Hit Points - Why were they designed to be incoherent? [Archive]

harpy

2012-01-30, 11:24 AM

I've been mulling over the nature of hit points lately. One thing that keeps cropping up is the issue of their “incoherence.” That is, hit points are seen as both an abstract model, but also a “realistic” model (and I put those quotes around realistic for a reason, don't go there!). On the one hand hit points are supposed to represent a broad range of factors, including physical health, luck, skill, divine grace, etc. However when hit points have to be recovered naturally the recovery is at a rate that better represents bodily damage.

The incoherence began right from the start with Old D&D, however I'll skip over it because the game was still in an “accretion” state where game elements and assumptions were still forming. The references to hit points and there recovery are very brief and still assume some afterglow to miniature wargaming which is rife with deliberate abstraction. I'll also skip over Holmes Basic D&D because the language is terse to get a succinct rules package assembled.

It's when we get to Advanced D&D where Gygax has license and page count to go into a great deal of depth on what hit points represent and how they are recovered. It's here where the contradiction comes into high relief. He even tries to address it pretty head on in the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide, but the explanation doesn't seem to quite fit.

It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).

Already there is a problem here. Gygax pushes hard right at the beginning that hit points do not merely equate physical damage, and that as you gain levels the inflation of hit points means even less the capacity to absorb damage. Most of the hit points lean towards a sixth sense, luck, magic and divine protection. However, in that last sentence the sixth sense and luck are collapsed into a corporeal notion of “fitness.” He's trying to make a distinction between physique and fitness, but both analogies are tied to the body and not the more abstract notions of luck, fate, divine providence, or even just plain skill to avoid being hit.

Harkening back to the example of Rasputin [Gygax had mentioned Rasputin having a Constitution of 18], it would be safe to assume that he could withstand physical damage sufficient to have killed any four normal men, i.e. more than 14 hit points. Therefore, let us assume that a character with an 18 constitution will eventually be able to withstand no less than 15 hit points of actual physical damage before being slain, and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character. The balance of accrued hit points are those which fall into the non-physical areas already detailed. Furthermore, these actual physical hit points would be spread across a large number of levels, starting from a base score of from an average of 3 to 4, going up to 6 to 8 at 2nd level, 9 to 1 1 at 3rd, 12 to 14 at 4th, 15 to 17 at 5th, 18 to 20 at 6th, and 21 to 23 at 7th level. Note that the above assumes the character is a fighter with an average of 3 hit points per die going to physical ability to withstand punishment and only 1 point of constitution bonus being likewise assigned. Beyond the basic physical damage sustained, hits scored upon a character do not actually do such an amount of physical damage.

Above Gygax goes into more depth of how hit points can be broken down conceptually with a character. There are the hit points you gain from the class, and there is also the hit points gained from Constitution. There is some assumption that character's simply become tougher over time through the level inflation of hit points. Adventurers become inured to the hostile life and gain a kind of pain tolerance or willpower that can hopefully see them through tough situations. And so if you were to slice hit points into different categories, the corporeal hit points that represent health, pain tolerance, willpower, etc. versus the incorporeal hit points that represent luck, magic, divine grace and the avoidance of damage through skill, what happens is that the minority of them are every the corporeal hit points.

Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.

Just as the first paragraph, this above paragraph seems fine until that last sentence. Once again we're given an explanation of how hit points function that seems to be at odds with itself. Gygax once again divides hit points into two broad categories, the physical hit points and the metaphysical hit points.

If one wanted a sense of verisimilitude in their game, then it makes sense that the physical hit points one has need a good deal of rest and recuperation if you were to lose them. If someone in real life gets stabbed by a sword it could take weeks, months, years or even permanent damage that can never be recovered. So in that regard long rest periods do make sense.

The incoherence comes from the metaphysical type of hit points needing the same amount of rest to be recovered. Why is luck, skill, divine favor or magic tied to the biological healing process? Why does a god only dribble out divine favor? Why is luck tied to tissue recover rates?

Today, unlike in the 1970s, one could make an argument that skill and general performance are impacted by things such as PTSD, so there is some overlap between wounds healing and a more ephemeral mental recovery, but the metaphysical is also pushed hard in the hit point explanation and it doesn't fit well together.

I've gotten ahead of myself a bit because we haven't looked at how hit point recovery happens in 1st edition. This is where the incoherence really hits hard because recovery rates are rather brutal, and the metaphysical elements are marginalized in specific ways.

For natural healing, true rest (no combat, spell casting, etc.) can be performed. A character gains 1 hit point per day in the first week. In the subsequent weeks they gain 1 hit point per day, plus their Constitution bonus per week. If a character rests continuously for 4 weeks they gain all of their hit points back regardless of the amount to be gained.

You can of course use magic to accelerate all of this. Spells, points, and other magic items will give you hit points at a much more accelerated rate. All of these magical effects are specifically defined as healing wounds.

However, that magic or divine grace is not as helpful you if you have gone to 0 hit points or less unless it is very powerful. The character is automatically in a coma for a bit even if they gain positive hit points, and more devastatingly, they simply can not function and must rest for a week, even if they were brought to maximum hit points. The only thing they can do is stumble out of the dungeon and find a bed to collapse into.

I'm walking through all of this because I just have to ask, why were hit points envisioned this way? Why stress the metaphysical when it came to absorbing damage, but when it came to recovery it was slanted towards the physical?

The alternative is seen today in a variety of mediums. Most video games today with a health bar, which is just hit points presented in a different manner, generally have some kind of auto regeneration effect.

Take your typical shooter today and how the health bar works is that if you take too much damage in a short period of time then you could die, but if you are able to duck, hide or generally pull yourself out of the line of fire you'll get your health back and can then rejoin the battle. This approach isn't realistic. If you get shot in real life you're pretty much shut down due to pain, bleeding and shock. However conceptually it emulates the metaphysical a bit more. In a sense you're not truly getting hit, instead you're getting grazed, or need to duck and your nerves are being overwhelmed, to the point where you finally do take an incapacitating hit.

Likewise, with 4th edition of D&D there is finally an introduction of a more explicit metaphysical statement of hit points through healing surges and second winds. Characters have the capacity to regain some of their hit points in a variety of ways, including just taking a breather for a moment to collect themselves. Anyone who plays a sport or has been in highly physical situations knows full well that your capacity to output energy has a limit, but that if you manage the pace of that expenditure it can be sustained over a long period of time. So 4th edition is trying to address the kind of ebb and flow of a person's performance in stressful situations through hit points.

So having some of those alternatives out there now, why weren't these ideas being used or considered back in the 1970s? Why wasn't there a “second wind” or say after five minutes of rest you'd regain half of your hit points, or any other metric where at least a portion of the metaphysical hit points could quickly come back to a character?

Lapak

2012-01-30, 11:46 AM

The incoherence comes from the metaphysical type of hit points needing the same amount of rest to be recovered. Why is luck, skill, divine favor or magic tied to the biological healing process? Why does a god only dribble out divine favor? Why is luck tied to tissue recover rates?The simple answer is why not? We've all heard the concept of 'pushing your luck,' of 'tempting the fates,' and so on. The idea that metaphysical luck (as opposed to mechanical chance) is not a bottomless well, but rather is something that a person can run out of, has always been with us. Likewise the idea that divine protection can only be pushed so far before a god grows weary of assuming he'll always save your bacon and lets you die. Assuming that it takes some time to rebuild the favor of Heaven / ease off on the risk-taking a bit makes sense - and since the exact physical/metaphysical split is never spelled out the healing rate doesn't try to divide it up either, just rule-of-thumbs it right alongside the physical damage.

You can of course use magic to accelerate all of this. Spells, points, and other magic items will give you hit points at a much more accelerated rate. All of these magical effects are specifically defined as healing wounds.Well, they all do heal wounds (and the game's handling of poisoned attacks and so on indicates that even 1 hit point damage does include some level of physical injury, however minor) but they're also pretty much exclusively the domain of divine magic in AD&D which makes the idea that they bolster your metaphysical standing perfectly sensible as well.

However, that magic or divine grace is not as helpful you if you have gone to 0 hit points or less unless it is very powerful. The character is automatically in a coma for a bit even if they gain positive hit points, and more devastatingly, they simply can not function and must rest for a week, even if they were brought to maximum hit points. The only thing they can do is stumble out of the dungeon and find a bed to collapse into. Once you hit 0, you've burned through ALL of your metaphysical protection as well as your physical toughness; you've broken the bank and suffered an actual debilitating injury. Note that being at 1 hit point doesn't hurt your combat effectiveness at all. Passing 0 signifies the point where your skill and luck and meatiness have given way and you've let an opponent do you serious harm. The other injuries were minor cuts and nasty bruises, but the one that takes you below 0 has gotten past your defenses: that's the sword that runs you through or the mace that concusses you and leaves you senseless or the lightning bolt that hit you full on and left you smoking on the ground. It's an entirely different class of injury, the kind that sends you to the ER with bad odds for survival, and no matter how divinely favored you are it leaves you incapacitated. Healing magic can knit your tissues together and restore your stock with whatever divinity watches over you, but your body and mind have been at the edge of death and are left weakened by the experience.

I'm walking through all of this because I just have to ask, why were hit points envisioned this way? Why stress the metaphysical when it came to absorbing damage, but when it came to recovery it was slanted towards the physical? I think my answer sums up to "it's not," if you think of Luck and Divine Favor as resources that can be expended and take time to regenerate and consider 0 hit points as literally being at Death's Door.

Now, as for the mechanical end...

So having some of those alternatives out there now, why weren't these ideas being used or considered back in the 1970s? Why wasn't there a “second wind” or say after five minutes of rest you'd regain half of your hit points, or any other metric where at least a portion of the metaphysical hit points could quickly come back to a character?Early D&D was a combat-centric game, yes, but it was also an exploration game with resource management as a critical element. The tracking of torches, food, and water; the hiring and maintenance of hirelings; the rules about overland travel and exploring uncharted areas were all there in support of this. Both the hit point mechanic and Vancian casting are right there in the same school, and the game made deciding when to turn back a critical aspect of play. The lack of easy escape options meant you had to plan ahead - teleports were risky, and wandering monsters meant that you couldn't just assume that the path home was cleared, so you had to head back home while you still had the resources to survive the trip. In other words, it was a deliberate design decision to make hit points difficult to recover once lost.

EDIT: I should also add that yes, obviously, game design was by definition not as far advanced then as now. We've had 40 years of experience with these systems now to see what makes for a fun experience for more people, and hundreds of possible permutations have been tried in that time to see what works. The first people to put together such a system did not have the benefit of experience.

Jay R

2012-01-30, 12:44 PM

Hit points aren't incoherent; they are simple, clear, easy to use, and inaccurate as a simulation. Any explanation that attempts to portray them as an accurate simulation must therefore be incoherent.

Hit points as used in the game mechanics were designed as a simulation simple enough to actually use. Hit points as explained in the text were attempts to handwave the fact that damage cannot be easily simulated, and that hit points are a poor way to do it. Also, most people don't want their character to have a high chance of dying each time the character is hit with any weapon at all, as is the case with real weapons. (It's not a weapon unless it can end the fight with a single blow, against anybody.)

All attempts to create a realistic description of battle damage have gotten bogged down in too much detail. When Chivalry and Sorcery first came out, everybody marveled at its realism, dividing damage into Fatigue an Body, which were treated differently. It was the most lush, complete, realistic, and beautiful unplayable mess I've ever seen.

Mustard

2012-01-30, 01:15 PM

This has always confused me as well. I think Mr. Gygax had a clear concept, but must have had difficulty explaining it simply yet in enough detail. Or maybe he wanted contradiction - I can't pretend to know his goals.

So, ignoring all that text, I like to consider a dramatic battle, as in television or books, as an example. This is basically the usual description I've seen of what HP represent, but with the context of a dramatic battle, just to sort of cement the concept a little. Otherwise, you might think of a regular fight, with maybe a couple blows, which are parried, and one single hit kills, then onto the next foe. Anyway, on to the description.

Two foes face off, attacking fiercely, each one seemingly equally skilled. Then, one gets past the other's defenses, or one makes a mistake, and the result is a strike gets through. It's a dramatic battle, so it's not an immediate killing blow, but damage has been done - pain at minimum (though not necessary, I prefer interpreting it that way), but no actual bleeding in most cases. Examples: the blow was parried, but a follow-up kick got through; glancing blow that left a shallow cut; strike using the pommel rather than the blade (hey, you take what you can get, right?). Basically, whatever happens, the victim feels pain, and if a few more of these minor strikes get through, it won't be good. Eventually, one combatant will wear down the other, and get a killing blow. The pain, damaged muscles/ligaments/tendons, etc., becomes just too much to cope with to fight on, the loser is now less able to fight, and a killing blow is now possible. Alternatively, and I think I like this one better now that I think about it: it's not a killing blow, but enough to overwhelm the body and send it into shock.

This interpretation of the abstraction holds up against most of the various effects of HP I can think of, but it will likely break down to something I failed to consider. More levels means more combat experience, and thus maybe you can ignore lesser wounds with ease. Experience in physical combat also means more pain tolerance, stronger bones, and rolling with the blows to lessen damage. Overnight rest heals the small wounds like torn muscle fibers from overexertion, shallow cuts. Arguably, you'd feel even worse the next day, but be much better the day after, but I'm willing to let that one slide. Then, getting knocked into negatives is the singular mortal wound, though, not necessarily so (as I realized in my last sentence of the previous paragraph). Healing magic heals the worst of the damage first. Poisons... er, I can't really help there. It's not perfect, but it's how I figured this out for myself to explain how weird HP seemed. No metaphysics or divine intervention required.

Then one has to think like Jay R says: it's a simulation, but not an accurate one. Or, to follow the MST3K mantra adapted for gaming: just repeat to yourself, "it's just a game, I should really just relax." But if you want some sort of bridge between abstraction and "reality", so you know what to picture in your head, or describe as the battle takes place, the dramatic battle explanation is just the thing.

TheHarshax

2012-01-30, 01:57 PM

I think there should be an award for Gygaxian Verbosity.
I nominate Harpy.

Seems clear that Gygax was struggling with a new concept, and tackling it through his experiences, using a lexicon that was still emerging from its wargaming womb.

I think a parallel can be drawn between the works of Immanuel Kant and Robert Persig Jr.

You have Kant, devoting countless hours and hundreds of pages in the twilight of the 18th century to quantifying this new concept called moral philosophy.

Then 180 years later, Robert Persig comes along and writes a succint refutement of moral philosophy, and does so in a much slimmer, more entertaining, and often tangental novel called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Thankfully, it didn't take 200 years to see that the 'Hit Point' is still an evolving definition. Today, there are game designers that interpret 'Hit Points' simply as currency for being allowed to act.

Take for example, Dying Earth or Hero Quest by Robin Laws. In those games, there are clearly 'Hit Points', but they don't specifically refer to physical injuries. You can lose them in an argument, mountain climbing, combat, spirt journey, what have you. While you don't die from losing an argument, the results are the same: you can lose, you can be defeated, you can no longer act.

kaomera

2012-01-30, 07:30 PM

Hit points aren't incoherent; they are simple, clear, easy to use, and inaccurate as a simulation. Any explanation that attempts to portray them as an accurate simulation must therefore be incoherent.
This. I don't see that hit points' ''recovery is at a rate that better represents bodily damage'', or that they in any way come anywhere close to attempting to represent anything other than a very, very abstract concept. The only place there is any issue is terminology - ''to-hit'', ''damage'', and ''wounds'' (as in: cure X wounds) are all problematic, as none of them actually mean exactly what it seems they should from a casual read.

Prime32

2012-02-01, 07:01 PM

Take your typical shooter today and how the health bar works is that if you take too much damage in a short period of time then you could die, but if you are able to duck, hide or generally pull yourself out of the line of fire you'll get your health back and can then rejoin the battle. This approach isn't realistic. If you get shot in real life you're pretty much shut down due to pain, bleeding and shock. However conceptually it emulates the metaphysical a bit more. In a sense you're not truly getting hit, instead you're getting grazed, or need to duck and your nerves are being overwhelmed, to the point where you finally do take an incapacitating hit.Well those are derived from Halo, where damage disrupted your energy shield first.

Similarly, going with the DBZ explanation covers hit points nicely. The more skilled you are, the more spiritual energy you build up in your body. When you're hit, some of that energy is expended to protect you from the blow. Attacks which deal Con damage bypass this protection to hit you directly. Healing spells just infuse you with more ki, and can't do anything about "real" injuries.
Vitality and Wound Points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) covers this better though (including letting crits damage you directly).

Manateee

2012-02-01, 07:31 PM

I keep thinking the OP is satire of something, but I can't figure out what.

CarpeGuitarrem

2012-02-01, 09:51 PM

Jay R

2012-02-02, 12:14 AM

You know, I keep seeing HP justified as "divine favor", "luck", and "plot armor", but I have just one question, a simple question, that I think also summarizes the OP's point very handily:

"Why Constitution?" What makes a tough character any luckier, more divinely favored, or more dramatically protected than an un-tough character? If HP is plot armor, why do beefy characters have more of it?

If people want to justify hit points by redefining it, they certainly can, but to be consistent, they have to redefine everything connected to it as well. Hits aren't damage, they're plot reversals, healing isn't healing; it's renewed luck. And Constitution isn't constitution; it's karma.

mcv

2012-02-02, 05:51 AM

Hitpoints just don't make sense. Gygax's description of what they represent is not an explanation of how they work, it's a justification after the fact. And it's a lousy justification.

Realism, or even plausibility, has no place in the D&D system. Hitpoints are designed to be an easy and predictable way to measure how long you can fight until you can die.

Any realistic damage system would mean that any blow has at least a tiny chance to instantly kill even the biggest hero. If you want it more epic, any well-placed blow should be able to seriously inconvenience the biggest hero. In real life, people have taken a bullet to the head and lived, or a bullet to the foot and died. But also, any meaningful wound will take ages to heal, whereas a 1st level D&D character can heal life-threatening wounds in a few days with no special care.

D&D was never designed to be realistic. It was designed to be easy and predictable. Players shouldn't be taken out of the fight with the first damage, but they should be able to see death coming from a mile away, so they have the chance to choose to stop fighting before they die.

Unfortunately D&D 3.5 is far from easy, and with incapacitating spells, it's not terribly predictable either, but hit points are probably the easiest part of D&D, and apparently nobody though it'd be worth the trouble to change how they worked. For D&D at least. I think d20 modern replaced them, but I have no experience with that.

Killer Angel

2012-02-02, 05:57 AM

Realism, or even plausibility, has no place in the D&D system. Hitpoints are designed to be an easy and predictable way to measure how long you can fight until you can die.

See? the answer was easy.
If you explain HP in a different way, trying to justify the concept in a sort of realistic way, you're doomed to fail.

Saph

2012-02-02, 11:40 AM

CarpeGuitarrem

2012-02-02, 11:56 AM

I've never quite understood why people have trouble with hit points.

Hit points represent physical health. Your base number of Hit points represents how tough you are. If you lose hit points it means you've been injured. If you gain hit points it means you've been healed.

Now you can define hit points in a bunch of other ways, but the simple and straightforward idea that HP = health and loss of HP = damage is much much easier and it's by far the most consistent way to understand it.

I've taught the rules of RPGs to more players than I can count and I honestly don't think I've ever had one get confused when I explained it to them that way.
The main trouble I have with hitpoints is the conclusions which then stem from it. If hitpoints represent physical health...

Why does only the last hitpoint matter? Why can you keep functioning at full capacity, and not have to worry about the lethality of any attacks that won't take out your remaining health?

Why do you keep getting more and more health per level? Why are you able to jump from ridiculous heights, as any class, and survive a fall at high levels?

Why is the only way to die a gradual wearing-down of HP? Why can't every blow be potentially lethal? Rogues required a rules-based workaround (adding sneak attack) to represent the fact that their d4 dagger could potentially one-shot an enemy under the proper circumstances. That, to me, says that the physics of the game are flawed.

D&D simultaneously says "hitpoints represent physical health" and "hitpoints are a dramatic pacing mechanism for fights"; it says one of them literally, and it implies the other one in the structure of the game. That's my problem with hitpoints.

Lapak

2012-02-02, 11:58 AM

I've never quite understood why people have trouble with hit points.

Hit points represent physical health. Your base number of Hit points represents how tough you are. If you lose hit points it means you've been injured. If you gain hit points it means you've been healed.

Now you can define hit points in a bunch of other ways, but the simple and straightforward idea that HP = health and loss of HP = damage is much much easier and it's by far the most consistent way to understand it.

I've taught the rules of RPGs to more players than I can count and I honestly don't think I've ever had one get confused when I explained it to them that way.Aside from the fact that they explicitly weren't intended to be read as purely physical health from the beginning according to the people who created them? Reading them as pure meat-toughness means that when a 10th-level barbarian takes a x3 max-damage greataxe critical from a stronger-than-human opponent - which you can't really interpret as anything but 'hit directly as hard as it is possible to do with a giant sharp chunk of metal' if you're reading HP as purely physical - and it doesn't put him down, you have to somehow reconcile the mental image of a human being walking away from such a blow with your suspension of disbelief. And for some (a lot?) of people, that just isn't going to work.

mcv

2012-02-02, 12:06 PM

Saph

2012-02-02, 12:06 PM

The main trouble I have with hitpoints is the conclusions which then stem from it. If hitpoints represent physical health...

Why does only the last hitpoint matter? Why can you keep functioning at full capacity, and not have to worry about the lethality of any attacks that won't take out your remaining health?

Because keeping track of graduated wound penalties is too much work for too little return. D&D isn't designed to be heavily realistic and this is one area where realism gets sacrificed for fast gameplay.

Why are you able to jump from ridiculous heights, as any class, and survive a fall at high levels?

Because you really are just that tough. A 10th-level fighter/barbarian isn't some random guy with a sword, he's freaking Conan. He can take inhuman levels of punishment before going down.

Why is the only way to die a gradual wearing-down of HP? Why can't every blow be potentially lethal?

At lower levels and against really deadly opponents, one blow can be lethal. A 1st-level character can be taken out by a single critical hit, and a dragon can shred equivalent-level characters in a single round.

A higher-level character getting attacked by lower-level ones, though . . . well, as mentioned, he's just that tough. Sticking a dagger in him only annoys him.

Reading them as pure meat-toughness means that when a 10th-level barbarian takes a x3 max-damage greataxe critical from a stronger-than-human opponent - which you can't really interpret as anything but 'hit directly as hard as it is possible to do with a giant sharp chunk of metal' if you're reading HP as purely physical - and it doesn't put him down, you have to somehow reconcile the mental image of a human being walking away from such a blow with your suspension of disbelief.

A 10th-level druid can turn into a giant bear and is immune to poison. A 10th-level monk can break multiple Olympic records per minute. A 10th-level wizard treats the laws of physics as loose guidelines to be followed when convenient.

If you can accept all that, is it really that hard to believe that a 10th-level barbarian can eat a critical hit from a giant and survive it?

10th-level characters are not human. They're superhuman.

So how do you explain why starting adventurers heal much quicker from the brink of death back to full health than very experienced adventurers?

Which system are you talking about here?

TheHarshax

2012-02-02, 12:14 PM

I think anyone taking this thread seriously is being rickrolled.

Aotrs Commander

2012-02-02, 12:15 PM

The main reason hit points are used is simply, it's less complex than the alternative.

Rolemaster has hit, specifically "concussion hits" which are a combination of pain, physical damage and bleeding. However, it's rare that hit point loss kills you in Rolemaster - it's the criticals. And crits cover things like bone, muscle (and organ) damage, as well as shock (stun, and bing forced to parry) and penalties to attack. Of course, this means you ALSO have have a correspondingly complex HEALING system.

D&D's hit points are an abstract. You can treat them as being pure physical damage (and people being THAT HARD) or as a more abtract combination of that plus combat fatigue, luck etc etc (and each occurance of hit point loss can be interpreted differently). The long and the short of it is, it's the simplest way of looking at it.

Though, the Vitality/Wound point system has a certain charm to it as well - though that also falls towards the Rolemaster problem of making things a bit more rocket tag (or where a single lucky hit can end your dramatic combat right out of the gate.)

lesser_minion

2012-02-02, 12:39 PM

"Why Constitution?" What makes a tough character any luckier, more divinely favored, or more dramatically protected than an un-tough character? If HP is plot armor, why do beefy characters have more of it?

Because there's more than one factor in play. Normally, you don't try to justify everything about hit points as being down to luck, you only do so for the bonus hit points you get each time you gain a level.

This is the reason why 3rd edition also lets you recover hit points faster if you're higher level -- a higher-level character has suffered fewer injuries for a given number of hit points worth of damage than a lower level character.

And as for why hit points are used, it's because their gameplay properties are useful. Allowing an injured character to make a comeback is desirable, both for dramatic purposes and because it lessens the "sudden death" element of what might be a more realistic system. At the same time, if you don't restrict the ability of an injured character to make a comeback, or if you use some sort of tug-of-war system, you run the risk of an extended stalemate.

erikun

2012-02-02, 12:40 PM

Once upon a time, there were wargames. And in these wargames, units pretty much ran around and one-shotted each other. After awhile, someone wanted to create unusually tough or epic units, but had trouble dealing with them dropping in a single hit like everyone else. Hence, the idea of hit points.

Hit points were, at the most basic level, how many times a unit could stand being hit before dying. They could represent luck, armor, unit size, or any number of things. The point was, however, that they made the unit unique or special. They could get through stuff that would kill normal units, and keep on fighting.

I make no claim that this is an accurate view of how it worked, but you get where the concept of a "hit point" came from at least.

When D&D came around, they decided to use those hit points as a measure of a character's survivability. No doubt wanting to make the numbers more random and impressive, they switched them from individual numbers to dice rolls. That is, rather than a hit dealing 1HP damage and strong units having between 3HP and 6HP, one hit might deal 1d6 HP damage and characters could have 3d6 HP or 6d6 HP. It also allowed some granularity, with the difference between 1d4 and 1d6 and 1d8 making some difference. That, for the most part, made sense.

The problem came up with levels. A first-level character could have 1d6 HP, while a twentieth-level character could have 20d6 HP (or equilivant). Does this mean that a 20th level character is twenty times as lucky as a 1st level character? For the system, yes it did. Of course, later editions just made the problem even worse; 3rd edition, with their large CON bonus every level, meant that a character could literally ignore swords stabbing them through pure healthy constitution.

However, in that last sentence the sixth sense and luck are collapsed into a corporeal notion of “fitness.” He's trying to make a distinction between physique and fitness, but both analogies are tied to the body and not the more abstract notions of luck, fate, divine providence, or even just plain skill to avoid being hit.
You are misunderstanding the definition of the word fitness (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fitness). Fitness means being fit for a specific role, task, or environment. In other words, it means suitibality or capability. Fitness can mean health, but it doesn't need to be. For example, if we are talking about a computer programming job, the fittest individual would be someone who is familiar with programming computers, knows the specific languange, and enjoys doing it. Their general health has nothing to do with it. The fittest item for driving in a nail would be a hammer, not the arm of a bodybuilder.

In this case, the fitness of an individual exploring a dungeon is how well they can avoid the harmful effects of the dungeon. Therefore, being unusually lucky, protected by the gods, or whatever else would make them far more fit than an exceptionally healthy indivdual who just has no luck stumbling into traps or getting snacked on by dragons.

Just as the first paragraph, this above paragraph seems fine until that last sentence. Once again we're given an explanation of how hit points function that seems to be at odds with itself.
Not really. Have you even heard the phrase "don't test your luck"? You cannot assume you luck, reflexes, or divine grace will suddenly pop back to full strength after only a few hours of rest, especially if your body is still recovering from the effects of battle.

I'm walking through all of this because I just have to ask, why were hit points envisioned this way? Why stress the metaphysical when it came to absorbing damage, but when it came to recovery it was slanted towards the physical?
What makes you say that? In your recovery description, someone resting a month regains their full metaphysical stock of hit points automatically. How is this "slanted towards the physical"?

What's more, why do you say recovery is even physical? Is not taking a break from combat and adventuring just as much of a mental, spiritual, and metaphysical rest?

So having some of those alternatives out there now, why weren't these ideas being used or considered back in the 1970s? Why wasn't there a “second wind” or say after five minutes of rest you'd regain half of your hit points, or any other metric where at least a portion of the metaphysical hit points could quickly come back to a character?
So you are asking why, in 1970, people were not using concepts popular in 2010 media? :smallconfused:

And to answer your question a bit better: Because there was a different concept of fantasy. Back then, a fifty-foot dragon was assumed to be something that could swallow a person whole, no matter what their skill or luck. You were a small fish in a big pond, and you mostly needed to rely on your wits and guile to stay alive in a dangerous world. Today, everyone is the Big Hero. They're supposed to be Superman, able to shrug off swords and bullets and plow their way through to their objective through sheer grit.

In other words, you're seeing a genre shift. 1970 RPG heroes were the regular guys who through chance and luck accomplished greater things. 2010 RPG heroes are the super guys who through strength-of-arm and resilience accomplish great things. Neither one is really better, but if your question really is, "Why don't 70's RPGs play like those today?" then you have your answer.

Lapak

2012-02-02, 01:13 PM

A 10th-level druid can turn into a giant bear and is immune to poison. A 10th-level monk can break multiple Olympic records per minute. A 10th-level wizard treats the laws of physics as loose guidelines to be followed when convenient.

If you can accept all that, is it really that hard to believe that a 10th-level barbarian can eat a critical hit from a giant and survive it? Yes. The others I can easily see in my mind's eye, given the rules of the world that have been presented to me. They do not break my suspension of disbelief, because I've been given a framework in which to understand them.

There is no framework provided that allows me to envision a human-shaped figure made of flesh and bone that can take a full-strength direct hit from a greatsword sized for a 14' tall giant without getting cut in half. The only frameworks that I can make up for myself that allow this to be possible would make that same person quite literally immune to any smaller arms - the difference in sheer force between a human-scale handaxe and a giant-scale greatsword are just that different - yet the 10th level barbarian can be taken down with repeated strikes from a much smaller weapon. It does not process in my head.

Assuming that hit points aren't pure toughness allows me to picture that exchange as a hit that SHOULD have been devastating but wasn't, due to a combination of skill and luck and other factors. That's way, way easier to work with that assuming his very flesh and bone are made of impossibly dense material that somehow is still vulnerable to lesser blows.

10th-level characters are not human. They're superhuman. Superhuman, yes; Superman, no. You'd have to be Superman to take the kind of hit we're talking about full-on, and Superman isn't going down to any number of thugs armed with lead pipes - but that's what hit points would be describing if they were pure physical ruggedness.

I completely understand if it works better in your imagination than mine, but for me it just flat-out won't leave me happy.

viking vince

2012-02-04, 07:55 AM

If you want 'realisitic', play GURPS. You can die most any time in that game.

Hit points are a great mechanic in ADnD.

paddyfool

2012-02-04, 08:06 AM

Grac

2012-02-05, 08:28 PM

"it's just a game, I should really just relax."
I saw the OP and thought this. I decided to skim the comments to see how long it would be until someone said it, so I could quote it. It is a game. Accept the limitations of the simulation and have fun stealing coin from dragons.

mcv

2012-02-06, 02:00 AM

And if you want 'coherent', but 'akin to D&D', play Fantasy Craft. This splits hit points into two parts:
- Wounds: limited to your Con score, slow to replace, doesn't increase by level, only with increases in Con, feats etc.; represents the character's ability to actually take serious damage. Generally damage is only sustained to wounds with critical hits or when vitality is exhausted.
- Vitality: varies based on class, increases as a multiple of level, very easy to replace, e.g. free with a cantrip between scenes (the FC equivalent of encounters), and operates as a kind of ablative armour, representing the character's ability to ignore or avoid minor damage.

This sounds incredibly suitable to D&D. In 4e, healing surges were introduced to make quick healing between scenes easier, and lots of people complained about that mechanism. Distinguishing between a cheap, easy, quick-healing buffer (which could represent luck, experience, fitness, etc to soak up most of the damage before we start on the serious injuries, might be exactly what D&D needs. Someone should tell Monte Cook.

Cronos988

2012-02-06, 03:29 AM

But how does metaphysical luck explain why a Greataxe deals 1d12 damage, or a Dagger 1d4? Does evading a greataxe blow take more luck? How do you survive an AOE Fireball?

The only real explanation would be some kind of divine shield that absorbs a certain amount of force before it fails.

Arx

2012-02-06, 04:18 AM

This sounds incredibly suitable to D&D. In 4e, healing surges were introduced to make quick healing between scenes easier, and lots of people complained about that mechanism. Distinguishing between a cheap, easy, quick-healing buffer (which could represent luck, experience, fitness, etc to soak up most of the damage before we start on the serious injuries, might be exactly what D&D needs. Someone should tell Monte Cook.

I see what you did there...

For those who haven't read The Book of Experimental Might, HP is divided into "Health" and "Grace." Health is explicitly the portion of HP based on Constitution, whereas Grace is the portion derived from Class. Grace is lost before Health, and also heals at a rate of 1 grace per minute of rest. Health is regained at the normal healing rate.

paddyfool

2012-02-06, 05:54 AM

Someone should tell Monte Cook.

Heh. The actual lineage of the vitality/wound point system goes more like this:

Star Wars d20 system (2000) -> Spycraft 1.0 (2002) -> Spycraft 2.0 (2005) -> Fantasy Craft (2009).

Since The Book of Experimental Might came out later in 2009, Monte Cook would likely have decided to apply this to fantasy roleplaying independently from FC, but it doesn't seem unlikely that he might also have drawn inspiration from Spycraft or Star Wars d20.

Matthew

2012-02-08, 12:50 AM

busterswd

2012-02-08, 01:11 AM

Hit points are whatever you want them to be, whatever you can get along with and not worry too much about. Mainly, they are an "abstraction" and lots of people seem to have trouble with that idea [i.e. a simplification of something potentially complex and detailed into a more vague, ambiguous or undefined form]. The only thing they do in D&D is measure the distance between "up and fighting" and "down and out".

This. Whatever way you imagine hit points, the only number that really matters is 0; that's the last blow that for whatever reason drops that character to their knees, for a reason mental, physical, or otherwise. What happens from 100% to 1% is all completely inconsistent.

Also, realism oftentimes doesn't translate to a better game. Designing a realistic damage system would involve a lot more complication in rules to an already complicated game.

I'm walking through all of this because I just have to ask, why were hit points envisioned this way? Why stress the metaphysical when it came to absorbing damage, but when it came to recovery it was slanted towards the physical?

In a nutshell, game design centered around teamwork. Why include a healer if healing is easy to do? Why have a tank if everyone has superhuman ability to withstand harm? This was an early way to create niches for different roles other than "I shoot the bad guys."

It also introduces resource management without making the system incredibly restrictive. You don't keel over from 1 hit in fights, and as long as your buddy can heal you up, you can keep trekking; you need to take care, however, that you don't run out of easy healing.

ZerglingOne

2012-02-08, 01:24 AM

Okay, so I like to think of boxers when I think of hit points. Boxers and other trained fighters can frequently take hits that would knock a normal person out. This comes from many factors. Of them are the ability to roll with and block punches which would indicate a higher dexterity and something called conditioning. Conditioning is literally the real world's version of gaining constitution or hit points. Boxers intentionally get hit by their trainers so they can learn to just deal with it better.

Fact: Getting hit a lot tires you out.

Blows continuously landing on you will wear you out very quickly. Your muscles will start to tire out because your body is sending blood and resources to where you've been hit instead of the muscles you're using to stay up and retaliate with. The more tired you get (hit points lost in this case,) the more your defenses begin to fail, thus one really good hit at low hit points will lower you to 0 or lower thus ending the fight.

Given that no one has ever likely existed above level 5 or so in our world, it's not impossible to believe that hit points are a realistic form of damage indication.

Edit: I thought I would also throw in that recovering from a 5-10 round title fight takes days or even weeks to get back to 100%

Cronos988

2012-02-08, 03:04 AM

The main Problem I have with all these theories is that they do not interact well with armor class.

It would make sense to envision hitpoints as some kind of Stamina, but it makes significantly less sense that every hit that is absorbed by:
- your armor
- dodging
- parrying/blocking with your shield
does not count against you hitpoints, which seems to imply that only blows that you cannot dodge, fail to parry and that puncture your armor actually affect your HP, at which point it becomes hard to imagine that they do not represent bodily injuries.

If HP were Stamina, then even absorbed hits would cost stamina, but unabsorbed hits would kill you.

Cronos988

2012-02-08, 03:05 AM

paddyfool

2012-02-08, 05:42 AM

I'm not convinced by that argument. An armoured opponent is going to have to spend a lot less effort on not getting hurt, because they can count on their armour to take various hits they'd otherwise have to work hard to avoid. (On the whole, the issue with armour in D&D is that it doesn't help enough to be reasonable, but that's another matter).

viking vince

2012-02-08, 10:54 AM

It would make sense to envision hitpoints as some kind of Stamina, but it makes significantly less sense that every hit that is absorbed by:
- your armor
- dodging
- parrying/blocking with your shield
does not count against you hitpoints, which seems to imply that only blows that you cannot dodge, fail to parry and that puncture your armor actually affect your HP, at which point it becomes hard to imagine that they do not represent bodily injuries.

Maybe they do. Perhaps, since this just simulated anyway, some HP loss is actually represents getting tired from blocking or otherwise actually avoiding blows.

You really are overthinking this.

Jay R

2012-02-08, 11:30 AM

All attempts to explain hit points are rooted in the same fallacy - that there is any logic there to explain. It is a simple game mechanic that is unrealistic, but allows the game to go on.

Whatever explanation you come up with is your own invention, not how hit points were designed. And whatever explanation you find in the rules was an afterthought by the author, not how he actually designed the game.

kaomera

2012-02-08, 04:05 PM

Hit points are a kind of inverse victory points. If we instead substituted ''WIN'', and had characters score WIN each time they hit, instead of subtracting hit points each time they are hit, then things get a lot more complicated, so it's a useful abstraction (although a WIN-based system would be interesting to explore, imo).

Personally I feel like before you can even really start to talk meaningfully about RPG mechanics making real sense from a fluff perspective you have to go so much further than any RPG so far really has, and so far beyond any reasonable limits of playability, that I find the best that I can hope for is that I can describe the abstracted results of those mechanics in a reasonable way.

DigoDragon

2012-02-09, 09:30 AM

If you want 'realisitic', play GURPS. You can die most any time in that game.

Also, Shadowrun. :smalleek:

Yes, it is a more realistic "HP" system, but I personally don't feel satisfied when my long-time experienced war soldier can be put down by a single bullet just as easily as an inexperienced white-collar worker on their first day. The game plays VERY differently. Challenges don't ramp up much in scope because you don't gain that resilience to damage necessary to take on larger challenges like Titans and elder dragons.

Not that I have a problem with GURPS or shadowrun. They can be cool systems.
But for me, they don't have the same memoriable encounters like that elder dragon. :smallsmile:

Tyndmyr

2012-02-09, 12:05 PM

Here's why...

HP are an easy mechanic. Very intuitive, newbies understand it in short order. This is great. Newbies also tend to understand it as pure physical damage, though, because this is also intuitive.

But...people don't want to design a game where after a moderate fight, you spend a month in bed rest to recover from your wounds. 'cause that game would not be as much fun for many.

So...they BS it. Nobody is willing to entirely get rid of some measure of hp = physical damage, because you can't very well die from low morale. That's a bit awkward and hard to accept. However, a certain level of handwaving is accepted by many, wherein some indeterminate amount of hp lost early on is not actually physical. The more you try to pin it down, the less sense it makes, but it's a justification for the unrealistic healing and the like.

Siosilvar

2012-02-12, 01:25 PM

Heh. The actual lineage of the vitality/wound point system goes more like this:

Star Wars d20 system (2000) -> Spycraft 1.0 (2002) -> Spycraft 2.0 (2005) -> Fantasy Craft (2009).

Since The Book of Experimental Might came out later in 2009, Monte Cook would likely have decided to apply this to fantasy roleplaying independently from FC, but it doesn't seem unlikely that he might also have drawn inspiration from Spycraft or Star Wars d20.

You're missing Unearthed Arcana (2004), which took the vitality/wound system wholesale and dropped it in as an optional rule for D&D.

paddyfool

2012-02-12, 02:51 PM

You're missing Unearthed Arcana (2004), which took the vitality/wound system wholesale and dropped it in as an optional rule for D&D.

Never noticed that before - interesting :)
It's a little less polished as an option than it is in FC, but then, the latter did come five years later and in that, Wounds/Vitality is the primary option.

Frozen_Feet

2012-02-12, 06:48 PM

This. Whatever way you imagine hit points, the only number that really matters is 0.

No it's not. I see this misconception crop up a lot, and hold the opinion that people who say it haven't played enough videogames. :smalltongue:

Seriously, the exact amount of HP you have affects many possible actions you could take - they're just not apparent from the number itself, you need to take surrounding circumstances into account.

For example: a Fighter is fighting numerically superior opposition in second-floor room where he slept. His only ways out are through the doorway and his opponents, or through the window. He has 20 HP. Crashing through the window and falling to the ground causes 18 points of damage. One slash from a dagger causes 4.

On his first turn, the Fighter is guaranteed to survive defenestration. However, one hit from a dagger later, and it'll no longer be an option. Reduction of HP limits his possible actions, dictating who he has to attack and where he has to go. (Any turn-based combat game with HP will also teach you this.)

This is not unlike a weary or wounded person have to watch his steps to prevent worse injuries, by the way. :smallwink:

As long as there are variable causes and values for damage, it's not one and the same what your HP is.

Knaight

2012-02-12, 07:25 PM

I saw the OP and thought this. I decided to skim the comments to see how long it would be until someone said it, so I could quote it. It is a game. Accept the limitations of the simulation and have fun stealing coin from dragons.

Because it is a game, it is above - or rather, below - criticism? Really? It seems to me that that attitude devalues games as a whole, and treats them as a less valid work than anything that wouldn't get that response. One doesn't hear "It's just a book, don't worry about how well it's written", or "It's just a painting, don't worry about how well it's painted", or even "It's just a symphony, don't worry about how well the musicians are playing, but "It's just a game, don't worry about how well it is designed" is just fine?

Regarding HP - I would add that there are HP systems where HP works just fine and isn't disassociated at all, and the issue seems to be more the vast increase in HP than anything else. GURPS uses HP, as does WR&M, which actually has a very D&D feel in many respects.

Aether

2012-02-13, 05:02 PM

TheOOB

2012-02-13, 11:21 PM

Always remember that D&D came from wargames, and in wargames each unit typically had a certain number of hit points before it died. They never had a more complex wound system because you'd be managing dozens of units. The hit point system just kinda moved over the D&D.

I always thought of hit points as "Conan Health". If you read any old Conan book, he gets injured a lot, and he rarely ends a fight without dozens of cuts bruises and stab wounds, and covered in blood, mostly his own. That said, he always fights at his all, right until the end. That's what I think hit points represent, the kind of heroic fantasy hero who always fights his best until the bitter end. If you want someone more gritty or realistic, don't play D&D, it's called "heroic fantasy" for a reason.

mcv

2012-02-14, 10:15 AM

Personally, I find reading these sorts of debates interesting and fun. Really, talking theory or poking holes in a game or story or book can be fun. You can create stories or justifications for missing things, try to explain plot holes or other strange events, and otherwise speak your mind.

So hearing somebody come into this thread with nothing more than a "It's just a game, you should really just relax" sounds kinda arrogant. I, for one, am having fun and feel like someone's being a party pooper.
It is possible to relax and still have an interesting discussion.

In any case, my position is that HP in D&D are completely unrealistic, but it's hardly the only aspect of the game that's unrealistic. If you really want realism, it's probably more productive to play a different system, though of course it is possible to patch D&D to make it somewhat more realistic. But a realistic D&D won't really feel like D&D anymore, because D&D has never been about realism. A little bit of lip service here and there perhaps, but mostly it's just a combat game.

I think the easiest way to make D&D make more sense, is to replace HP with Wounds/Vitality. But that probably does require changing a lot of spells.

Kerrin

2012-02-14, 10:42 AM

I always thought of hit points as "Conan Health". If you read any old Conan book, he gets injured a lot, and he rarely ends a fight without dozens of cuts bruises and stab wounds, and covered in blood, mostly his own. That said, he always fights at his all, right until the end. That's what I think hit points represent, the kind of heroic fantasy hero who always fights his best until the bitter end. If you want someone more gritty or realistic, don't play D&D, it's called "heroic fantasy" for a reason.
I like this description. It's concise, accurate, and thematic.

Thank you. I plan to use just such a descriptioon the next time I'm discussing hit points with someone.

kaomera

2012-02-14, 10:32 PM

So hearing somebody come into this thread with nothing more than a "It's just a game, you should really just relax" sounds kinda arrogant.
I don't see where anyone has done that in this thread - the only mention of "It's just a game, you should really just relax" was part of a much larger post. Forums are a great place to discuss this sort of thing, but at some point you end up actually playing the game, and IMO during play is not actually a great place to bring it up.

In any case, my position is that HP in D&D are completely unrealistic, but it's hardly the only aspect of the game that's unrealistic. If you really want realism, it's probably more productive to play a different system, though of course it is possible to patch D&D to make it somewhat more realistic.
See, personally, I've never seen this actually work. Hit points being an unrealistic system on a very basic level, by the time you start to even approach realism you aren't using hit points anymore, even under some other name / variation. Fortunately, realism isn't the real issue. Every player is going to have some ''button issues'' that are generally prevent them from enjoying the game. Ideally, you avoid those issues.

Now I think it can be really tempting not to actually avoid those issues. Particularly in online discussions there's a real urge to prove you're right, or at the very least to explain your position. The real problem comes up when this seeps into actual play. When you get players joining games with (apparently) the main goal of proving some point about how broken / wrong the system is, I think there's a serious issue...

Aether

2012-02-15, 08:46 PM

I don't see where anyone has done that in this thread - the only mention of "It's just a game, you should really just relax" was part of a much larger post. Forums are a great place to discuss this sort of thing, but at some point you end up actually playing the game, and IMO during play is not actually a great place to bring it up.

I saw the OP and thought this. I decided to skim the comments to see how long it would be until someone said it, so I could quote it. It is a game. Accept the limitations of the simulation and have fun stealing coin from dragons.

Much larger post? Not really. Mustard's post was long, but not Grac's.

It is possible to relax and still have an interesting discussion.

That's true; it shouldn't be a thing to get hotheaded over. But Grac sounded like he was saying to not think about it at all, and implying that it's not fun, and that you should just go have fun doing something else.

For me, discussing something, or reading discussions, are a fun and interesting pasttime.

Actually, I haven't gotten to play any pen and paper RPG for years, so discussion forums is pretty much the only way I've seen anything RPG-related. Yes, actual play would probably be better, but I don't have that option, so I'll take my fun when and where I can.

Lord_Gareth

2012-02-16, 01:33 PM

I still prefer my hit point system - every time you lose a hit point, you spray out a gallon of blood at high velocities. You don't take penalties until your last hit point because you still have blood in you at all, but once you hit negatives you instead fire off large, jagged chunks of cracked bones and organs.

....What?

Knaight

2012-02-16, 06:30 PM

Lord_Gareth

2012-02-16, 11:24 PM

Dungeons and Dragonballs, eh?

Pretty much, yeah. It's a funny way to play.

kyoryu

2012-02-17, 02:27 PM

If you want 'realisitic', play GURPS. You can die most any time in that game.

Ehhh, depends on the tech level. Fantasy, and even modern to a certain extent, you're far more likely to get knocked out than to die. The exception is a bad hit to the head.

But how does metaphysical luck explain why a Greataxe deals 1d12 damage, or a Dagger 1d4? Does evading a greataxe blow take more luck? How do you survive an AOE Fireball?

It's not a consistent resource. It means whatever it does at that time. Going from 60 to 56 doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as happened in going from 4 to 0. 60 to 56 probably means you dodged the attack, and maybe fell or something, or got a light bruise in some way or another. Maybe stretched a muscle, maybe just got a little more tired. 4 to 0 means you took a knife to the gut.

A greatsword does more damage than a dagger because:
1) A hit does more
2) Because of the fact that a hit does more, and it's a smaller weapon, you're less likely to have to really exert yourself to dodge it. Whereas a small maneuver will turn a knife hit into a graze, a small maneuver turns a greataxe THWAP into.... well, a greataxe THWAP.

Fireball? You're smarter about getting behind cover, your pain tolerance is increased, you know how to protect the important bits, you're just a bit better at seeing what's about to happen.

But yeah, some forms of damage just don't work well with hp. HP is a pretty good mechanic in a stand-up melee fight where victory is a combination of fatigue, actual physical damage, etc. HP tends to fall apart pretty horridly when dealing with things that are really "pure" physical damage.

A lot of old D&D stuff was more abstract than most people think it was. That's why armor works the way it does, rather than damage resistance. An attack didn't mean "I swing my sword." It meant - "I spend a minute trying to kill this guy, do I get a shot to make a blow that counts?"

The assumption was that a lot of swings happened in that minute, and a lot of incidental, glancing blows would occur. Armor as "harder to hit" meant that you had to be more patient to find a shot that would land in a way that would actually hurt the opponent - finding a weakness in their armor, or getting a shot open enough to really power the weapon through.

So...they BS it. Nobody is willing to entirely get rid of some measure of hp = physical damage, because you can't very well die from low morale. That's a bit awkward and hard to accept. However, a certain level of handwaving is accepted by many, wherein some indeterminate amount of hp lost early on is not actually physical. The more you try to pin it down, the less sense it makes, but it's a justification for the unrealistic healing and the like.

Yup. I went back to D&D when I finally just decided I didn't care about the inconsistencies any more.

SimperingToad

2012-02-17, 02:35 PM

I think this comment from Tim Kask over at Dragonsfoot pretty much sums it up for me.

It all had to do with the original concept of hit points and how combat was conducted. As designed, HP were a measure of how long you could avoid a fatal blow. Each time you lost HP, it was because of a good stroke, or hit, that did not kill you outright.

For those who don't know, Tim was the first editor of The Dragon, and worked with Gary on some of the OD&D supplements.

Straybow

2012-02-23, 05:23 AM

This. Whatever way you imagine hit points, the only number that really matters is 0...

No it's not. I see this misconception crop up a lot, and hold the opinion that people who say it haven't played enough videogames. :smalltongue:

Seriously, the exact amount of HP you have affects many possible actions you could take - they're just not apparent from the number itself, you need to take surrounding circumstances into account.

For example: a Fighter is fighting numerically superior opposition in second-floor room where he slept. His only ways out are through the doorway and his opponents, or through the window. He has 20 HP. Crashing through the window and falling to the ground causes 18 points of damage. One slash from a dagger causes 4.

On his first turn, the Fighter is guaranteed to survive defenestration. However, one hit from a dagger later, and it'll no longer be an option. Reduction of HP limits his possible actions, dictating who he has to attack and where he has to go. (Any turn-based combat game with HP will also teach you this.)

This is not unlike a weary or wounded person have to watch his steps to prevent worse injuries, by the way. :smallwink:

As long as there are variable causes and values for damage, it's not one and the same what your HP is. The injured person watching his step moves slower. Does Mr. Fighter's movement rate decrease after taking 18 points? Does his AC suffer, or his attack, if he's forced to move cautiously? In d20 he would if fatigued or exhausted, or suffering any of a dozen other specific conditions, but not if actually injured? It is one and the same no matter what his HP.

SimperingToad

2012-02-23, 09:24 AM

Straybow

2012-02-23, 02:35 PM

As has been already established, hit points are an abstraction, and more than just physical damage. A component of this abstraction is the representation of endurance. A character losing hit points is becoming increasingly fatigued to the point where he cannot adequately defend himself against that final blow which renders him unconscious, or worse. Why give him a double whammy by applying further penalties? Why effectively give an opponent an AC bonus due to some type of attack penalty? The character is already getting weaker.

Keeping a fatigue 'penalty' confined to hit points serves to weaken the character without giving any creature he is combatting an undeserved boost. Both sides in a conflict are already wearing out through their war of attrition. Adding a stream of modifiers, which in many cases would merely cancel each other out, really isn't necessary and will likely lead to longer combats. So, then, why don't you take hit points when fatigued due to non-combat events? Case 1) Mr. Fighter wakes up, does his calisthenics, eats a square breakfast, dawdles for half an hour while putting on his armor so as not to exert himself with a full tummy. Case 2) Mr. Fighter has been moving on foot over rough terrain with full kit and armor for hours. The sun is hot, he is hungry and thirsty.

In either case, should Mr. Fighter engage in combat he fights and has hit points exactly the same. If fatigue that leads to weakened defense is part of the hit point abstraction, then fatigue due to non-combat exertion should do hit point damage. Hunger and thirst should do hit point damage. Lack of sleep should do hit point damage. Anything that weakens defense in a fatigue-like way should do hit point damage.

Frozen_Feet

2012-02-23, 04:58 PM

The injured person watching his step moves slower. Does Mr. Fighter's movement rate decrease after taking 18 points? Does his AC suffer, or his attack, if he's forced to move cautiously? In d20 he would if fatigued or exhausted, or suffering any of a dozen other specific conditions, but not if actually injured? It is one and the same no matter what his HP.

Did you pay attention to my illustration? Okay, I'll give you two new ones:

Scenario #1

Here's a terrain our characters have to cross. "L" stands for Lava, "S" stands for stepping stone which is safe to to walk on. Each dip in Lava causes 1 point of damage. Diagonal movement is allowed, and is equivalent to horizontal and vertical.

LLLLL
LSLLS
LLLLL
SLLLS
LSLLL

Anyone with 6 or more hitpoints could just run right across, and survive. However, anyone with 5 or less HP has to plan their path. The minimum amount of damage you need to take to get to the other side is 2, so anyone with 2 or less HP can't get over. But death is not the only bad thing that can happen - a character with 2 HP can try to get over, and even get one square away from the other side - but they'll be stranded, unable to either get to their goal or return to where they started!

Scenario #2

We have four characters:

Fighter has 30 HP, and does 10 damage.
Goblin #1 has 12 HP, and does 4 damage.
Goblin #2 has 10 HP, and does 3 damage.
Ogre has 24 HP, and does 8 damage.

The Fighter has the first turn, and can choose which enemy to fight first. Other two enemies won't interfere as long as their comrades stand, but will step up to take their turn once they fall.

So, the Fighter decides to take on Goblin #1 first. He takes two strikes to fall down, so our Fighter takes 4 points of damage in return, bringing him down to 26. Immediatly, Goblin #2 steps up, dealing 3 points of damage and bringing our Fighter down to 23. Oh well, Fighter promptly kills him, but then the Ogre steps up, dealing 8 points of damage and bringing the Fighter down to 15. Now, our Fighter can't win, because he'd take three turns to kill the Ogre, but the Ogre only takes two to kill him. He has to flee or face death.

But what if Fighter takes on the Ogre first? He takes three swings to kill him, suffering two in return, bringing him down to 14. Goblin #1 steps up, bringing him down to 10. Fighter takes two swings to kill him, taking one more swing in return, bringing him down to 6. Goblin #2 steps in and strikes, bringing Fighter down to 3, but then Fighter kills him and is left standing victorious, if a bit short of breath.

As you can see, the exact number of hitpoints dictates what is the optimal tactic for the fighter to follow.

Now, suppose Scenario #2 comes directly after #1. If our Fighter was smart with the stepping stones, and fights the Ogre first, he still wins, though he only has 1 HP left. But if he was stupid and took 3 or more damage from swimming in lava, he can't win at all!

It should be apparent from this that the exact number of HP you have limits your options, and affects which options are available. This is why, in CRPGs, knowing when to heal your characters and in which order to fight your opponents is important. But these situations emerge just as well in tabletop RPGs that inspired them.

You just can't see it from HP alone. You need to know how much damage your environment and enemies might cause.

Another example, this time from actual D&D rules.

Scenario #3

You are on the top of a cliff, and you need to get down. You have no rope, and there's no apparent path down. You could jump, but at least a 30' drop, meaning 3d6 points of damage.

If you have 3 or less HP, it's not even an option. At the very least, you'll be disabled and unable to get back up; most of the time, you'll be left unconscious and dying. Not worth the risk, so you'll have to go searching for a way around.

If you have 11 HP? It's 50% chance you can continue your journey with minor inconvenience. You won't outright die in any case, but's it's still a long shot.

If you have 17 HP? Well, 99,53% of the time, nearly always that is, it'll only smart a bit, and you can keep going. There's a slight chance you maybe disabled and left at the mercy of nature, but you can do it, right?

Once again, the exact number of HP you have has a great deal of importance. It's not one and the same if you just have positive HP, only above a specific treshold of HP is it safe, or even an option, to jump down.

Straybow

2012-02-23, 07:12 PM

You are still only describing a player metagaming the choices, not the character's capabilities. Character capabilities are all the same regardless of hit point condition.

Scenario #1: The intense heat of a lava flow should deal fatigue-like damage just by being adjacent to the flow, if fatigue is being included in the hit point abstraction.

Scenario #2: Unless you are talking about a game totally unknown to me the fighter and the monsters will be rolling to hit and damage, and probably some kind of initiative. There is no way to prognosticate who hits when and for how much. Surviving against those three foes would be less likely the longer the fight drags on, whatever order faced. It's up to the dice.

Scenario #3: Unless you know of a certainty that no damage-dealing dangers await after reaching the bottom, you'd be better off finding another way down in any case. The character should only consider jumping in greatest desperation, not flippantly depending on whether the injury will be mortal. The risk of movement incapacitation should be significant regardless of hit points, and a good DM should make that roll or judgment in addition to the (inadequate) 1d6 per 10' rule.

Frozen_Feet

2012-02-24, 10:09 AM

You are still only describing a player metagaming the choices, not the character's capabilities. Character capabilities are all the same regardless of hit point condition.

You think it's metagaming for a character to know what condition they're in? You think it's metagaming for a character to think that "Screw this, I can't run across 30 feet of molten rock!". Note: it doesn't matter what the hitpoints actually represent. They only need to represent something for a character to gauge his option based on that something.

Also, I just finished demonstrating how the character capabilities are not the same. In scenario #1, the guy with 2 or less HP can not cross the stream. Saying his capabilities are the same as those of someone with 6 HP is clearly false.

Scenario #1: The intense heat of a lava flow should deal fatigue-like damage just by being adjacent to the flow, if fatigue is being included in the hit point abstraction.

You, sir, are missing the point. I make no claim whatsoever regarding what exactly hitpoints represent; it is, in fact, entirely irrelevant. My argument is that the exact number of hitpoints can and does matter. Your argument of realism thus has no bearing whatsoever on my points.

Scenario #2: Unless you are talking about a game totally unknown to me the fighter and the monsters will be rolling to hit and damage, and probably some kind of initiative. There is no way to prognosticate who hits when and for how much. Surviving against those three foes would be less likely the longer the fight drags on, whatever order faced. It's up to the dice.

... what did I say about people not playing enough CRPGs? :smalltongue: Besides, as long as you know the game rules, there is a way to calculate who is likely to get hit and for how much. of course, these calculations will be probalistic instead of deterministic, so there's a great deal more variance than in my examples.

I used simplified math just to illustrate my point without getting bogged down by tangential mechanics. The actual point holds in real games just as well.

To give a brief idea how it works: Scenario #4.

Fighter has 31 HP, does 1d10 damage and wins iniative 75% of the time. He's duelling ogre, who has 20 HP and does 3d6 points of damage, winning iniative 25% of the time.

Suppose the Fighter is unlucky, and the Ogre goes first, hitting him for max damage, 18. Fighter now has just 13 HP. If he scores two hits for max damage, he can kill the Ogre in two rounds - but it's only a 1% chance. Meanwhile, the Ogre has 25.92 chance to kill him with his next swing! With two swings, 99% of the time the Fighter just wounds the Ogre, but the Ogre kills him ~86% of the time! It is thus the best plan for the Fighter to just retreat. Once again, the exact number of HP is important, as it dictates the chances of his survival and capability to fight the Ogre.

Now, you can call this metagaming, I don't care. It has no bearing on my point. But I have to say that if you always cry foul when players do decisions based on info like this, you are not only denying players from using rules knowledge, you are preventing the characters from using any knowledge those rules represent! This leads to situations like a Fighter having no idea how lethal a swordblow could be, or how well he'd do against any opponent.

Scenario #3: Unless you know of a certainty that no damage-dealing dangers await after reaching the bottom, you'd be better off finding another way down in any case. The character should only consider jumping in greatest desperation, not flippantly depending on whether the injury will be mortal. The risk of movement incapacitation should be significant regardless of hit points, and a good DM should make that roll or judgment in addition to the (inadequate) 1d6 per 10' rule.

Bah. Again you're missing the point, arguing what the rules "should" be, or what the player "should" do, instead of taking look at the math and how it supports my point.

You're only stating opinions on what is smart, or which rules you don't like. It doesn't change the fact that this is how the rules work, and this is how Hitpoints interact with damage and affect what a character can and can't do.

Protoneiko

2012-02-25, 08:38 AM

I've not read the full 2 pages of posts only the first page, but...

Anyone taking about Hit points as Luck and every blow could be a killing blow, that would be a Level 1 wizard could potentially KILL a level 20 black dragon by wacking him with a quaterstaff. Now I don't see that happening, also a summon small insect spell could wipe out a whole town.

Hit points are meant to process that game along explaining why a hit doesn't kill you. Hit points = Toughness. A Boxer can take a punch alot easier then I can. Therefore more hit points, therefore a higher level of training.

Now for anyone who says a gunshot or chopping of a limb would kill me and the boxer, correct thats like 4D100s of damage.

olthar

2012-02-26, 01:26 AM

Now for anyone who says a gunshot or chopping of a limb would kill me and the boxer, correct thats like 4D100s of damage.And there are, of course, people who survive a bullet to the brain.

Protoneiko

2012-02-26, 07:41 AM

And there are, of course, people who survive a bullet to the brain.

Even 4d100 have a chance to roll only 4 damage :smallbiggrin: Just a bad roll

Frozen_Feet

2012-02-26, 08:01 AM

Which is what the variance in damage represents. A gunshot doing 4 points of damage is not the same thing as one doing 40 points - and furthermore, it represents a different injury against a person with 4 hitpoints than it does against someone with 40.

TheOOB

2012-02-26, 06:29 PM

In the questions for Star Wars Saga edition on WotC's website the sage actually addressed this. The question was (and I'm paraphrasing what I remember here) Why does a 10 damage blaster bolt to the chest kill a stormtroopers, but my solider can take three such bolts before being killed.

The answer was that you take damage differently, if you have 30 hp and get hit for 10 damage three times, the first might graze your cheek, the second wing your shoulder, and the third hit you square in the chest. It's the cinematic ability to avoid damage.

Straybow

2012-03-03, 01:35 PM

Also, I just finished demonstrating how the character capabilities are not the same. In scenario #1, the guy with 2 or less HP can not cross the stream. Saying his capabilities are the same as those of someone with 6 HP is clearly false.
Incorrect, they are the same. The guy with 2 hp has a particular movement rate and can jump a particular distance I can't be bothered to look up. It doesn't matter whether he's an nth level character who has taken 72 hp of damage and has only 2 left, or a 1st level character who rolled up 2 hp.

Now, you can call this metagaming, I don't care. It has no bearing on my point. But I have to say that if you always cry foul when players do decisions based on info like this, you are not only denying players from using rules knowledge, you are preventing the characters from using any knowledge those rules represent! This leads to situations like a Fighter having no idea how lethal a swordblow could be, or how well he'd do against any opponent. I'm not crying foul, I simply respond that your point is immaterial to mine, or rather reinforces mine.

I quoted a post saying that the only hp that matters is 0, and quoted your response saying that a simplified calculation of survivability shows this to be false. Now you've launched into increasingly complicated scenarios showing calculations based entirely on not reaching 0 hp. Each analysis depends on the fact that there is functionally no difference between 1 hp and many hp. He attacks the same, his AC is the same, his saving throws are the same, all of which you count on for your decision-making.

Every argument you've brought up is actually proving that, indeed, the only hp that matters is hp #0, and that the capability doesn't change when creatures take damage.

I'm not criticizing your game play method, or your analysis of it. I am discussing the incoherence of the model that claims to represent physical damage but doesn't, claims to represent fatigue but doesn't, claims to represent luck, fate or divine favor, but doesn't. When an event occurs that specifically effects those things the event does no hp damage.

Frozen_Feet

2012-03-12, 04:42 AM

... all fine and dandy, but you're still not grasping my point. You're right those calculations are based on not reaching 0, but your argument that the amount of HP somehow doesn't matter for the capabilities your character has in the interim is just ignoring content of my examples.

You go on about movement rates, AC, etc., and you're right, those things don't change. But that's not the same as the character's capabilities not changing, when clearly the amount of HP he has left limits what decision he can make or survive.

And for the record, it does affect how he attacks. A character with more HP will survive for more turns, which mean they can make more attacks and deal more damage. A character with less HP dies or is forced to retreat earlier. This is not trivial for the course of the game.

Your idea that the only HP difference mattering is between 1 and 0 is simply mistaken. I've shown you how the math works, what if you go and play Disgaea in the interim and learn what it means in practice?

Straybow

2012-03-13, 12:38 PM

I'm not ignoring the content, I'm rejecting the erroneous conclusion.

Just because you play the character differently at different damage levels doesn't mean that the game mechanics are modeling character actions differently when damage is taken.

Capabilities are capabilities, period. If your opponent hacks into your arm (which must surely occur in some cases where damage is not reduced to 0), somehow your capability to do damage wielding a weapon with that arm is not reduced.

By contrast, if your opponent sunders your weapon, your capability to do damage is reduced. It doesn't matter if you have massive hit points and haven't taken a scratch of damage. Can you sunder your opponent's arm? No, somehow a squishy flesh and blood arm can't be damaged, but a steel weapon can...

Let that be my last point to convince you of your error in logic, and you may take or leave it as you will.

Frozen_Feet

2012-03-13, 02:55 PM

It's your own logic that's erroneous. You're claiming that character A not being able to X or Y without severe consequences does not consist a difference in capability compared to character B, who can.

You yourself said it: capabilities are capabilities. Capability to stay in action for 5 rounds instead of 4 is a clear difference. So is ability to run across hazardous terrain wholly instead of in half.

You're merely fixating on things that don't change. That doesn't mean you can ignore changes that are demonstrably there.

Siosilvar

2012-03-13, 03:16 PM

Here's another metaphor: I need to do some math that I simply can't do in my head, and I don't have a calculator to do it with. A computer costs $120 and a calculator costs $15, or I could head to the library and use a computer there.

If I have $500, I can do any of the three options. If I only have $20 to my name, I don't have the capability to buy the computer, but I can still do the math with the calculator or go to the library. If I'm broke, I have to go to the library.

Now substitute HP for dollars, math for finishing the challenge, and the library for running away. Having a bunch of HP gives me the capability to solve the challenge any of the three ways. If I've only got a few HP, I lose one of my options. And if I'm out of HP, my only option is to get the heck out of Dodge.

You're right in that the physical abilities of the character don't decrease at low HP, but there's definitely a change in what you can do. If you have 12 HP, you're not going to be able to defeat a dragon or go through the Tomb of Horrors, but you can go orc-hunting. When you get a whole bunch more HP, you might be able to take on the dragon. You gain and lose the ability to do certain things without failing based on your HP and the expected damage you'll take. The game doesn't realistically model physical damage, but it does model a reduction in capability.

Straybow

2012-03-14, 02:00 PM

TheOOB

2012-03-14, 07:22 PM

-sigh-

@Siosilvar: You're new, I'll give you a chance to apply actual logic. If you can't do the math in your head, you don't have the capability, period. That doesn't change. The fact that a computer can do it, and you can use a computer, is not a measure of the same capability. If every bone in your body were broken, your body cast would prevent you from using the computer on your own. You couldn't even turn it on. The damage you have taken has reduced the capability to use the computer, even though the computer isn't swinging a sword at you and you are at no risk of losing hit points. Does that compute?

You know your really coming off as a an inconsiderate jerk there, just saying.

In any case, it is true that a character with less HP is able to fight less than a character with more HP, ergo they have a greater capacity for fighting. D&D doesn't take place in the real world with real physics and biology. It is easy to presume characters have some idea how much hp they have, and they understand that even though they are still going, it won't take much more to take them out. It's how their world works, so that's how their logic will.

You also mention breaking of bones and what-not. If you still have a positive hp score, your bones are not broken, you don't have critical internal bleeding, you may be beat up, but your still fundamentally in one piece. It's not until you hit 0 or less hp that an attack finally found it's mark and caused you real damage, until then it's just cuts scraps and bruises. It's how heroic fantasy works.

Knaight

2012-03-15, 01:39 AM

If you can't do the math in your head, you don't have the capability, period. That doesn't change. The fact that a computer can do it, and you can use a computer, is not a measure of the same capability.
The capability in this question is to see that some specific math is done, and the means are entirely irrelevant. If the options included paying other people to do it, it would still be applicable. Moreover, "you don't have the capability, period" is absurd, as it ignores tools. It makes no more sense to say that about math than it does to physical labor - if you can't dig that hole with your hands, you can't dig it period, and little details like "possession of a shovel" can just be ignored.

Straybow

2012-03-16, 01:37 PM

You know your really coming off as a an inconsiderate jerk there, just saying. Meh, it's funny when Belkar is sarcastic. Just pretend that I'm him.

... It's how heroic fantasy works. Would it not be heroic fantasy, for example, to be staggered by a hurled dagger penetrating the abdomen to the hilt, yet the protagonist rises again with obviously diminished capacity, not at "0 hit points" and incapacitated?

Would it not be heroic fantasy, in this example, that Before being wounded the protagonist's skill was so great his cowardly opponent had fled in terror? That his capacity was so diminished by the thrown dagger that he barely deflects two sword thrusts away from his vitals? That these thrusts deliver serious wounds to his shoulder and arm, each clearly not mere "scrapes and bruises?" That the protagonist chants, "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!" to rally his remaining strength and consummate skill to defeat Count Rugan, despite greatly weakened state from his wounds?

@ FF, Sio, OOB, Knaight: Might it be judged inconsiderate, and maybe being a bit of a jerk, to repeatedly say that I'm not "getting it" when I discuss what the hit point system does not model? In a thread discussing the inconsistencies of the hit point system? just saying.

Knaight

2012-03-16, 09:11 PM

@ FF, Sio, OOB, Knaight: Might it be judged inconsiderate, and maybe being a bit of a jerk, to repeatedly say that I'm not "getting it" when I discuss what the hit point system does not model? In a thread discussing the inconsistencies of the hit point system? just saying.
Disagreement is inherently inconsiderate now? Your statement is that there is absolutely no effect on capabilities, we consider that statement incorrect, our reasons have been given. That isn't to say that there shouldn't be other mechanical effects - I'm all for them, and prefer to avoid hit point systems entirely anyways - but that we think your claim is overstated.

Straybow

2012-03-18, 02:48 AM

Disagreement is inherently inconsiderate now? Please, spare the false indignation. As I said, it is the charming way you guys keep saying I don't "get it." I do get it, and [once again] the arguments made for "not getting to 0 hp" are not relevant to an observation that D&D hp doesn't include any physiological effects of taking damage, just fully capable or fully incapacitated.

Your statement is that there is absolutely no effect on capabilities No, I consistently and specifically wrote about the kind of measured capabilities that could, and perhaps should, be penalized by wounds. I mentioned ability scores, AC, saving throws, and movement rates. I also mentioned two unmeasured capabilities that (by convention and narrative in manuals) "hit points" are supposed to vaguely include: fatigue and luck. I did mention "attack" capabilities without specifics, but I specifically excluded "how effectively you can attack depending on hp with all other capabilities unchanged."

And yet, after chiding me for not "getting it," you and the others go on to argue about everything except the measured quantities (or math-skill analogies), or fatigue and luck as vague qualities of hit points, that I cited.

That isn't to say that there shouldn't be other mechanical effects - I'm all for them, and prefer to avoid hit point systems entirely anyways ?? :smallconfused: /me double-checks thread... ??
That's the first time you said anything remotely akin in this thread. By your previous post one would have the exact opposite impression, that you think it is stupid to model direct mechanical effects and such things should be ignored.

...but that we think your claim is overstated. ?? :smallconfused: :smallconfused: ??
How can I possibly overstate the simple fact that hp has no effect on any other measured quantity in D&D? In a thread about the shortcomings of the hit point model?? A simple fact to which you just admitted not only comprehension but a similar outlook???

Knaight

2012-03-18, 01:17 PM

Please, spare the false indignation. As I said, it is the charming way you guys keep saying I don't "get it." I do get it, and [once again] the arguments made for "not getting to 0 hp" are not relevant to an observation that D&D hp doesn't include any physiological effects of taking damage, just fully capable or fully incapacitated.
They aren't relevant. D&D HP doesn't include any physiological effects, with the tiny niche of exactly 0 HP effectively slowing people. That isn't the part of your argument that is being objected to; in my case that is actually a shared complaint (I can't speak for anyone else in this argument on this).

No, I consistently and specifically wrote about the kind of measured capabilities that could, and perhaps should, be penalized by wounds. I mentioned ability scores, AC, saving throws, and movement rates. I also mentioned two unmeasured capabilities that (by convention and narrative in manuals) "hit points" are supposed to vaguely include: fatigue and luck. I did mention "attack" capabilities without specifics, but I specifically excluded "how effectively you can attack depending on hp with all other capabilities unchanged."
Your original post was defending "Whatever way you imagine hit points, the only number that matters is zero", which is wrong. Nearness to zero affects the choices one can make, and that isn't one of the systems shortcomings. As for hit points representing fatigue and luck - they do so extremely poorly. As far as I've seen, the only thing they represent well is sheer physical damage. Lord Gareth's "one hit point is one gallon of blood lost, you lose all your blood and you die" system is one of few that would be modeled well by hit points, which is not a point in the subsystem's favor.

And yet, after chiding me for not "getting it," you and the others go on to argue about everything except the measured quantities (or math-skill analogies), or fatigue and luck as vague qualities of hit points, that I cited.
That would be because we agree about most of the measured quantities. HP doesn't affect strength, or move rate, or anything else (again ignoring the exactly 0 HP niche condition). There is no reason to debate this, it is objectively true in D&D. Your argument is bigger than the other mechanical statistics and physiological effects however, and it is beyond those that the problems in the argument appear.

?? :smallconfused: /me double-checks thread... ??
That's the first time you said anything remotely akin in this thread. By your previous post one would have the exact opposite impression, that you think it is stupid to model direct mechanical effects and such things should be ignored.
What I said in that post was that ignoring tool use in capacity to complete tasks is ridiculous. That really has very little to do with the rest of the discussion, given that it is a tangential defense of a metaphor.

?? :smallconfused: :smallconfused: ??
How can I possibly overstate the simple fact that hp has no effect on any other measured quantity in D&D? In a thread about the shortcomings of the hit point model?? A simple fact to which you just admitted not only comprehension but a similar outlook???
Again: Your original post was defending "Whatever way you imagine hit points, the only number that matters is zero", which is wrong. Nearness to zero affects the choices one can make, and that isn't one of the systems shortcomings. That includes other measured quantities, in specific situations. Take the lava flow example - how many times it can be crossed is directly connected to HP.

With that said, I do have some of the same problems with it. It best represents actual physical damage, and actual physical damage should have effects it doesn't have - which is not to say it has no effect. For instance, a character with a tiny fraction of their HP can aim a high powered bow as well as an uninjured person, they should have trouble drawing it, let alone aiming.

If you revise your claim to "D&D HP doesn't affect other physiological capabilities and it should, even if HP has to be entirely discarded as a system", with nothing else included, I am entirely on board. If it remains "D&D HP doesn't affect any other capabilities at all", I'm not. This is subject to change, given sufficiently good argument, but I've yet to see such. After all, you outright admitted that proximity to zero mattered, and proximity to zero is exactly what HP measures.

Straybow

2012-03-18, 08:41 PM

Your original post was defending "Whatever way you imagine hit points, the only number that matters is zero", which is wrong. I defended it because it is not wrong. FF was comparing being near zero hit points to a "weary or wounded" person needing to move more carefully than when uninjured. So I asked if movement rate was diminished to reflect this. Or attack, AC, etc. Imagining it isn't the same as modeling it in the system.

I pointed out that d20 has all kinds of conditions, such as fatigued, but no condition for "wounded." Imagining wounds isn't the same as modeling them.

Your argument is bigger than the other mechanical statistics and physiological effects however, and it is beyond those that the problems in the argument appear. No, I was reinforcing the "whatever way you imagine hit points" part of the statement.

Examples of imagining what hit points could represent can't make hp model anything. They are an abstraction of ability to avoid lethal damage. When the examples, such as crossing the lava, amount to "don't take lethal damage" they do nothing to alter that. Creating a metaphoric illustration of solving math does nothing to alter that, and is purely contentious. I apologize for being contentious in return.

If you want a good argument, we should return to crossing the lava. Why should crossing lava inescapably kill an umpteenth level fighter who happens to have only 2 hp left, and allow the 6 hp commoner with half the Str and Dex to cross easily? Nothing is effecting the fighter's movement, balance, judgment or perception, or any other measureable factors in safely crossing. He doesn't trip and fall into the lava, thus killing him, he is abstractly dropped to zero hp, and then falls incapacitated into the lava.

Knaight

2012-03-18, 09:11 PM

I defended it because it is not wrong. FF was comparing being near zero hit points to a "weary or wounded" person needing to move more carefully than when uninjured. So I asked if movement rate was diminished to reflect this. Or attack, AC, etc. Imagining it isn't the same as modeling it in the system.

I pointed out that d20 has all kinds of conditions, such as fatigued, but no condition for "wounded." Imagining wounds isn't the same as modeling them.
The "weary or wounded" state breaks down fairly easily for a few reasons (mostly in that so much of what is needed for either is not modeled), but the need to move more carefully is still there, and still modeled. The HP isn't at zero, yet it still restricts choices, which means that there are meaningful differences between different non-zero states. If the only number that mattered was zero, there would be no meaningful differences between different non-zero states.

No, I was reinforcing the "whatever way you imagine hit points" part of the statement.

Examples of imagining what hit points could represent can't make hp model anything. They are an abstraction of ability to avoid lethal damage. When the examples, such as crossing the lava, amount to "don't take lethal damage" they do nothing to alter that. Creating a metaphoric illustration of solving math does nothing to alter that, and is purely contentious. I apologize for being contentious in return.
True, imagining what they represent doesn't make them model those things, and the math metaphor doesn't change that. However, the math metaphor doesn't need to, as it is merely pointing out that variance in the quantity of a resource affects options. It doesn't really matter what that resource is, it may be money, it may be time, it may be hit points, it may even be something like quantity of sugar. Certain options only exist if you have enough, such as buying a particular thing, going a particular place, entering a particular dangerous situation in character, or making a particular desert. That is what the math example indicates, nothing less, and nothing more.

If you want a good argument, we should return to crossing the lava. Why should crossing lava inescapably kill an umpteenth level fighter who happens to have only 2 hp left, and allow the 6 hp commoner with half the Str and Dex to cross easily? Nothing is effecting the fighter's movement, balance, judgment or perception, or any other measureable factors in safely crossing. He doesn't trip and fall into the lava, thus killing him, he is abstractly dropped to zero hp, and then falls incapacitated into the lava.
Mechanically, the fighter ran out of abstract resource. If this was in a computer strategy game or similar this really wouldn't bother me, as it works for that purpose. Within the narrative* it doesn't mean anything - which nicely illustrates one of the downsides to the D&D HP system. I'd consider this major enough to be a point against D&D, and is (a small) part of the reason I almost never play D&D.

*There is an exception in that the Lord Gareth blood loss system works surprisingly well here. The last two gallons of blood evaporated, but the commoner had more blood, and only two to five gallons evaporated, leaving at least one gallon of blood to keep functioning. HP works beautifully for Dungeons and Dragonballs.

Lord_Gareth

2012-03-18, 11:15 PM

*There is an exception in that the Lord Gareth blood loss system works surprisingly well here. The last two gallons of blood evaporated, but the commoner had more blood, and only two to five gallons evaporated, leaving at least one gallon of blood to keep functioning. HP works beautifully for Dungeons and Dragonballs.

This footnote, it made me weep with joy. I love you, Knaight. Marry me.

Straybow

2012-03-19, 05:50 PM

The "weary or wounded" state breaks down fairly easily for a few reasons (mostly in that so much of what is needed for either is not modeled), but the need to move more carefully is still there, and still modeled. The HP isn't at zero, yet it still restricts choices, which means that there are meaningful differences between different non-zero states. If the only number that mattered was zero, there would be no meaningful differences between different non-zero states. The counter-point to that is that the "near zero" state only manifests at the point of a sword. If you need to do a feat of strength with a high DC, maybe bending the bars blocking a window, suddenly you don't have to be careful about hurting yourself. But the next commoner with a paring knife might as well be Jet Li with a +5 sword.

It doesn't really matter what that resource is, it may be money, it may be time, it may be hit points, it may even be something like quantity of sugar. Certain options only exist if you have enough... The only "resource" hit points represent is the mystical ability to avoid fatal damage. But it is a resource use that is inconsistently applied. You can't apply it to parry, dodge, or block the blow, nor to improve those defenses, it isn't skill or talent in that sense, it is something intangible that kicks in to nerf the damage, by unknown means, when the opponent gets past all that.

We can't even call it "toughness," because the character isn't taking any meaningful damage. The fighter crossing the lava runs out of an abstract resource which was never really in his control. Somehow he knows it is there, he can even quantify it, but doesn't know what it is.

Knaight

2012-03-19, 10:24 PM

The only "resource" hit points represent is the mystical ability to avoid fatal damage. But it is a resource use that is inconsistently applied. You can't apply it to parry, dodge, or block the blow, nor to improve those defenses, it isn't skill or talent in that sense, it is something intangible that kicks in to nerf the damage, by unknown means, when the opponent gets past all that.
My point is that hit points do not represent a resource, but are one, and the general rules applicable to resources still apply, even when the resource in question is really weird.

TheOOB

2012-03-20, 01:20 AM

Would it not be heroic fantasy, for example, to be staggered by a hurled dagger penetrating the abdomen to the hilt, yet the protagonist rises again with obviously diminished capacity, not at "0 hit points" and incapacitated?.

If you have more than 0 hp, there is no dagger penetrating your abdomen to the hilt, that thrown dagger just cut your side, only only penetrated just the tip before falling out. That's how hp works, and that is Word of God, by the Sage himself. I mentioned that above in the Star Wars example.

Straybow

2012-03-21, 12:29 PM

That's how hp works, and that is Word of God, by the Sage himself. I mentioned that above in the Star Wars example.
WotC is a commercial entity (a cog in the great machine of world domination) financially obligated to protect the sales of the crud they churn out for undiscerning gamers. Their "Sage" is a corrupt minion who merely spews the party line, a fat geek surrounded by discarded fast food wrappers and cups covering his desk deep in the bowels of the WotC sweatshop. Seeking an opportunity to escape the whips of the production line, he ingratiated himself to his corporate masters by convincing them he could turn picky gamers into mind-numbed customers by use of a "Dear Abby" column. Caught between the fear of falling from his position back into the slavery of his fellows and the lure of rewarded promotions and perks he has been swallowed by the very darkness he conjured. His evil taint empowers the twisted logic and infectious rationalization of lame game mechanics, and thus you are deceived.

TheOOB

2012-03-25, 04:20 AM

WotC is a commercial entity (a cog in the great machine of world domination) financially obligated to protect the sales of the crud they churn out for undiscerning gamers. Their "Sage" is a corrupt minion who merely spews the party line, a fat geek surrounded by discarded fast food wrappers and cups covering his desk deep in the bowels of the WotC sweatshop. Seeking an opportunity to escape the whips of the production line, he ingratiated himself to his corporate masters by convincing them he could turn picky gamers into mind-numbed customers by use of a "Dear Abby" column. Caught between the fear of falling from his position back into the slavery of his fellows and the lure of rewarded promotions and perks he has been swallowed by the very darkness he conjured. His evil taint empowers the twisted logic and infectious rationalization of lame game mechanics, and thus you are deceived.

Wow...I'm not sure if you're trying to be funny or if you just have problems. If you dislike the game that much, don't play it.

As for the Sage, he is the official last word on D&D rules. Ultimately, D&D from third edition onwards, and by extension any official d20 book is a WotC supplement. You are buying their rules, for better or worse, and as D&D is a very complex set of rules open to interpretation, it is necessary to have someone to arbitrate rules disputes.

The fact is many people have explained how the HP system works to you. It's less about how much a character can take, and more their cinematic ability to avoid damage. It's not how many arrows can you take to the chest, but how many arrows will nick and scrap you before one does hit you in the chest. You seem to be ignoring other peoples often well crafted points in a desire to remain ignorant and contrary.

Straybow

2012-03-26, 10:54 PM

Knaight

2012-03-27, 02:46 AM

Or "incoherent," perhaps. It is a resource that protects you when somebody is dropping rocks on your head or sticking a spear in your spleen, and it protects you from fire, lightning, cold, acid and "sonic" attacks... but not from poison that is attacking the flesh by chemical means, nor from water, when it gets in your lungs.

Or incoherent, yes. The exact same principles regarding what resources are and how they work apply to completely incoherent resources, provided that how they work is understood. This is the crux of the options argument, which is what I've been arguing in from the beginning. Really, the entire thing boils down to this:

HP is a resource (coherence is irrelevant to this).
The quantity of a resource influences options.
Therefore, the quantity of HP influences options.

If the first two are true, the third follows. HP can be completely incoherent - I'd argue it pretty much is - and it still works.

TheOOB

2012-03-27, 11:01 PM

Some of us, oh great and wise OOB, are not discussing "what does the Sage say" but how well do hit points work as a game mechanism. That's why somebody chiming in to say "think of it as this or that" is less than productive. Some of us are not content to close our eyes and think of Seattle as hit points are whittled away.

In that regard, the Sage's answer (or your citation) is incomplete. Unearthed Arcana includes OGL variants to standard hit points for injury, massive damage, and vitality. Almost as though somebody at WotC realizes that the plain potato hit point model isn't the only way to say "how heroic fantasy works."

I dislike the hit point system enough that I'm in a thread discussing the incoherence of it and suffering those who think this is a twelve-step group for recovering hit point haters.

Or "incoherent," perhaps. It is a resource that protects you when somebody is dropping rocks on your head or sticking a spear in your spleen, and it protects you from fire, lightning, cold, acid and "sonic" attacks... but not from poison that is attacking the flesh by chemical means, nor from water, when it gets in your lungs.

Your problem is you keep saying the same things while not paying attention to others arguments. Hit Points are not the only, or even the best method of tracking player health, but they do work, and they do make a certain kind of cinematic sense.

You keep mentioning how hit points are not a proper resource, when in fact they are, even if they are abstract.

You also keep talking about people not getting penalized for getting say, stabbed in the spleen, when it's been mentioned that people with hit points haven't been severely injured.

Hit points works, it's a measure of how much abuse you can go through, how many times you can luckily avoid a major wound, before you are taken down. It stands to reason that characters operating in world rules by hit points understand, at least in ab abstract sense, how much they have in the way of hit points. This is a setting where someone can wave their hands around and say funny words and cause someone to burst into flames, if characters can comprehend that, they can comprehend that even though their wounds are not slowing them down yet, they don't have a lot of fight left in them.

Honestly, the entire concept behind this thread is logically sound, starting with the title. Hits Points are not incoherent, they are abstract. Incoherent means that there is no logic or that it's inconsistent. Hit points are very coherent, they work in a very predictable and understandable way. Even a 5 year old can understand that as you get hurt, your hit points go down, and when they all go away you are defeated.

Hit Points are abstract in that they don't represent a concrete reality as we have come to understand it. They represent a fictional reality that is only present in works of fiction. Fictional character get the crap beat out of them all the time and are still able to kick butt, and so can D&D characters. You know what else, a lot of other things are abstract in D&D too. The idea that my attack rolls are determined by a twenty sided die, and I have a 5% chance of hurting a master swordsman in full armor, or they when I am moving around the battlefield, everyone else stands around until their turn. You don't see people complaining that you can have 20 foot tall giants even though a humanoid skeleton could never support that kind of weight. D&D doesn't follow the rules of reality. It follows the rules of fantasy and drama, but it does follow rules.

Straybow

2012-03-29, 04:18 PM

Your problem is you keep saying the same things while not paying attention to others arguments. Hit Points are not the only, or even the best method of tracking player health, but they do work, and they do make a certain kind of cinematic sense. I dunno, I'm pretty sure that I offered counter-arguments, which explicitly means I was not ignoring their arguments. I simply regarded their arguments as not addressing the issue of incoherence, and explained how they failed to address it.

You also keep talking about people not getting penalized for getting say, stabbed in the spleen, when it's been mentioned that people with hit points haven't been severely injured. Yes, but the hit points aren't used if the attack actually misses. Hit points are only "expended" as a resource if the attack is successful and is considered a "hit," which means the spear does not miss the defender, nor is it deflected off the armor. The spear would injure, if not for the resource of hit point offering protection.

It isn't just a flat charge of N hit points to cinematically avoid the spear's damage, the hit points expended match the damage the spear would have done.

Hit points works, it's a measure of how much abuse you can go through, how many times you can luckily avoid a major wound, before you are taken down. But didn't you cite The Great and Wonderful Sage saying that "hit points" mean that the character does not suffer abuse? The scrapes and bruises are too minor to be considered even 1 point of real damage, even if the character has taken dozens of hits. Thus there are no major wounds or minor wounds, just non-wounds represented as hit points.

Honestly, the entire concept behind this thread is logically sound, starting with the title. Hits Points are not incoherent, they are abstract. Incoherent means that there is no logic or that it's inconsistent. No, a concept or an implementation can be coherent in some measures yet incoherent in others. I've listed several incoherent aspects that can only be rationalized as "picture it this way" even though the mechanics do not reflect that picture. Thus, the inconsistency of hit points as a game mechanism.

Hit points are very coherent, they work in a very predictable and understandable way. Even a 5 year old can understand that as you get hurt, your hit points go down, and when they all go away you are defeated. But, as already mentioned above, your whole argument says you don't get hurt as long as you have positive hp. And, thus, the inconsistency that would confuse the 5 year old and umpty-five year old alike.

It means that no matter how tough your epic level barbarian is intended to be, he can't take any real damage. He's a total pansy. He jinks and dodges the missiles and swords like Neo, barely sustaining a nick. He mystically zens away the physical damage of the engulfing fireball when you missed the saving throw, hardly suffering a singe. He avoids damage all the way down to 1 hp. Then somebody jabs him with a letter opener and he passes out and starts bleeding to death. Predictable, yes. Coherent, no.

You know what else, a lot of other things are abstract in D&D too... D&D doesn't follow the rules of reality. It follows the rules of fantasy and drama, but it does follow rules. And just because it follows rules means that those rules are coherent? No. Some rules are poorly conceptualized or poorly implemented or both. D&D hit points are in the "both" category.

Straybow

2012-03-29, 05:53 PM

HP is a resource (coherence is irrelevant to this).
The quantity of a resource influences options.
Therefore, the quantity of HP influences options.

If the first two are true, the third follows. HP can be completely incoherent - I'd argue it pretty much is - and it still works.
I pointed out to FF several times that limiting options due to low HP is simply not the same as actually changing measured capabilities that would be effected by wounds. Pretending the fighter is "hurt" and can't face the ogre is not the same as game mechanics that model injury.

As long as FF could calculate that his fighter wouldn't reach 0 hp, FF would have the fighter take any action he wanted, even jumping off a cliff rather than spend time finding another way down! The end result, as expressed before, is that the only hit point that really matters is the last hit point.

A person who would flippantly jump off a 30' cliff just because he's mystically certain that it won't kill him (due to the hp model and falling damage rule), and because somehow nobody ever gets injuries less than mortal wounds (due to the hp model)... that doesn't sound like it works to me.

Yes, it "works" as far as all the creatures in the game are modeled the same way, and everybody just shrugs and rolls the dice. That is consensus, not coherence.

Knaight

2012-03-29, 11:24 PM

TheOOB

2012-03-29, 11:28 PM

A person who would flippantly jump off a 30' cliff just because he's mystically certain that it won't kill him

Is a high level adventurer in a fantasy setting. Keep in mind that any past say, level 3 in D&D is superhuman. A level 4 fighter is stronger, more capable, and more powerful than any human ever.

In the Iliad, Achilles fights through swarms of enemies, and never takes an appreciable wounds, in Conan, everyone's favorite Barbarian can be hit by spells, monsters, and swords and still manages to call upon all his strength to fight a snake monster after all that. In Lord of the Rings Gimli fights Uruk-Hai at Helm's Deep for literally hours and never misses a beat.

High Fantasy characters don't get stopped because of flesh wounds, they don't get bones broken and become useless and bleed out. Wounds that don't kill them only make them more pissed off.

D&D health is designed to represent that sort of fiction, High Fantasy characters who keep going until they can't go on any more. If you don't like it, don't play D&D, or house rule it.

But stop acting like the system doesn't make sense. It is objectivly coherent, even if you are incapable of understanding it(that's your problem). From the American Heritage dictionary Coherent: logically connected; consistent: a coherent argument. That's not a matter of opinion. The system makes sense in world do, as it's very similar to how many other fantasy works that pre-date D&D depict their characters fighting.

I understand that your incapable of understanding that someone can know they're wounded and shouldn't go fight a dragon without several internal organs spilling out onto the floor. You've made that abundantly clear. You also are incapable of understanding that a 10 damage sword hit nearly cleaves a level 1 commoner in two, while for a level 20 fighter, through a mix of skill, toughness, and luck, only manages to nick their cheek. Just because you can't comprehend how the system works and to logically apply it, don't start saying it doesn't work.

Frozen_Feet

2012-03-30, 08:08 AM

I pointed out to FF several times that limiting options due to low HP is simply not the same as actually changing measured capabilities that would be effected by wounds. Pretending the fighter is "hurt" and can't face the ogre is not the same as game mechanics that model injury.

However, limited options due to low HP are changes in mechanically measured abilities. That is, and has been, the crux of my point. It doesn't actually matter if HP quantify health or running out of icecream, the change in capability is still clear.

It's a mechanically measurable capability if you survive X+1 instead of X rounds.

It's a mechanically measured capability if you're 95% likely instead of 50% likely to survive next connecting blow.

It's a mechanically measured capability if you can fall 60' instead of 30', or if you can take 30' fall thrice instead of twice.

The exact number of HP affects these. Ergo, other values than 1 and 0 for HP do matter for character capability.

EDIT: Once again: what HP doesn't do is tangential to my point. It doesn't matter if it doesn't limit capabilities like you'd expect or want to: it still limits character capability, period. And different HP values affect it differently.

As long as FF could calculate that his fighter wouldn't reach 0 hp, FF would have the fighter take any action he wanted, even jumping off a cliff rather than spend time finding another way down! The end result, as expressed before, is that the only hit point that really matters is the last hit point.

*groan* I actually did an example with falling showing how the exact number of hitpoints affects game maths. It isn't the same if you survive 0%, 1% 15% or 99% of the time. That marks a clear difference in capability.

Let's take CODA system. In it, getting injured nets a growing penalty to all actions. Having that -7 from being incapacitated doesn't actually prevent you from trying to do whatever. However, it means everything you do is less likely to succeed. The mathematical effect on character abilities is comparable.

... as for flippantly jumping from great heights under reasoning "oh, I'll be fine", I suggest you watch a few episodes of Jackass. The verisimilitude problem you posit only exists because you think people wouldn't act like that in real life. Hint: they do.

Straybow

2012-03-30, 11:00 AM

In the Iliad, Achilles fights through swarms of enemies, and never takes an appreciable wounds, in Conan, everyone's favorite Barbarian can be hit by spells, monsters, and swords and still manages to call upon all his strength to fight a snake monster after all that. In Lord of the Rings Gimli fights Uruk-Hai at Helm's Deep for literally hours and never misses a beat. In the Iliad, Achilles is the immortal son of a nymph. Nymphs were quasi-deities who were undying but could be slain, who could bear similarly immortal children to mortal mates or divine children to deities. He was granted impregnable armor by the gods. In addition, he never fought open battles alone, but lead a troop of elite soldiers who had his back. So, yes, an immortal in impregnable armor with a cadre of high level followers attacking in formation will roll through armies of mostly 0 level levies and 1st level soldiers.

Tolkien is a bad example to invoke, as nothing in D&D is remotely Tolkienesque except the use swords and the English language. As for Conan, never read the books, read a few comic book versions, wasn't too impressed. Not my cup of tea. But I'll not disparage the literary genre just to tweak you, go ahead and enjoy them.

But stop acting like the system doesn't make sense. It is objectivly coherent, even if you are incapable of understanding it(that's your problem). From the American Heritage dictionary Coherent: logically connected; consistent: a coherent argument. That's not a matter of opinion. Hmmm, that's odd. I can come up with examples all day long that point out the incoherence of the system, and you keep saying "LA LA LA LA can't hear you, but if I could I'd say just pretend you're Conan." So, quit whining that I point out the system's weaknesses and disagree with you.

The system makes sense in the same way that math makes sense. Where it loses coherence is when you try to apply the abstract math to the modeled actions. The problem isn't the math, it is the model.

Straybow

2012-03-30, 11:13 AM

Let's take CODA system. In it, getting injured nets a growing penalty to all actions. Having that -7 from being incapacitated doesn't actually prevent you from trying to do whatever. However, it means everything you do is less likely to succeed. The mathematical effect on character abilities is comparable. In other words, wounds effect other measured capacities, even when you aren't faced with somebody trying to injure you. There is no comparison between calculating whether or not you can keep from hitting 0 hp and actually having capabilities effected, and that is a weakness of the hit point system. Thank you for, again, demonstrating my point.

... as for flippantly jumping from great heights under reasoning "oh, I'll be fine", I suggest you watch a few episodes of Jackass. The verisimilitude problem you posit only exists because you think people wouldn't act like that in real life. Hint: they do.... and that's why the show is called "Jackass," not "rational being who doesn't want to be injured doing something both foolish and avoidable." Hint: they don't have to face an ogre trying to smash their skulls in, they just have to pay a medical bill and maybe spend some time in a hospital.

Frozen_Feet

2012-03-30, 12:23 PM

I wonder how the ogre got involved in the jumping example? But if your point is that people don't get into fights because they think "oh, I can handle it", I suggest you take a look at any martial arts... or just Jackass, again.

It's entirely tangential that what they do is stupid. People do stupid things routinely even when it carries equally high risk of injury or death. But a lot of people have confidence, warranted or not, to do things that would make weaker-stomached people gringe. See Parkour, downhill skiing or skateboarding.

As for injury penalties, contrast and compare the following with my earlier example of jumping down a cliff:

It's Easy TN (Target Number) 5 Swiftness test to survive jumping down a cliff.

Jill is uninjured. On a 2d6 roll, he makes it 83.33% of the time.
Jack, however, is wounded, gaining a -5 penalty. Thus, he only makes it 16.67%

(Calculations for HP are omitted, but only out of convenience, CODA's health points serve the same purpose, they just have injury penalties as added mechanic.)

Just like with differing amount of HP in the earlier example, the capability being changed is the character's chance of surviving. Names of variables changes, but the effect is identical.

I do agree that adding penalties to lost HP models injury better than just HP, but things affected by HP alone are still actual capabilities.

You say I'm demonstrating your point, but your point is still tangential to mine. My point is about what Hit Points do and how they work; you complain about what they don't do and how they don't work. But you can't deny what they do based on what they don't. Apples don't cease to be apples just because they aren't oranges.

My argument is "Exact amount of Hit points affects character capability" - exact amount of capabilities it affects is irrelevant. It isn't mutually exclusive with or countered by your "Hit Points don't affect X, Y or Z, so they're a bad system".

Straybow

2012-03-30, 03:47 PM

I wonder how the ogre got involved in the jumping example? But if your point is that people don't get into fights because they think "oh, I can handle it", I suggest you take a look at any martial arts... or just Jackass, again. The ogre got involved because this is DnD. When the doofus fighter decides to shrug off 3d6 of foolish, avoidable damage, he must be aware that a random wilderness encounter could pop up in the next hour. If Durkon isn't there to heal him up after the jump he will be in deep doo-doo. Johnny Knoxville doesn't have to worry about that after he jumps off a balcony. If injured he'll go to the hospital in an ambulance and spend the recovery time in comparative luxury. Security will keep any wandering ogres out.

My argument is "Exact amount of Hit points affects character capability" - exact amount of capabilities it affects is irrelevant. It isn't mutually exclusive with or countered by your "Hit Points don't affect X, Y or Z, so they're a bad system". Except, again, having 1 hp or many doesn't effect the character unless facing the possibility of hp damage, and the exact capabilities not effected are relevant. It is the point, the weakness that hp are completely abstracted, to the point where there is no connection to physical reality whatsoever. So much so that the Sage has to remind everybody that no actual damage occurs until the last positive hp is gone.

Straybow

2012-03-30, 04:05 PM

You also are incapable of understanding that a 10 damage sword hit nearly cleaves a level 1 commoner in two, while for a level 20 fighter, through a mix of skill, toughness, and luck, only manages to nick their cheek. Just because you can't comprehend how the system works and to logically apply it, don't start saying it doesn't work. Oh, I forgot to add:

No, the 10 hp sword damage does only moderate harm to the commoner. If the poor schlub had only 1 hit point at full health he is dropped to –9. He isn't dead, but he will bleed to death in a few seconds. If his wound is bound up he will recover fully in about 10 days with no surgery, antibiotics, or advanced medical care necessary. There isn't even an explicit need to stitch up the wound, so it can't really be that bad. As soon as he has his 1 hit point back, he'll be as good as new.

Ironvyper

2012-04-05, 01:31 AM

Actually (depending on edition) the average commoner has around 4 HP. That 10pt shot puts him at -6. Out on the floor, grievously wounded and bleeding to death.

And not just kind of bleeding to death like the paramedics have a half hour in the ambulance to get you to a doctor. Bleeding to death like in 24 SECONDS he is dead. 24 seconds is nothing.

Do go back to pointlessly bashing HP in a mysterious effort to make yourself look foolish though. Its very entertaining.

Straybow

2012-04-05, 02:31 AM

Knaight

2012-04-05, 12:00 PM

As absurd as that may be, the inconsistency is that the supposedly real, traumatic, mortal wound hit points heal just as fast and just as easily as the mystical scrape and bump hit points that aren't even worth counting as a hundredth of a point of real damage.

That is indeed entertaining.

It is even more entertaining when you consider healing spells. Cure Serious Wounds can bring you from the brink of death to up and about. It can also marginally increase your ability to not get hurt when you aren't even meaningfully injured. You'd think that something that brought one from death's door to up and about would do more than that, but nope, it doesn't.

Ironvyper

2012-04-05, 08:03 PM

You guys need to either watch more action movies and learn how heroic health like D&D uses works or just switch to warhammer or NWoD. Both of those have brutal HP systems that model real wounds very well.

But if you insist on playing a game of high heroic fantasy you cant crap all over the idea of high, heroic, health.

Its one or the other. Gritty and realistic, or high and heroic. Both are good but have to pick one. Playing one and pissing and moaning about it not being the other is just ridiculous.

Your basically ordering from Pizza Hut and bitching that they didnt bring you Chinese food.

Lord_Gareth

2012-04-05, 08:32 PM

It is even more entertaining when you consider healing spells. Cure Serious Wounds can bring you from the brink of death to up and about. It can also marginally increase your ability to not get hurt when you aren't even meaningfully injured. You'd think that something that brought one from death's door to up and about would do more than that, but nope, it doesn't.

Hit points = gallons of blood man. I'm telling you, it's the only way it makes sense. They just store all the blood you're not using right now in Roguespace.

Knaight

2012-04-07, 01:46 AM

Hit points = gallons of blood man. I'm telling you, it's the only way it makes sense. They just store all the blood you're not using right now in Roguespace.

I'd prefer to just throw away the concept of approximate conservation of volume entirely. You know I'm down with this model. :smallamused:

Straybow

2012-04-07, 04:28 AM

Its one or the other. Gritty and realistic, or high and heroic. Both are good but have to pick one. Playing one and pissing and moaning about it not being the other is just ridiculous. We are men of action. Lies do not become us.

Did I say it had to be gritty and realistic? Nope. I just agreed that the net effect of the model is that only the last hp really matters. I insisted that to play differently when down to the last few hp isn't the same as any system that incorporates some additional measure of effect of wounds, fatigue, etc.

Where I would disagree with you is that I did give an excellent example of a high fantasy movie where a major character was wounded and his performance degraded as a result. So it doesn't have to be exclusive to one or the other.

D&D and similar hit point systems have only one advantage: extreme simplicity. Now, there you have the choice: it must be either extremely simple or not. Just don't pretend that simplicity is somehow more pure or virtuous and get upset if we jest at its incoherence as a model.

Fatebreaker

2012-04-07, 04:40 AM

We are men of action. Lies do not become us.

Odd choice of words for a man pretending to be something he's not.

Straybow

2012-04-08, 01:46 AM

I'm just quoting from the high heroic fantasy movie that treated wounds as wounds, not as hits that become cinematic misses without real damage. You know, to counter the idea that high heroic fantasy has to look like D&D hit points.

Folks keep using those words. I don't think they mean what folks seem to think they mean.

I'm not sure what you think I'm pretending to be, nor what it is you think I really am beneath the sinister cloak of internet anonymity.

Fatebreaker

2012-04-08, 06:06 AM

*shrug* Roleplaying games, by definition, are about pretending to be something you are not.

Razanir

2012-04-08, 06:35 AM

Because you really are just that tough. A 10th-level fighter/barbarian isn't some random guy with a sword, he's freaking Conan. He can take inhuman levels of punishment before going down.

Just my 2 cp, Gandalf, you know, Stormcrow, the Gray Pilgrim, the one who goes on to be Saruman, THAT Gandalf? Meh. Lv 5. I'm serious, check it out online! Even summoning fire on Caradhras was only a 3rd level spell. And Aragorn? Lv 5 as well. We are WAY underestimating Lv 10 by saying he's only spuerhuman, not Superman.

Also, OP, why do you have a problem with DnD hit points but not games with auto recovery? The latter makes less sense to me

TheOOB

2012-04-08, 05:58 PM

Just my 2 cp, Gandalf, you know, Stormcrow, the Gray Pilgrim, the one who goes on to be Saruman, THAT Gandalf? Meh. Lv 5. I'm serious, check it out online! Even summoning fire on Caradhras was only a 3rd level spell. And Aragorn? Lv 5 as well. We are WAY underestimating Lv 10 by saying he's only spuerhuman, not Superman.

Also, OP, why do you have a problem with DnD hit points but not games with auto recovery? The latter makes less sense to me

Well, LotR is Low Fantasy while D&D is distinctly High Fantasy, comparing them is like comparing apples to magic apples that grant wishes and shoot fireballs.

Razanir

2012-04-08, 06:55 PM

Well, LotR is Low Fantasy while D&D is distinctly High Fantasy, comparing them is like comparing apples to magic apples that grant wishes and shoot fireballs.

At the very least, Wikipedia considers them both high fantasy. Low fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy#Distinguishing_between_subgenres) High fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy). Lord of the Rings takes place far enough in the past that it is considered a different world for fantasy. Also, it would make sense that they're the same type, because if you go back far enough, they get intertwined enough that halflings were once called hobbits.

TheOOB

2012-04-08, 08:11 PM

Perhaps I'm wrong, bu those were not the definitions of high and low fantasy I am familiar with. I always felt that low fantasy is a world that fundamentally follows the rules of the real world, where magic is rare and doesn't impact the day to day life of most people, whereas high fantasy doesn't follow the rules of the real world whatso ever.

Regardless, while LotR inspired much of D&D, trying to describe LotR characters power in D&D terms is kind of silly. Gandalf is a demi-god, and the warriors of the fellowship are some of the best warriors in the world, even if, by a strict interpretation of D&D rules none of them are near double digits.

Fatebreaker

2012-04-08, 08:23 PM

At the very least, Wikipedia considers them both high fantasy. Low fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy#Distinguishing_between_subgenres) High fantasy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy). Lord of the Rings takes place far enough in the past that it is considered a different world for fantasy. Also, it would make sense that they're the same type, because if you go back far enough, they get intertwined enough that halflings were once called hobbits.

The two have diverged over the years to such a degree that it would be overly simplistic to label them as members of the same sub-genre just because they were once within shouting distance of one another.

Or, put another way, from an outsider's perspective, the Lord of the Rings movie looks a lot more "high fantasy" than, say, the Conan movie. But both are pretty tame compared to D&D.

I do think pre-4th D&D makes a mistake by not defining what levels of skill represent; the "only 5th level" argument makes a lot of sense from certain perspective. But it should tell you something that folks can legitimately arrive at a 5th-level world for Lord of the Rings. Other folks posit a higher-level world, certainly, but when the granduncle of modern D&D can be viewed through a 5th-level lens, it might be time to reevaluate whether the two are even members of the same sub-genre.

Moreover, even if you do categorize them together, it's worth asking whether the standards of one are relevant to the standards of the other. 3.x isn't trying to "model" Lord of the Rings, so does it matter if Lord of the Rings functions differently?

Straybow

2012-04-09, 11:39 AM

I think much of the "only 5th level" view of LotR is because magic is so subdued. Nobody has spells like D&D, not even Gandalf. Frodo and Gandalf are the only ones who have magic weapons, and only Frodo has magic armor. But that is also why the fighters have to be much higher than 5th or 6th level.

In the battle by the river they are outnumbered 20 to 1. Aragorn is cutting uruk-hai down left and right, attacking far more effectively and frequently than the orcs. No way can a fifth level fighter do that with no magic armor or weapons. At a minimum he would have 3/2 attacks, but 2/rd is more likely which puts him well into double digit levels. If he were a non-spellcasting ranger variant he might get attack boosts at 7th and 13th like regular fighters, otherwise he'd have to be 15th minimum.

I'm now speaking in AD&D terms, when fighters were actually better at fighting than other classes and could attack multiple targets with their extra attacks. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas wade through uruk-hai for hours after the wall is breached at Helm's Deep. They don't have healing potions, rings of protection, or any of the other common items found on mid-single-digit level D&D characters, so again they have to be much higher level just to survive.

I would also say that Saruman equipped the leader of the hobbit-hunting party with powerful magic arrows, which is how he was able to penetrate Boromir's mail so easily and kill him with just a few arrows.

Nonetheless, I'm inclined to agree that LotR can't be compared to D&D effectively.

Doug Lampert

2012-04-09, 12:04 PM

Heh. The actual lineage of the vitality/wound point system goes more like this:

Star Wars d20 system (2000) -> Spycraft 1.0 (2002) -> Spycraft 2.0 (2005) -> Fantasy Craft (2009).

Since The Book of Experimental Might came out later in 2009, Monte Cook would likely have decided to apply this to fantasy roleplaying independently from FC, but it doesn't seem unlikely that he might also have drawn inspiration from Spycraft or Star Wars d20.

You forgot the old DragonQuest RPG released by SPI in 1980. Which used a fatigue/wound system.

Electric knight

2012-04-14, 07:55 PM

My general view is that a medieval fantasy world is one where the laws of physics co-exist with the laws of magic - they haven't been replaced by them. A wizard can produce lightning bolts from nothing, but if he's stabbed a few times he'll bleed to death. If we are trying to simulate reality in the game, let's try to be consistent about it. And cinematic doesn't have to mean unconvincing.

I'm not sure I completely understand the argument being made against Straybow, but it seems to be this: "A character being aware that his hit points are at a dangerously low level, and his behaviour being influenced by that awareness of reduced survival capabilities, demonstrates that those hit points represent something more than blood and guts."

No, I don't see a logical connection there. You might convincingly argue that only the last HP is physical and all those before represent luck, but then regenerating HP would require magical means such as a 'potion of fortune' or clerical blessing - rest and medical care would make no difference. It's pretty clear that hit points overwhelmingly represent the ability to take physical damage. This works quite plausibly at first level, but the mechanism of hit points increasing with experience is absurd and the only reason I ever accepted it was because I didn't think about it much. I reckon the best way around it is to come up with a magical reason why hit points improve with experience, or a magical mechanism which produces a trend to that effect.

For all it's faults, D&D is a game well worth saving.

Knaight

2012-04-15, 06:45 PM

I'm not sure I completely understand the argument being made against Straybow, but it seems to be this: "A character being aware that his hit points are at a dangerously low level, and his behaviour being influenced by that awareness of reduced survival capabilities, demonstrates that those hit points represent something more than blood and guts."
You're conflating several arguments that address different points. The basics:
Argument 1: Hit points are incoherent / Hit Points are coherent.
Argument 2: Only the last hit point counts / Any variation in hit points count.
Argument 3: Hit points represent only health / Hit points represent a bunch of stuff.

Behavior influence due to HP variation plays into Argument 2, and only Argument 2. It is utterly irrelevant to arguments 1 and 3. Moreover, among those who subscribe to any variation counting for argument 2, there are disagreements regarding arguments 1 and 3. There are also cases where 1 and 3 connect, where people will support either answer for 1 provided that the corresponding answer for 3 is supported, but will consider the other 1, 3 pair mutually exclusive.

Electric knight

2012-04-16, 11:44 PM

You're conflating several arguments that address different points. The basics:
Argument 1: Hit points are incoherent / Hit Points are coherent.
Argument 2: Only the last hit point counts / Any variation in hit points count.
Argument 3: Hit points represent only health / Hit points represent a bunch of stuff.
To make myself clear, then:

Arg. 1: HP are fairly coherent at 1st level but the notion of HP increasing with experience is absurd, especially because . . .

Arg. 3: HP obviously represent physical health - that's why they diminish with combat and accidents, and why healing restores them.

Argument 2 and the subject of behaviour influence add nothing meaningful to the discussion.

Matthew

2012-04-20, 10:53 PM

In the Iliad, Achilles is the immortal son of a nymph. Nymphs were quasi-deities who were undying but could be slain, who could bear similarly immortal children to mortal mates or divine children to deities. He was granted impregnable armor by the gods. In addition, he never fought open battles alone, but lead a troop of elite soldiers who had his back. So, yes, an immortal in impregnable armor with a cadre of high level followers attacking in formation will roll through armies of mostly 0 level levies and 1st level soldiers.

It is not Achilles' armour that is impregnable, it is his very self after having been dipped in the river Styx, but having been held by the heel that point remained vulnerable. However, all of that is later accretion, in the Illiad he is just a ferocious guy with semi-divine parentage (but then all the heroes in the Illiad are descended from the gods, even the Trojans trace their heritage back to Zeus, for example: Hector, son of Priam, son of Laomedon, son of Ilus, son of Tros, son of Erichthonius, son of Dardanus, son of Zeus).

cattoy

2012-04-21, 02:31 AM

Hit points measure the body's ability to withstand physical trauma/damage.

If they were intended to reflect ANYTHING else, then the rules were horribly written.

Knaight

2012-04-21, 06:11 AM

To make myself clear, then:

Arg. 1: HP are fairly coherent at 1st level but the notion of HP increasing with experience is absurd, especially because . . .

Arg. 3: HP obviously represent physical health - that's why they diminish with combat and accidents, and why healing restores them.

Argument 2 and the subject of behaviour influence add nothing meaningful to the discussion.

While I more or less* agree with these, I'd note that Argument 2 is a lot of fun, even if it isn't particularly relevant.

*Again, gallons of blood, Dungeons and Dragonballs, so on and so forth. For that, they work beautifully.

Talakeal

2012-04-21, 10:54 AM

Hit points measure the body's ability to withstand physical trauma/damage.

If they were intended to reflect ANYTHING else, then the rules were horribly written.

If you read the first edition notes, HP were indeed meant to represent physical trauma, and the reason players got more HP as they leveled up was not to represent them getting somehow magically tougher, but because they were more skilled at avoiding or minimizing damage, turning lethal wounds into mere strain and glancing blows.

Of course, this all falls apart when you have people declaring suicidal actions like swimming in lava and not even trying to minimize the damage.

Electric knight

2012-04-22, 07:41 PM

I recently came up with a system of increasing armour class to replace increasing hit points, but it leaves even high level characters very vulnerable to special attacks such as dragon breath, fireball spells and to falling damage. I can't go back to the original hit point rules, though, so I've now come up with a magic item which provides a reserve of 'healing points' and tends to get fuller with experience.

Knaight

2012-04-22, 10:26 PM

If you read the first edition notes, HP were indeed meant to represent physical trauma, and the reason players got more HP as they leveled up was not to represent them getting somehow magically tougher, but because they were more skilled at avoiding or minimizing damage, turning lethal wounds into mere strain and glancing blows.

Of course, this all falls apart when you have people declaring suicidal actions like swimming in lava and not even trying to minimize the damage.

It all falls apart as soon as characters fall in lava, or fall off a cliff, or are exposed to dangerous stuff that can't be mitigated. If one must treat a model delicately less it break, it breaking is due to a flaw in the model and not the ones using it. This is particularly true when similar models are made elsewhere that don't have those flaws, such as the coherent HP system in GURPS.

Talakeal

2012-04-23, 12:23 AM

I already said the system gets a little wonky if players decide to swim in lava etc.

However, if you are adept at tumbling and rolling with damage you can minimize the impact of falls, and I would imagine you could minimize contact with lava as you scramble to get away from it.

If you are in a situation where this is actually no way to avoid or mitigate the damage, well that's why the book has rules for inescapable death.

Knaight

2012-04-23, 01:35 AM

I already said the system gets a little wonky if players decide to swim in lava etc.

It applies just as much when it isn't their decision. If you fall in a lake of lava, there are no ways to mitigate that damage. That doesn't particularly matter with the actual HP rules. Plus, if it is physical damage, and more HP means better ability to turn actual wounds into tiny cuts, why don't healing spells scale by HP?

Matthew

2012-04-23, 02:37 AM

If you read the first edition notes, HP were indeed meant to represent physical trauma, and the reason players got more HP as they leveled up was not to represent them getting somehow magically tougher, but because they were more skilled at avoiding or minimizing damage, turning lethal wounds into mere strain and glancing blows.

Well, first edition AD&D actually describes hit point as having a very variable function, certainly magical aspects are considered part and parcel. OD&D on the other hand does not really bother to describe what hit points are, which is not surprising since it had just jumped from hits to hit points (normal men are slain when "hit", but heroes must be "hit" four times)..

Of course, this all falls apart when you have people declaring suicidal actions like swimming in lava and not even trying to minimize the damage.

Technically, hit points can be and are bypassed in the face of certain death. Poison, lava, assassination or anything of that ilk is simply death. Hit points only measure damage when damage is meted out in hit points, unfortunately there was a tendency to try and expand this universally to anything that threatened a character [e.g. falling damage].

Talakeal

2012-04-23, 11:01 AM

Healing spells are always a bit weird. My personal explanation was that as a character grew stronger they built up an innate resistance to magic. This explained why their saving throws went up as they leveled, and also why healing spells had proportionally reduced effectiveness.

Inescapable death was a big thing in 1e and 2e, and the DM could apply it whenever they felt like. I believe the examples listed in the book where falling into lava and being crushed under a descending ceiling. Also, coup de grace was simple "target dies", no save or roll or anything.

Knaight

2012-04-23, 10:35 PM

Healing spells are always a bit weird. My personal explanation was that as a character grew stronger they built up an innate resistance to magic. This explained why their saving throws went up as they leveled, and also why healing spells had proportionally reduced effectiveness.

I'd like that one, but the issue is that healing spells scale the exact same way damage spells do, where the latter should be mitigated both by magic resistance and by better wound mitigation, which could thus reduce damage further. It's all sorts of iffy, which gets back to the whole "incoherent mess" thing.

sterlin2

2017-10-20, 06:58 PM

I've been mulling over the nature of hit points lately. One thing that keeps cropping up is the issue of their “incoherence.” That is, hit points are seen as both an abstract model, but also a “realistic” model (and I put those quotes around realistic for a reason, don't go there!). On the one hand hit points are supposed to represent a broad range of factors, including physical health, luck, skill, divine grace, etc. However when hit points have to be recovered naturally the recovery is at a rate that better represents bodily damage.

The incoherence began right from the start with Old D&D, however I'll skip over it because the game was still in an “accretion” state where game elements and assumptions were still forming. The references to hit points and there recovery are very brief and still assume some afterglow to miniature wargaming which is rife with deliberate abstraction. I'll also skip over Holmes Basic D&D because the language is terse to get a succinct rules package assembled.

It's when we get to Advanced D&D where Gygax has license and page count to go into a great deal of depth on what hit points represent and how they are recovered. It's here where the contradiction comes into high relief. He even tries to address it pretty head on in the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide, but the explanation doesn't seem to quite fit.

Already there is a problem here. Gygax pushes hard right at the beginning that hit points do not merely equate physical damage, and that as you gain levels the inflation of hit points means even less the capacity to absorb damage. Most of the hit points lean towards a sixth sense, luck, magic and divine protection. However, in that last sentence the sixth sense and luck are collapsed into a corporeal notion of “fitness.” He's trying to make a distinction between physique and fitness, but both analogies are tied to the body and not the more abstract notions of luck, fate, divine providence, or even just plain skill to avoid being hit.

Above Gygax goes into more depth of how hit points can be broken down conceptually with a character. There are the hit points you gain from the class, and there is also the hit points gained from Constitution. There is some assumption that character's simply become tougher over time through the level inflation of hit points. Adventurers become inured to the hostile life and gain a kind of pain tolerance or willpower that can hopefully see them through tough situations. And so if you were to slice hit points into different categories, the corporeal hit points that represent health, pain tolerance, willpower, etc. versus the incorporeal hit points that represent luck, magic, divine grace and the avoidance of damage through skill, what happens is that the minority of them are every the corporeal hit points.

Just as the first paragraph, this above paragraph seems fine until that last sentence. Once again we're given an explanation of how hit points function that seems to be at odds with itself. Gygax once again divides hit points into two broad categories, the physical hit points and the metaphysical hit points.

If one wanted a sense of verisimilitude in their game, then it makes sense that the physical hit points one has need a good deal of rest and recuperation if you were to lose them. If someone in real life gets stabbed by a sword it could take weeks, months, years or even permanent damage that can never be recovered. So in that regard long rest periods do make sense.

The incoherence comes from the metaphysical type of hit points needing the same amount of rest to be recovered. Why is luck, skill, divine favor or magic tied to the biological healing process? Why does a god only dribble out divine favor? Why is luck tied to tissue recover rates?

Today, unlike in the 1970s, one could make an argument that skill and general performance are impacted by things such as PTSD, so there is some overlap between wounds healing and a more ephemeral mental recovery, but the metaphysical is also pushed hard in the hit point explanation and it doesn't fit well together.

I've gotten ahead of myself a bit because we haven't looked at how hit point recovery happens in 1st edition. This is where the incoherence really hits hard because recovery rates are rather brutal, and the metaphysical elements are marginalized in specific ways.

For natural healing, true rest (no combat, spell casting, etc.) can be performed. A character gains 1 hit point per day in the first week. In the subsequent weeks they gain 1 hit point per day, plus their Constitution bonus per week. If a character rests continuously for 4 weeks they gain all of their hit points back regardless of the amount to be gained.

You can of course use magic to accelerate all of this. Spells, points, and other magic items will give you hit points at a much more accelerated rate. All of these magical effects are specifically defined as healing wounds.

However, that magic or divine grace is not as helpful you if you have gone to 0 hit points or less unless it is very powerful. The character is automatically in a coma for a bit even if they gain positive hit points, and more devastatingly, they simply can not function and must rest for a week, even if they were brought to maximum hit points. The only thing they can do is stumble out of the dungeon and find a bed to collapse into.

I'm walking through all of this because I just have to ask, why were hit points envisioned this way? Why stress the metaphysical when it came to absorbing damage, but when it came to recovery it was slanted towards the physical?

The alternative is seen today in a variety of mediums. Most video games today with a health bar, which is just hit points presented in a different manner, generally have some kind of auto regeneration effect.

Take your typical shooter today and how the health bar works is that if you take too much damage in a short period of time then you could die, but if you are able to duck, hide or generally pull yourself out of the line of fire you'll get your health back and can then rejoin the battle. This approach isn't realistic. If you get shot in real life you're pretty much shut down due to pain, bleeding and shock. However conceptually it emulates the metaphysical a bit more. In a sense you're not truly getting hit, instead you're getting grazed, or need to duck and your nerves are being overwhelmed, to the point where you finally do take an incapacitating hit.

Likewise, with 4th edition of D&D there is finally an introduction of a more explicit metaphysical statement of hit points through healing surges and second winds. Characters have the capacity to regain some of their hit points in a variety of ways, including just taking a breather for a moment to collect themselves. Anyone who plays a sport or has been in highly physical situations knows full well that your capacity to output energy has a limit, but that if you manage the pace of that expenditure it can be sustained over a long period of time. So 4th edition is trying to address the kind of ebb and flow of a person's performance in stressful situations through hit points.

So having some of those alternatives out there now, why weren't these ideas being used or considered back in the 1970s? Why wasn't there a “second wind” or say after five minutes of rest you'd regain half of your hit points, or any other metric where at least a portion of the metaphysical hit points could quickly come back to a character?

It is not hit points that don't make sense as defined. The mechanic that is stapled on and illogical is healing. Hit points representing both an increase in physique and ability comes across fairly well. But then they decided that a low lvl heal should heal a low level character completely but only a powerful heal could heal a high lvl character..even though half(at least) of their injuries were mitigated not by physicality but by ability, meaning a cure light wounds should in fact heal a 10th lvl fighter for more hitpoints..but not necessarily a greater percentage of hit points..The problem being that this would, in general mean a cure light and a cure serious are identical spells or one of them is obsolete depending which way you correct for the problem. Making healing a special ability not tied to spell level with various utilities(burst, vs single target, etc) would probably be the best way to fix it..so longer as the uses per day were either unlimited( meaning much but not all of challenge becomes per encounter) or sufficiently plentiful. Alternately leaving them as spells with a sliding scale..the current sliding scale falls short yet..well current for me being 3.5. I do not play the later ones.

sterlin2

2017-10-20, 07:49 PM

You mock my pain.

You might notice that I said "bleed to death in a few seconds" without comment on how ridiculous it is that a single round of attention by a person with no emergency medical training by modern standards could stabilize somebody that severely wounded.

Nonetheless, my point was that this supposedly mortal wound is completely healed in ten days of simple bed rest, with essentially no medical care by modern standards.

As absurd as that may be, the inconsistency is that the supposedly real, traumatic, mortal wound hit points heal just as fast and just as easily as the mystical scrape and bump hit points that aren't even worth counting as a hundredth of a point of real damage.

That is indeed entertaining.

Consider the potentiality that they do not count scrapes and bumps except insofar as those scrapes would have actually been substantial wounds to a less capable fighter but for their skill. Further, consider that the stabilization does not specify to manner of injury intentionally but might at times mean a pressure dressing or some other modality. Consider that all adventures have some measure of basic first aid by virtue of lifestyle. Indeed all people might well do to environment. You can as easily see the explanations for these things that concern you as you can see the flaws. they are both there..which in this particular case means the flaws aren't actually there as the answers are too. I, knew all manner of first aid before i was 10 and my parents were not in any way associated with the medical profession. They simply had many active(some call this wild) children.

There are effects in the same to give you debilitations both short term and long. We do not need more of them and systems that use them extinsively are rarely if ever more accurate. What they are is more punitive. If you want that go for it but don't think it is more realistic. People fall hundreds of feet bounce several times and walk away and just as infrequently fall 1 foot and die. What lies between is a complex mix of the individual the surface they land on(how many games change damage based upon any surface other than liquid for a fall?), the angle of the fall...we could get into ligament strengths or cellular compositions...the hp system is reasonable. It is not the entire story..I could add a number of systems to make it both more complex and more realistic without actually replacing hp but your average group already takes most of a game session playing less than a minute collectively of combat(game time).