[Fatherchaos]

As was mentioned earlier, and is often brought up in various other forms of discussion for DnD, hit points are less a direct representation of how much direct physical punishment one can take in combat and is more representative of the overall combat dance. Essentially, ever traded blow, parry, miss, glancing shot, dodge, roll, etc., is what Hit points are truly representative of.

Of course this all falls apart when sitting at the table and scoring "a hit" or observing another avatar poke your avatar squarely in vulnerable places. From my perspective, I would assume that character A hit character B a few times - glancing blows, sliding past a parry, etc. - but was never able to successfully penetrate the armor. At most, character B then got nudged about due to his protective armor, the likes character A might have never seen.

Before I forget, don't forget your dicebag - you could always do a called shot to the face which tends to generally be rather unprotected by copious amounts of semi-magical chain mail. Face, hands, exposed tail, all are fair game if you play it smart. You may want to dicebag future pvp combat - ignoring potentially event breaking things such as + x / soak Y - but that's all between the combatants. I don't think the mechanical nature of NWN's combat system was designed for anything more efficent in pvp then to measure one's electronic-pencil.

For me, pvp is a dicebag only affair. It gives both sides to properly act with their characters abilities.