Smaller numbers are better. It's not always  true in RPGs, but it is generally true. It's easier to work with in terms of calculation, but perhaps more importantly it makes it easier to intuitively gauge the significance of the numbers. You can feel the impact of a +1 on 1d6 more than you can on a d20. The older I get, the more I appreciate smaller numbers. The art quality in OD&D may be lacking, but the art direction  was pretty dang good. Number creep started with Greyhawk, continued in AD&D, really took off with 3e, before being scaled back a bit in 5e, with its notion of "bounded accuracy". 5e's notion of bounded accuracy still yielded a greater inflation of numbers than Classic D&D (Holmes, B/X, BECMI, Cyclopedia) which held back a bit on that front but still had slightly higher numbers than pre-Greyhawk D&D. One of the most obvious parts where number inflation took off is hit points. And in this regard, I quite appreciate the HD scale in OD...

I've analysed and critiqued the concept of Hit Points in the past . The gist of the critique is that whilst hit points conceptually are mostly "hero points", mechanically they are treated entirely as "wound points". And that grates. The 10th level fighter with 60 Hit points who loses 80% of his hit points will need seven weeks to recover those 48 hp lost,  assuming a basic 1 hp/day of recovery . Meanwhile, the 1st level fighter with 5 hit points who loses 80% of his hit points (and was near death with just 1 hp left) will need just four days to make a full recovery. Besides the incongruence of this, it also has the mechanical downside of necessitating magical healing at higher levels for the game to be at all functional. Art for the entry is from the old Swedish "Drakar och Demoner" supplement Torshem. I've seen various elegant and less elegant attempt to remedy this, from healing HP equal to level per day (as 3e faultily suggested) to each added d...

Oh, Hit points. Is there any other gaming concept as opaque and contentious over the ages? Maybe Armor Class,  but that is for another day. What are  hit points really? With monsters, it is simple enough to equate hit points to physical damage. But less so for people. Originally, number of Hit dice = the number of hits before you go down. Simple and intuitive option. A normal 1 HD man goes down when struck by a sword. A troll, being of larger and more durable stature than a man, has six hit dice (ie, can take six sword hits before going down). But then the iffy part: A 6th level fighter fighter is the equal of six men - Is his body as tough as a troll? What does his extra hit points represent? The exact answer seems to vary over the years and as significantly - There doesn't seem to be a clear consensus in any point in time as to its exact status. "Wounds + [x], from taking a hit" seems to be the the closest definition people can agree on at any given time. ...