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="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3976246" data-attributes="member: 32164">To me, there's a big difference between durability (hit points and Second Wind rules) and characters having "over-the-top" abilities. You're talking about the latter Henry.Characters from The Black Company were able to accomplish feats that are impossible for a D&D character. There's no way a couple low-level fighters could get the drop on two of the most powerful wizards in the world (as Croaker and Raven do). To account for that, Green Ronin altered the way hit points worked in The Black Company campaign setting. Moreover, to truly mimic that scene, you have to use the optional gritty rules. As that scene shows, characters in the Black Company don't get tougher at higher levels the same way D&D characters do. Of course, they also don't fight dragons...Now maybe you have no problem with high-level characters being able to get tail-slapped by a dragon and live. But if that's so, it's not the level of "realism" that's the problem. It's that you think being fragile at the start of their careers makes the game more "realistic" even though it doesn't last. That switch is a pretty uniquely D&Dish notion.I'll say it again. To me, hit points are mostly heroic luck. It's because of hit points that the low-level character is lucky enough to survive all those arrows that get shot at him. They might nick him (if it's needed for believability reason, like an arrow being poisoned) but for the most part, they aren't solid hits. And even when they are, they might not be lethal hits. An arrow passes straight through the meat of your arm, for example. In the Black Company novels, Croaker is a PC and so are some of the other characters, as are many of the wizards. Many of their comrades are not. Survivability is the defining characteristic of a low-level hero. Yes, he might die, but only if he's in truly dire straights or gets very unlucky.Is it possible to stand in the middle of "enough arrows to block out the sun" and not get hit? Yes. Certainly, it's not likely, but it is possible. Luck tends to run in the PCs favor.You can certainly decide that survival past the low levels is dependent on luck favoring the player, but 4e takes the position that fortune usually favors the character. Saga does this for a reason. It has the advantage of not requiring Luke Skywalker to already be a seasoned adventurer (3rd-level) just to survive his adventure in Star Wars. With the Saga rules, Luke can start as a 1st-Level hero. And to me, that's a definite advantage.</blockquote>

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