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<blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 3001903" data-attributes="member: 545">It is not so clearcut that early editions of D&amp;D cared much either.&nbsp; We may say that my fighter attacks the orc with his longsword, but it does not look mechanically different in any important way to my &quot;Pike unit&quot; attacking that &quot;Light Infantry unit&quot;.&nbsp; Early D&amp;D was on the far far fiddly end of the scale of these things, but was it really so different?&nbsp; Only at the most superficial level IMO.One can make a reasonable argument that the superficial level really matters in this case.&nbsp; But I am skeptical that makes a strong basis for generalizations about all RPGs that came after.D&amp;D itself has always been a bit schizophrenic about striking.&nbsp; On one hand an &quot;attack&quot; has always meant a series of feints and swings that might, in some editions, take up to 60 seconds(!) to complete, but when it comes to describing the results we call it a &quot;hit&quot; and prefer to use the language of a single discrete telling blow with a named weapon.Unless we want to get into a very in depth philosophical discussion on Damage Resistance and Critical Hits (which did not exist in early D&amp;D), there is no mechanical difference between a &quot;hit&quot; and a &quot;success&quot; where a success may or may not be a number of hits with the effects summed together implicitly.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ridley's Cohort, post: 3001903, member: 545"] It is not so clearcut that early editions of D&D cared much either. We may say that my fighter attacks the orc with his longsword, but it does not look mechanically different in any important way to my "Pike unit" attacking that "Light Infantry unit". Early D&D was on the far far fiddly end of the scale of these things, but was it really so different? Only at the most superficial level IMO. One can make a reasonable argument that the superficial level really matters in this case. But I am skeptical that makes a strong basis for generalizations about all RPGs that came after. D&D itself has always been a bit schizophrenic about striking. On one hand an "attack" has always meant a series of feints and swings that might, in some editions, take up to 60 seconds(!) to complete, but when it comes to describing the results we call it a "hit" and prefer to use the language of a single discrete telling blow with a named weapon. Unless we want to get into a very in depth philosophical discussion on Damage Resistance and Critical Hits (which did not exist in early D&D), there is no mechanical difference between a "hit" and a "success" where a success may or may not be a number of hit[b]s[/b] with the effects summed together implicitly. [/QUOTE]

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