HP is messed up because it tries to track two different things at once. The first is how a combatant can be disabled by one big hit or a few smaller ones. The second is how a more experienced or more “heroic” combatant is harder to disable. When you put these together, you get a mess where your Aragorn ripoff can survive multiple blows from an axe.
But players don’t like being at risk of dying every time they get close to a commoner with a dagger…
HP is messed up because it tries to track two different things at once. The first is how a combatant can be disabled by one big hit or a few smaller ones. The second is how a more experienced or more “heroic” combatant is harder to disable. When you put these together, you get a mess where your Aragorn ripoff can survive multiple blows from an axe.
But players don’t like being at risk of dying every time they get close to a commoner with a dagger…
In GURPS you have relatively low HP, but several ways to defend. Still it’s pretty lethal if you’re combat-happy