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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6658757" data-attributes="member: 42582">I hadn't looked at it that way. (Which is not to say you're wrong.)To me, it seems more like your discussion with [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION]: he wants to frame DCs by reference to Conan and Aragorn, you want to frame them by reference to paragon-tier PCs, and BryonD sees some radical contrast whereas - like you - I don't see the issue at all. What are Conan and Aragorn, after all, but (in 4e terms) paradigms of the paragon tier?How do we tell if a DC is higher than what Conan can do? What is Conan's bonus to climbing, survival, etc? It seems to me that has to be determined on a genre basis - REH didn't pencil D&D stats into his margins.It seems to me the real issue is whether the GM, in framing some challenge and assigning it a mechanical difficulty within the system, has regard to the likely prospects of success for his/her players' PCs, and to the likely pacing consequences of the players engaging that ingame situation via their PCs. Some systems make this easier for the GM who wants to do so (Robin Laws's HeroQuest Revised is probably the poster child here, but 4e is at least in the same general neighbourhood). For reasons I don't really understand some people seem to think that having regard to such considerations, as a GM, is inimical to "real" roleplaying. (But many of those critics still use hit point ablation as their combat mechanic!)And yet fantasy fiction is heavily populated by minor antagonists who fall to a single sword blow from Conan, Aragorn, Gandalf, Lancelot, etc, etc.In a system that uses hit point ablation to prevent one-shot kills, you need to sidestep that system if you want that sort of event to take place. You can either do this on the player side - give the players resources that permit them to bypass NPC/monster hit points and one-shot them - or you can do it on the GM side. 4e does it on the GM side by default, though plenty of 4e games also feature it on the player side, with "minionisation" via successful skill check or skill challenge.On the question of verisimilitude, I personally can't see the hit point system as a measure of what seems true-to -life, as if it is unrealistic that anyone should ever fall to a single arrow or magic missile or mighty-thewed swing of the sword.</blockquote>

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