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<blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 238613" data-attributes="member: 1645">I enjoyed Dancey's article, Hit Points Suck!.&nbsp; (That title's a bit tongue in cheek, by the way.)&nbsp; Since (a) it's quite germane to our discussion, and (b) no one follows links, I thought I'd post some of it:Point the First: The HP system is designed to ensure that higher level characters are simply harder to kill than lower level characters. I agree with this design objective, but I'd put conditions on it. I don't think that the objective of &quot;harder to kill&quot; should apply in all situations. Specifically, I think it should not apply to many environmental effects. High level PCs should simply not be able to survive falls over a certain distance, being crushed under certain weights, being immersed in certain substances, or held without air for certain lengths of time. Using the standard hit point mechanism to account for all these effects results in characters who behave in irrational ways which both break the suspension of disbelief, and cause no end of arguments. In my opinion, if your character jumps off a cliff that's 100 feet high, your character should &gt;always&lt; die. Period, full stop. If the roof of the tunnel collapses and you have a 1,000 pounds of loose rock and dirt fall on your head, you die. If I drop you in molten lava, you die. If I take away your ability to breathe for more than three minutes, you die. Regardless of how many hit points you have.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mmadsen, post: 238613, member: 1645"] I enjoyed Dancey's article, [i]Hit Points Suck![/i]. (That title's a bit tongue in cheek, by the way.) Since (a) it's quite germane to our discussion, and (b) no one follows links, I thought I'd post some of it: [Color=silver]Point the First: The HP system is designed to ensure that higher level characters are simply harder to kill than lower level characters. I agree with this design objective, but I'd put conditions on it. I don't think that the objective of "harder to kill" should apply in all situations. Specifically, I think it should not apply to many environmental effects. High level PCs should simply not be able to survive falls over a certain distance, being crushed under certain weights, being immersed in certain substances, or held without air for certain lengths of time. Using the standard hit point mechanism to account for all these effects results in characters who behave in irrational ways which both break the suspension of disbelief, and cause no end of arguments. In my opinion, if your character jumps off a cliff that's 100 feet high, your character should >always< die. Period, full stop. If the roof of the tunnel collapses and you have a 1,000 pounds of loose rock and dirt fall on your head, you die. If I drop you in molten lava, you die. If I take away your ability to breathe for more than three minutes, you die. Regardless of how many hit points you have.[/Color] [/QUOTE]

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