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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6860715" data-attributes="member: 42582">Divorcing this from any analysis of RPG design, and just looking at it on its own terms, it makes no sense.It makes no sense in terms of the history of the game. In AD&D, for instance, a high level druid may well have more hit points that a high level ranger (more d8s, and both may have no better than 16 CON), yet the ranger will have a higher to hit bonus (better table, more likely to have 17 STR). And thieves and clerics have comparable hit points per XP earned (d6 vs d8, but thieves are on a much more generous XP table and go to 10d6 at 160,000 XP rather than 9d8 at 225,000 XP). But clerics have better to hit bonuses (mostly because they start with 10 rather than 11 to hit AC 10). 0-level mercenaries have d4+3 hp, which is the same average as a fighter (d10), yet attack as 0-level humans and so have a comparative -1 to hit.And that's not even getting onto the monster to-hit tables, which are incredibly ramped up at low HD before tapering off (in comparison to fighters) at the upper end. Nor onto the fact that NPC half-orcs attack on the monster table rather than the character class tables.And it makes no sense in terms of scientific method: just as, in special relativity, space and time are relative but the space-time interval is constant, so in the model you're now discovering there is no constant variation of hit points relative to attack bonus, but there is a genereally constant relationship between hit points, damage dealt and attack bonus. (In other words, high level minions have lower hit points but better attack bonus than their lower-level analogues, and deal somewhat comparable damage; elites hold attack bonus constant but double both hit points and damage; etc.)</blockquote>

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