I fully agree with that. However, the designers are trying to acomplish that using other game stats. At 15 level, your fighter will have maybe 1d8+15 damage, so he kills goblins when he hit (and demons have maybe 2000 hp). Your fighter will have 4 attacks per turn, and will have the "reaper" feat (so kill goblins even on a miss), and he might have the "Cleave" feat (so get an extra attack when he kills one) and maybe the "flashing blades" maneuver, that allow him to attack every creature in his reach.
I'm pretty sure there will be *some* scalability in the attack bonus. It's not going to be 100% flat. We haven't seen higher levels, or magic items yet. It's quite probable a fighter gets some "weapon focus" improvements to hit through levels, and maybe to AC too, but it seems it's going to be something you get through class features/feats/themes etc. Not a direct assumption by level. In 3e, 4e (and other editions), a 20th level wizard, who has NEVER used a sword (much less trained with it) has a much better base attack than a 2nd level samurai with weapon focus in katana, only because of level.
I think there will be some scaling, too. I really,
really hope high level doesn't look like "1d8+15 damage vs 2,000 hit points" as the balancing measure, even with four attacks per round plus maneuvers. But, that's personal preference.
Let's see how they design it. So far it seems an elegant design (adventage/disaventage is just pure genius imho), although it's too soon to draw conclusions.
Yep, totally agreed. I was just saying I like
some progression because of what it represents within the fiction, and that I'm not sure how much I like the idea of hit points doing all the fictional heavy lifting that AC/attacks used to fulfill as well (when you have issues like poisoned attacks and falling damage). But, yes, let's see how it plays out for the next few months before rushing to any conclusion. As always, play what you like
Anyway, I like your point about having a certain attack bonus mean something in the game world. I do think that more tightly controlled math will better achieve that-- somebody above uses the example of a 20th-level 3e wizard who's better with a sword than a 2nd-level samurai with weapon focus, just because the wizard has a natural BAB progression, and it sounds like 5e is trying to move away from that by giving fighters bonuses with weapons and casters bonuses with magic rather than a universal BAB system. I think it makes sense in the gameworld that warriors would get better with weapons, and casters better at magic, rather than both getting better at "attacking" in general. Mechanically speaking I believe they will try to represent this through concrete bonuses (the fighter gets a "Weapon Training" bonus at level 5 or something, for example) rather than a generalized improvement progression, so you can say specifically, "My fighter has a +6 to attack because of his Strength, his specialization in longswords, and his weapon training." (They addressed some similar ideas in the chat yesterday, talking about specific race and class bonuses to damage and AC, but I'm guessing the same will apply to the modest to-hit progression.)
Right. I just hope that the attack bonus progressions are meaningful enough in play, feel-wise. It's a hard target to peg, in all honesty. I just don't like the idea of "I hit 20% more often, because I'm maximum level" as a solution. That 20% will add up, for sure, especially with the higher damage at high level doing the heavy fictional lifting for what a "hit" is. However, I do have some reservations about hit points filling this role within the game.
I'm not sure what to say to your poison example; that's a clever and interesting argument that I hadn't thought of. My mental fiction tends to be that every hit is actually a landed blow (it just feels more exciting in my head like that, or if I'm describing actions as DM) and higher HP means more ability to shrug that off or tough it out. So in that case a poisoned dagger would hit on a hit and put more poison in your system, but your higher HP would mean the same amount of poison just doesn't affect you as much. Or maybe you're just better at turning the blow so you get nicked by the non-poisoned part. Not perfect, I know. If anything, my best guess is that 5e will have a system like you suggested where different poisons have different HP thresholds based on their potency, a la the spells we've seen.
I'm guessing that it will be the case for poison. For falling damage? I'm not as sure. Being set on fire? Not as sure. Falling onto lava? Not as sure. Being immersed in acid? Not as sure. Hit points have always had a hiccup in this area in D&D, and moving the heavy fictional position of dodge/deflection to hit points means that you're going to get heavy hiccups in situations where HP damage is dealt, but dodging/deflecting isn't much of an option (like the above scenarios).
But, again, I'm interested to see how it works out. If it ends up working well, and they end up having patch mechanics that seem clean in-play (like HP thresholds), then I guess it's fine, and I'll be happy.
Though, to be honest, I still have reservations with HP mechanics. Take the Sleep spell, with its 10 HP-threshold. It can only affect creatures with 10 HP or lower. Okay. The Wizard, I assume, knows this before he casts it. The creature needs to be weak or it needs to be beaten down some first. Do creatures actually need to be beaten down first, since any creature that has 1 HP or more automatically heals overnight (because that wasn't "real wounds" yet)? Does that rule only apply to PCs, and, if so, is there a way for him to judge just how beaten down someone needs to be? Can he assess a creature's hit points in the game to know that it's safe to use his spell? Is this a purely metagame mechanic ("if they're at or above 10 HP, just pretend they made the save in-game, but let a player know when the creature falls lower than a certain HP threshold")? If so, will the large majority of players in the playtest be okay with that?
I just have questions about the implementation. But, that doesn't mean I think there will be tons of problems with it in play. We'll wait and see what people think, and how they like it in the long run. For now, it's probably best to observe, report, and just think about how you feel about things that Wizards presents to you. And, for now, I intend to wait and observe. As always, play what you like
