The problem of low hit points on humans

[B0rsuk]

Increasing HP would be redundant, because we already have 'burning out' mechanic. It's called Fatigue. Fatigued enemies are easier to hit, and after certain point can no longer fight.

2. Achilles' near invulnerability came from his mother Thetis dipping most of his body (except the notorious Achilles' "Heel") in the River Styx. One could say that that is an equivalent of his natural armor or "protection" but it could also said to represent his natural hardiness or constitution or--gasp!--HP. To insist on Achilles' near-invulnerability solely as a category of "protection" may be to try to interpret everything according to your convenience

Translation: I like the legend about Achilles, but not that part about magical origins of his power. The part about hero is right, the part about magical protection is wrong. Because I say so.

Some quotes from wikipedia:

When Achilles was born, Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx. However, she forgot to wet the heel she held him by, leaving him vulnerable at that spot

In another version of the story, Thetis anointed the boy in ambrosia and put him on top of a fire to burn away the mortal parts of his body. She was interrupted by Peleus and abandoned both father and son in a rage.

Homer does not make reference to this invulnerability in the Iliad. To the contrary, he mentions Achilles being wounded. (In Book 21 the Paeonian hero Asteropaeus, son of Pelegon, challenged Achilles by the river Scamander. He cast two spears at once, one grazed Achilles' elbow, "drawing a spurt of blood.")

So, in two first quotes Achilles is said to be nearly immortal. Styx is no ordinary river, and ambrosia is food of the gods. There's also mention of burning away mortal parts of his body.
We see Homer didn't mention Achilles' invulnerability, and there's one case of him being wounded. His elbow was grazed by a thrown spear. You don't easily die from a hit to elbow, much less a graze. If anything, it could be said that Thetis' Blessing gave him heroic defence/reflexes. Because the worst wound he received (before the final one) was grazed elbow.
Doesn't sound like he had a lot of hps, does it ? It's either Protection, or reflexes (Defence) if you listen to Homer.

As predicted by Hector with his dying breath, Achilles was thereafter killed by Paris — either by an arrow to the heel, or in an older version by a knife to the back while visiting Polyxena, a princess of Troy. In some versions, the god Apollo guided Paris' arrow.

Both versions conspicuously deny the killer any sort of valor owing to the common conception that Paris was a coward and not the man his brother Hector was, and Achilles remains undefeated on the battlefield.

So in one version he was hit in the heel and it was enough to kill him. In another(never saw this one), he was killed (one shot !!!) by knife in the back.
Even if you assume totally realistic point of view and support the idea that Achilles' tendon was crippled, it seems to imply that it made him lose his Defence and dodging ability.
I'd also like to note that Greeks considered all ranged weapons, especially bows, cowardly. Their military was really centered around heavy infantry. Most probably because bows tend to ignore target's Defence, and you can't show your skill in melee combat.
Either way, Achilles died from a single blow.

As to Herakles, the only instance of him being wounded I remember was a crab that cut into his feet while he was wrestling with a legendary monster, don't remember which one.

Achilles' armor was the object of a feud between Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax (Achilles' older cousin). They competed for it by giving speeches on why they were the bravest after Achilles and the most deserving to receive it. Odysseus won. Ajax went mad with grief and vowed to kill his comrades; he started killing cattle or sheep, thinking in his madness that they were Greek soldiers. He then killed himself.

Because there's mention of Odysseus, I assume it was Homer who wrote this. It seems to imply that Achilles' power at least partially came from his armor - or so the two Greeks believed. What it doesn't do is support the HP hypothesis.

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.

[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 )

[Twan]

Cainehill said:

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!

IIRC hp were supposed to be given back by cleric spells and at the level your Conan would have 90hp his cleric friend was supposed to be able to give him back 90hp in a day or two. Of course the fact that these priest spells were called "cure" and "heal" aggravated the confusion about the hp definition, but they could easily be seen as the need to be in good terms with a god to regenerate the hero/luck/fate part of the points.

Anyway dominions has a system which is closer from rolemaster with its open ended dice rolls allowing with extreme critical hits to one shot anybody or give severe afflictions, but rolemaster hadn't a limited by size hp system, it used a light form the D&D hp concept with the possibility to develop them with leveling, so there is no real need of chaosium systems limitations to make heroes mortal.

Note that I don't think there is a problem with humans hp in general (out of heroic characters and eventually very experienced commanders) I was just tired by the nonsense of some D&D-hp-concept* bashing arguements (*I don't remember having defended the way they modeled armor, recuperation or other parts of the mechanics) when it was far more able to model med fan heroes without making them unbalanced than one in which the GM was forced to cheat to avoid to see "Conan" one shoted in each fight (runequest), and when boosting stats like defense or giving luck instead of hp risks to make heroes far more overpowered in case a lucky roll never happen (some suggestions for dominions).

[Cainehill]

Twan said:

IIRC hp were supposed to be given back by cleric spells and at the level your Conan would have 90hp his cleric friend was supposed to be able to give him back 90hp in a day or two. Of course the fact that these priest spells were called "cure" and "heal" aggravated the confusion about the hp definition, but they could easily be seen as the need to be in good terms with a god to regenerate the hero/luck/fate part of the points.

Which simply forced parties to have a druid or cleric if they wanted to get anywhere. And it was _still_ retarded that a lvl-1 who got beat to within an inch of his life (-9 HPs) could be completely healed and ready to go (as ready as they ever were) within 3 weeks, while Conan would feel he needed to rest for 3 months.

Didn't keep me from spending man-months or years playing and writing up adventures for AD&D, but that was mostly because of the difficulty in finding a group that'd play Champions/Hero Systems, or Powers & Perils, or Rolemaster, or Runequest, or half a dozen other far better systems.

D&D was damn near the most retarded, stupid system, and so, like MacDonalds, it succeeded hugely. Never underestimate the poor taste of the American people.

[UninspiredName]

Hey! I like D&D... Also, it's not 1 HP, but 1 HP per level. So a level 20 fighter resting with treatment would heal 20 HP instead of 1. Then you factor in how item-based D&D is, and it likely becomes much more. Potions are also fine in the absence of a druid or cleric.

Though I'll agree, the HP system is messed up as far as suspension of disbelief goes. Still, as far as gameplay goes, I find it works.

[Cainehill]

UninspiredName said:
Hey! I like D&D... Also, it's not 1 HP, but 1 HP per level. So a level 20 fighter resting with treatment would heal 20 HP instead of 1. Then you factor in how item-based D&D is, and it likely becomes much more. Potions are also fine in the absence of a druid or cleric.

Eh, _if_ it's 1 HP per level, that's a very recent change in AD&D's rules - for more than 20 years, it was essentially 1 HP per day of _rest_, period. IIRC, every week you may've gotten a bonus bit of healing equal to your constitution bonus. That was it - if you were traveling, you weren't healing.

As far as potions go - they might've been fine in a Monty-Haul campaign, but generally speaking healing potions were rare, expensive (if they could even be purchased), and used in the direst of circumstances. Oh, and let's not forget, most of the potions were relatively useless for most characters who weren't very low level. The "common" potions healed something like 1-8, 2-16 and 3-18 HPs. Not really meaningful when your fight is down 70+ HPs, and then rolls a 2 out of possible 16.

So, you were stuck with needing a cleric in your party, in a game with the most insane ethical/moral framework of "alignment" (*), where most players would have throttled someone attempting to roleplay a cleric properly (ie, preaching and attempting to convince everyone to do things as their deity would wish).

* Yes, insane. When an entire alignment (Chaotic Neutral) is described as being likely to flip a coin to decide whether or not to follow a suicidal plan of action, that's more insane than the CN characters are supposed to be. It also ignores that CN might simply mean that a person didn't care much about good or evil, didn't like laws and conventions and cared more about individuals than the swarming masses of people. Oh, and evil alignments, as described (especially CE and NE), meant that you should be flaying puppies, openly torturing and killing, etc.

[alexti]

Cainehill said:
So, you were stuck with needing a cleric in your party, in a game with the most insane ethical/moral framework of "alignment" (*), where most players would have throttled someone attempting to roleplay a cleric properly (ie, preaching and attempting to convince everyone to do things as their deity would wish).

Thinking about, priest of Odin might be quite useful in various situations

[curtadams]

Cainehill said:
Didn't keep me from spending man-months or years playing and writing up adventures for AD&D, but that was mostly because of the difficulty in finding a group that'd play Champions/Hero Systems, or Powers & Perils, or Rolemaster, or Runequest, or half a dozen other far better systems.

D&D was damn near the most retarded, stupid system, and so, like MacDonalds, it succeeded hugely. Never underestimate the poor taste of the American people.

It was more a network effect than stupidity. Lots of people saw the flaws, but everybody knew how to play, everybody had the manuals, there were a gazillion scenarios, etc.

The other systems had their flaws too. Runequest was like a horror movie sometimes with multiple limbs flying off in a typical combat. Rolemaster (sometimes called Rollmaster ) had those critical hit tables that were very entertaining to read but not so entertaining when characters experienced them so often. Hero systems was IMO the best but it was pretty late to the game - non-superhero versions didn't come out until 10 years after D&D and the fad aspect had faded.