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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 7803878" data-attributes="member: 53980">I agree that hit points are quite practical.That said, I think that most issues with HP go away if we simply reframe how we look at them.Hit points (IMO) are essentially akin to the resilience that important characters in a story have (aka, plot armor). If you're watching TV or reading a book, and an important character falls off a ledge and plumets to their inevitable demise, there's a nearly 100% chance that the character will survive. To the point where that old trope has been a cliche for years now.Generally speaking, it's not really an issue unless you're expecting HP to model reality or there's metagaming involved. In the former, a high level character is among the great heroes, like Hercules or Odysseus, so expecting realism is arguably about having mismatched expectations. If Hercules or Odysseus tumbled off a cliff you can bet either one would walk away from it.As for the latter, it can be an issue if players of high level characters have them behave as though they were aware of that plot armor, but outside of perhaps comedy, we'd balk at any writer that had a character behave in such a manner (throwing themselves off cliff after cliff because "I've got the hit points". In that case it isn't the HP system that is at issue, but rather the player's metagaming.This brought to mind an episode of MASH where a grenade gets tossed and (IIRC) Col Potter throws himself on the grenade. There's a tense moment, but the grenade is a dud, and everyone is okay.That said, if the player throws his character on grenade after grenade, I'd agree, just let them die.Back in the day, when we were playing 3rd edition, we ended up with a very high level party (somewhere around 25 I think). We came across a group of powerful creatures who had opposed us for much of the campaign. They offered to allow us to be reborn as one of them, and offered us a rusty dagger. And that's the story of how, one-by-one, each character of a epic level party slit their own throat. Self inflicted TPK. The DM still likes to trot that one out when he's in the mood to gloat. A near miss is still a near miss, whether it's from a .308 or a .22. That's what I'd argue is the case for a high hit point character facing off against someone with a modern military rifle. You might be getting peppered with debris as the rounds shred through anything around you, but you haven't actually been hit until you're reduced to 0. I could totally see a rule that makes stabilizing a character brought to 0 with such a weapon more difficult.There were weapons even before modern rifles that were designed to kill an armored opponent. Warhammers and the like. No standing around all day against those weapons. You could always bring back the old weapon vs armor charts if that sort of thing interests you, but it's not my thing.That said, some games like Stars Without Number do go a more realistic approach. More advanced weaponry will typically ignore less advanced armor. High powered weapons are likely to put a low level character on the ground in one shot. Even high level characters probably can't handle more than 2 or 3 shots. Truly powerful weapons, like those mounted on a starship, will outright kill most characters unless the GM rules otherwise. Of course, the game makes it possible to resuscitate dying characters with med patches or psychic powers (unless the GM rules that the character is beyond saving), and also makes rolling up replacement characters fairly quick. Obviously, SWN assumes a less heroic tone by default.</blockquote>

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