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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 3963390" data-attributes="member: 32164">While I agree that a continually escalating trend would be a bad thing, I can actually understand the reason for doing it in Fourth Edition. That doesn't mean it won't increase again, but I could understand increasing it now and then leaving it alone. Before you disagree on principle, bear with me. There might be a reason that addresses your concern.Third Edition has a granularity problem with hit points. The oft-quoted "commoner vs. cat" battle is an excellent example of this. Since no creature in D&D can have fewer than 1 hit point or do less than 1 hit point in damage, cats (and other small animals) are amazingly durable. While this is excellent for modeling how difficult it can be to kill them (many small mammals are hard to hit solidly), it can lead to the situation where a weak human is easier to kill than a cat. And less combat effective. Now, this is patently ridiculous, but it IS how the numbers work out.By giving low level heroes more hit points, you open up more ground below them for handling the difference between weak commoners and small animals. To do this, you might increase the damage that weapons do.There's another point here. Many (most?) people do not enjoy the fragility of low-level play. I understand that you're one of the ones who does enjoy that level of play Henry, and that's fine. The typical response from your group to those of us who hate the lethality of levels 1-3 is "well, why don't you just start at 3rd-level?" The problem with that is that what we want is less lethal play without the characters having more offensive potential. Yes, we could houserule more hit points for starting characters, but by the same token, those who prefer more lethal games can also houserule in fewer. And, honestly, the game should cater to the majority of its player base "out of the box." If the vast majority of players are skipping levels 1-3 (or 13-20), then a good portion of the published game is essentially worthless to them. Any smart business would try to fix that.Just curiously Henry, if there's an optional rule in the DMG for "starting the game with apprentice-level or nonheroic characters," would you be happy with the game? Or have you already decided that 4e's "style" isn't for you?</blockquote>

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