What is HP?

[The-Mage-King]

Now, this is to keep it from drailing another thread.

What is HP representing? Luck? Skill at dodging? Plot armor?

A combination?

And how much of it is the actual damage a character can take? At what point are they taking actual wounds instead of just nicks and minor cuts?

[Gnoman]

Standard fluff doesn't answer this question. It's all in how the DM decides to fluff it. You may be interested in the VP/WP system, which does seperate actual damage from plot armour.

[The-Mage-King]

Oh, I know about those. I'm just asking everyone their opinions, and how they would fluff it, to get a better understanding of, well, the community's thoughts on this subject.

[Bhaakon]

The way I've always understood the HP total as representing your character's growing ability (via skill, improved equipment, divine favor, increasingly magical essence, ducks, dodges, flinches, planning, positioning, etc.) to turn attacks that would impale a lesser man through the heart into little more than paper cuts. It's still actual damage, though.

Obviously the fluff is unclear, and even game mechanics are contradictory (ie: a 1st level cure light wounds spell can fully heal a 1st level character at 0 HP, but barely dent a 20th level character in the same condition; while both characters might take comparable amounts of bed rest to heal), but I'm strongly resistant to a definition where 1 HP of damage doesn't equal some sort of actual injury regardless of level. If it were little more than fatigue and psychology, then it wouldn't regenerate so slowly.

[Zaq]

HP is a number. It represents how close you are to death. When it reaches 0, you usually fall unconscious, and when it reaches –10, you usually die.

If you examine it any more closely than that, things get weird and stop making much sense at all. Sometimes it's best to just admit that an abstraction is an abstraction and continue on your merry way. This is one of those times.

[The Succubus]

HP is a popular condiment in the UK and other countries, often used in bacon sandwiches. Each time your character gets hit, their bacon sandwiches become less tasty. A collapse at 0 HP represents despair that they now have to go out shopping to buy more.

[Tokiko Mima]

The definition that makes the most sense to me as a measure of how long you can absorb serious risk in combat. A beefy warrior can take larger risks for a longer time than a rogue can, for example. When you run out of HP, the inevitable finally strikes, and you are taken down.

[tiercel]

"Combination" would be my take on it -- what exactly HP represents is, for me, fluffed different depending on whose HP we are talking about.

For a giant beast of a monster, I think of its HP being its actual *bulk* and difficulty in actually hitting anything vital because it's so freaking massive, every bit of HP damage is literal gouges in its flesh until (at low HP) it finally begins to stumble allowing you to go for the head/eye/soft underbelly/spine/whatever and finish it off.

For a lightly armored, skilled swordsman, I tend to think of HP as mostly being fatigue and luck -- being able to fend off a lethal strike by ducking, weaving, straining, just being out of position enough that the blow that would have skewered a mere Commoner is barely/mostly avoided... but it's taken something out of you, something that makes it that much harder to avoid the next blow.

For a heavily armored "tank" I think of it as catching the blow on your armor in such a way that it doesn't deflect the blow harmlessly (fails to break your AC) but turns a body-splitting strike into a brutal bruise under your metal plates... making it that much harder to roll your armor's strong points into the path of the next blow you can't quite avoid or deflect.

None of these are exactly perfect, since any actual hit point damage still sets off secondary effects (notably poison), meaning that technically every blow must be drawing at least some blood regardless of how you tend to fluff HP.

In game terms, too, HP damage is mechanically different than forms of exhaustion, fatigue, nonlethal HP damage, and other things you might associate with the fluff I've mentioned, so while such fluff might be convenient, you have to hold it separate from game mechanics (which are entirely abstract to avoid this very issue).

Personally, I tend to think of actual serious physical wounds as beginning to take place when a humanoid character is wounded to less than ~10hp (consider that 10hp would be around the max of a "typical human" in most people's experience -- a beefy, near-max-hp 2nd level Commoner with above-average Con); much above that I visualize hp loss as mostly coming from skill/luck/deflection/plot armor with mostly cosmetic scratches in terms of direct physical damage.

[Mr.Bookworm]

HP is just one of those things you don't think about too hard.

Consider a level 20 Barbarian with completely average (10) Constitution, who rolled a 6 at every HD past first level. Not Raging, he has full HP, and he is completely naked with no magical effects on him. He jumps off Mount Everest (5.4 miles high).

He hits the bottom, rolls 20d6 for damage from terminal velocity, and gets a 6 on every dice. He then stands up, brushes off his knees, and walks away whistling with absolutely no ill effects from the fall. He took 120 damage, sure, but he still has 6 HP left, so he's completely fine as long as he has those 6 remaining.

[Seharvepernfan]

I always assumed it was actual physical toughness. As in, quality of tissue. A proffesional boxer for instance, they can take punches to the face from a normal person all day and it just doesnt hurt them, whereas if I were punched in the face, id have broken bones and bruises and bleeding.

A wizard is a non-physical person who never really exercises or gets hurt (and thus no tissue toughening), and a barbarian is always doing something physical and taking damage. The other classes are somewhere in between.

I also see hd size as build size. So a wizard is lean and thin, and a barbarian is thick and broad.

Proffesional powerlifters supposedly have tendons (or was it bones?) that are (so I understand) almost like steel.

If you are shot in the back by an archer you didnt see, it cant really be experience or skill if you survive it, right?

[Aemoh87]

Now, this is to keep it from drailing another thread.

What is HP representing? Luck? Skill at dodging? Plot armor?

A combination?

And how much of it is the actual damage a character can take? At what point are they taking actual wounds instead of just nicks and minor cuts?

The reality is it doesn't matter. All of the Armor class isn't realistic and HP doesn't represent how life really works arguments are forgetting its a game. And the more complicated you make the game often the harder it becomes to play.

I like to think it is the threshold or hits a player can take until he becomes susceptible to a fatal one (which is the one that drops him).

[Morph Bark]

HP doesn't stand for Hit Points as is commonly presumed. It stands for Healthy Paradox, because the way it works is a paradox, but it is the only healthy one as it keeps you alive longer.

Since 4E came out, I also decided to include the Bloodied status in 3.5, though we haven't yet put in ways to make this significant other than letting the players know they're halfway.

[Saph]

Standard fluff doesn't answer this question.

Actually it does; it's just a relatively little-known part of the rules.


Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.

The 3.0 PHB had a longer description:


What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. A 10th-level fighter who has taken 50 points of damage is not as badly hurt as a 10th-level wizard who has taken that much damage. Indeed, unless the wizard has a high Constitution score, she's probably dead or dying, while the fighter is battered but otherwise doing fine. Why the difference? Partly because the fighter is better at rolling with the punches, protecting vital areas, and dodging just enough that a blow that would be fatal only wounds him. Partly because he's tough as nails. He can take damage that would drop a horse and still swing his sword with deadly effect.

So there you go. :smallsmile:

[HalfDragonCube]

HP doesn't stand for Hit Points as is commonly presumed. It stands for Healthy Paradox, because the way it works is a paradox, but it is the only healthy one as it keeps you alive longer.

Since 4E came out, I also decided to include the Bloodied status in 3.5, though we haven't yet put in ways to make this significant other than letting the players know they're halfway.

Don't your players get to know their own hit point total?

Where I play it is houseruled that people die a -Con rather than -10. It makes things slightly more realistic, since under the normal rules if people that are unconscious will die at roughly the same point if they get hit by stuff.

[Ogremindes]

I always thought of it as your ability to avoid a telling blow. A mixture of luck, skill and endurance. For DnD 4th, I'd say you haven't taken any serious injury until you're bloodied, and from then on you're taking punishment until you're finally receive the blow that takes you out of the fight.

The problem with this model, as opposed to the 'this is how much blood you have' approach, is healing. The same spell that brings the mage from near death may have no appreciable effect on a fighter in the same condition. Percentage-based healing makes more sense but is also more maths and means low-level healing is either never useful or never really superseded.

[Morph Bark]

Don't your players get to know their own hit point total?

I meant as in "they're halfway in beating down the enemy", not as in "they're halfway down on their own hit points". :smalltongue:

[lesser_minion]

The usual answer I give is that hit points represent the belief of the game's designers that it would be unfair to roll percentile dice to see if you die every time someone hits you.

Beyond that, it's just an exercise in post-hoc rationalisation. The rules provide, the DM interprets, and the players get annoyed at me for not being witty enough in my film misquotes.

[Boci]

The problem with HP damage = fatigued is (off the top of my head):

Sneak attack: It hits your vital organs.

DR and regeneration and other things where the type of weapons determines how the final damage is treated: Why does dodging a cold iron weapon tire a demon more than a steel blade?

The problem with the hp damage = physical wounds is (off the top of my head)

Super fast healing rates, just naturally by the char level / day

Why isn't my character bleeding?

So a mixture of the two is probably best, but that could potentially show both flaws.

[lesser_minion]

Sneak attack: It hits your vital organs.

It hits your head or abdomen (and does more damage because such an injury is obviously much harder to survive). There is no mention of 'organs' anywhere in the description of sneak attack.


Super fast healing rates, just naturally by the char level / day

Already explained: a character with more hit dice suffers less injury from a given amount of damage.


Why isn't my character bleeding?

A wound negated by hit points is not severe enough to slow you down. A wound that is bleeding significantly is.

[Boci]

It hits your head or abdomen (and does more damage because such an injury is obviously much harder to survive). There is no mention of 'organs' anywhere in the description of sneak attack.

No, but creature's without a discerable anatomy are immune. A lot of constructs have torsos.


Already explained: a character with more hit dice suffers less injury from a given amount of damage.

A first level character can recover from dying at -8 in what, a week?


A wound negated by hit points is not severe enough to slow you down. A wound that is bleeding significantly is.

Sneak attack to vital organs, plus the arterial strike. Or bleeding weapon, some creatures have that ability naturally.

[Morph Bark]

The problem with the hp damage = physical wounds is (off the top of my head)

Super fast healing rates, just naturally by the char level / day

Why isn't my character bleeding?

So a mixture of the two is probably best, but that could potentially show both flaws.

You should simply see it as something percentage-wise, like that everyone dealt equally lethal blows would all go down, but that what constitutes "lethal" is different for higher-level characters and monsters. They simply take a lower percentage of damage. This would explain both those things.

[Dr.Epic]

A representation of your endurance and ability to strive off death via an ability to survive damage.

Or some writer who redefined the horror genre.

[Creed]

I usually treat HP as physical wellness. 0 is the threshold of extreme pain, -10 is death.
Not sure if this is what you were looking for or not, but that's my two cents.

[Boci]

You should simply see it as something percentage-wise, like that everyone dealt equally lethal blows would all go down, but that what constitutes "lethal" is different for higher-level characters and monsters. They simply take a lower percentage of damage. This would explain both those things.

See above, even a first level character can recover from being on the brink of death remarkably fast.

[random11]

HP is one of the main reasons I prefer a more realistic system like GURPS...

But seriously now, HP does not make sense if you compare it to anything realistic.
On the other hand, forget realism and compare it to the damage characters in fictional TV programs can take and still fight back.

So between the options you gave, I think "plot armor" is probably the best to explain it.

[Yuki Akuma]

HP is a popular condiment in the UK and other countries, often used in bacon sandwiches. Each time your character gets hit, their bacon sandwiches become less tasty. A collapse at 0 HP represents despair that they now have to go out shopping to buy more.

This. This is now official.

[lesser_minion]

No, but creature's without a discerable anatomy are immune. A lot of constructs have torsos.

Lacking a discernible anatomy is a sufficient condition for sneak attack immunity, not a necessary one. Constructs are immune for a different reason.


A first level character can recover from dying at -8 in what, a week?

So? He was clearly not very badly hurt. You don't have to be.

If he'd actually been maimed in some way, it would get treatment in the rules besides hit point damage, and he wouldn't recover from it in a week.


Sneak attack to vital organs, plus the arterial strike.

The sneak attack did not deplete the character's hit points entirely or incur a secondary effect, ergo it did not inflict an injury that actually affects the character's performance in any way. You've said nothing.

And again, 'organs' are never mentioned anywhere in the description of sneak attack.


Or bleeding weapon, some creatures have that ability naturally.

In which case the bleeding is modelled as a side-effect.

[Timeless Error]

When a character takes damage, I don't view it as a physical blow that draws real blood. I imagine that the character has been destabilized, has lost a little momentum, and is a little more vulnerable than he/she was before, but hasn't really been stabbed/cut/smacked/fried. A critical hit might represent a physical wound.

[Boci]

Lacking a discernible anatomy is a sufficient condition for sneak attack immunity, not a necessary one. Constructs are immune for a different reason.

So if creatures can be immune to sneak attack solelu because they lack vital organs, doesn't that imply that sneak attack targets vital organs?

So? He clearly wasn't very badly hurt. You don't have to be.


If he'd actually been maimed in some way, it would get treatment in the rules besides hit point damage.

Getting reduced to -8 hitpoints isn't being hurt badly?


The sneak attack did not hit the vital organs, it hit "a vital spot". There's a difference. It also did not inflict a serious or life-threatening injury. So why would it cause significant bleeding?

Because the feat says it does.


In which case the bleeding is modelled as a side-effect.

So the creature have a special ability to make you bleed without causing debilitating wounds? What are they doing, taking blood?

[Yukitsu]

I run it purely as toughness. Otherwise it would be reduced when you're asleep or are being sneak attacked or are otherwise prevented from using skill to avoid damage.

[lesser_minion]

So if creatures can be immune to sneak attack solely because they lack vital organs, doesn't that imply that sneak attack targets vital organs?

No. It implies the same as it did before -- that sneak attacks are aimed at vulnerable spots on a creature. The designers saw no reason why damage to the head or abdomen of a construct should be worse than damage to a limb, hence you don't get to sneak attack them.


Getting reduced to -8 hitpoints isn't being hurt badly?

It's an incapacitating and potentially life-threatening injury. There are plenty of ways to end up in that situation without requiring eight weeks to recover from it. The fact that this is the case here is demonstrated by the fact that the injury had no effect whatsoever besides loss of hitpoints.


Because the feat says it does.

In which case the bleeding is, again, a secondary effect.


So the creature have a special ability to make you bleed without causing debilitating wounds? What are they doing, taking blood?

They're causing a wound that bleeds, ergo it does slow you down, and that's handled by a side-effect.

Hit point damage alone doesn't represent injuries that slow you down. This is explicit in the rules. Hit point damage with something else attached represents something different to what hit point damage alone represents.

[Starbuck_II]

So the creature have a special ability to make you bleed without causing debilitating wounds? What are they doing, taking blood?

Maybe it is a reverse hemolysin effect: instead of destroying red blood cells, it creates them and makes them "bleed" out of you. This "fatigues" you lowering your "morale".

[MarkusWolfe]

The way it works, hitpoints has got to be straight up toughness. A high level barbarian can be thrown off a cliff in his sleep and survive; if it had anything to do with skill, it wouldn't work like that.

[Boci]

No. It implies the same as it did before -- that sneak attacks are aimed at vulnerable spots on a creature. The designers saw no reason why damage to the head or abdomen of a construct should be worse than damage to a limb, hence you don't get to sneak attack them.

There are living creatures which heads and abdomens that are immune to SA, a changelling has an alternative class feature that gives it 50% immunity, and a plant creature should be taking more damage from such hits.


It's an incapacitating and potentially life-threatening injury. There are plenty of ways to end up in that situation without requiring eight weeks to recover from it. The fact that this is the case here is demonstrated by the fact that the injury had no effect whatsoever besides loss of hitpoints.

Whilst you are unconcious and dying at -2 a commoner coup de graces you with a dagger, causing 5 points of damage. Your luck turns and you succeed the make the save against death and are stabalize the next round. How long until you fully recover at a rate of 1 hp / level?


In which case the character is bleeding, it's modelled as a secondary effect, and it's entirely irrelevant to your original complaint about wounds not bleeding.


What exactly are you trying to say? They're causing a wound that bleeds, ergo it does slow you down, and that's handled by a side-effect. Hit point damage alone does not inflict debilitating injuries. Hit point damage with a side-effect is an entirely different ball game.

How does a creature inflict an injury on you that is severe enough to cause you to loose HP each round via bleeding, without scoring a very serious wound? You said it yourself: wounds that bleed enough to cause extra HP damage are serious.


Maybe it is a reverse hemolysin effect: instead of destroying red blood cells, it creates them and makes them "bleed" out of you. This "fatigues" you lowering your "morale".

But in D&D those kind of things generally allow a save throw. Besides, I'm pretty sure there are some non-toxic creatures with a bleed attack, like the rogue with arterial strike feat.

[lesser_minion]

Maybe it is a reverse hemolysin effect: instead of destroying red blood cells, it creates them and makes them "bleed" out of you. This "fatigues" you lowering your "morale".

It's hit point damage with a side effect and represents something different to what hit point damage alone represents (specifically, a nasty wound that does have the potential to slow you down if not seen to).

Stupid 'fatigue' and 'morale' explanations of hit points are stupid.


There are living creatures which heads and abdomens that are immune to SA

Different reason.


A changelling has an alternative class feature that gives it 50% immunity

Different reason.


Whilst you are unconcious and dying at -2 a commoner coup de graces you with a dagger, causing 5 points of damage. Your luck turns and you succeed the make the save against death and are stabalize the next round. How long until you fully recover at a rate of 1 hp / level?

Still not a serious injury. Evidently that was a really wimpy coup de grace. And yes, those happen as well. Given six seconds and an unconscious person, you can make it likely that they'll be dead, maimed, or brain damaged, but you can't always guarantee it.


How does a creature inflict an injury on you that is severe enough to cause you to loose HP each round via bleeding, without scoring a very serious wound? You said it yourself: wounds that bleed enough to cause extra HP damage are serious.

Your serious injury is why you now have a status effect instead of merely being out a few hit points. Moreover, I'm pretty sure 3.5 deprecated bleed dots in favour of constitution damage.

[Boci]

Different reason.

Care to elaborate? Did you miss the plant creature example?



Still not a serious injury. Evidently that was a really wimpy coup de grace. And yes, those happen as well.

You still got stabbed. Even if the person stabbing you was was not too strong and missed every vital organ, you were still stab with a dagger whilst unconcious. As knife wunds go you were lucky, but that is still a serious injury. And no it wasn't a wimpy coup de grace, it was an avergae coup de grace from someone with a neutral strength modifier and a dagger.


Your serious injury is why you now have a status effect instead of merely being out a few hit points.

But all the bleeding causes you it to be out a few hitpoints.

[MarkusWolfe]

But all the bleeding causes you it to be out a few hitpoints.

Well, obviously you loose hitpoints when you loose copious amounts of blood. What further explanation is required?

[Hyudra]

I like the 'Aragorn was Level 5' mentality. The premise being that most of the notable characters from your favored Fantasy are PCs of level 5 or below (Or, to take a different tack, they do nothing that a level 5 PC wouldn't have been able to pull off). A level 5 PC can theoretically survive a fall from terminal velocity, but people who have fallen from airplanes at 10,000 feet have survived too, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

When you're getting beyond level 5, you're venturing into the realm of the superhuman and you're starting on a road to becoming gods. So yeah, things get a bit weird.

At that point, your vitality is something of a superhuman lifeforce. Like the concept of Qi/Ki/Chi, you've got a vital force running throughout your body that intermingles vitality and willpower and giving you the ability to take a battering ram to the chest and get up afterwards. This same force exists in low level creatures, but is so minor as to not matter. By the time things start getting borderline ridiculous, you can handwave it with Lifeforce/Ki/Qi/Chi.

Recognize the 'Aragorn was level 5' distinction, and things kind of fall into place at higher levels.

[Boci]

Well, obviously you loose hitpoints when you loose copious amounts of blood. What further explanation is required?

Lesser_Minnion said only serious wounds bleed. I pointed out they were wrong.

[lesser_minion]

Care to elaborate? Did you miss the plant creature example?

Your example was too generic to really do that, but:

Concealment. You can't see the creature clearly enough to pick out a vulnerable spot.
Fortification. The creature's vulnerable spots are protected by magic.
Plants. It's not obvious what might be a vulnerable spot.

A critical hit or a sneak attack is like a blow to the face, not a crossbow bolt in the eye. It does more damage because it could have hit your vital organs, but it doesn't generally do so.

When you rationalise the events, you describe it as "your arrow strikes him in the face, grazing the side of his temple. He screams, and blood trickles down the side of his face, but he doesn't fall.". Not "your arrow strikes him in the eye, piercing it cleanly and penetrating deep into his brain. He pulls the arrow out, eye and brain tissue attached, and throws it back at you."


You still got stabbed. Even if the person stabbing you was was not too strong and missed every vital organ, you were still stab with a dagger whilst unconscious. As knife wounds go you were lucky, but that is still a serious injury. And no it wasn't a wimpy coup de grace, it was an average coup de grace from someone with a neutral strength modifier and a dagger.

It didn't kill you, ergo it was wimpy.


But all the bleeding causes you it to be out a few hitpoints.

Bleed dot != one-time loss of hit points. Eventually, you go into shock.

And bleed dots are deprecated -- the preferred way to model such injuries is constitution damage.


Lesser_Minion said only serious wounds bleed. I pointed out they were wrong.

No you didn't. You said that hit point damage can't be actual wounds, because they don't cause bleeding. I pointed out that hit point damage explicitly does not do anything to slow you down, which any real bleeding would.

Anything that causes you to bleed in D&D has that handled as a side-effect, not an inherent part of hit point damage. That's because hit point damage represents wounds that don't slow you down (which is explicitly stated in the rules).

[Boci]

Your example was too generic to really do that, but:

Concealment. You can't see the creature clearly enough to pick out a vulnerable spot.
Fortification. The creature's vulnerable spots are protected by magic.[/QUOTE]

Neither of these apply to the changeling.


Plants. It's not obvious what might be a vulnerable spot.

Head and torso?


A critical hit or a sneak attack is like a blow to the face, not a crossbow bolt in the eye. It does more damage because of your vital organs, but it doesn't do any real damage to them. When you rationalise the events, you describe it as "your arrow struck him in the face, grazing the side of his temple. He wipes blood out of his eyes and glares at you.". Not "your arrow struck him in the eye, piercing it cleanly and penetrating deep into his brain. He pulls the arrow out, eye and brain tissue attached, and throws it back at you, vision seemingly unaffected."

How is that reliant on vital organs? Creatures with no vital organs still have eyes.


It didn't kill you, ergo it was wimpy.

And now you're not even trying.


Bleed dot != one-time loss of hit points. Eventually, you go into shock.

I don't get what you are saying here. If you go into shock mid fight, aren't you dead?


And bleed dots are deprecated -- the preferred way to model such injuries is constitution damage.

No, the alternative way. Core uses both, but constitution damage generaly result from blood loss that requires a pin.


No you didn't. You said that hit point damage can't be actual wounds, because they don't cause bleeding. I pointed out that hit point damage explicitly does not do anything to slow you down, which any real bleeding would.

And I pointed out that bleeding can sometimes be nothing but hitpoint damage.


Anything that causes you to bleed in D&D has that handled as a side-effect, not an inherent part of hit point damage. That's because hit point damage represents wounds that don't slow you down (which is explicitly stated in the rules).

Combat fatigue is out then. That causes you to slow down.

[lesser_minion]

Neither of these apply to the changeling.

He's altering his anatomy so that parts of his body that would normally be vulnerable are better protected.


Head and torso?

They generally have nothing like the significance they have to humans. A treant is functionally a walking tree.


How is that reliant on vital organs? Creatures with no vital organs still have eyes.

Not necessarily, and not generally ones that matter the way they do to humans.


And now you're not even trying.


I don't have to. The rules depend on post-hoc rationalisation. I don't have to come up with something that's always the case that would prevent the character from dying or having an injury that takes months to recover from. It happens that way because it could.



I don't get what you are saying here. If you go into shock mid fight, aren't you dead?

Given that this happens because your dot put you into negatives, what do you think?


And I pointed out that bleeding can sometimes be nothing but hitpoint damage.

Which it isn't, given that you suddenly have to record the fact that you're subject to a bleed dot on your character sheet.

And of course, in this case, you're slowly bleeding until you are slowed down.


Combat fatigue is out then. That causes you to slow down.

Given that I never said, never implied, and have never believed that hit point damage was combat fatigue, why is this relevant?

[flabort]

HP is the first two initials of a well known horror author.

2 pages and nobody made that joke?

[Jallorn]

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/explaining-hit-points.html [/thread]

[Yukitsu]

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/explaining-hit-points.html [/thread]

It's a bad article, as a decent fort save and 100 means a guy can get an execution style bullet between his eyes 10 times and live (coup de gras, average bullet damage is 7, give him a build that can make the saves). That alone kind of negates his entire thesis (the first one that is).

I know people like middle ground arguments, but honestly, the only problem people have with hit points representing sheer toughness is that they don't like this notion that level 10+ adventurers are anything more than particularly talented normal people, rather than world shattering monsters. There aren't, as far as I know, any in game or even out of game problems with them simply being that hard to kill.

[DwarfFighter]

Sneak attack: It hits your vital organs.


It's only a hit to a vital organ if it kills you...

-DF

[lesser_minion]

It's a bad article, as a decent fort save and 100 means a guy can get an execution style bullet between his eyes 10 times and live (coup de gras, average bullet damage is 7, give him a build that can make the saves). That alone kind of negates his entire thesis (the first one that is).

The entire D&D game depends on post-hoc rationalisation in order to provide any semblance of realism at all.

In other words, the rules allow you to declare in broad terms what results you want to achieve, but exactly what you did to achieve them is not fully known until after the results are determined. That's why trying to throw someone uses the exact same rules as sweeping your weapon at their feet, for example.

Because of that, you haven't actually proven anything. An execution-style gunshot to the head might be one possible interpretation of a coup-de-grace, but all you've actually declared as far as the rules are concerned is an attempt to finish off an already-defeated opponent in combat.

When you try to model a concrete set of actions using their 'best-fit' equivalents, the fact that you end up with an absurdity should not be considered surprising -- you've already discarded one of the central principles behind the rules.

This only gets worse when you start trying to use the D&D rules to model something entirely outside of their scope.

[Starbuck_II]

Plus, only crossbows and melee weapons can be used for Coup de Grace, guns aren't included in allowed weapons.

[Yukitsu]

A coup de grace is a combat action, and does not model being shot in that way at all. By RAW (in so far as it's applicable to the scenario), you can kill a character outside of combat with a Profession (executioner) check, which gives them no recourse to anything whatsoever.

Execution that isnta kills requires an optional variant from a book few people use, and a specific device. You can't just shoot a guy in the head and call it an execution check, since that's covered by the in combat variant.

It's a pretty bad variant too. It makes it a DC 15 check to insta-kill anything if you can make a grappler supported by a caster that can cast giant size.

[Optimator]

What is HP? Extremely abstract and a convention for table-top gaming ease. Trying to nail it down is impossible.

[Siosilvar]

Here's Gygax's interpretation.


Each character has a varying number of hit points, just as monsters do. These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors. A typical man-at-arms can take about 5 points of damage before being killed. Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The same holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes. Thus, the majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

[thompur]

All successful hits do some kind of physical damage, even if it's no more than a scrape or a minor cut. Otherwise, a poison tipped arrow or dagger, or bite for that matter, couldn't get the venom into the bloodstream. Since poison or disease from an attack works with 1 hp or 1000, skin is broken, and bleeding occurs.

[thompur]

HP is the first two initials of a well known horror author.

2 pages and nobody made that joke?

See Dr. Epic, 1st Page, reply #23. He was subtle, but he did make the joke.:smallsmile:

[Morph Bark]

See above, even a first level character can recover from being on the brink of death remarkably fast.

Getting from the brink of death back to the slightest bit of fighting capability (as in, the bare minimum) in a week sounds about right to me tbh. Sure, healing doesn't go as fast after that irl and you don't have penalties for low hp in DnD unlike Exalted, but therein lies the difference between a game and a simulation.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

At that point, your vitality is something of a superhuman lifeforce. Like the concept of Qi/Ki/Chi, you've got a vital force running throughout your body that intermingles vitality and willpower and giving you the ability to take a battering ram to the chest and get up afterwards. This same force exists in low level creatures, but is so minor as to not matter. By the time things start getting borderline ridiculous, you can handwave it with Lifeforce/Ki/Qi/Chi.

That's what I go with. Hit points are representative of the positive energy that living beings contain, which is depleted by injury. You can also use this to explain a lot of other reality-defying acts that high level characters are capable of performing on a regular basis.

The only thing it doesn't really explain is why characters' superhuman abilities aren't reduced when their hit points are depleted.

[Etrivar]

http://www.filehurricane.com/photos/73200884936AM_bbc63a23e8.jpg

This has always summed up my objections to the silliness of the HP system.

[SartheKobold]

I always thought HP stood for Healing Pixies, the little blood-faeries that live in PCs veins and come out to mend tissue when it is cleft in twain...

[Hiro Protagonest]

http://www.filehurricane.com/photos/73200884936AM_bbc63a23e8.jpg

This has always summed up my objections to the silliness of the HP system.

Yeah, though they have penalties for missing limbs in the rules

[SiuiS]

HP is a number. It represents how close you are to death. When it reaches 0, you usually fall unconscious, and when it reaches –10, you usually die.

If you examine it any more closely than that, things get weird and stop making much sense at all. Sometimes it's best to just admit that an abstraction is an abstraction and continue on your merry way. This is one of those times.
This is best. It is also advice that few (myself included) will take. But I mus nod in acquaintance and say "there, but for a stubborn streak of romance, go I'.


I always thought of it as your ability to avoid a telling blow. A mixture of luck, skill and endurance. For DnD 4th, I'd say you haven't taken any serious injury until you're bloodied, and from then on you're taking punishment until you're finally receive the blow that takes you out of the fight.

The problem with this model, as opposed to the 'this is how much blood you have' approach, is healing. The same spell that brings the mage from near death may have no appreciable effect on a fighter in the same condition. Percentage-based healing makes more sense but is also more maths and means low-level healing is either never useful or never really superseded.given my reasoning (below, under gygax) this isn't really an issue. Healing can fix the tissue damage, not the strain and fatigue (sense of stress, not the condition) of a battle. So while CLW can patch up a full 13 hitpoints on a fighter, for one fighter he's *good and the other still has a whole lot more fatigue and stress going on that the spell doesn't touch.
Like getting hit with a bowstring and then being unable to do a full draw, the 'more wounded' fighter has a harder time throwing his painful injuries into the way of his vitals.


When a character takes damage, I don't view it as a physical blow that draws real blood. *I imagine that the character has been destabilized, has lost a little momentum, and is a little more vulnerable than he/she was before, but hasn't really been stabbed/cut/smacked/fried. *A critical hit might represent a physical wound.
See above. Thought I'd lumped these two quotes together... Ah well. Long day.*


There are living creatures which heads and abdomens that are immune to SA, a changelling has an alternative class feature that gives it 50% immunity, and a plant creature should be taking more damage from such hits.

Plant Creatures

EXHIBIT A
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_r959I00kE7I/TNcrD-0TqTI/AAAAAAAAAgc/-ErIDhRq5EY/s1600/MM35_PG223a.jpg

EXHIBIT B
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_itwMdxBvpt4/TP0uV8_SAnI/AAAAAAAAATQ/F0wmyrd30HM/s1600/treant.jpeg

EXHIBIT C
http://timothymschreyer.com/companionsofchaos/srd35/doc/SRD/img/MonstersT-Z.Tendriculos.jpg

Quick! Where are the vulnerable points on EXHIBIT A? how about B and C?
Did you say the eyes, or the head? Well, then I'd like you to meet my friend...

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT8UVQ33qAaux9n5-bJQYdRjnD0-sEcAXmLzypPZTRLBpNjwVcltQ


Shape-changers
The ability to move, protect, conceal, duplicate, and add redundancies to a vital system or weakpoint, as well as shift the tissues from damaged to non-damaged, takes care of this issue.


Whilst you are unconcious and dying at -2 a commoner coup de graces you with a dagger, causing 5 points of damage. Your luck turns and you succeed the make the save against death and are stabalize the next round. How long until you fully recover at a rate of 1 hp / level?
while unconscious and bleeding, an angry man with no idea how to kill someone hammerfists a knife into somewhere meaty and non-vital. Despite already being severely wounded, this isn't enough to push me over the edge and kill me.

So?




How does a creature inflict an injury on you that is severe enough to cause you to loose HP each round via bleeding, without scoring a very serious wound? You said it yourself: wounds that bleed enough to cause extra HP damage are serious.
shallow and jagged wound, such as a cat scratch. Hurts like the dickens, bleeds forever, is only a problem if it gets infected or you are dumb and don't stifle the bleeding.

Serious bleeding can creep up on you; it doesn't have to drop you immediately into dizziness. If it wasn't subtle, it would be much less of a medical issue. By the time you've lost enough blood to really feel it (by the time you hit 0 hp and are staggered) it's kinda too late to be blasé about maybe patching it up, in game and in real life.


HP is the first two initials of a well known horror author.

2 pages and nobody made that joke?no, someone made it. It was at the tail end of a longer post though,*


Here's Gygax's interpretation. and as always, the man sounds like he knows what he's doing. I always favored this interpretation myself, though it requires more willingness on the part of players, and for everyone to be on the same page.

Those stories in fiction, where swordsman clash and after a few traded parries and ripostes, one gets thumped hard on the shield, *straining the arm and bruising from force? That's a 5th level fighter getting hit several times and having 15 hitpoints left at the end of the round.

That guy, who is burnt and struck by a falling beam, gets shot in the thigh but pulls the arrow out, and 'hobbles' full speed at his enemy? He's a 5th level fighter who got hit several times in a round and has 15 hitpoints remaining; he's just from a different genre.


DR and regeneration and other things where the type of weapons determines how the final damage is treated: Why does dodging a cold iron weapon tire a demon more than a steel blade?
Because the demon laughs off the steel blade bouncing away, but actually tries to juke the iron knife, strains himself, and gets nicked through his mystical protections to boot. The difference is "haha you can't hurt me" and "oh crap I actually got hit maybe I'm not invincible?!"


See above, even a first level character can recover from being on the brink of death remarkably fast.
The 'recovered' first level character can do little more than speak (they are @ 0 hp). After another day, of actually eating and drinking instead of having food forced into them, the fatigue goes away but they are still in the brink of death-- stepping on a nail could traumatise them enough to bleed out and die.

1 hp means "I can focus and perform actions" not "I'm perfectly healthy". A PC is, by default, going to have the will to tough it out when almost dead. It's a genre- and game-staple.


Yeah, though they have penalties for missing limbs in the rules
where? I could use those rather soon.

[flabort]

See Dr. Epic, 1st Page, reply #23. He was subtle, but he did make the joke.:smallsmile:

....touche, doctor. touche.

[DwarfFighter]

The rules for hp don't describe a granular state of injury: At 1+ hp the character is healthy (as in: fully functional). At 0 hp he's disabled and will pass out if he performs any strenuous activity. At -1 through -9 hp he's unconscious (and probably dying) and at -10 he's dead.

This means that we can say something of the power of the attack by looking at the amount of damage caused:

A single hit for 11+ damage can potentially kill any healthy character, dependent on that characters current hp: A character with 10 hp remaining will be killed outright by a damage 20 hit regardless of whether his normal hp maximum is 10 hp or 100 hp.

Even a 1 damage hit is significant. It's enough to disable a healthy character, enough to knock out a disabled character, and to finish of a dying character on his last legs. Even a healthy but helpless character can potentially be killed with a coup-de-grace at 1 point of damage.

But obviously a healthy character that takes damage and is still healthy hasn't suffered a killing blow (or even a knock-out blow). Regardless of the magnitude of the damage, if the character has even a single hp remaining he has escaped without debilitating injury.

Also, 20 damage to a character with 100 current hp is in itself no big deal. It's only if you factor in the circumstances: It's significant if the character can expect to take more hits of the same magnitude before healing is available. At the end of the "work day" near a secure place of rest the effect on the character may be that of a scratch or a bruise, but deep in owlbear territory and with no healing effects available it may prompt the character to retreat to heal and resupply.

All in all, how you want to describe the execution and effect of an attack is really dependent on multiple factors: the magnitude of the damage, the character's condition after the attack has been resolved, and the circumstances with regards to further threat.

-DF

[Winds]

My 2 cents: item creation feats are described as the person in question imbuing an item with their life force. This sounds like XP is really something adventurers steal from fallen enemies...which would imply that leveling up (more particularly, gaining HP) is related to that gathered power becoming enough to change them. From that standpoint, it makes sense that a HP is the amount of damage a person's body can withstand. If you accept that XP represents the spirit or life energy of that character, it makes sense that higher-level characters simply are harder to kill.

However, I am prone to over-thinking such things. A faster, simpler way of explaining it could be that HP is the damage you've taken, and higher level characters are just too stubborn to die easily...with Diehard and similar feats just representing more extraordinary examples.

[flabort]

It seems to me that not only are HP+XP abstractions, that if we should try to interpret them as real, it only gets to be a worse headache if we try to interpret them together. They are separate values, for a reason.

Although once you actually take time to read what Winds said, and then consider maybe XP is a boon granted by gods, and can become HP, a very divine protective force beyond the effects of most magics...

No! No! you are not going to be a hypocrite! Bad Flabort!

[Seharvepernfan]

For the record, a coup de grace is always a critical hit. Dont bullets have x3 crit? So it would actually be a DC 31 save.

And remember, somebody with 100 hit points is very resistant to physical shock (a primary factor in how bullets kill) and most likely has some pretty damn impressive bone density (another factor). And if in your world (like mine), hp and fort saves represent actual physical bulk, then that bullet is "smaller" to the fighter than to average joe (not by much, but enough to matter).

[Traab]

I say its like the damage that a boxer takes in a fight. His hp is how long it takes for the knockout blow to land. Every drop in hp is like another shot to the body to slow you down, weaken you, and dull your reflexes, leaving you open for the knockout blow to the head. Then when you are at 0 hp and knocked out, the ref looks the other way while your opponent jumps on you and keeps beating you till you die. /nod

[Viktyr Gehrig]

For the record, a coup de grace is always a critical hit. Dont bullets have x3 crit? So it would actually be a DC 31 save.

x3 in Pathfinder, x2 in d20 Modern. Average critical damage is 14 or 15, for a total save DC of 24 or 25; an average NPC can only survive on a natural 20 and would still be dying with minimal chances for stabilization. Even an 8th level Barbarian with a 20 Constitution and the Great Fortitude feat-- someone just about as tough as it is physically possible for a human being to be-- only has a 50% chance of survival.

In d20 Modern, the average NPC would actually have to succeed in two saving throws, one for the coup de grace and one for Massive Damage. A double tap or burst practically guarantees death.

A single point blank gunshot wound to the head is survivable if you're lucky; as far as I know, the world record is 3.

The only thing I can't really account for is snipers. Best case scenario with typical equipment is 2d10+9 or 2d10+3d6+5. That's enough to reliably drop anything with under 3 HD, but anything tougher than that only has to make a relatively easy Fortitude save.


And remember, somebody with 100 hit points is very resistant to physical shock (a primary factor in how bullets kill) and most likely has some pretty damn impressive bone density (another factor).

That's comparable to an Elephant. Probably has a Fortitude save near +12 total, so makes massive damage saves on a 3.

If you use the d20 Modern massive damage rules, hit points are actually pretty realistic up to around 5 or 6 HD except for one narrow category of attacks. Main problem is that massive damage save DCs do not scale with the amount of damage.

[AngelisBlack]

I run it as sort of both a resistance to being wounded and resistance to healing at the same time, bestowed by a combination of luck, innate magic (in the case of spellcasters), divine luck, or genuine toughness brought about by body conditioning.

For example, while a Fighter 1 is brought down to near death by a well placed and pinpoint accurate blow with an elegant weapon such as a greatclub, possibly representing a wound where he's pretty much coughing up blood, his body is also more able to accept the positive energy for a cure minor wounds spell, thus easily coming back up to full HP if the cure roll was lucky.

On the other hand a LV10 Fighter can take the same blow, and even though it will do the same damage numerically, it represents a much less serious wound for that person, lets say a small laceration instead. His body's innate toughness and perhaps luck or some other force lessened the severity of the blow. If he were wounded to the point of coughing up blood (which at LV10 would take quite a few blows), then to heal him back to the point of full health would take more powerful magic, because the resistance to being wounded also transfers to being cured.

Well, I realize it might have a few holes, but I'm still trying to figure it out as well. Might refine it depending on the answers in this thread. :smallsmile:

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I run it as sort of both a resistance to being wounded and resistance to healing at the same time...

That's not bad. Never thought it that way.