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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 427102" data-attributes="member: 8158">It's not broken. It provides a simple, video-game style mechanism for tracking a character's health. Just because it's withstood the test of time, though, that doesn't mean it's achieved a state of perfection. Like I said, it needs fine-tuning. I like d20 plenty, but hit points are a flawed artifact of 1e D&D's combat system that went overlooked during the big overhaul that WotC performed converting the system to 3e. Man o man, I don't mean to get all snarky and jasamcarl-like, but how I pray for the day when all the smug GM's inculcated in their fluffy little fawning circle of gamers up in the clouds come back down to planet Earth, and stop proffering gamers who live in the real world all the quaint little techniques that only function within the confines of their pristine, perfect little groups.Your system of improvised penalization, where players contrive all manner of ways to flagellate themselves with self-imposed handicaps in exchange for scraps of XP is cute, but are you naive enough to believe such an arbitrary system is an easy, ideal solution for every group of gamers to implement? Perhaps you have an ideal group of gamers who all love you and coddle you and stroke your hair and tell you how wonderful this ad-lib wound system is. If so, that's great. I'm happy for you <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Putting aside your own infallibility when it comes to assigning all these off-the-cuff effects ("Uh, gee, that arrow hit you...in the arm! Yeah! You drop your weapon!"..."Wow! I rolled three 6's on that 8d6 fireball. Let's see, I say you're stunned for 1d6 rounds!") and your players' sheepish acceptance of those whimsical penalties, do you see where this knee-jerk approach to applying notions of "common sense" to hit points might actually lead to enormous debacles of gaming in the hands of someone less brilliant than yourself? How about all the left-brained DM's out there that are capable storytellers, but have a half-baked grasp of game mechanics (of which there are many)? They would constantly be coming up with sloppy, unfair, and just plain stupid calls on how penalties are assigned, getting players killed routinely. That would tend to sour a players' ability to appreciate the DM's finer qualities, wouldn't it? And imagine, for a second, that there's actually a large contingent of players who actually have some standards of their own when it comes to their gaming experience, and believe it ought to be governed by well-thought-out rules, that have undergone at least a bare minimum of playtesting. They might just find this slap-dash approach to a comprehensive damage system to be shoddy, inconsistent, and just plain half-arsed. I do.Now, if your answer to that is "Then they can find someone else to play with!" or "You shouldn't be a GM if you can't cut it!", then you have undercut your own position. Getting back onto what this thread is supposed to be about--the overall welfare of the RPG industry--it's safe to say that attitude is not one that's healthy for business. If d20 or any other system has a gap in rules that ultimately results in the GM having to take up so much slack that it's too much hassle to run, or has shortcomings that frustrate players to the point that they're turned off by the experience, then the game's publishers have fallen short. That's what happened with my group's foray into Deadlands d20. You can play the elitist all you want blame the GM and players for not being up to snuff, but ultimately the publisher is the one who suffers when Deadlands fails to succeed in the market due to its inability to meet consumer expectations.Yeah, I had a groovy group like that once too, but don't take it for granted that what works within your microcosm is applicable to 90% of the gamers out there. Most people can agree on basics, but once they're into the specifics--like how to decide whether a character dodged an arrow, or was struck in the arm--then the disparity of views to begins to tell. Frankly, I find it quite disturbing to think that there might still be some game designer pursuing the remnants of this thread who might stumble across your comments and take that lofty nonsense about "the follies of a GM" seriously. The rulebook serves as a toolkit for the DM. Now, maybe there are virtuoso GM's out there who have a MacGyver-like ability to jury-rig rules for their game with duct tape, baking soda, a can of Coca-Cola, and a pack of pop rocks, but most folks will just wind up making a big mess. They need the best tools that they can get their hands on. The fact remains that hit points are not a great tool for creating dramatic, cinematic combat encounters. Even you don't dispute that statement so much as insist that a good DM should just ditch his tools and drive in the screws with his teeth <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /></blockquote>

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