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  1. - Top - End - #91
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    But the insane rocket tag that occurs in Black Crusade eventually is a citation that he is not.
    Um, no, sorry.

    You've failed at basic logic there.

    One example of a non-binary proves falsity of a false binary.

    You: "But there's this other thing that totally fits the binary!" -- Great, good for you, but that's irrelevant.

    A false binary is a case where a binary is presented as if nothing else exists. The existence of something outside the binary is sufficient to discredit the proposition.

    There may be a valid point which you're trying to argue, but you can't justify your point using false binaries -- nor a false equivalence, like one piece of evidence which proves the falsity of a false-binary being somehow equal to one example in favor, because one data-point in favor is not equivalent to a conclusive disproof.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    Um, no, sorry.

    You've failed at basic logic there.

    One example of a non-binary proves falsity of a false binary.

    You: "But there's this other thing that totally fits the binary!" -- Great, good for you, but that's irrelevant.

    A false binary is a case where a binary is presented as if nothing else exists. The existence of something outside the binary is sufficient to discredit the proposition.

    There may be a valid point which you're trying to argue, but you can't justify your point using false binaries -- nor a false equivalence, like one piece of evidence which proves the falsity of a false-binary being somehow equal to one example in favor, because one data-point in favor is not equivalent to a conclusive disproof.
    1) I merely citated a counter example, no more or less. The whole binary thing? Literally an assumption on your part.

    2) You asserted that a single instance out of hundreds agreeing with the initial statement was evidence to its veracity. This is a variant on Jumping to Conclusions, which is a logical fallacy. You then openly insulted me with the second line of your post. This is an Ad Hominem, which is a logical fallacy. You then declare that because (in your misinterpretation of the statement) a fallacy exists that it is wrong. This is the Argument from Fallacy, which is a logical fallacy. I am pretty sure the average person can figure out the next line...

    Edit: I totally forgot that you ignored the central part of my post and instead took a single line and declared that because THAT is wrong the entire argument must be wrong, which is a strawman.
    Last edited by ZamielVanWeber; 2017-09-18 at 10:20 PM.

  3. - Top - End - #93
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    1) I merely citated a counter example, no more or less. The whole binary thing? Literally an assumption on your part.

    2) You asserted that a single instance out of hundreds agreeing with the initial statement was evidence to its veracity.

    Context:

    Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
    This discussion would be a lot more productive if people dropped the false dichotomy that it's either ever-scaling HP or realistic and/or low-powered game. This is not true at all, since you can have an unrealistic, high-powered game without continually escalating the PCs' passive ability to withstand punishment. And it'll be better for it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    Exalted is a citation that you are correct.

    One of the highest power games, but no particular "level" scaling for their HP analogue.
    Morty's statement called out a false dichotomy.

    In agreement, Nifft gave an example what shows that said dichotomy is indeed false, because it does not conform to either of the choices supposed by the false dichotomy.

    It only takes ONE example of an alternate, middle, or different possibility to demonstrate that a dichotomy is indeed false.

    Your response was then as follows:

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    But the insane rocket tag that occurs in Black Crusade eventually is a citation that he is not. Also the ability to soak damage in Exalted can scale with exp as long as you assign exp to it.

    Scaling defensive capacity and power level are preferences, flat out. There is no objectively better combination of the two in a vacuum. As long as everyone in the gaming group is happy with what you use and what you use does not break the versimilitude asserted by that particular system you are fine.
    Your example did nothing to demonstrate that Morty's statement was untrue -- to do so, it would have had to prove in some way that the dichotomy is question is not false. A single particular example of an instance that does fall under one of the two options of a false dichotomy neither proves the dichotomy true, nor disproves arguments made against said false dichotomy.

    Morty's statement also had nothing to do with preferences. It was purely about the way some posters have repeatedly offered up a false choice between "D&D-style ever-scaling hit points and a high-powered epic/fantastic game" on one hand, and "non-scaling HP in a low-power/realistic game" on the other hand.

    Nifft's statement offered up an example of a game that is both insanely high-powered and fantastic and does not featuring ever-scaling massive HP pools, thus immediately demonstrating that the aforementioned dichotomy is indeed false.
    Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2017-09-18 at 10:40 PM.
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  4. - Top - End - #94
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    I parsed Morty's statement as "dichotomies are bad" and "high powered without HP are the best" as two separate statements. Then Nifft responded to "high powered without HP are best" "this is correct and here is an example why" which prompted my response of "your example is meaningless as there are counterexamples as well" and then I went on to argue a point similar to what you assert Mroty was saying. If this was legitimately started by my mistaKen reading of Morty's original statement than I apologize for the confusion it caused.

  5. - Top - End - #95
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    I parsed Morty's statement as "dichotomies are bad" and "high powered without HP are the best" as two separate statements. Then Nifft responded to "high powered without HP are best" "this is correct and here is an example why" which prompted my response of "your example is meaningless as there are counterexamples as well" and then I went on to argue a point similar to what you assert Mroty was saying. If this was legitimately started by my mistaKen reading of Morty's original statement than I apologize for the confusion it caused.
    He said that the discussion would be better without the false dichotomy that he described.

    You've been spraying mud into the thread for literally no reason.

  6. - Top - End - #96
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    He said that the discussion would be better without the false dichotomy that he described.

    You've been spraying mud into the thread for literally no reason.
    You openly and hypocriticaly insulted me and are now complaining when I explain where the confusion came from and apologized for my part in it especially since you literally made the same error immediately after? Okay then...

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    I think hit points are a clumsy and half-baked way of implementing plot armour. And the version of hit points where you just gain more of them linearly as you go up levels - is the worst version.

    If you must use hit points at all, then I favour something like the Hero approach (an explicit split between Body - long-term, slow-healing, potentially-fatal damage) and Stun (short-term pain and fatigue). And "resistance to damage" is better modelled as - well, what in D&D is called "damage resistance", rather than increasing hit points.

    But even better is a system that eschews hit points entirely, in favour of a combination of status conditions and wound levels. As for plot armour: I remember an obscure game called TORG, which gave an actual in-universe rationale for the apartheid between "characters" and "mooks", and had the two categories use different tables for attacking and being attacked. Thus allowing characters to mow down large mobs of mooks with little risk to themselves, while still allowing for real contests between characters. That, to my mind, is a better way of implementing plot armour.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    That's hardly unique to TORG. Notably Spycraft (a D20 game) used Damage saves for standard npcs (save or drop basically) and wounds/vitality for heroic characters/special npcs (actually pre-dating the Star-Wards Wounds/Vitality system).
    WFRP has mooks drop at 0 wound points while specials take critical wounds after this point.
    Numenera/Cypher the enemies don't even roll their own dice and are mostly reduced to having a 'level', with exceptions for anything that doesn't fit with it's single statistic.
    Even in D&D I usually fudge npc hit points, most npcs that aren't specifically motivated will fall down screaming rather than fight to their last hit point. All that really matters is if they're in the fight or not.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    *Shrugs*

    We simply have a problem mapping "real effects" and "narrative effects", which hp represent.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by spinningdice View Post
    That's hardly unique to TORG. Notably Spycraft (a D20 game) used Damage saves for standard npcs (save or drop basically) and wounds/vitality for heroic characters/special npcs (actually pre-dating the Star-Wards Wounds/Vitality system).
    And TORG predated Spycraft...

    But the point is that TORG actually includes an in-universe justification for it. A reason why some of its people are really, objectively, that much better than the common herd - even if they're, like, a weedy librarian with no combat skills at all, and the "mooks" in question are elite Navy SEALs or something.
    "None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain

  11. - Top - End - #101
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    *Shrugs*

    We simply have a problem mapping "real effects" and "narrative effects", which hp represent.
    And it's the narrative effects I have approximately zero interest in (see any post by me involving the term "narrative causality").
    It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.

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  12. - Top - End - #102
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    You openly and hypocriticaly insulted me and are now complaining when I explain where the confusion came from and apologized for my part in it especially since you literally made the same error immediately after? Okay then...
    Nobody insulted you. Moving on...

    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    And TORG predated Spycraft...

    But the point is that TORG actually includes an in-universe justification for it. A reason why some of its people are really, objectively, that much better than the common herd - even if they're, like, a weedy librarian with no combat skills at all, and the "mooks" in question are elite Navy SEALs or something.
    One has to wonder how the mooks became elite Navy SEALs if they were always mooks.

    Quote Originally Posted by Florian View Post
    We simply have a problem mapping "real effects" and "narrative effects", which hp represent.
    IMHO the problem is that HP are supposed to represent both gritty and cinematic "reality", and they're an okay-ish compromise as such, but only if you avoid looking at them too hard. For example, in several editions it's possible to poison your weapon, and the poison is delivered if you deal HP damage. In those editions, HP damage must represent some sort of physical injury, or the poison delivery doesn't make sense.

    Overall they work well enough for casual use, but fall down when someone tries to tinker too extensively.

    4e had a good compromise solution: at half max HP, you're Bloodied. That means the top half of your HP bar is luck / avoidance / narrative / etc. -- but once you're down to the bottom half, you have taken a palpable hit, and you've suffered real injury.

    IMHO the Vitality / Wound systems are better at representing this sort of thing, but they're far less explored.

  13. - Top - End - #103
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    Nobody insulted you. Moving on...
    You did. Twice. But I am honestly not surprised you are pretending not to.

    One has to wonder how the mooks became elite Navy SEALs if they were always mooks.
    Elite mook are a thing in RPG in general. Oxymoronic? Yes. But they are there.

    4e had a good compromise solution: at half max HP, you're Bloodied. That means the top half of your HP bar is luck / avoidance / narrative / etc. -- but once you're down to the bottom half, you have taken a palpable hit, and you've suffered real injury.
    It suffered the exact same critical issue where you could fall in lava/acid/etc and suffer no debilitating harm, alyough sue to 4e's mechanics it was not as extreme as 3rd ed could be. Bloodied was about creating useful design space than solving the reality breaking issue of HP.

    IMHO the Vitality / Wound systems are better at representing this sort of thing, but they're far less explored.
    UA's sadly do nothing to fix it (and I generally do not like theirs). As long as there are reasonable consequences to being dunked under lava for a few seconds I am more willing to think it is not having issues.

    It occurs to me that we have not mentioned the Marvel SAGA edition (the one that has a deck of cards specifically). Their approach to damage is an oddball one: instead of dice you have a hand of cards (3+). If you take damage you must throw away cards who totals meet or exceed the damage taken. The downside is that your pool of "hit points" fluctuates from turn to turn as you spend cards in offense and defense while the upside is that there are clear consequences to taking damage that are a lot less complicated than many systems.

  14. - Top - End - #104
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZamielVanWeber View Post
    It suffered the exact same critical issue where you could fall in lava/acid/etc and suffer no debilitating harm, alyough sue to 4e's mechanics it was not as extreme as 3rd ed could be. Bloodied was about creating useful design space than solving the reality breaking issue of HP.
    It's not a reality breaking issue of HP - it's an issue of the choice to implement HP and damage that way. GURPS doesn't have these problems. It does make escalating HP hard to implement at all while leaving in the other damage systems - the best I can think of off the top of my head is task specific HP multiples that map back to real HP. A character might have 10 HP. A great warrior might then have 100 Combat HP, where every 10 Combat Damage translates to 1 real damage. Meanwhile an excellent scout might have a much higher HP multiple for exposure to dangerous conditions, a mage might have an excellent psychic reserve where it takes a lot of mental attacking to drop real HP. This gets pretty clunky pretty quickly though.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    It's not a reality breaking issue of HP - it's an issue of the choice to implement HP and damage that way. GURPS doesn't have these problems. It does make escalating HP hard to implement at all while leaving in the other damage systems - the best I can think of off the top of my head is task specific HP multiples that map back to real HP. A character might have 10 HP. A great warrior might then have 100 Combat HP, where every 10 Combat Damage translates to 1 real damage. Meanwhile an excellent scout might have a much higher HP multiple for exposure to dangerous conditions, a mage might have an excellent psychic reserve where it takes a lot of mental attacking to drop real HP. This gets pretty clunky pretty quickly though.
    One way to work around that clunk is task-specific resistance & mitigation abilities.

    For example, a Scout might have Environmental Resistance 10 -- reduce all incoming damage by 10 if the damage has the Environmental tag.

    (Some spells like Cloudkill or Ice Storm might have such a tag, for example.)


    The Warrior might have Weapon Resistance 5.


    A Duelist might have an active defense which can only trigger once per turn. This might be some sort of overwhelmingly good Parry, which gives a distinct advantage in 1-on-1 combat, but which isn't as good as passive resistance when a pack of monsters attacks.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    One has to wonder how the mooks became elite Navy SEALs if they were always mooks.
    The same background story explains that, actually. But the difference between "possibility-rated vs non-possibility-rated" characters is so great that it makes all the differences between "non-possibility-rated" characters insignificant by comparison.
    "None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by veti View Post
    The same background story explains that, actually. But the difference between "possibility-rated vs non-possibility-rated" characters is so great that it makes all the differences between "non-possibility-rated" characters insignificant by comparison.
    Huh, cool.

    I'll have to give TORG a read some time.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    I've been wracking my brain and I have a trouble coming up with another system than D&D that has a bloated HP issue. I've probably tried over couple of dozen systems, some name's I don't even remember. I really don't remember any system that treats HP like D&D or D20.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Having not read the thread, I'm just going to answer the initial question:

    It depends. If I have a system with levels or the equivalent, I'm going to want a scaling way to survive and endure harm. Whether that be through HP, higher Avoid stat, damage reduction, or whatever, ultimately what matters is that at level 10 I can survive things without trouble that were life-threatening at level 1. Whether this means I can take five arrows to the chest and keep fighting or whether it means I can knock arrows out of the air, I need some method. I like using HP as a "I can take five arrows to the chest" sort of deal, so if that's what I want, then high HP is good.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by RazorChain View Post
    I've been wracking my brain and I have a trouble coming up with another system than D&D that has a bloated HP issue. I've probably tried over couple of dozen systems, some name's I don't even remember. I really don't remember any system that treats HP like D&D or D20.
    Palladium can have it even worse, you have two ranks of HP and your armour adds HP as well (depending on your enemies roll to strike). Of course Palladium was based on the owners D&D game. Aside from that... huh there's one other system which is on the tip of my tongue but I can't recall the name. But yeah it is pretty rare.
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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tinkerer View Post
    Palladium can have it even worse, you have two ranks of HP and your armour adds HP as well (depending on your enemies roll to strike). Of course Palladium was based on the owners D&D game. Aside from that... huh there's one other system which is on the tip of my tongue but I can't recall the name. But yeah it is pretty rare.
    Thanks, I bought some palladium books 25+ years ago, skimmed it and never played it. But I remember the arms and equipment guide impressed me. It had lots of pictures and Al Gore was busy inventing the internet so I coulndt just google things.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Essential. Even if it doesn't make total sense from a story standpoint, it makes perfect sense from a mechanical standpoint. High level enemies have higher HP and more damaging attacks, so if you didn't scale with them, or vice versa, the game becomes either impossibly hard or insultingly easy. I know my poor character Ergdorf needs more HP; last session, he got downed with one stab from a magic butler's dagger. I was only level one, and I did make it out alive, but I definitely need more than my paltry 9 HP.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ergdorf the Fly View Post
    Essential. Even if it doesn't make total sense from a story standpoint, it makes perfect sense from a mechanical standpoint. High level enemies have higher HP and more damaging attacks, so if you didn't scale with them, or vice versa, the game becomes either impossibly hard or insultingly easy. I know my poor character Ergdorf needs more HP; last session, he got downed with one stab from a magic butler's dagger. I was only level one, and I did make it out alive, but I definitely need more than my paltry 9 HP.
    This is not true in all systems. It's true in D&D, but not, say, Traveller.
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    Quote Originally Posted by JNAProductions View Post
    This is not true in all systems. It's true in D&D, but not, say, Traveller.
    Never played it. I'm just saying this from the D&D standpoint.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ergdorf the Fly View Post
    Never played it. I'm just saying this from the D&D standpoint.
    At which point the argument basically becomes "you need to gain HP with level because everyone gains HP with level". That's not actually saying anything about the mechanic one way or the other, just noting that it doesn't work well when only applied to NPCs.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    I'm curious how threats escalate and how that's dealt with in these systems where HP doesn't increase by level. Increasing damage and HP are the norm not just in d20 systems, but in most CRPGs as well, and for good reason. It's mechanically elegant, easy for a player to understand quickly, and it makes it simpler to eyeball a monster or NPC's durability and basic threat level.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mendicant View Post
    I'm curious how threats escalate and how that's dealt with in these systems where HP doesn't increase by level. Increasing damage and HP are the norm not just in d20 systems, but in most CRPGs as well, and for good reason. It's mechanically elegant, easy for a player to understand quickly, and it makes it simpler to eyeball a monster or NPC's durability and basic threat level.
    Normally by either a toughness or a dodge mechanic. Bear in mind to a number of people the HP scaling can seem completely out of whack, a master swordsman might be able to defeat 100 opponents by dodging them but it kinda strains credulity that he could withstand getting stabbed 500 times. Of course these systems have their own issues but that is another story. Also D&D has an absolutely massive level of threat escalation compared to a lot of games.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mendicant View Post
    I'm curious how threats escalate and how that's dealt with in these systems where HP doesn't increase by level.
    Exalted has been noted already. In it, you get better at landing a hit and at avoiding hits as you increase in power, but actual damage stays fairly static (although you can certainly boost it) and HP stays more static (although you can boost it a few times, and there are ways, as previously noted, to boost Soak, which lessens damage.) Old World of Darkness was similar. In both, I guess I could describe it as you get slightly better ways to deal more damage, but mainly you get more ways to deal damage or otherwise hinder foes and accomplish goals. You might just have an extra +2 damage after a lot of experience and getting better gear, but your means to get that damage to land (and your utility powers) have increased a lot more.

    Increasing damage and HP are the norm not just in d20 systems, but in most CRPGs as well, and for good reason. It's mechanically elegant, easy for a player to understand quickly, and it makes it simpler to eyeball a monster or NPC's durability and basic threat level.
    Although I tend to prefer systems without increasing HP, I agree completely with this statement.

    I prefer static HP (and fairly static damage-causing abilities) with games that have a more gritty feel. Death and injury are serious in Exalted and Mage, so it seems fitting.
    For other games, a D&D-esque HP systems seems fitting. For example, my group (which largely uses just d10 systems now) considered a Naruto game, and d20 seems best for it as scaling HP fits the setting well. Higher-skilled ninjas can do just about everything better, including doing and taking damage.
    (Not sure if 'gritty' is really the word I want, but it's the closest adjective I can think of.)

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    Aug 2008

    Default Re: How do you feel about gaining HP with level?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mendicant View Post
    I'm curious how threats escalate and how that's dealt with in these systems where HP doesn't increase by level. Increasing damage and HP are the norm not just in d20 systems, but in most CRPGs as well, and for good reason. It's mechanically elegant, easy for a player to understand quickly, and it makes it simpler to eyeball a monster or NPC's durability and basic threat level.
    For the most part the escalation is dramatically reduced - d20 systems and CRPGs have a tendency to be really well optimized towards combat heavy games where a small group of heroes gets in a bunch of progressively more difficult fights while gaining ever more power. Most other RPGs aren't about that, and thus don't have that same level of scaling.

    With that said, the big things are usually scaling up the size of conflicts (more opponents), higher skill levels, and in games with combat powers by bringing in more and better combat powers. Eyeballing a basic threat level is also pretty easy, particularly when the big thing involves looking at one or a couple of skills. If you see someone with Swordsman 8, Archer 7 in Burning Wheel you know they're terrifying at a glance, just the same way that seeing 300 HP in D&D is an indication that a monster is dangerous. There's much more to it in both cases, but the eyeballing is still there.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

    I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that.
    -- ChubbyRain

    Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.

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