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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CarlZog" data-source="post: 1846667" data-attributes="member: 11716">It's the basics that bug me the most: Peeve #1: The core combat mechanic.-- For all its other advances, D&D's basic "to-hit" mechanism remains woefully stuck to its wargame origins. The idea of armor strength determing hit success comes from wargames in which units were assigned offensive and defensive strengths that when compared gave you a ratio for determing the outcome of an attack. It was meant to effectively model large battles between armies in which units representing thousands of soldiers could be eliminated with a single die roll. It was NOT meant to effectively model the skill of a single soldier swinging a sword at someone in front of him, or the opponent's ability to defend himself.  From the 1e attack matrices to 2e ThAC0 to 3e Base Attack Bonuses, the rules have danced around explaining what the abstraction of the core attack roll was supposed to depict. They've never succeeded in fitting this square peg of wargaming in the round hole of role-playing, but they've never given up. Specific weapon proficiencies, and, more recently, "armor as damage reduction" rules have applied band-aids to problem, but it still doesn't make very good sense. Peeve #2: Hit points.-- Hit points are another leftover wargaming tool that D&D has never completely adapted to role-playing. I don't have a problem with the basic idea of measuring a character's health and injuries with a general series of points, but it drives me nuts that that there is no incremental reduction in a character's ability to function as points are lost. We now have reams of tactical combat rules modeling every 5-foot step, amount of cover, attacks of opportunity,etc., yet the final result of all this  maneuvering is a grossly abstract hit determination method that results in the loss of a  handful of homogenous points that wont' affect us 'til we pass out or die. Given the level of detail ladled onto every other aspect of the game, it blows my mind that this core activity remains so badly modeled. I discovered Alternity over the summer and have become a huge fan of its pure skill-based mechanics. Though it certainly has its flaws, Alternity is a lot closer to what 3e/d20 should have been. Carl</blockquote>

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