The problem of low hit points on humans

[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.

[curtadams]

Originally D&D hit points were the ability to take damage. "Cure", "heal", "rest" were all based on that concept. I don't remember if it was explicit (the original books were just pamphlets and lacked extensive discourses on concepts and design philosophy), but it was pretty obvious. However, from the start, D&D took a lot of flack from the ridiculous results, like competent characters easily being able to survive being squashed by a large boulder. The patch for this was to reinterpret "hit points" as an abstraction reflcting the ability to survive by any means, not just to able to take the damage. This was made "official" in AD&D in 1980 although many (including me) had already come up with it on their own. I remember this pretty well as I'd had numerous arguments with people over reinterpreting hit points and really enjoyed shoving that passage under their noses when it came out.

Unfortunately "cure" spells and the like were never reinterpreted in light of the reinterpretation. In fairness, D&D is a game, not a sim, and the HP abstraction works pretty well for having fun regardless of the bizarrities simulating certain events.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[PvK]

curtadams said:

That indicates not that Marius Lorca has a fabulous attack skill but that attack skill doesn't vary much in Dominions. He hits about 3-4 times as often as a smuck human. If he had "heroic" skill, akin to fiction, you'd be looking at a 50-100-fold ratio. Absolutely nothing in Dominions fights anything like Bruce Lee or Fafhrd.

Things with stacked abilities (magic, blessings, experience, heroic abilities, spells, etc.) do. Do you really think you want supercombattants to simply show up for free and not need to take any risk or investment before they start wiping out entire armies without risk? If so, it can easily be modded in.

BTW, comparing Marius Lorca with _no_ experience and no magic items to a plain trained heavy infantryman (#38) (skills at 10, equipped a spear, ringmail, shield) spear-carrier: Looks to me like Marius hits him and not the shield 76% of the time averaging 10 points of damage after armor (the man has 10 HP). If such a man tries to hit minimal Marius Lorca, he has a 6% chance, and even if he hits, has only about a 14% chance of doing any damage at all through Marius' armor. That's before Marius gets any experience or abilities or magical help, etc.

PvK

[UninspiredName]

At any rate, healing potions (and potions in general) are cheaper now as well, and it's not so much that clerics/druids are necessary anymore as that they're grossly overpowered. (Particularly Druids) I wouldn't know much about AD&D, I've only gotten into it a couple of years ago. (3.5 edition)

[Graeme Dice]

PvK said:
They only live up to their descriptions if they survive to get experience and items and/or heroic abilities or are made prophets or whatever.

What items are you planning to give the Ulmish heroes so that they aren't killed by the first A2 mage they meet that casts lightning bolt twice? Melee commanders have nowhere near as much effect on the battlefield as the equivalent gold cost in mages, and that's part of the problem.

As for Marius Lorca, just to annoyingly quibble about your example, he may not be much better than an Emerald Lord, but Emerald Lords are some of the best human melee foot commanders in the game, so adding a bunch of +1's to one of them is actually quite good from a mortal human perspective.

The problem is that it's not good enough from a game mechanics standpoint. As a random guess, Emerald lords should probably have basic attack and defense stats of around 20 if you want to use them in a battle situation. This is necesary if you don't want them to die in the very first battle they ever see, especially with the extremely granular fatigue system that Dominions uses.

Vanheim's Vanlade is even less impressive compared to typical Vans (he's about the same), though again, mounted Vans are some of the best mounter human combat commanders (and they have magic too).

A basic van commander is about how powerful in combat without boosting spells or blesses as I would like to see most human commanders. Skilled enough to take on a dozen or so untrained or even well trained normal humans.

[Graeme Dice]

PvK said:
If such a man tries to hit minimal Marius Lorca, he has a 6% chance, and even if he hits, has only about a 14% chance of doing any damage at all through Marius' armor.

So, in other words, when he experiences 30 attacks in ten rounds of combat against size two opponents, he's not particularly likely to survive.

Edit:Size two opponents, not size three.

[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