Hit points

[Delcor]

I've been thinking:

How unrealistic are HP, I've always explained it to myself as HP being a persons weariness in combat. So If and ogre swings an axe and it hits you...you dead :smalleek: so I've just always thought of an ogre hitting a barbarian as him dodging its attack, but that takes energy, and thus the waning of hitpoints is the exhaustion of the warrior, so when his HPs gets to -10, that ogre actually hit him with the axe. Doees this make any sense at all?

For example lets take a popular fantasy novel set in a popular campaign setting. The first Drizzt novel set in forgotten realms. At the start of the book a high level drow wizard is shot in the back with a crossbow and killed...by a 10 year old.

Looking at this in game terms, its a 1-3 level adept/wizard one shotting a 10+ wizard with 1d10. If that happened in game, the wizard would say "ow" turn around and blow the crap out of the kid.

So I guess what I'm saying is, how do you explain the obviously unrealistic abstract system that is hit-points?

[Alleran]

I usually describe it as minor hits, the sort that wouldn't do much damage, but when they start adding up, you start slowing down, bleeding more, the wounds get worse, and so on.

[NNescio]

How unrealistic are HP, I've always explained it to myself as HP being a persons weariness in combat. So If and ogre swings an axe and it hits you...you dead :smalleek: so I've just always thought of an ogre hitting a barbarian as him dodging its attack, but that takes energy, and thus the waning of hitpoints is the exhaustion of the warrior, so when his HPs gets to -10, that ogre actually hit him with the axe. Doees this make any sense at all?

This runs into problems when interaction with Cure spells are considered. And stuff like falling damage.

[The-Mage-King]

Plot armor. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor) Only the first level HP are "real" hit points, that are actual wounds taken- the rest are just the Plot knocking otherwise killing blows away from the character.

Cure spells do a combination of repairing actual damage and mending the Plot's defenses back together.

[Herabec]

Plot armor. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor) Only the first level HP are "real" hit points, that are actual wounds taken- the rest are just the Plot knocking otherwise killing blows away from the character.

Cure spells do a combination of repairing actual damage and mending the Plot's defenses back together.

I enjoy this interpretation.

[Cofniben]

For example lets take a popular fantasy novel set in a popular campaign setting. The first Drizzt novel set in forgotten realms. At the start of the book a high level drow wizard is shot in the back with a crossbow and killed...by a 10 year old.

Looking at this in game terms, its a 1-3 level adept/wizard one shotting a 10+ wizard with 1d10. If that happened in game, the wizard would say "ow" turn around and blow the crap out of the kid.

Well let's use this as an example. If we are looking at a level 3 Wizard, that is 3d4 hit dice and lets say for a sake of argument, that he rolled 1's for the second two starting with a base HP of 6. Let's be generous and say they have a 12 in constitution, so the minimum HP they would get is 9. So in that case it is 100% possible for a 1d10 to kill a wizard 10% of the time in that situation.

Now it's been a few years sense I've last read the Drizz't books, but I don't know which book or scene you are talking about. Also we can throw into question, was the Wizard already damaged at one point, could the 10 year old have gotten some kind of extra damage dice such as sneak attack or skirmish damage.

As for your weariness in combat, don't forget that each round of combat is just 6 seconds, it's not that long and most combat is over between 5-10 rounds. So fighting for a minute while isn't easy, wouldn't be too hard for an experienced fighter. You should also remember that we are basically level 1 commoners with 10's in every ability score and 1d4 hit dice. So if we look at it as a view point of a regular human, we would be out of a fight very quickly when something has a +4 strength modifier.

In the end, don't look at Hit points as if it was their endurance, it is better to look at them as how many cuts you can take before fainting from pain over the energy you need to do something.

[Delcor]

This runs into problems when interaction with Cure spells are considered. And stuff like falling damage.

You have a point, which is why I may switch my view over to Allerans idea.


Well let's use this as an example. If we are looking at a level 3 Wizard, that is 3d4 hit dice and lets say for a sake of argument, that he rolled 1's for the second two starting with a base HP of 6. Let's be generous and say they have a 12 in constitution, so the minimum HP they would get is 9. So in that case it is 100% possible for a 1d10 to kill a wizard 10% of the time in that situation.

Now it's been a few years sense I've last read the Drizz't books, but I don't know which book or scene you are talking about. Also we can throw into question, was the Wizard already damaged at one point, could the 10 year old have gotten some kind of extra damage dice such as sneak attack or skirmish damage.

As for your weariness in combat, don't forget that each round of combat is just 6 seconds, it's not that long and most combat is over between 5-10 rounds. So fighting for a minute while isn't easy, wouldn't be too hard for an experienced fighter. You should also remember that we are basically level 1 commoners with 10's in every ability score and 1d4 hit dice. So if we look at it as a view point of a regular human, we would be out of a fight very quickly when something has a +4 strength modifier.

In the end, don't look at Hit points as if it was their endurance, it is better to look at them as how many cuts you can take before fainting from pain over the energy you need to do something.

I think you misread my comment.
It was the level 10+ wizard who was being one-shotted, meaning 10d4 hp (uninjured) minimum with a con of 12 being above 10.

Its at the start of Homeland, the Faceless One was hired to kill Alton DeVir, but just before he does, the Faceless One's apprentice Masoj Hunett assassinates him via crossbow.

[Wyntonian]

The Alexandrian said it best, and this is rough paraphrase.

1 hp =/= 1 hp

Your mind just got blown. First couple hits? A dodge, a close call, maybe a minor scratch. Next couple (for the exact same damage, remember), are more serious hits. Someone gets a serious cut, or an otherwise solid, direct but not immediately lethal hit. Last hit, when they have 1 hp? No, they don't die from a scratch. That 1 damage hit that was a close call when they were full is now ramming a yard of steel through them.

That's just my interpretation, take it how you will. That was also a rough paraphrase of a blog post by the Alexandrian, look him up.

[RndmNumGen]

The way I think of it is that the world of D&D, along with it's gods, magic and monsters, works in fundamentally different ways. Hit points are one of these different things - people don't live and die as they do in our world. Instead, every person has a certain amount of 'life force' which sustains them. Taking damage depletes this life force, but it's not like losing blood would be for us - in our world, everyone has around 6 quarts of blood, but in this world people have varying amounts of life force. Some people gain more as they experience new things, while others always had large reserves of it which let them live long enough to see things like high levels.

[Greyfeld]

Plot armor. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor) Only the first level HP are "real" hit points, that are actual wounds taken- the rest are just the Plot knocking otherwise killing blows away from the character.

Cure spells do a combination of repairing actual damage and mending the Plot's defenses back together.

Pretty much. Especially when you take into consideration that natural healing regenerates 1 HP per level per 8 hours of rest. Without magical healing, a level 10 wizard can come back from the brink of death to full health in 3-4 days. Even faster on full bed rest and/or regular Heal checks.

It's one of those things that I think most people just hand-wave, much like daily food rations and cheap spell components.

[Cofniben]

You have a point, which is why I may switch my view over to Allerans idea.



I think you misread my comment.
It was the level 10+ wizard who was being one-shotted, meaning 10d4 hp (uninjured) minimum with a con of 12 being above 10.

Its at the start of Homeland, the Faceless One was hired to kill Alton DeVir, but just before he does, the Faceless One's apprentice Masoj Hunett assassinates him via crossbow.

Oh I see, I made a slight mistake in understanding what you said.

Alright, I went back and reread the scene you are talking about and here is what I have to say about it, the Dart from the crossbolt was poisoned, and being a wizard, they have poor fortitude saves, so most likely it was the poison that killed him instead of the damage from the weapon. Now it could have been ether just normal Drow poison knocking him unconscious so then he could coup de grace him on the following turn because it is stated that he reloaded the crossbolt, or it could have been something like the Black Lotus poison that does 3d6 Con damage, and I think dropping con to 0 kills a living creature. Granted there could be many reasons for it, but I think the Drow poison following with a coup de grace is the most reasonable.

[Delcor]

Well then lets take another scene from The Crystal Shard:

First page, (I think) a wimpy sucks-at-everything wizard kills his master with a dagger strike. I realize he was old, but he is still high level.

[Mystic Muse]

D&D book and the D&D game itself might not match up. The story comes before the mechanics in those I believe.

[Serpentine]

I would look to things like action movies for an example of hit points in practice.
The low level mooks, they have barely any hit points at all. Most of the time, if they're not dead in one shot, they're down and out of the fight.
The hero takes blow after blow. A bullet to the stomach, a sword to the shoulder... But although he might be limping, and clearly in pain (i.e. roleplaying the injuries), his physical capabilities, his ability to fight back, is barely impacted, if at all. He just keeps on going, through injury after injury, no matter how serious they are.

[holywhippet]

Fluff is not the same as crunch. The books are fluff, they don't really play along with the same rules as the game. You never see any mention of spell levels or spells per day in the books. That's one of the reasons OotS is so funny - it's using the crunch rules for the setting rather than the fluff.

[deuxhero]

I'm fine with HP being physical endurance, given its a setting/system where everything you do breaks the laws of physics in some way, I accept "Fighters CAN take dozens of shots".

[DemonRoach]

So I guess what I'm saying is, how do you explain the obviously unrealistic abstract system that is hit-points?

I don't, nor do I see the need to.

If you can accept all the other reality/logic/physic bends in d and d, a health meter shouldn't even register as an oddity.

[lesser_minion]

Exactly how you survive is left to the narrative -- the only hard and fast rules are:

You were hit (we know this because secondary effects like poisons take effect).
You weren't killed or incapacitated as a result, but you could have been -- if it can remove hit points at all, it's able to remove your last hit point. We assume it didn't kill you, because that's considered "more fun" than rolling a d20 and having your character die unless you roll 14 or higher.
Nothing that does hit point damage is considered to be a 'certain death' scenario (see the whole "a dagger in the eye is a dagger in the eye" thing).

The issue here is that there's more than one element at work -- we know what isn't involved (attacks actually missing, for example), but what is involved is less clear.

For future reference, depictions of D&D in fiction typically don't follow the actual rules of D&D. There's a nice webcomic in the sidebar that explains why.

[panaikhan]

Palladium tried to address this, by having HP (actual bodily harm) and SDC (the 'plot armour', if you will). HP was a fixed value per level (based on Con), SDC was the variable (based on Class).
Some attacks (most notably assassin-style sneak attacks) bypassed the SDC, and were therefore far more deadly.

[Tyndmyr]

I've been thinking:

How unrealistic are HP, I've always explained it to myself as HP being a persons weariness in combat. So If and ogre swings an axe and it hits you...you dead :smalleek: so I've just always thought of an ogre hitting a barbarian as him dodging its attack, but that takes energy, and thus the waning of hitpoints is the exhaustion of the warrior, so when his HPs gets to -10, that ogre actually hit him with the axe. Doees this make any sense at all?

So, leaping off a cliff makes me tired, eh?

Likewise, being lit on fire?

Also, what do those "fatigued" and "exhausted" conditions stand for now?

I'm gonna have to go with no, this doesn't make sense.

[Flickerdart]

When was the last time your PC took a bath? Hit points are just a gradual accumulation of a rock-hard layer of blood, grime, mucus and other unsavory fluids that adventurers wade through on a daily basis. This is why fire is so hilariously non-lethal - this stuff doesn't burn very well at all.

[Morph Bark]

Well then lets take another scene from The Crystal Shard:

First page, (I think) a wimpy sucks-at-everything wizard kills his master with a dagger strike. I realize he was old, but he is still high level.

Even at high level the crits matter, especially if you only get 1 hp/level.

[Tyndmyr]

When was the last time your PC took a bath? Hit points are just a gradual accumulation of a rock-hard layer of blood, grime, mucus and other unsavory fluids that adventurers wade through on a daily basis. This is why fire is so hilariously non-lethal - this stuff doesn't burn very well at all.

If a GM ever uses this explanation, I will nod along most sincerely, while memorizing prestidigitation.

[Flickerdart]

If a GM ever uses this explanation, I will nod along most sincerely, while memorizing prestidigitation.
Prestidigitation can't duplicate the effects of other spells - so damage would be beyond it. :smalltongue:

[Crasical]

Prestidigitation can't duplicate the effects of other spells - so damage would be beyond it. :smalltongue:

Prestidigitation -can- clean or soil objects though.

Also holy crap, am I the only one who remembers to have their PC bathe on occasion? And I'm in the World's largest dungeon, I have to summon water and use a rag for a sponge-bath.

Soap is cheap and available by the pound, what's your excuse? :smalltongue:

[TheJudicator]

Probably a little late to mention this, but I'm personally surprised a certain possibility hasn't been brought up...

Referring back to the deal with a level 1-3 wizard killing a level 10+ (having never read the story, I'm going by just that), it would be entirely feasible to kill in one shot, even in full-game hp terms. How? Besides the use of poison, would it not be feasible that the low-level had cast, say, -true strike-, followed by a lethal called shot? Think about it...

[Tyndmyr]

Prestidigitation -can- clean or soil objects though.

Also holy crap, am I the only one who remembers to have their PC bathe on occasion? And I'm in the World's largest dungeon, I have to summon water and use a rag for a sponge-bath.

Soap is cheap and available by the pound, what's your excuse? :smalltongue:

Exactly. In short, if damage is dirt, then it can remove damage. Or add it. Hilarious abuses ensue as every battle devolves into a mud-fight.


Also, there's a rule for killing people in their sleep. It's called Coup De Grace. Auto hit, auto crit, save vs death.

[Flickerdart]

Besides the use of poison, would it not be feasible that the low-level had cast, say, -true strike-, followed by a lethal called shot?
No, because there are no rules for called shots. The best he could do is CdG, which requires an immobile target.

[World]

I see hit points as the ability and the experience to reduce damage while in combat. It's why 8 damage from a sword done to a commoner with 4 hp slashes him twice, while the same amount of damage ( 8 ) done to a fighter with 100 hp just results as a scratch.

Same 8 point of damage, 2 different points of view (depending on the target who was hit)

[Jeraa]

Hit points can't really model what happens in books. The books tell a story - they don't follow game rules.

However, that 1st level character killing a level 10+ with a single crossbow bolt is possible, if you use the Vitality/Wounds system. Critical hits ignore vitality points and go straight to wounds. So that high level wizard (with say the normal 10 constitution), would have 10 wound points. At 0 wound points, you have to make a fortitude save or fall unconscious and begin dying. So, a 1d10 crossbow bolt can take out a wizard - if you use the Vitality/Wounds rules from Unearthed Arcana.

Edit: I also forgot - any time you take wound damage, you need to make a fortitude save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. If you consider stunning to make the target helpless, you can coup de grace him.

[marcielle]

Mechanics don't come into play AT ALL in the books. Or at least very little. And usually only as a nerd reference/joke.
Consider this. Drizzt is a two-weapon fighter, a technique considered weak even by meelee standards. He regualrly beats the crap out of Huge Earth elementals, adult white dragons, Balors and most importantly, WIZARDS. Make of that what you will.

[Keithicus]

The Alexandrian said it best, and this is rough paraphrase.

1 hp =/= 1 hp

Your mind just got blown. First couple hits? A dodge, a close call, maybe a minor scratch. Next couple (for the exact same damage, remember), are more serious hits. Someone gets a serious cut, or an otherwise solid, direct but not immediately lethal hit. Last hit, when they have 1 hp? No, they don't die from a scratch. That 1 damage hit that was a close call when they were full is now ramming a yard of steel through them.

That's just my interpretation, take it how you will. That was also a rough paraphrase of a blog post by the Alexandrian, look him up.

Not quite how I read what he wrote there (especially the part about "first couple hits a dodge" since he specifically points out that fallacy) but I do think that short essay is a good one. Since the essay stated it better than I could I'll just put a link up here.

Explaining Hit Points (http://thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/explaining-hit-points.html)

Edit: to explain a bit more why I don't quite agree with that, I don't see a 5 hp strike being worse for a character with 30 hp each time he gets hit for said 5 hp strike. Each 5 hp strike does roughly the same damage to him (whereas it sounds like you're arguing that the second 5 hp strike is somehow worse). Both 5 hp strikes could easily be cuts in the character's legs. A large number of gashes on your legs, that are obviously fairly deep considering each one is 1/6 your hp pool, seem perfectly capable of adding up to kill you, even if it's from blood loss or shock maybe.

(note: I haven't read the books that were brought up here and, of course, I'm not a medical professional. The numbers I gave above were just made up on the spot)

[Flickerdart]

Edit: I also forgot - any time you take wound damage, you need to make a fortitude save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. If you consider stunning to make the target helpless, you can coup de grace him.
Why would Stunned be helpless? It's not labelled as such, unlike real helplessness causing conditions like Paralyzed.

[ericgrau]

I tend to go with non-injurous wounds: cuts, bruises, gashes, etc. It fits the fluff of most spells and doesn't hamper your combat ability in any way. A serious injury wouldn't usually hamper most peoples' combat ability anyway; it would make them straight-up pass out.

[Delcor]

I'm seeing the flaws in my explanation, I still like Allerans idea of HP just being a tracker of cuts and bruises, or cracked ribs and such.

I am aware that it is entirely possible for a low level wizard to one-shot a high level one with a cross-bow, I'm just trying to make the point that there are countless examples in novels or stories of someone who would be considered in game terms "high level" being stabbed or slashed once, and going down.

[Mystic Muse]

I'm seeing the flaws in my explanation, I still like Allerans idea of HP just being a tracker of cuts and bruises, or cracked ribs and such.

I am aware that it is entirely possible for a low level wizard to one-shot a high level one with a cross-bow, I'm just trying to make the point that there are countless examples in novels or stories of someone who would be considered in game terms "high level" being stabbed or slashed once, and going down.

That's because they're stories, and not D&D games.

[Delcor]

That's because they're stories, and not D&D games.

But just think about how it would go IRL, I imagine its awfully hard to concentrate on a spell with a dagger in your back/chest. It was meant as an example to prove how unrealistic HP is.

[Jeraa]

Why would Stunned be helpless? It's not labelled as such, unlike real helplessness causing conditions like Paralyzed.

I did say "If you consider", not that stunning=helpless. While helpless doesn't specifically mention stunned as a condition that causes helplessness, helpless does say "or otherwise completely at an opponent's mercy", meaning that more conditions then are listed there in the helpless condition description may cause helplessness.

While stunned, you drop everything held, can't take any actions, take a -2 penalty to AC, and lose your Dex bonus to AC. Since you can take no actions, and can't defend yourself very well, you could very well be "at your opponent's mercy".

Its all up to the DM's judgement on the matter.

[Flickerdart]

I did say "If you consider", not that stunning=helpless. While helpless doesn't specifically mention stunned as a condition that causes helplessness, helpless does say "or otherwise completely at an opponent's mercy", meaning that more conditions then are listed there in the helpless condition description may cause helplessness.

While stunned, you drop everything held, can't take any actions, take a -2 penalty to AC, and lose your Dex bonus to AC. Since you can take no actions, and can't defend yourself very well, you could very well be "at your opponent's mercy".

Its all up to the DM's judgement on the matter.
Considering how easy it is to stun things, ruling stun as helpless means that CdGs are a joke to set up - for the enemies, because when the PCs try that they'll find half of the MM is immune. There's a reason it's not explicitly ruled as such while paralyzed is - it's a less severe, more common state that has no business rendering anyone helpless.
By that same logic, a Wizard can CdG a Monk, because the latter might as well be at the former's mercy. :smalltongue:

[Greyfeld]

I did say "If you consider", not that stunning=helpless. While helpless doesn't specifically mention stunned as a condition that causes helplessness, helpless does say "or otherwise completely at an opponent's mercy", meaning that more conditions then are listed there in the helpless condition description may cause helplessness.

While stunned, you drop everything held, can't take any actions, take a -2 penalty to AC, and lose your Dex bonus to AC. Since you can take no actions, and can't defend yourself very well, you could very well be "at your opponent's mercy".

Its all up to the DM's judgement on the matter.

The bolded section isn't license to just randomly add crap to the definition that suits your whims.

[Jeraa]

The bolded section isn't license to just randomly add crap to the definition that suits your whims.

Randomly add crap? Its not like I suggested that being attacked on the fifth tuesday of the month, or a government holiday, or if your wearing a red shirt makes you helpless. If your stunned, you can take no actions (not even free or purely mental actions), lose any dex bonus you had to AC, and take a further -2 AC. You can take no actions, and can not effectively defend yourself. That sounds like you would be at the mercy of your opponents to me. Your not as bad as you would be if you were fully helpless, but you are still in a bad position.

Now I wouldn't rule that every time someone is stunned they would count as helpless for a coup de grace. But in the right circumstances, thats how I would rule. Your all alone, and get stunned? Coup de grace is possible. You have friends there to help defend you? No coup de grace.

[SowZ]

Well let's use this as an example. If we are looking at a level 3 Wizard, that is 3d4 hit dice and lets say for a sake of argument, that he rolled 1's for the second two starting with a base HP of 6. Let's be generous and say they have a 12 in constitution, so the minimum HP they would get is 9. So in that case it is 100% possible for a 1d10 to kill a wizard 10% of the time in that situation.

Now it's been a few years sense I've last read the Drizz't books, but I don't know which book or scene you are talking about. Also we can throw into question, was the Wizard already damaged at one point, could the 10 year old have gotten some kind of extra damage dice such as sneak attack or skirmish damage.

As for your weariness in combat, don't forget that each round of combat is just 6 seconds, it's not that long and most combat is over between 5-10 rounds. So fighting for a minute while isn't easy, wouldn't be too hard for an experienced fighter. You should also remember that we are basically level 1 commoners with 10's in every ability score and 1d4 hit dice. So if we look at it as a view point of a regular human, we would be out of a fight very quickly when something has a +4 strength modifier.

In the end, don't look at Hit points as if it was their endurance, it is better to look at them as how many cuts you can take before fainting from pain over the energy you need to do something.

Well, seeing as we are mostly educated/able in a trade/pick up multiple skills as we go and have varying strengths and weaknesses, real people are probably more like one to third level experts with stats varying from 8-14, meaning we have D6 HP. Most people aren't necessarily commoners in a society in D&D. But your general point still stands. Most people would have around six HP going up to ten. But real people don't fit well into D&D stats.

People don't get better at everything at once, (they gradually pick up skills as they go,) and just because you are more skilled at computers doesn't mean you can take more punches before being knocked out. And you don't get better at fighting without... you know... learning about fighting. Comparing D&D HP/Leveling system to real life is mostly a lost cause. The most you can do is come up with a reasonable-ish explanation enough to satisfy the suspension of disbelief.

Even then, your players need to have a pretty decent sized suspension of disbelief to play D&D as written. The best way to describe it, I think, is to say that at level five or your characters are actually superhuman.

A level ten fighter would be like something from Marvel in D&D.

[deuxhero]

Mechanics don't come into play AT ALL in the books. Or at least very little. And usually only as a nerd reference/joke.
Consider this. Drizzt is a two-weapon fighter, a technique considered weak even by meelee standards. He regualrly beats the crap out of Huge Earth elementals, adult white dragons, Balors and most importantly, WIZARDS. Make of that what you will.

The problem is actually that D is a 2nd edition character that suffered from the conversion.

[Alleran]

The problem is actually that D is a 2nd edition character that suffered from the conversion.
I think RAS writes Drizzt as a 16th level 1E ranger. He basically ignores edition changes.

[Acanous]

well you see, Drizz took a few levels in Mary Sue, and is powered by Fanbase.

[theMycon]

So, leaping off a cliff makes me tired, eh?

Likewise, being lit on fire?

Also, what do those "fatigued" and "exhausted" conditions stand for now?

I'm gonna have to go with no, this doesn't make sense.
Well, yes. As you adventure more, you instinctively learn to roll into a fall, tumble skill be damned. But it starts to wear at you after a while, and you get dis-coordinated and sloppy, and falling off that cliff makes you continually edge closer to seriously hurting yourself.

Fatigued and exhausted are your body being tired, and so you lose that battle-hardened focus faster.

Yeah, it's a stretch. But so's anything with HP. I choose to go with "It's how much pain you can ignore before you pass out from shock. And once you're unconscious, it's gonna catch up to you soon."

[Serpentine]

I still think action and adventure movies are the best demonstrator of hit points in action.
Take, for example, Inigo Montoya's big battle at the end of The Princess Bride.
(spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the movie. But really, who's that? :smallwink:)
Inigo takes on a bunch of soldiers/low-level mooks: his AC is too high for them to touch him on Dexterity alone, but an effortless stab or slash to each one and they go down in one blow (i.e. low HP).
Then he chases the Count, who flees until he's able to surprise Inigo with a flung dagger (a sneak attack, or possibly just catching him flat-footed). He gets it straight to the belly, which clearly hurts - i.e. he takes a pretty big bunch of HP damage. I consider the apparent weakness and pause to be roleplaying, although the aforementioned vitality system could represent him being "stunned". Count Rugen chooses to use his spare rounds to gloat.
The Count approaches Inigo and stabs him in each shoulder. This is a slightly tricky one, as the Count was trying to stab his chest, but each time Inigo deflected it with his sword to the side - usually, if you manage to deflect a blow with your sword, that just means you don't get past their AC and therefore do no damage at all. It is possible that this is sort of a matter of reverse-engineering the description - "he hits, but he only does very low damage. So what happened was you manage to deflect the blow from your vitals, but it still hit...".
Then he recovers, and manages to stand up - with some initial stumbles - and go back to the fight, apparently with his skills completely, or almost, intact. He overcomes the Count's armour class twice, stabbing each time in the shoulder.^
He handily disarms the Count, and then slashes him once across each cheek, dealing minor, probably minimum, damage*. At this point Count Rugen tries futilely to fight back, but Inigo manages to get one last blow in, right through the belly. This last stab may have been a critical hit, or it may merely have done enough damage to finish him off.


^ Perhaps some kind of Called Shot, which would fit in well with one of my casual houserules whereby someone can aim for a specific part of a body, but at a higher AC due to the smaller size of the part.
*I would allow a player to do this, along the lines of "a player can chose to fail any check", although I might require a Dexterity check.So yeah. I'm definitely in the camp of "HP damage represents accumulated wounds and injuries", although I'd be willing to consider an element of "the increase in HP represents an increased ability to take a blow, but also the ability of the character to deflect blows to less dangerous areas".

[Delcor]

I still think action and adventure movies are the best demonstrator of hit points in action.
Take, for example, Inigo Montoya's big battle at the end of The Princess Bride.
(spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the movie. But really, who's that? :smallwink:)
Inigo takes on a bunch of soldiers/low-level mooks: his AC is too high for them to touch him on Dexterity alone, but an effortless stab or slash to each one and they go down in one blow (i.e. low HP).
Then he chases the Count, who flees until he's able to surprise Inigo with a flung dagger (a sneak attack, or possibly just catching him flat-footed). He gets it straight to the belly, which clearly hurts - i.e. he takes a pretty big bunch of HP damage. I consider the apparent weakness and pause to be roleplaying, although the aforementioned vitality system could represent him being "stunned". Count Rugen chooses to use his spare rounds to gloat.
The Count approaches Inigo and stabs him in each shoulder. This is a slightly tricky one, as the Count was trying to stab his chest, but each time Inigo deflected it with his sword to the side - usually, if you manage to deflect a blow with your sword, that just means you don't get past their AC and therefore do no damage at all. It is possible that this is sort of a matter of reverse-engineering the description - "he hits, but he only does very low damage. So what happened was you manage to deflect the blow from your vitals, but it still hit...".
Then he recovers, and manages to stand up - with some initial stumbles - and go back to the fight, apparently with his skills completely, or almost, intact. He overcomes the Count's armour class twice, stabbing each time in the shoulder.^
He handily disarms the Count, and then slashes him once across each cheek, dealing minor, probably minimum, damage*. At this point Count Rugen tries futilely to fight back, but Inigo manages to get one last blow in, right through the belly. This last stab may have been a critical hit, or it may merely have done enough damage to finish him off.


^ Perhaps some kind of Called Shot, which would fit in well with one of my casual houserules whereby someone can aim for a specific part of a body, but at a higher AC due to the smaller size of the part.
*I would allow a player to do this, along the lines of "a player can chose to fail any check", although I might require a Dexterity check.So yeah. I'm definitely in the camp of "HP damage represents accumulated wounds and injuries", although I'd be willing to consider an element of "the increase in HP represents an increased ability to take a blow, but also the ability of the character to deflect blows to less dangerous areas".

I would agree :smallsmile:

[Dralnu]

SRD says:

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.

I remember someone else posted another quote taken from the DMG or somewhere that explains it with a little more detail.

[ericgrau]

Stunned does not say you're helpless, nor even unable to defend yourself, merely unable to act. Paralyzed says helpless. Stunned is somewhere between dazed and paralyzed in that on top of not acting on your turn (like dazed) you drop what you're holding and take a small penalty to defending yourself. The defensive penalties for paralyzed or otherwise being helpless are far, far worse.

[MrRhin]

While I am usually in favor of thinking that until the final blow is struck, it's all just minor wounds, no matter what the actual damage taken was, I also like the idea that characters who've gained a few levels are 'just that though'. They a critical hit might actually be a knife in the eye to these guys, but it wont stop em or even make it hard to see if they still have some HP left. Does it make sense? No, but neither does magic.

Even if this isn't something a lot of people like, specially with badass normal thoughts going around, there does come up some circumstances where there is simply no way of avoiding it.
Like some have pointed out, falling damage, there is little to no reason a person who is just good to make big wounds small should survive a really huge drop. Even if he could 'roll with it' there are limits.
But to take it a step further. What about when said high HP character takes a swim in lava or a pool of acid? He got the hit points to survive it, so why shouldn't he? Sure some might say that lava is an instakill, and that is alright.
But what about the acid pool then? Say it deals 3d6 points of acid damage a round. Not to bad, but it hurts. And there are several ways to handwave this. But what if a high level Barbarian leaps into the pool at the same time as a lvl 1 commoner? One could stay there for quite some time, the other will turn to a meatless skeleton in about two rounds..

(Ps, sorry if someone already brought this up, I can have missed it ^^;:
Also, first post, yay!

[Tyndmyr]

Well, yes. As you adventure more, you instinctively learn to roll into a fall, tumble skill be damned. But it starts to wear at you after a while, and you get dis-coordinated and sloppy, and falling off that cliff makes you continually edge closer to seriously hurting yourself.

Fatigued and exhausted are your body being tired, and so you lose that battle-hardened focus faster.

Yeah, it's a stretch. But so's anything with HP. I choose to go with "It's how much pain you can ignore before you pass out from shock. And once you're unconscious, it's gonna catch up to you soon."

So, I can faceplant off a cliff, not having a single rank of tumble, and it merely makes me tired...

And this is to fix the "unrealism" of me continuing to act after sustaining injury?

[Serpentine]

While Like some have pointed out, falling damage, there is little to no reason a person who is just good to make big wounds small should survive a really huge drop. Even if he could 'roll with it' there are limits.Real life people can, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Surviving_falls) and do, survive really huge drops (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/17113222/ns/today/t/skydiving-miracle-man-falls-two-miles/). I don't see it as all that unreasonable to figure that higher-level people are just more likely to do so, and to be able to do so and then get up and walk away from it.

Tentatively raised alternate contributing factor to hit point representation: luck. As you gain levels, you get a bit more lucky. Blows are less likely to hit vital spots, if you fall off a cliff you're more likely to land on a blackberry bush, fireballs just happen to blast in such a way that you manage to avoid the worst of it. That sort of thing.
I think it sorta works with the way wounds tend to be described in D&D. So, for example, at 2nd level 10HP, aka likely nearly or actually all your points, might be described as "it slashes you across the front, cutting deep into your chest and belly, exposing the innards below", whereas at 12th level, where it would be probably less than a quarter, the same 10hp damage might be described as "it slashes you across the front, leaving a bloody scratch across your chest".

[Tyndmyr]

Real life people can, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Surviving_falls) and do, survive really huge drops (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/17113222/ns/today/t/skydiving-miracle-man-falls-two-miles/). I don't see it as all that unreasonable to figure that higher-level people are just more likely to do so, and to be able to do so and then get up and walk away from it.

Note that "survives" is not a synonym for "gets up and walks away".

[Serpentine]

Is that directed at me, or just clarifying what I said? Cuz I did allude to that :smalltongue: But I think we've already established that, whatever HP represent, it does not at all well represent the whole "as you get tired and/or take more wounds, you get worse at fighting back" thing.

[Lapak]

So, I can faceplant off a cliff, not having a single rank of tumble, and it merely makes me tired...

And this is to fix the "unrealism" of me continuing to act after sustaining injury?Not 'tired.' Battered, bruised, worn down, less able to avoid further injury. You just bounced off the cliff-face five times, hit a tree on the way down and got whipped by branches as they slowed you down a bit, and rolled to a stop on a slight curve at the bottom. Your muscles are sore from head to toe, you have dozens of tiny cuts and abrasions that make it hurt to move, and you're trying to catch your breath but can't quite due to a cracked rib.

None of that kills you, or even stops you from fighting. You can still pull yourself together and wade into combat swinging. But it slows your reflexes, it makes you flinch a bit with every motion. You have to commit more fully to your attacks to keep them threatening, and that means your defense is suffering. Normally, when an opponent manages to surprise you and get an axe past your guard, you might be able to get your own weapon in under it at the last second, stop the blade from splitting you open by main force , and reduce a lethal blow to a minor cut. But now you're just plain too beat-up and tired to react in time.

[MrRhin]

Real life people can, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Surviving_falls) and do, survive really huge drops (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/17113222/ns/today/t/skydiving-miracle-man-falls-two-miles/). I don't see it as all that unreasonable to figure that higher-level people are just more likely to do so, and to be able to do so and then get up and walk away from it.

Tentatively raised alternate contributing factor to hit point representation: luck. As you gain levels, you get a bit more lucky. Blows are less likely to hit vital spots, if you fall off a cliff you're more likely to land on a blackberry bush, fireballs just happen to blast in such a way that you manage to avoid the worst of it. That sort of thing.
I think it sorta works with the way wounds tend to be described in D&D. So, for example, at 2nd level 10HP, aka likely nearly or actually all your points, might be described as "it slashes you across the front, cutting deep into your chest and belly, exposing the innards below", whereas at 12th level, where it would be probably less than a quarter, the same 10hp damage might be described as "it slashes you across the front, leaving a bloody scratch across your chest".

True, true. It's not impossible, and certainly a high level character would posses a knack for doing stuff like that, and while very improbable, it is not outside the realm of reality.

That does however not answer my second point. What about when there is not doubt that two characters are exposed to the same effect (dipped in acid or somesuch), but one turns to a skeleton in seconds, the other can swim around for a few minutes without any real lasting harm?

[Tyndmyr]

Really? What if it was just cliff. Sheer, straight drop. I mean, I didn't roll five separate impacts. I rolled one. I fell a hundred feet, and then I hit the bottom. Nothing was in the way. I don't even have the tumble skill.

This is not that crazy of a situation...I've seen it happen in actual play.

How does this not translate to actual, physical damage?

[Serpentine]

That does however not answer my second point. What about when there is not doubt that two characters are exposed to the same effect (dipped in acid or somesuch), but one turns to a skeleton in seconds, the other can swim around for a few minutes without any real lasting harm?Ionno. Denser flesh?

[SowZ]

Again, the only way HP, (or most anything,) makes sense by level five or so is through superhuman ability. Level five characters are no loner BA normal- they are something out of a comic book. Now, they've earned this status. It is not uncommon in myth, (Greek, anglo-saxon, etc.) for great warriors to just attain para-human ability because they've become a Legend.

[MrRhin]

Ionno. Denser flesh?
Heh, now that would be one way to explain it, but then it goes straight into what SowZ said.


Again, the only way HP, (or most anything,) makes sense by level five or so is through superhuman ability. Level five characters are no loner BA normal- they are something out of a comic book. Now, they've earned this status. It is not uncommon in myth, (Greek, anglo-saxon, etc.) for great warriors to just attain para-human ability because they've become a Legend.

I have to agree with you here, this might be best way to look at it. And as you say, it's not really that strange, seeing as D&D also involves things like magic and so on.

The biggest problem that comes up here is Coup de Grace.
Why would having a slit throat or a dagger in the eye be any worse than other things that would instantly kill you.

Oh well, awesome as the system is, I guess one just have to put some reality away in the end~

[lesser_minion]

That does however not answer my second point. What about when there is not doubt that two characters are exposed to the same effect (dipped in acid or somesuch), but one turns to a skeleton in seconds, the other can swim around for a few minutes without any real lasting harm?

Being dunked in acid does 10d6 damage per round. Anyone who survives "a few minutes" of that treatment probably has resistance or immunity. If they don't, they probably are still exotic enough that complaining about them surviving is pointless.

Additionally, while D&D is unspecific about what its "corrosive acid" is, it's not going to completely dissolve either character. They'll both come out with serious burns. If you come out with fewer than zero hit points, you probably won't survive them. Otherwise, you 'miraculously survive', some in-universe reporter dude becomes famous by writing up the story, and then we all move on.

[MrRhin]

Being dunked in acid does 10d6 damage per round. Anyone who survives "a few minutes" of that treatment probably has resistance or immunity. If they don't, they probably are still exotic enough that complaining about them surviving is pointless.

Additionally, while D&D is unspecific about what its "corrosive acid" is, it's not going to completely dissolve either character. They'll both come out with serious burns. If you come out with fewer than zero hit points, you probably won't survive them. Otherwise, you 'miraculously survive', some in-universe reporter dude becomes famous by writing up the story, and then we all move on.

I did not know that it did that much. Granted, I didn't look for it either.

The point I was trying to make wasn't the acid though. It was that, because how HP works, something that can kill or even completely destroy one person, can leave the other pretty much with just a few bruise, even in cases where there is no argument that, yes, they both suffered the exact same thing to happen. Neither got a lesser effect on them. One is now a mangled husk, turned to ashes or whatever, the other, not so much.
And there is no real way to explain this (as far as I know) without simply saying, yes, that guy is more than human by being high level.

But if I am wrong on this, please, correct me =3

[Tyndmyr]

Pretty much. You just have to go with "this dude is a LOT tougher than the first dude".

This doesn't bother me for the same reason that it doesn't bother me that mooks in movies get taken out by the bucketload by things the hero easily survives. They are not supposed to be as tough as he is.

[lesser_minion]

The point I was trying to make wasn't the acid though. It was that, because how HP works, something that can kill or even completely destroy one person, can leave the other pretty much with just a few bruise, even in cases where there is no argument that, yes, they both suffered the exact same thing to happen.

I already addressed this in the second paragraph of that post.

We use hit points to represent things that may or may not kill a person, including situations where surviving would be considered unusual or miraculous, like what happened to Tsutomu Yamaguchi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi) (brief summary, he was nuked twice in the space of four days).

If you stab someone, they might survive, and they may even be able to fight back. Likewise if you shoot someone. But it's not guaranteed. They might die in both cases. This is an example of what hit points are for.

You shouldn't be describing characters dying from hit point loss as being puréed into a fine mist, no matter how many hit points they lose. If it's doing hit point damage, then it's something you think that a human being might survive.

[Daer]

It is really suprising what all people have survived. Or how much some people have took damage before dying. While sure hp isnt accurate indicating things still it is not completely unrealistic, specially when you think that its in world with gods and other mystical forces arelooking after people.

few examples here. (http://www.cracked.com/article_16822_7-historical-figures-who-were-absurdly-hard-to-kill.html)

so just because you stab someone, poison him, shoot him, shoot him three more times and club him doesn't mean that you shouldn't have few more back up plans :)

[SowZ]

Heh, now that would be one way to explain it, but then it goes straight into what SowZ said.



I have to agree with you here, this might be best way to look at it. And as you say, it's not really that strange, seeing as D&D also involves things like magic and so on.

The biggest problem that comes up here is Coup de Grace.Why would having a slit throat or a dagger in the eye be any worse than other things that would instantly kill you.

Oh well, awesome as the system is, I guess one just have to put some reality away in the end~

Take Spiderman. You can stab him, shoot him, etc. and he will be hurt but he will probably live because he is much stronger, has a more efficient metabolism then humans, and heals faster. If I stabbed a knife directly through the middle of his throat or took a shotgun to his head? That is a dead Spiderman. Even superheroes can die from a single massively lethal hit.

[Icestorm245]

It's a game. That's all there is to it. Did you know that the force in a punch is multiplied by 3 when the target is between the offender and a solid surface (such as a wall, or the ground)? So if this is the case, why doesn't a giant do 3 times as much damage when he smashes your PC into the ground?

Similarily, if a giant side swipes you, in reality, you SHOULD go flying very very far. Think of being hit by a car going 40mph. Instead there are rules for Bull Rushing.

Another thing. Why is there a magical property you need to have placed on your weapon to make something bleed out (wounding property, BoVD)? In reality, as soon as a knife cuts you, you bleed.

When you think of these, explaining hit points just seems so much easier. It's a game and really cannot be explained in any other way, besides the plot armour idea. That is the best one I have heard of it.

[Flickerdart]

Another thing. Why is there a magical property you need to have placed on your weapon to make something bleed out (wounding property, BoVD)? In reality, as soon as a knife cuts you, you bleed.
Normally, when you bleed, it's more of a trickle. I imagine that wounding and similar properties make the blood fountain out instead, spraying everything around you in gore.

[Serpentine]

You shouldn't be describing characters dying from hit point loss as being puréed into a fine mist, no matter how many hit points they lose. If it's doing hit point damage, then it's something you think that a human being might survive.I once had a character split vertically with a single blow from an axe, but she was at half hit points and it would've done enough damage to down her at full hit points...

[MrRhin]

You shouldn't be describing characters dying from hit point loss as being puréed into a fine mist, no matter how many hit points they lose. If it's doing hit point damage, then it's something you think that a human being might survive.

You make a good point, and I guess I did exaggerate a lot of my examples. But there are things that do hit point damage and do indeed (or should) turn you into a pile of mush. Disintegrate being one of them. Really big falling objects where you fail your reflex save and is then hit dead center being another. (cause if you're still not 'really hit' after failing the save, what was it there for?)

I do in no way endorse that people shouldn't explain stuff by turning it into minor wounds or miraculous escapes and so on. I do it too, and its a great way to explain things and keep it real. But I do also believe that it gets silly after you've pulled your 23rd miracle drop from a falling cliff, and think that as levels go up, you just have to accept that, no, these guys and galls are no longer as weak and vulnerable as a normal human, they've gone beyond real world durability and then some.


Take Spiderman. You can stab him, shoot him, etc. and he will be hurt but he will probably live because he is much stronger, has a more efficient metabolism then humans, and heals faster. If I stabbed a knife directly through the middle of his throat or took a shotgun to his head? That is a dead Spiderman. Even superheroes can die from a single massively lethal hit.

I know what you mean. But I'd personally compare high hp characters to heroes like the Thing. Those axes and swords hit after all.

But all in all, I guess I'll concede and agree with ya all that yes, in most cases you can explain it. ^^

[lesser_minion]

As a rule, when D&D magic decides not to play nicely with the rest of the system, it's the magic system's fault, not the rest of the game's. The same principle applies to disintegrate.

As for repeatedly falling off a cliff... how reasonable is it for that situation to come about in the first place? If you fall off of a cliff 23 times in a game, then there's something odd going on. Is it really a problem that the rules don't deal with the situation very well?

[Tyndmyr]

As a rule, when D&D magic decides not to play nicely with the rest of the system, it's the magic system's fault, not the rest of the game's. The same principle applies to disintegrate.

As for repeatedly falling off a cliff... how reasonable is it for that situation to come about in the first place? If you fall off of a cliff 23 times in a game, then there's something odd going on. Is it really a problem that the rules don't deal with the situation very well?

Off a cliff specifically? Sure. In general, no. Falling damage is a fairly common part of games. Consider, if you will, the classic pit trap.

I would not be at all surprised if falling damage came up 23 times over the course of a 1-20 campaign. Hell, it could easily come up 23 times in tomb of horrors if you lack a rogue but have sufficient hp.

[noparlpf]

Yeah...hit points are an abstraction.

A few caltrops can kill a commoner.
Enough poison to kill a horse won't hurt a 10th level Barbarian.
That same 10th level Barbarian won't die if he holds a grenade to his chest and detonates it. I mean, it "only" does 4d6 (which is enough to kill a bunch of commoners or other NPCs.)
Removal of the heart will simply cause a Frenzied Berserker to spit blood in your face and then rip your heart out with his teeth.

[lesser_minion]

Off a cliff specifically? Sure. In general, no. Falling damage is a fairly common part of games. Consider, if you will, the classic pit trap.

Falling damage, sure. How many times do you expect to end up climbing the cliffs of insanity again? Why aren't you able to fly up these things?

A 20 foot fall might kill you, but we wouldn't be too surprised if it didn't.


Yeah...hit points are an abstraction.

Er... yes. That doesn't mean they have to be completely nonsensical, however.


A few caltrops can kill a commoner.

There's this thing called 'shock'. It sometimes kills people who don't have any injuries to their vital organs, and can be caused by events like having a large metal spike rammed into your foot.


Enough poison to kill a horse won't hurt a 10th level Barbarian.

This has nothing to do with the hit point system. Please go back and read the poison rules. "Enough poison to kill a horse" is also enough to completely wreck -- if not kill -- a 10th level barbarian.


That same 10th level Barbarian won't die if he holds a grenade to his chest and detonates it. I mean, it "only" does 4d6 (which is enough to kill a bunch of commoners or other NPCs.)

Could this possibly be a really wimpy grenade? And aren't the grenades designed for d20 Modern, where every hit that does more than your con score in damage has a chance of flattening you outright?


Removal of the heart will simply cause a Frenzied Berserker to spit blood in your face and then rip your heart out with his teeth.

Wrong. Removal of the heart isn't hit point damage, and Deathless Frenzy doesn't protect against it.

[noparlpf]

Falling damage, sure. How many times do you expect to end up climbing the cliffs of insanity again? Why aren't you able to fly up these things?

A 20 foot fall might kill you, but we wouldn't be too surprised if it didn't.

Depends on how you land, really. But they have a mechanic for that called Tumble, so they did take that into account.


Er... yes. That doesn't mean they have to be completely nonsensical, however.

Any system in which a human can take multiple grenades the the face and live is nonsensical in my book.


There's this thing called 'shock'. It sometimes kills people who don't have any injuries to their vital organs, and can be caused by events like having a large metal spike rammed into your foot.

At age 12 or 13 I had a long, rusty nail go literally through my foot. I swore, pulled the board off of my foot, and walked (well, limped) back home before checking it out.
And that's not even the worst thing that's happened to me. "Shock" requires more than something small like a caltrop.


This has nothing to do with the hit point system. Please go back and read the poison rules. "Enough poison to kill a horse" is also enough to completely wreck -- if not kill -- a 10th level barbarian.

I know it has nothing to do with hp, but I believe it is pertinent to how silly the system of life and death is in D&D.
A heavy warhorse has Fort +7. A 10th level Barbarian has a base Fort +7, and probably has decent Con; let's assume both the Barbarian and the horse have 17 Con. So the Barbarian gets Fort +10.
Let's take, say, wyvern poison. Injury DC 17, 2d6 Con/2d6 Con. The Barbarian will usually pass both saves (70% chance for each); the horse will probably pass one (50% chance for each) and take on average 7 Con. So between one and three doses of this stuff will likely kill the horse but probably won't kill the Barbarian. (This is assuming there is not some rule that I've never seen that requires a higher dose to affect a larger creature.)


Could this possibly be a really wimpy grenade? And aren't the grenades designed for d20 Modern, where every hit that does more than your con score in damage has a chance of flattening you outright?

I was thinking of the grenades in the 3.5 DMG. Check out page 146. A fragmentation grenade does 4d6 slashing damage in a 20-foot radius, Reflex DC 15 for half damage. (I've never looked at d20 Modern. If their grenades do that, they're designed better. In 3.5, a grenade doesn't even have a chance to break the massive damage threshold--its maximum damage is 24, or maybe 48 if it can crit--and surviving massive damage is only Fort DC 15 anyway.)


Wrong. Removal of the heart isn't hit point damage, and Deathless Frenzy doesn't protect against it.

Okay, maybe not. But there's no decent mechanic for called shots and any description of damage the DM may provide is mostly just for flavor. I've seen a raging Barbarian with "half his head caved in" who was fine after a single Cure Moderate Wounds.

[lesser_minion]

At age 12 or 13 I had a long, rusty nail go literally through my foot. I swore, pulled the board off of my foot, and walked (well, limped) back home before checking it out.
And that's not even the worst thing that's happened to me. "Shock" requires more than something small like a caltrop.

People do die from things like this. That's one reason they do damage. Not everyone dies from things like this. This is the other reason they do damage.

Note that they only do one point of damage -- i.e. the rules for caltrops reflect the real-life result that while they could prove lethal, it rarely ever happens.

And for future reference, caltrops aren't particularly small.


I know it has nothing to do with hp, but I believe it is pertinent to how silly the system of life and death is in D&D.

The barbarian surviving when the horse doesn't isn't an impossible result. "Enough to kill a horse" doesn't mean "enough to definitely kill a human".

There's nothing here that doesn't work if you're prepared to accept that higher level characters are somehow "more important" and get more leeway when it comes to matters of luck.


I was thinking of the grenades in the 3.5 DMG. Check out page 146. A fragmentation grenade does 4d6 slashing damage in a 20-foot radius, Reflex DC 15 for half damage.

So, the rules don't require you to assess extra damage for having a grenade blow up in your face, but apparently it's the fault of the hit point system that some characters can survive a grenade blowing up in their face. Really?


Okay, maybe not. But there's no decent mechanic for called shots and any description of damage the DM may provide is mostly just for flavor. I've seen a raging Barbarian with "half his head caved in" who was fine after a single Cure Moderate Wounds.

The problem here is still that the injury is being described as far worse than the rules think it is (and yes, the book does actually suggest not overdoing descriptions for precisely this reason).

D&D is not perfect, but it would be nice if people made more effort to direct their complaints at the element that's actually responsible for the problem, rather than a tangentially related one.

[Eldest]

Generally, if a poison will kill a horse, it will kill a human more often than the horse. Body mass is a big deal with poison.

[NNescio]

Generally, if a poison will kill a horse, it will kill a human more often than the horse. Body mass is a big deal with poison.

Chocolate, coffee, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, brocolli, tea, sugar, maple leaves, poppy seeds...

Ragwort...

Metabolism mechanisms do play a huge role as well.

[MrRhin]

As a rule, when D&D magic decides not to play nicely with the rest of the system, it's the magic system's fault, not the rest of the game's. The same principle applies to disintegrate.
I'd consider that handwaving. But for each their own =3



As for repeatedly falling off a cliff... how reasonable is it for that situation to come about in the first place? If you fall off of a cliff 23 times in a game, then there's something odd going on. Is it really a problem that the rules don't deal with the situation very well?
The cliff scenario isnt really the point. It is the fact that after having enough 'miracle' saves and lucky breaks for whatever reason, it would seem more reasonable to say, yeah he's tougher than the average dude, than saying he's the luckiest person in the world.

And let not forget that players are allowed to experiment on their own. Character A can ask Character B to strike him as hard as he can. And it will still just deal normal damage.
Why someone would do that, isn't really that important, but that the system allows them to do it, is.

However, I feel that we've pushed this a bit to far off-topic, and that is not nice to the OP. Also, while I could probably continue to nitpick, I guess it all boils down to us having a bit of different perception on how to go with these things. You are obviously a lot more skilled in explaining these things than I would be. Which makes me a bit of envious =P

[Anarchy_Kanya]

If in my game a player would detonate a grenade in his own face, I would make it an aouto-death. I mean, come on, hp is when you're trying NOT to get killed. If you go and stab yourself in the head with a dagger, you don't get just 1d4+Str damage, you are making a "self-coupe de grace". ;)
The same goes for asking your pal to strike you. You either dodge the attack or you're purposefully make yourself vulnerable, are considered helppless and maybe even your pal gets a critical-hit on you.

[etrpgb]

I actually prefer going by RAW. Because the game is less fun the DM states ``you are dead''. If you want realism go practising fencing, not playing D&D.

[MrRhin]

If in my game a player would detonate a grenade in his own face, I would make it an aouto-death. I mean, come on, hp is when you're trying NOT to get killed. If you go and stab yourself in the head with a dagger, you don't get just 1d4+Str damage, you are making a "self-coupe de grace". ;)
The same goes for asking your pal to strike you. You either dodge the attack or you're purposefully make yourself vulnerable, are considered helppless and maybe even your pal gets a critical-hit on you.
That would be a matter of taste, and where ours differ.
I'd say he was left flat-footed.

However, why do you think that should be? I mean, for a world where there is magic, demons and dragons and so on. Is it really that strange to think that people can get more durable than your average (real) human?

[SowZ]

I actually prefer going by RAW. Because the game is less fun the DM states ``you are dead''. If you want realism go practising fencing, not playing D&D.

For you, maybe. The game is a lot less fun for me if the the DMs gameworld is completely inconsistent.

[Anarchy_Kanya]

Is it really that strange to think that people can get more durable than your average (real) human?
No. I'm totally for saying that the PCs (or any creature for that matter) in a D&D world can survive a 2 mile fall because he's just that awesome, but the awesomeness stops when a PC detonates a grenade in his hands knowing that he has enough hp to survive it unscathed. It's not Dragonball. In D&D people should at least try to avoid damage and not take it head on.

[Tyndmyr]

For you, maybe. The game is a lot less fun for me if the the DMs gameworld is completely inconsistent.

The game is no more consistent when you have a "lucky dodge" for the vast majority of hits in addition to all the misses that already exist.

[MrRhin]

No. I'm totally for saying that the PCs (or any creature for that matter) in a D&D world can survive a 2 mile fall because he's just that awesome, but the awesomeness stops when a PC detonates a grenade in his hands knowing that he has enough hp to survive it unscathed. It's not Dragonball.

Aha I see.
Well I guess its just about where you set the limit. (though I'd say a 2mile fall would hurt more, but that's neither here or there.)


In D&D people should at least try to avoid damage and not take it head on.

Agreed for the most part on this.
Though at the same time, it should allow room for the people who want to interpret it the other way.
As long as that's allowed. I'm cool with it.

[drakir_nosslin]

HP is something that I can't explain as long as I treat D&D humans as 'earth' humans. Same as with ability scores. I no longer assumes that human means identical to homo sapiens sapiens.
They are simply built different, higher pain threshold, fast coagulating blood etc, just like the rest of the D&D races. They've all evolved similarly.
This means that HP can actually work as a measure of damage or whatever.

[Chronos]

The way I see it, hit points are exactly what they purport to be. I figure that it takes somewhere around 200 points of damage to completely reduce a human body to hamburger, but a person will usually be killed long before that. Consider a single blow from a dagger: That's usually about enough to kill your typical first-level commoner (or wizard), but really, that's hardly any damage at all to the body as a whole. A high-level barbarian, though, it really will take grinding him to hamburger to stop him, so the barbarian can have hundreds of HP.

And look at the real world: Some people (the majority, in fact) really are killed by one or two dagger blows, but occasionally, you'll hear of someone getting thoroughly mangled and surviving. And, in fact, the folks who survive the manglings generally are the sort of folks who would be considered high-level, and in high-HP classes. Consider Simo Häyhä, for instance, who took a critical hit from a high-power rifle, and still survived. Why? Because he was a really damn high level ranger/fighter. Implausible though it may seem, the real world really does seem to use HP, that increase dramatically with level.

[Morty]

I very much dislike hit points as they're presented in D&D. There's just too many of them. Yes, high-level D&D characters are supposed to be badass and larger-than-life. I'm fine with them accomplishing things that are beyond the scope of "normal" people, which includes taking damage. But the amount of punishment they can take quickly goes beyond badass into ridiculous, in my view - even if we take pains to describe it as luck, dodging or plot armor, where it's just ridiculous in a different fashion.

[Anarchy_Kanya]

(though I'd say a 2mile fall would hurt more, but that's neither here or there.)
Actually, a 2 mile fall is the same as a 1 or 0.5 mile fall. At some point acceleration from falling stops because the air gives too much resistance to your body. That's why falling damage stops at 20d6.

[MrRhin]

Actually, a 2 mile fall is the same as a 1 or 0.5 mile fall. At some point acceleration from falling stops because the air gives too much resistance to your body. That's why falling damage stops at 20d6.

Oooh, I didn't know that.
Or well, I didn't think about it at least, heh.

Now I know...
And knowing is half the battle!
G.I Joe~

[lesser_minion]

I'd consider that handwaving. But for each their own =3

Well, no. Handwaving would be "it's magic, figure it out."

What I'm saying is that while disintegrate is inconsistent with the hit point rules, that's the fault of disintegrate, not the hit point rules. And that's true -- the hit point rules haven't changed since 3.0, but disintegrate has. And previously, if you failed your save against disintegrate, there was no fistful of d6s, you just disintegrated. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 zorkmids.


The cliff scenario isn't really the point. It is the fact that after having enough 'miracle' saves and lucky breaks for whatever reason, it would seem more reasonable to say, yeah he's tougher than the average dude, than saying he's the luckiest person in the world.

Well yes, sure. The game is meant to be believable by action film standards, not by Joe Bloggs the Unremarkable standards. The entire point of hit points is to be an abstraction -- the point I'm trying to make is that it's not as bad an abstraction as everyone thinks.

The other point is that there's more than one thing going on -- it might make sense for the larger than life action film barbarian to be as tough as nails, but would you explain the athletic swordsage who weighs about 90 lb falling off a cliff and surviving as her being "just that tough"? Or the pacifistic priest who does nothing but heal people?


And let not forget that players are allowed to experiment on their own. Character A can ask Character B to strike him as hard as he can. And it will still just deal normal damage.
Why someone would do that, isn't really that important, but that the system allows them to do it, is.

Go back and read the section on metagame thinking in the DMG, and how the DM shouldn't encourage it. The system was designed based on the assumption that the players would not test the rules. There would be no point to designing it to work any other way.


I very much dislike hit points as they're presented in D&D. There's just too many of them. Yes, high-level D&D characters are supposed to be badass and larger-than-life. I'm fine with them accomplishing things that are beyond the scope of "normal" people, which includes taking damage. But the amount of punishment they can take quickly goes beyond badass into ridiculous, in my view - even if we take pains to describe it as luck, dodging or plot armor, where it's just ridiculous in a different fashion.

I know it seems like I'm bending over backwards to defend hit points here, but if you're OK with a character having something like 30 or 40 hit points, but not with the same character having 100 or 120, then isn't that really a complaint about the game's power curve rather than the hit points themselves?

[Qwertystop]

I remember seeing a good explanation somewhere else on these forums. It was something like:

Hit Points are representative of the odds something will kill someone. If you have 50 HP, and a shortsword-stab does 6 damage, it has a 10% chance of killing you. If you go with a forking-branch-universe-probability-theory, that means that in 1/10th of all the possible worlds forking from the result of that stab, you are now dead of stabbed-ness. However, the narrative follows one of the ones in which you survived. If a Freezing Sphere then deals 40 damage to you, and you fail the save, that means that there was no way in which you could have avoided unconsiousness from a full-on hit from that spell, so you are now at -1, and dying.

Maybe I didn't present it as clearly as whoever wrote it. If anyone else remembers this, and knows where it was, could they quote it?

[NNescio]

I remember seeing a good explanation somewhere else on these forums. It was something like:

Hit Points are representative of the odds something will kill someone. If you have 50 HP, and a shortsword-stab does 6 damage, it has a 10% chance of killing you. If you go with a forking-branch-universe-probability-theory, that means that in 1/10th of all the possible worlds forking from the result of that stab, you are now dead of stabbed-ness. However, the narrative follows one of the ones in which you survived. If a Freezing Sphere then deals 40 damage to you, and you fail the save, that means that there was no way in which you could have avoided unconsiousness from a full-on hit from that spell, so you are now at -1, and dying.

Maybe I didn't present it as clearly as whoever wrote it. If anyone else remembers this, and knows where it was, could they quote it?

So how do cure spells work?

[Qwertystop]

So how do cure spells work?

Well, in the example above, the shortsword-stab dealt 5 damage. We know it hit, so that means that you didn't die, you were just injured. That's why your HP went down: You were less able to take the punishment of a further attack, for whatever reason (probably pain or physical damage). Healing spells fix whatever various injuries were making it harder to put up with further injury.

[lesser_minion]

So how do cure spells work?

No matter your model, hit points are lost as a way to acknowledge injuries when we've decided that it's a bad idea to have them actually impede the character. If the injury is cured, there's no need to acknowledge it further.

Although it's worth pointing out that the healing spells are hardly sensible in and of themselves -- a spell designed to cure "minor wounds" can be used to stop people bleeding to death, while a spell designed to cure "critical wounds" won't necessarily cure a broken nail.

IIRC, the probability of being killed by an attack depended on the maximum hitpoints -- the idea is that you take something close to the 'expected' result instead of just breaking out the percentile dice.

[NNescio]

Well, in the example above, the shortsword-stab dealt 5 damage. We know it hit, so that means that you didn't die, you were just injured. That's why your HP went down: You were less able to take the punishment of a further attack, for whatever reason (probably pain or physical damage). Healing spells fix whatever various injuries were making it harder to put up with further injury.

Let me rephrase that -- Why can the same cure spell heal a d4 Wizard from the brink of death while barely doing anything to fix the injuries of a raging Barbarian?


... a spell designed to cure "minor wounds" can be used to stop people bleeding to death, while a spell designed to cure "critical wounds" won't necessarily cure a broken nail.


That was my point. Why do different people heal at different rates? Doesn't that suggest that HP is something intrinsic in the characters themselves?

See, I prefer the Vis Vitae theory myself. HP= Life Force, and creatures with higher HP have more life energy to spare. Injury to the body, naturally, causes a loss in life energy. Creatures with more life energy (or unlife, as the case may be) require more positive energy (or negative) to be healed. These all interact nicely with various spells, especially necromancy effects that target these energies directly, as well as spells with effects that vary depending on hitdie.

Real-life anatomy be damned, of course. But this isn't exactly an alien concept in various real-life philosophies either. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism)

[Thurbane]

Hit Points are just one of those gamist concepts you just have to try and not think about too much, if you want to suspend disbelief. Trying to explain them as sheer ability to soak up hits, or alternatively as dodging or luck, don't really hold up under any kind of scrutiny.

It's a game mechanic, pure and simple. Some game systems dispense with this kind of mechanic altogether, but D&D isn't one of them...

[Qwertystop]

Let me rephrase that -- Why can the same cure spell heal a d4 Wizard from the brink of death while barely doing anything to fix the injuries of a raging Barbarian?

As I said, it heals the injuries. What is an incapacitating injury for the Wizard is not going to prevent the Barbarian from killing things, because the Barbarian is better at dealing with the pain and therefore needs to have much more physical damage before dying, while the not-physically-capable Wizard dies that much faster due to shock and pain.

[lesser_minion]

That was my point. Why do different people heal at different rates? Doesn't that suggest that HP is something intrinsic in the characters themselves?

No, why would it?

Remember, a spell designed to cure "minor wounds" can stop anyone bleeding to death -- in fact, it's the single thing it's best at. This is not a hallmark of a consistent and sensible element to the game system.

[No brains]

I once came up with some pseudo-scientific BS wherein 1hp represented the surplus metabolic energy created by a normal human in one day.

I thought of this because normally you heal 1hp a day at 1 HD with 10 con.

So the way I explain it for higher level stuff is that creatures with more hp have better metabolic reserves and processes. Barbarians work out like volcanoes every day of their lives, so in an alternate game universe, this seems plausible.

Also on the subject of bleeding wounds and D&D Human is not Homo Sapiens Sapiens, I figure that all forms of biology in D&D evolved in such a way as to specifically thwart bleed out. Think about the rules for cutting out of a stomach in Swallow Whole. In NIGH ON ANY GOD-DANGED THING EVER a ripped open abdominal cavity is incapacitatingly painful, likely to induce shock, and often flatly lethal. But every single creature adapted to eat living pointy things can thoughtlessly seal its ruptured major organ(s) with "...a muscular action...". What's to prevent this biological mechanism from applying to all forms of life in D&D? Maybe they all have built-in tourniquets in their circulatory systems...

[Qwertystop]

I once came up with some pseudo-scientific BS wherein 1hp represented the surplus metabolic energy created by a normal human in one day.

I thought of this because normally you heal 1hp a day at 1 HD with 10 con.

So the way I explain it for higher level stuff is that creatures with more hp have better metabolic reserves and processes. Barbarians work out like volcanoes every day of their lives, so in an alternate game universe, this seems plausible.

Also on the subject of bleeding wounds and D&D Human is not Homo Sapiens Sapiens, I figure that all forms of biology in D&D evolved in such a way as to specifically thwart bleed out. Think about the rules for cutting out of a stomach in Swallow Whole. In NIGH ON ANY GOD-DANGED THING EVER a ripped open abdominal cavity is incapacitatingly painful, likely to induce shock, and often flatly lethal. But every single creature adapted to eat living pointy things can thoughtlessly seal its ruptured major organ(s) with "...a muscular action...". What's to prevent this biological mechanism from applying to all forms of life in D&D? Maybe they all have built-in tourniquets in their circulatory systems...
Wow... You know, that's possibly the most internally consistent, rule-supported answer here. At least that I've seen, but I admit I skimmed a bit, so don't feel angry if you think yours is moreso.

[VanBuren]

I think at least part of what it's supposed to represent is an adventurer learning, over time, how to minimize how much damage they take. So as HP increases, an adventurer learns how to make a blow glance off instead of hit directly, or to contort in a way to avoid getting hit in a vital location, or move just enough that it nicks them but causes nothing more than a shallow scratch.

Which is why melee classes have higher hit die; this sort of learning comes naturally to them as a result of fighting close all the friggin' time.

It's not a perfect approximation, but eh.

[No brains]

Wow... You know, that's possibly the most internally consistent, rule-supported answer here. At least that I've seen, but I admit I skimmed a bit, so don't feel angry if you think yours is moreso.

Oh wow, thanks! :smallbiggrin: While I'm pretty open to whatever explanation people may give, I made this up as the in-game explanation a genre-savvy scientist came to in my setting.

[I FORGOT, TWICE!] This can also explain the scaling of cure spells, as each level of cure can only replace so much metabolic integrity. What is enough of a pick-me-up for a commoner is just a drop in the coffeepot for a hero.

Ultimately, I don't care where it comes from, so long as it keeps me brawling spiders, I'm happy.:smalltongue:

[Morty]

I know it seems like I'm bending over backwards to defend hit points here, but if you're OK with a character having something like 30 or 40 hit points, but not with the same character having 100 or 120, then isn't that really a complaint about the game's power curve rather than the hit points themselves?

It's not mutually exclusive. I do dislike D&D's power curve. HP are just a particularily bad facet of it that breaks immersion heavily for me.

[etrpgb]

HP? Really? What about magic? Vestiges? Ridiculous walking speeds?

[No brains]

HP? Really? What about magic? Vestiges? Ridiculous walking speeds?

Wizard did it, Binder did it, and Monty Python did it.
Problem solved.:smallamused:

[NNescio]

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen dragon?

[Morty]

HP? Really? What about magic? Vestiges? Ridiculous walking speeds?

I'm not talking about realism, I'm talking about immersion. That's quite a difference. Hit points in D&D don't rub me the wrong way because they're impossible, they rub me the wrong way because they cause silly, anticlimatic situations and generally spoil the atmosphere by allowing PCs to withstand obscene amounts of punishment.

[etrpgb]

Wizard did it, Binder did it, and Monty Python did it.
Problem solved.:smallamused:

Come on! You could solve the whole thread solving the HP and you skipped it! :D

[Flickerdart]

anticlimatic situations
Evil Bad Guy: I am so evil!
Random Guy With a Crossbow: *thunk*.
Evil Bad Guy: On noes I am dead.

A lack of HP is just as anticlimactic as an overabundance.

[No brains]

Come on! You could solve the whole thread solving the HP and you skipped it! :D

Read my explanation above.

Credit goes to those guys for what they did, but HP...

[dons sunglasses] No brains did that.:smallcool:

[Silverlich]

Randomly add crap? Its not like I suggested that being attacked on the fifth tuesday of the month, or a government holiday, or if your wearing a red shirt makes you helpless. If your stunned, you can take no actions (not even free or purely mental actions), lose any dex bonus you had to AC, and take a further -2 AC. You can take no actions, and can not effectively defend yourself. That sounds like you would be at the mercy of your opponents to me. Your not as bad as you would be if you were fully helpless, but you are still in a bad position.


That explains EVERYTHING!!!