NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6095007" data-attributes="member: 17106">Well, that's true. Then again, a fighter who simply makes an attack roll on his turn, compares it to AC, and rolls damage is "easy" whereas one who selects from a list of powers with three different recharge times (or even one who has some bonus dice and maneuvers each turn) is much harder.Adding complexity can be a problem, yes, but it can also create a better game experience, so there's a fine balance. The thing that I think is bizarre is that D&D has an enormous number of complicated and difficult rules for magic, combat, character advancement, and even noncombat situations, but has essentially only one rule to describe harm.There are a variety of different ways of approaching health and wounds. Two significant ones with a lot of precedent for D&D are vp/wp and the injury system from Unearthed Arcana. Neither of those systems are especially 'realistic', and neither of them are radically more complex. After all, even with hit points, you have regular and nonlethal/subdual damage. The vp/wp simply takes two types of points and makes the distinction more meaningful and uses them more regularly. In any case, non-hp health systems are not necessarily more complex, more realistic, or less cinematic.But virtually any alternative offers more design space; more ways for characters to effect harm on their enemies, more ways to be tough and mitigate injuries, more ways for healing to proceed at different rates for different reasons. So, to your last point, I think it's a shame that we're still stuck (at the moment) with hit points. Not that I didn't think they'd be there at all, but health systems I would expect to be one of the most important and fundamental "dials", one that I would have hoped to see explored much more deeply by this point.</blockquote>

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