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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9855106" data-attributes="member: 7026617">There are all kinds of ways to do that though.  Among other things, not every game just has amorphous blob hit points in the first place, and even if you do, you can have things where you trade off damage for various special effects and the like.  But yes, D&D is prone to that because its damage model is so vague and broad (including baking most defensive ability into hit points) out the gate.There actuallly used to be a collection of game-book combat rules that were somewhat in that direction; I probably still have mine buried somewhere.  I can't remember what they were called any more though, and since they were designed for standalone play, would probably be too in-depth for use in an RPG anyway (you'd need to factor character skill in in some way too, which they didn't do).Show me where, other than positioning, OD&D opponents made a bit of difference in their choices when you were attacking them, and I'll follow you.  I don't believe you can short of GM intrusion (which is essentially baking in new mechanic in an ad-hoc fashion).  As I said, with the vast majority of OD&D opponents, what mattered on their defensive side was AC and hit points.  Nothing more.  Once you've hit that level of abstraction, there's no real reason parallel skill approaches with other potential-hazard skill usage can't be done similarly.  They just usually aren't.</blockquote>