Post originally by Robin Ashe at 2003-12-14 06:58:15
Converted from Phorums BB System

OK. Everybody is getting hung up on an incredibly small aspect of both systems. I'm willing to bet that neither system focuses 95% of the rules on Hit Points, which certainly seems to be what 100% of the debate is about. Something else that I find peculiar is that people are assuming that a gun that does 3 dammage in BRP would deal 3 dammage in D20. It's a different HP system and a different dammage system. Guns in D20 last time I checked don't deal a flat out 3 dammage, they deal variable dammage that is usually quite a lot higher than BRP. A revolver does 1d10 dammage (average 5.5), 2d10 on a crit (average 11). That's twice as high as BRP on a normal hit. Now lets say your 1st Level Character has 6hp. 1 gun shot is pretty fatal according to D20. For it to have the same effect as a starting BRP character, HP would have to be 22. With an average HP advancement of 3.5, a 6th level character would have the same survivability as a starting BRP character. Which one is harder? Even this analasys is ridiculous. Is the entire point of CoC to run around being shot by guns at point blank range? No. That's a small and insignificant part of the game. I don't recall reading a single HP Lovecraft story which even involved guns. I'm thinking regardless of which system you use, having Keziahs pet rat eat his way out of your chest would be fatal. There's no dammage table for having a rat step from another dimension into your chest and burrow his way out. It's just assumed to be fatal. That's far more likely in a CoC game than being shot at point blank range with a pistol. That's what HP Lovecraft is about. You don't fight vampires with guns, you fight them with a contraption that produces ultraviolet light. Is Cthulhu going to care if you have 12 HP or 500 HP? No. He'll kill you either way if he wants to. Should you even be engaging in combat in CoC? Well, that depends on what your goals are, but the whole point is to deal with the supernatural. That in itself is unrealistic, so any other lack of realism is trivial. When you're dealing with supernatural dammage, it's perfectly reasonable that someone with more experience with the supernatural could sustain more dammage before dieing. Are you going to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the Crawling Chaos? Think about it, this is horror roleplaying. Most combat (and it should be rare as it is) should be of the supernatural variety, which already breaks the rules. Should someone with 15 "levels" of experience with the supernatural be able to survive it better than someone with 3? Most certainly. The Supernatural and horror aspect is where CoC should take form (from my biased opinion having only read HP Lovecraft but used both BRP and D20). To bring Ravenloft into this, high HP does nothing when you're stupid enough to fight Azalin, Kaz or Vecna head on. Sure, Jaqueline Renier might be slightly easier to deal with - initially, but you'll have a hoard of rats attacking you in short order if you do, and 100 rats will quickly kill anyone, regardless of their HP. Does it matter if it takes 1 round or 2?

Anyways, enough banter on the topic of HP. Let's talk DMing tools.....