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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 5598653" data-attributes="member: 1645">Gygax did not disagree with my suggestion that players would want to emulate Tolkien in D&D.  As you admit, he included elements of Tolkien in D&D to attract the many potential players who would want them in a fantasy role-playing game.And what holds for Tolkien holds for Howard, Leiber, Vance, etc., when it comes to one-shot kills of tough opponents.Except that he'd have to use a non-light weapon from surprise for that to work, and no one would doubt Conan's ability to drive a knife into a wizard's heart even without the element of surprise.What this is demonstrating is that "vanilla" hit points require a hodge-podge of additional complications to kind of, sort of let someone "tough" (high-level) die in one shot.I'm not arguing that tough characters should be less tough and have fewer hit points so they last for fewer rounds of combat, just that other mechanics can do that without providing plot protection to everyone tough.Again, we need lots of extra rules to make this work.  Either Bard has special powers -- which he could presumably call on with some regularity -- or his Black Arrow has special powers -- which, again, he could presumably call on with some confidence.I don't get the impression that he knew he could take out Smaug with his super-archery skills, and I'm pretty sure he didn't know his Black Arrow was guaranteed to slay any dragon with one hit.If you want a great warrior or monster to be able to survive roughly eight sword, spear, or arrow hits, you have a few choices of game mechanics to handle that.  The traditional D&D answer is to give a superhero eight hit dice.  The numbers have moved around a bit over the editions, but a character with 36 hit points can take roughly eight 1d8 attacks before succumbing.  Without extra rules for critical hits, such a character cannot succumb to fewer than five hits.  Even with crits in play, he can take multiple perfect shots -- crits rolling max damage.This is fine for characters with plot protection, but not for anyone and everyone who might be tough.Another way to make characters tough enough to take, say, eight arrows, is to give them a one-in-eight chance of succumbing to any one arrow.  Then they're just as tough, but they have no guarantee that they'll shrug off the first five spears or arrows -- or that they'll succumb to the first dozen.</blockquote>

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