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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7487396" data-attributes="member: 4937">Let's not argue if we aren't enjoying the debate.  If you want to be done, I don't blame you.Like Tiffany Aching, I am very particular about how a word is used.  In fact, I'm in two discussions right now where I suspect that the person used the word 'subjective' improperly.  It's a very easy word to misuse, especially since it is thrown around far too often these days.   That said, I'm not sure what you mean by 'mechanical' either.   Legalistic?  Inflexible?  I'm not sure what you mean to apply, but since I've at various times born nicknames like 'Spock' and 'Data' contentedly, I'll probably not be upset by whatever you mean by it or why you think my response reinforces that. That's certainly possible - you may not want a world with color coded dragons for instance.  Many don't.  I suspect though that you do, and that your vision for a fantasy world is greatly colored by the tropes of D&D and not necessarily those of some other work of fiction or wholly creative and individual ideas of your own.  LOL.  That is one of the least clarifying things I could have said, because now you have to know what my preferences are concerning adjusting the balance of PCs in 1e AD&D before you could understand it, and that would require a dozen or so threads at least as complex as this one.  Suggesting that you could get some idea of what I have in my head by looking at the pregenerated characters for 'Isle of the Ape' is far more clarifying, and further that I'm assuming that most tables played characters with abilities that existed in some range around that should hopefully get you in the ballpark. We haven't, but could, go into the great depth about what the above rules imply about how combat between the different chromatic dragon species plays out.  Breath weapon certainly does play some role in that balance.  Meh.  I don't greatly care one way or the other, save that whichever direction you choose, you need to take that into account.   Which way you go doesn't necessarily say anything particularly strong about your world as a whole, in the way that saying that you have adopted E5, E6, E10 or whatever is suggesting something about how you define the available 'end game'/narrative opportunities/place of mortals in the world.  The biggest impact in the 1e decision to cap hit dice was mostly in the balance between classes, as it mostly served as a strong nerf on low hit point total classes by forcing them to be squishy regardless of level. A lot of things, but for these purposes I don't know what works for you in the context of every edition.It is not at all reasonable that the damaging effect of a breath weapon holds to some function that depends on size across species.  I mean, as long as we are being realistic, it probably isn't reasonable that it depends solely on size within a species.  For example, while you would generally expect that the larger the human, the more power they have in their arms - and there is indeed some correlation - you would by experience and reason never expect that holds true as a strict function.   Some smaller humans are very much stronger than some humans much larger than them.   When you start to extend this general rule across species, it becomes ridiculous!  You'd never expect that equal weight cats, chimpanzees, and humans have the same strength, or even that the various subspecies of cats have equally strong limbs and bites for the same size cat despite the very close kinship.   So how is it entirely logical that across dragon species, with breath weapons that have different forms and modes of action, that there would have to be be a strictly increasing lethality with the size of the beast blowing the deadly breath?  They aren't even breathing the same thing, so why would this relation hold across species!  I would strongly suggest that the fundamental basis of you considering that self-evident is that is how it worked more or less (if you don't look at it closely) back in 1e AD&D when potential breath lethality was strictly tied to hit points.  But, not to put too fine a point on it, that is all of the sacred cows that I'm slaying here the one I most want to slay!There is no inconsistency here at all.  Now, I don't deny you could choose to base breath weapon damage around size and be consistent about it.  But there are some consequences to pursuing that approach.  But, rather than debating that in a vague way, come up with your own consistent design that bases breath weapon damage strictly on size and we can talk about the consequences of that.</blockquote>

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