I think the main problem here is that the NPCs are too powerful in that they have too many HP and deal so little damage. For instance, i think i have close to, or around 70HP and i deal out 110+ damage, while most rogues on the hand seem to have HP in the order of 500+ and either don\'t deal out damage or deal it out in incredibly small amounts eg 10, (yes there are some that can do 40 damage etc.) What ends up happening in most fights I have the rogue or opponent will start to damage me, but because of my uber hitting ability i smash him down before i go down. The NPCs should be on roughly the same sort of level as the players and everybody should be dealing damage well below a quater of their health. In reality if you wanted to kill someone you would need 4 or 5 hits to fully kill them, which is different to one or two fatal wounds which would eventually kill them.
-What i am hoping to eventually get to is that i think we should all (humanoid/intelligent characters) have similar HP with reasonable differences due to training and race.
-Our max damage should allow for 4 hits before we can kill any other intelligent character.
-Combat should be more heavily based on stats and skill so agile characters can dodge more and a succesful block or strike is by your skill in the attack style being tested against their skill in defense and given weapon skill
*intellgent creatures means player races, rogues, gladiators, etc. HP should be given by race trait, size, skill, so rats would obviously have very little HP.
I have this feeling that things will eventually balance out with armor and defense skills. I think this issue with one hit kills would either be resolved by making the radical changes i\'ve suggested or by patiently awaiting the body developement skill to be implemented. And hopefully that body developement will with a respectable amount of effort let us reach HP of say 250+ - i only just remembered about the unimplemented existence of body developement, which i guess would be god sent for the victims of one-hit one-kill duels
: P