Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 427733" data-attributes="member: 537">And _you_ can see my reply to Synicism.Nobody, as far as I know, has shown how a soldier can survive a direct hit with a tank round. Point me to where the hit point model mandates that taking X points of damage must be the result of a direct hit.1) Massive damage Fort save. Natural 1 always fails.2) Hit points presume a character actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of an attack. Someone who jumps off a mountain in the knowledge that he has lots of hit points is, arguably, not actively attempting to avoid the worst effects of the attack, and therefore the hit point model doesn't apply. Spatula time.3) The jump-off-a-cliff example is awfully, terribly old. It's so old it has hair. If this is the worst aspect of the model you can come up with, that would indicate it's actually doing rather well in the areas it's _supposed_ to model.How is this different to having, say, massive PD and DR in GURPS? Or any other mechanic by which a powerful character can avoid being hit by lesser characters?It is? I hadn't noticed.There's no such thing as a perfect model. Some models have more obvious holes than others, that's all.For every "stupid rules! Can't handle situation!" example, there is a counterexample. In this case, in _The Long Kiss Goodnight_, Geena Davis's character is involved in a standoff with a mook who has a gun pointed at her head. They argue for a bit, and then Davis slaps the gun out of the way, twists the mook's arm around, and uses his own gun to shoot two of his friends who were sneaking up on her. And you know what? I _like_ it like that.Have you actually played D&D at high levels, or like so many others, are you so hypnotised by hit points that you start believing it's nothing more than chop-chop-chop-kill?In the last high-level outing I was in, our 13th-15th level party got our butts kicked by a derro necromancer and her uber-death slaad companion. Not once, but twice. In one battle, the slaad reduced the 170+ hp fighter to single digits twice (he got a heal spell in between), knocked the rogue and the archer (me) unconscious, and blinded half the party, before we teleported the hell out of there. In the next session, the necromancer's horde of wraiths and spectres swarmed us and took out the cleric, and we again had to teleport the hell out of there. We finally managed to take them down on the third go after a protracted session of planning out buffs, strategy, and similar things.Tactics are VERY important at high level, possibly even more so at low level. And a character who focuses entirely on offense without looking at things like saves, AC and resistances better have a humongous initiative bonus, because if he doesn't take out the opposition in the first round, he's meat in the second round.Do you always rely on other people to exercise your imagination for you?The DMG itself says that high-level characters should be given the opportunity to enjoy the powers they gain. That means being able to demonstrate that they are, indeed, badasses by comparison with the everyday people around them. Do you prefer to argue by what's in the core rules, or what's in various modules, most of which I don't give a whit about, and some authors of which don't even know half the rules anyway?Your blustering technique needs work.I know. You, however, have some catching up to do.Boromir can have Iron Will, and with his Wisdom of 9, he might still have a Will save of +4 at 10th level. Quick quiz: how useful is a +4 Will at that level? Answer: not very.Indeed it does. You are enlightened. You can thank me later.Now I'm confused. Your reasoning is indeed spurious, but this fact hasn't been very well hidden. Am I missing something?</blockquote>

Verification