Dick said:
In the first play testings of Conan, you had a lot less hitpoints, basically you started with hitpoints equal to your Constitution stat. plus 1-4 hitpoints extra as you progressed in levels.
Having just played a few sessions of combat recently I am still mystified why this idea was dropped, players just have too many hitpoints, the way armour negates damage means fights last a hell of a long time
Two PCs, both level 7, one a nordheimer barbarian with a bardiche and medium armour, the other a Bossonian Soldier with a bow and medium armour held off and killed 40+ second level soldiers with armed with sabres, bows and light armour. The PCs had so many hitpoints that the risk to them was laughable.
At a recent session, the party was debating who to give short term care to since there was a limited amount of time. One player said something about being down 37? hit points and asked another how much he was down.
"I'm down 95."
Then, there's the barbarian killing machine who is better at combat than Conan would be at the same level with over 100 hit points who gets taken down or taken out a bit often for party comfort since anything that's a threat to him is pretty likely to eviscerate the rest of the party.
The point is not that the game breaks in certain ways, but that the game breaks both in favor and against PCs. A couple of grapplers and a midlevel thief could kill those two in two rounds. Give a high Str monster Power Attack and see how much use Diehard gets. Sabre, bow is just not that threatening in the first place, have some 16 Str, bardichers w/ PA use aid another tactics; the PCs may not lose (against some number less than 40), but they should squirm at the threat potential.
Then, that encounter sounds like one that should be a prelude to something more meaningful. Another encounter right away with any hit point loss or in the same day with any meaningful amount of hit point loss occurred makes that encounter mean something to the PCs.
Also, it's completely in genre for badasses to wade through dorks.
I don't find hit points to be meaningless. I do find that they mean much, much less when massive damage is being dealt left and right. When I look at numbers for antagonists, I don't really pay any attention to hit points, I look for Fortitude saves and whether they can deal 20+ points of damage in a single shot. Of course, obnoxious abilities like free grapples make some difference too. But, if they drop like flies to the barbarian and can't put him down in one shot, the fight isn't going to be interesting as the party just waits until they all die.
So, it really comes down to what sort of opposition is put before the party. How it matches up. Its tactics. Some people like to claim how great it is that Conan doesn't try to balance encounters, well, buying into that view, it's perfectly fine for the party to get through unscathed in some fights while being wrecked in others (though, the latter is more interesting by far and I buy into the idea of balanced fights being far more interesting than party decimation).
IMO, ideally, the party gets thrown a lot of different types of fights. Some will be easier or harder just based on the nature of the matchups, but also, different characters become more or less useful depending upon circumstances. Take archery. Archery has been pritnear useless for our party. It hasn't been used a lot against the party, but one time it was devastating due to the volume. Anyway, throw a bunch of 4 hp doofi who spread out with poisoned arrows at our party and archery suddenly looks a lot more exciting. Have some sorcerers who can't be easily reached telekinesing demonfire, and archery looks a lot more exciting.
Deadlier? Perhaps. Faster? Definitely not.
You can kill people in 1-5 rds of combat vs. 6-12 of true D&D
