Originally Posted by Sharp
I really wish this myth would die, because its not (and has never been) true. It was started because someone on reddit looked at one or 2 goblins, noticed that they don't have 15 AC and 7 HP and decided that because a goblin in tabletop has 2d6 hp, of which the average is 7 and has 15 AC, that the reason must be because Larian changed Goblins because "missing is not fun." At a very vague, surface level analysis, this seems like a fair assumption, except it does not hold up to any substantive level of analysis. For reference, here is a goblin.

Regardless of where it came from, it had a deep observable effect on the game's overall balance. Maybe your narrative purpose reasoning would work out if the goblins were designed around an average referencing the tabletop stats to begin with, but they and every other enemy in the game are near universally following the rule of lower AC/higher HP. And the end result is that people have noticed how the combination of that and the high ground advantage/backstab advantage system have really thrown out most incentive to use buff spells for the purpose of overcoming higher AC and spells that target saving throws. Not to mention the Sleep spell being far less effective than it should be.