55 hit points?

Assuming no strength bonus (except for the purpose of feat selection), no magic weapons, and no multiclassing (which is pretty contrary to the core ideal of 3rd Edition which I despised, but nevertheless) - incidentally, a single-classed fighter is one of the worst builds you can possibly conceive of at high levels - you can still get a two-handed sword (2d6 damage), and a selection of Core Rulebook feats, let's say Improved Critical, Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialisation, Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialisation (for a total of 6 out of a 20th level fighter's 18-19 feats), this fighter would attack each round at +23/+18/+13/+8 and deal 2d6+6 damage with critical hits for double damage on on rolls of 17-20.

Being generous and giving your 10th level fighter the best armour available (but neither dex bonus nor magical protection) he would have 10+8(Full Plate and Mail)+4(Tower Shield)+1(Dodge feat)=23. with an average of 10(.5) on rolls, the 20th level fighter would hit for 33/28/23 and then miss with 18. With an average of 13 damage per hit (without counting criticals, which I remind you occur on confirmed rolls of 17+) that's 3x13 per round or 39, but if you use your Power Attack feat to give yourself a -5 to attacks, you will still strike twice on average, but with +10 damage to both of those attacks, for 23x2=46 damage, either way dropping your 10th level fighter in 2 rounds, assuming average rolls.

And this is a terrible, terrible build. Even the most inept player will have a stronger character at that level, if only because he'll have put points in Strength. Now if you want a fighter actually designed to deal damage, you can just go googling, 3rd Edition was adored for that kind of min-maxing.

In 4th Edition, there's a 19th level Fighter Power called Reaving Strike which deals 5xWeapon damage, so assuming no strength bonus and no magical weapons, the feats Power Attack and Weapon Focus for +3 damage, a two-handed sword (1d10 damage in this game) would deal 42.5 damage on average, only not one-hit killing the 10th level fighter because the lack of damage modifiers from strength [EDIT: Fail. I forgot Strength was added after the multiplication, so only the magic weapon bonuses would get multiplied] or magic somewhat cripples the multiplying effect of Reaving Strike. Although, by using an action point to act again, he could still use another Power to finish the job in that single round.

To be fair, a 10th level fighter in 4th Edition would have 69+Con hit points (79, in our example here) rather than 55. But also on the other hand, fighters are a class designed to absorb damage rather than deal it out.



Heh, actually we've never got there. I've told you already how it was when we were younger in 2nd Edition and early on in 3rd. 3rd Edition was where it got more stable, most games there ended eitehr because the players lost their character sheets, or because my DMing love goes more to the world-building than the actual campaign running and every once in a while I stop running games for seasons on end to design a new setting. My last 3rd Edition was going great when the Edition change happened. And the 4th Edition games I played were all one-shots to familiarise ourselves with the rules while I started building up my homebrewed stuff, which should be complete by the end of the year. In the meantime we've been playing the other DM's White Wolf stuff, Call of Cthulhu, or the LotR roleplaying game (which is the ongoing game I'm currently GMing). So yeah, I haven't had that experience yet .



But why would you want to run a game where a character dies from falling off his seat? I mean, I can accept that you would, but that's clearly an issue of personal preference, not an objective quality issue.



Yeah, I didn't have that problem since I didn't use Rogues (or Thieves, as I think they were actually called back in 2nd Ed). Instead, there was this one divination spell I seem to recall using to spot enemy groups and fire are of effect spells from outside their field of vision so they didn't react in time.