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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 2939505" data-attributes="member: 8394">In my case, the abstraction is precisely what turns me off of hit points. Ditto saving throws, stat adjustments where the bonus is a different number than the stat, etc. This stuff just makes no sense to me.I think elegance and realism are probably incompatible. It's hard to deal with the fact that one person can be mortally wounded yet have enough strength to fight on, while another person can be bonked on the head and rendered unconscious without really being wounded at all. Realism is mechanically tedious.Absolutely. If you really want a certain kind of tactical combat, you're perfectly justified in arguing that d20 is elegant in that it's the most streamlined, intuitive way to give you what you want. I think d20 tries to have it both ways in that it courts a certain level of realism with things like AoO, then laughs in the face of realism with things like hit points. That contradiction might be one of the reasons some people aren't so hot on parts of it.</blockquote>