Yeah, yeah, in LotRO we call them moral points, but they are no different from Mister Gygax's fabled hitpoints, circa '65, which were developed by centuries-older games. It would be nice if they did act as a moral value and not a measure of how many hits it takes to kill. Like all games based on levels and hit points, LotRO starts to fall apart at it's extremes and I get burnt out on the damage grind.

The days of my champion building Fervour and releasing a devasting attack to defeat her foe are long gone, it seems. Most of my quests now involve Signature and Elite foes. Signatures have twice her hit points, around five thousand, and Elites have a multiple of ten, like over ten-thousand, and I really don't want to think about Elite Masters...

So, how many times can you be hit by a magically sharp greatsword? I am not not talking about getting swung at -- I'm talkin' 'bout gettin' whalloped by one! Some remarkably strong, expertly trained warrior walks up to you and zips down on you with a lethal weapon: how many hits can YOU take? Now think about how most fighters are trained to make attacks that are really a series of attacks, designed to maximize effectiveness...

I might be able to take a third of a hit.

Now my champ, who is a much better swordsman than I, is fighting stuff that can withstand hundreds of these hits, scores of her mightiest attacks, ad nauseum. I was literaly falling asleep while fighting some of these things. I just have to make its hit-point bar drop faster than my champ's. The excitement? The challenge? Kill these things faster than they respawn. Hope it has the quest item to loot.

As an a roleplayer I try to approach these games from my toon's perspective. Call it immersion as I try to put things into terms with which I am familiar. Now I have just put the equivalant of two rounds center-mass and another round square to this thing's face. Not only is it still standing, but this thing is still shooting at, and HITTING, me. Huh, time to empty my magazine, pop smoke and hope I can call for an air strike. And if I happen to survive this fight I'll to at least have to change my pants if not my armor, weapon and rig. Gee, now I just have to do this fourteen more times to complete this mission.

(As a significant side note: keep in mind that a sword causes at least ten-times the trauma of a bullet.)

Is there a solution to this Hit-Point and Level sillyness? Is there a way to give combat meaning and significance in these games? Combat should have the drama of a head-on collision where both vehicles are going at least forty-five miles per hour: "Boy, I am glad to have walked away from that one!" Instead, the mechanics of these games are built around a mathematical calculation comparing damage done versus received. So we're actually insurance agents, not adventurers.

When I put two rounds center mass and shift aim to the face, I am not thinking about how many more hits my body armor can take. I am thinking about putting this guy down, NOW, before he hurts one of my buddies: identify threat, reduce threat. Afterwards I may get the shakes, throw up, have more nightmares or just laugh and have a smoke.

I realize that if these games made combat "realistic" no one would want to play them. Or maybe, with a "realistic" combat system, players might act like real warriors and try to avoid that flash of blood and steel... Nah, nothin' UBER in that.