Quote from: jibbajibba;736795Seems like 1st level PC should be wary of a monster with a bloody big battle axe. There is a slight gamist take here. If you remove the game stuff and had a situation where a bunch of in experienced adventurers encounter an orc with a huge axe they would be wary of him, just like kids are wary of Jason in the Friday 13th movies. In D&D certainly TSR D&D most weapons do c.d8 damage and so you can kind of predict that a blow even a crit double damage isn't going to kill you though it might render you unconscious if you are a 1st level fighter with 9 or 10 HP.
Different games render this situation differently DnD, whilst we all think it is very lethal at low levels really isn't compared to most other RPGs.

It's one of the reasons I favor GURPS, where it's relatively easy for a PC at any power level to be incapacitated, but not so easy for one to be killed.

Quote from: jibbajibba;737424Doesn't that break the D&D HP paradigm?

The 10 HP blow is supposed to be a glancing blow to the guy with 90hp. If it has a 50% chance of knocking them out it seems a bit more like a pretty solid whack...

Not really, as I've learned from current experience. Ten damage is definitely towards the upper limit of regular weapon damage (unless you are a large creature). It'd require magical enhancements or weapon spec./mastery/etc. to really push it up that high or higher otherwise. So, with it's standard -4 atk & -1 init. called shot penalty, all in all it's not all that overwhelming to the standard combat. It actually ups fighter threat nicely, too.

The other interesting tidbit is the Sap weapon where that gets IIRC 20% KO per damage point for surprise, and caps around 80% (1d4?). I'd have to dig out CH:F for reference. With backstab it hits either the 95% KO cap, or spills over to 120%+ potential with GM judgment, so you can keep thieves sapping people from the shadows scary. Interesting option to tack onto a crossbow to the chest threat.

I have no real interest in using wound systems to my D&D, though.