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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6660386" data-attributes="member: 42582">I could equally say - "I'm surprised you can't see the difference between a monster which lacks the skill and luck to avoid a skilled combatant's blow (ie has 1 hp), and an attack rate and capability that varies depending on who the attack is declared against."Leaving aside that the AD&D attack isn't a "sweep" in any literal sense - there is no requirement, for instance, that the targets be adjacent; and it is not resolved as an area attack with a saving throw, which is the default AD&D resolution method for such things - why can a fighter not attempt it (say, with a penalty to hit) against higher HD monsters? It's not just that it has tight restriction on who it can be used against, but that those restrictions are defined in purely abstract mechanical terms, and without any sort of interface with the general rules for determining attack rates, damage and the like.The idea that a monster's mechanical representation - ie its level and hit points - might change depending on who, in the fiction, it is fighting, strikes me as no different in principle from the idea that a fighter's mechanical representation - ie its permitted action economy - might change depending on who, in the fiction, it is fighting.The question "but how many hit points does the monster really have?" seems to me like asking "but how many attacks does the fighter really have?" Neither hit points nor action economy is a real property of a monster or character (ie something that is true of it in the fiction) - on this I follow Gygax in his DMG, where he explains the abstract nature of the action economy on p 61, and the abstract nature of hit points on the same page and also pages 81-82 and 111-12.</blockquote>

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