The problem of low hit points on humans

[Cainehill]

B0rsuk said:
Let's face it, HP is a crude, old oversimplification in an old and flawed system like D&D. And if I remember correctly, the way AC works in D&D comes from pen&paper Mechwarrior games. (Just to support the idea that D&D). D&D says futuristic giant walking robots have more in common with ancient/medieval combat than history. That's guilty enough for me. And let's not forget D&D was optimised for humans - that is, GM had to be able to calculate everything quickly without help of computers.

Was wondering if anyone else was _ever_ going to rebut Twan's " I still can't understand how some strategy gamers may be so convinced that the D&D approach is only a weird RPG thing, and the second the best for strategy games, when it's very clearly the contrary IMHO."

D&D's HP system was retarded even for a pen and pencil RPG from day one, and games that came out at roughly the same time handled the issue _far_ better. (Runequest being the main one that came out at roughly the same time, but also AH's Powers and Perils, Hero Systems (ie Champions), etc.)

One of the most blatantly retarded aspects was that HPs supposedly represented luck, fatigue, etc, and yet, HPs recovered at the rate of roughly 1 HP a day, WITH rest and treatment! Under D&D's system, Conan could've fought an army single-handedly one day - and then required 90-some days to recuperate, not to mention weeks before he could've safely gone against a 1st level foe. Imagine the Three Musketeers requiring weeks between battles, instead of simply needing a chance to sit down and quaff a bottle of wine before re-entering the fray.

And of course, the flip side to the retardedness was the AC system, where platemail and agility (dexterity) both made you harder to _hit_, instead of plate armor making you easier to hit, but harder to significantly _hurt_.

Other games separated fatigue-type damage from actual bodily harm, and/or handled armor as reducing the effect of blows. Dominions to a large extent does this also, and contrary to Epaminondas's "If anything, that shows that a lot of people do agree with me in feeling that there is a problem with the base human commander or hero HPs", an awful lot of people have no problem with the base human commanders dying like flies - it's only the fact that heroes (without Turin's mod) are so useless that we have a problem with. (And some people don't even have a problem with that )