosising effect.From his article in White Dwarf 6, Combat and Armour Class -Consider what would happen if you chained up a 1st level magician with 1hp and an 8th level fighter with 45hp, both sans armour, outside the cave of your friendly neighbourhood red dragon. Said dragon ventures forth, decides he likes offerings to be burnt ones, and gives them both a quick blast of fiery breath (why can't dragons use toothpaste like everyone else?). They both take 30 points of damage, with the result that the magician is burnt to a crisp, while the fighter, though singed, is amazingly enough, still alive. How is that? Has finding x thousand gold pieces caused his skin to turn to asbestos? A man's a man for all that; either they should both be fried or they should both survive. Nor will I accept the argument that the man with less hit points is more likely to die of shock, since dragon breath is a lot more than a touch of heartburn.This article proposes giving characters a bonus to AC but limiting their hit points.ultimately I should like to see a system like this; when a character goes up a level, he increases his hit points by one die as per normal up to a base maximum of 10 hit points (modified up or down according to constitution). This represents the maximum amount of damage a human being can take. When the maximum is reached no further hit dice are added. However, right from the start, whenever a character goes up a level, his combat armour class decreases by one - from 2 to 1 for those humanoid juggernauts in plate, and from 9 to 8 for magicians.</blockquote>

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