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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9778266" data-attributes="member: 87792">And this is where I have a serious problem with the people who talk about versimilitude in the context of D&D.Most of us are not likely to face down a dragon. Most of us are likely to take a punch at some point in our lives and many of us will break bones. Most of us know what it feels like to be hurt. And D&D characters get into fights all the time. Thanks to the D&D hit point system after about level three in D&D in any edition an unarmoured character (yes, even a wizard) can take a maximum damage hit from an orc with an axe and be still standing with no long term negative effect. Just a recovery time that equates to excercise (which is normally considered to be a month for a marathon; one day per mile). No broken bones. No injuries. Just a workout.Once we are on a hit point paradigm with no death spiral we are firmly in the realms of action movie physics. It is impossible to be otherwise. And combat is a core element of D&D. Which means that for versimilitude to hold we need to stay consistently in the realms of action movie physics (or throw out the D&D combat system entirely). Playing a "Guy at the gym" who can be hit in the face for maximum damage by an orc with an axe and take no long term effect is the part that shatters my versimilitude if we want to pretend that we are using anything approaching the real world.It gets even worse than that when we consider damage output. Because the same mechanical effect that allows our action movie star to take a hit from an orc with an axe without actual injury means that they can't use sharp steel (magic or otherwise) to one shot or even cripple a large muscular unarmoured person (in specific an ogre) by stabbing them in the heart or pickaxing them in the head. Our "fighter" is, due to the supernatural way fighting works in this world, not actually dangerous to be a real world guy at the gym with a sharp weapon and some martial arts training. The effect of the hit point system is that everyone is swinging nerf bats and boffer swords. Which, again, is fine and in genre if we're allowing the fighter to be e.g. Xena. But not if we're trying to claim realism.This doesn't mean I have a problem with games that actually try for versimilitude and have death spirals. My first two major RPGs were GURPS and WFRP and while I find them clunky these days I don't consider they aimed at bad targets or did things notably badly on the realism front. But once you have the ability to withstand ludicrous amounts of damage and the ability for many characters to cast spells reliably and safely we're way outside the realms of the guy at the gym. And given it's normally caster players arguing for 'versimilitude' when even wizards are super-tough and able to warp reality this always comes across to me as "Versimilitude for thee but not for me".</blockquote>

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