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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gadget" data-source="post: 7853579" data-attributes="member: 23716">I think it is pretty much on record that many of the complaints in the OP were indeed intentional design decisions.  Having gone straight from AD&D to 5e, I can see how the OP can feel the lack, having missed all the design and game play changes overtime.  AD&D could be somewhat arbitrary about death and disability at times, and that could be frustrating to many players, though of course some really like that style as OSR shows.  That said, I can sympathize with being uncomfortable with the designers going "all in" on HP attrition.  I say "all in" but I must equivocate a bit; I don't think they went quite that far, it would be too much "not D&D" if they did.  Like say, if Hold Person only affected you if you were under X HP.  The whole game would have to be designed around it, and they really didn't go that far.  They had design goals that ran counter to this, namely tradition and the asymmetric design of PCs vs Monsters, particularly in the matter of HP.  That's why spells like the Power Word spells are not that great for PCs: Monsters have a much greater pool of HP compared to PCs; and they really need it to stay at all competitive.   IMO that's what makes many of the spells and abilities in the game lackluster, the asymmetric nature of the design and the fear that abilities that are good enough for the PCs to actually use against monsters, likely would be too effective if the Monsters used them against the PCs.  Exhaustion can be vary frighting when the PCs are threatened with it, but giving a level of Exhaustion to a Monster isn't really all that; particularly since many Monsters aren't meant to really last beyond the encounter and HP attrition is a more effective way of eliminating them.  Same with effects that stop healing for a time.  Another example is the Stone to Flesh spell, there's really no reason for this to be a concentration spell, it already has the fail x saves before passing x mechanic. But if the evil Sorcerer casts it on the PC, they want to give them every last opertunity to undo the effect by breaking his concentration.</blockquote>

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