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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4080324" data-attributes="member: 4937">The issue is 'a cat scratch could kill many humans' was a nagging flaw in 1st edition which together with various similar nagging flaws ended up driving many of us away from D&amp;D towards other systems.&nbsp; Bringing up past flaws in no way defends current ones.&nbsp; Remember, if you are taking the contrary position in this thread, then presumably you are arguing against my reason for not switching.&nbsp; Saying that 4E is at best just as bad is not an argument for switching to 4E.&nbsp; But more than that, the issue is that clearly to the designers of 4E, these sorts of problems were non-issues, and as such they've designed an edition with more of these (to me) nagging flaws rather than fewer.Now, you obviously agree with the 4E.&nbsp; Great.&nbsp; Have fun with 4E.As for how I explained it away in 3E?&nbsp; I changed the rules regarding the minimum damage for a weapon such that cats rarely do even a single point of damage.&nbsp; Between that and the fact that medium sized creatures don't die until -10 hit points, and that in general, most of the time a cat is scratching it's owner it's merely issuing a warning (that is, it is deliberately dealing non-lethal damage) allows the problem to be less of a problem.&nbsp; (I changed the rules for 1E to, but the mechanic I came up with was highly inelegant.)As for why you should care about an edge case like a 0-level human fighting a house cat, it is because the edge case is itself merely an exageration of the problem of a house cat interacting with a PC.&nbsp; If the interaction between house cats and commoners is obviously broken, it implies that the interaction between house cats and armored guys with swords is also broken, just in a less obvious way.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 4080324, member: 4937"] The issue is 'a cat scratch could kill many humans' was a nagging flaw in 1st edition which together with various similar nagging flaws ended up driving many of us away from D&D towards other systems. Bringing up past flaws in no way defends current ones. Remember, if you are taking the contrary position in this thread, then presumably you are arguing against my reason for not switching. Saying that 4E is at best just as bad is not an argument for switching to 4E. But more than that, the issue is that clearly to the designers of 4E, these sorts of problems were non-issues, and as such they've designed an edition with more of these (to me) nagging flaws rather than fewer. Now, you obviously agree with the 4E. Great. Have fun with 4E. As for how I explained it away in 3E? I changed the rules regarding the minimum damage for a weapon such that cats rarely do even a single point of damage. Between that and the fact that medium sized creatures don't die until -10 hit points, and that in general, most of the time a cat is scratching it's owner it's merely issuing a warning (that is, it is deliberately dealing non-lethal damage) allows the problem to be less of a problem. (I changed the rules for 1E to, but the mechanic I came up with was highly inelegant.) As for why you should care about an edge case like a 0-level human fighting a house cat, it is because the edge case is itself merely an exageration of the problem of a house cat interacting with a PC. If the interaction between house cats and commoners is obviously broken, it implies that the interaction between house cats and armored guys with swords is also broken, just in a less obvious way. [/QUOTE]

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