HP as luck or meat?

[Barebarian]

I believe that the current canon for HP in games like D&D is that taking HP damage represents losing control of the fight, running short of luck etc. rather than actually being injured by a weapon [yet getting hit by a poisoned weapon forced you to roll against a poison save :smallamused: ], while other games like Exalted measure your health as actual injuries, keeping track of how high a penalty you face for how many hits you've taken. Which do you prefer, why, and which do you think D&D should use going forward?

[Kardwill]

Wasn't there the exact same topic on this board a few weeks ago?

I'm more of a "HP as luck/exhaustion/bruises/ability to mitigate damage" type of GM, especially in games like D&D where nothing happens until you're at 0 HP.
I mostly play Fate, which use a combat system where the HPs are named "stress", and I find that it fits nicely in the "TV series" kind of mood I'm looking for. "Meat" hits are represented by the fact that if you cannot soak the damages with your current stress, you have to take lasting consequences to stay in the fight. That hits a nice balance that I like to repeat in other games like D&D
Being fully functionnal after a runaway car impact, a direct hit from a rocket launcher, an axe to the shoulder or even simply a stray bullet, just because you have enough HP to soak "meat" hits, would feel silly. But saying you barely just avoided the hit or just got grazed by some flying debris (but you probably won't be as lucky next time) is nicely cinematic.

I will sometime give a "physical" impact to some of those, sure (the bruised shoulder as your armor barely stops an axe, the shockwave of the explosion, the painful fall as you avoid the car, maybe a tiny cut from the poisoned sword...), but nowadays, "real" meat hits are only for wounds that have lasting insystem consequences.

Of course, it will depend of the game. HP as mitigation works really well in games with an abstract health system and/or a big HP pool, like D&D, Mouse guard or Heroquest. In games where getting hit is serious business with consequences (albedo), a more descriptive health system (runequest), or a very shallow health pool (chtulhu), wounds will get more "meaty" descriptions.

[Anymage]

HP as momentum (as Exalted 3e does it) has cooler visuals, especially since people's first reaction is to narrate connecting hits as meat hits. You might get grazed, but nothing solid will connect until you get into serious territory.

D&D HP is an odd mishmash. You could see it as proportional meat (losing 10 or 25% of your health bar means the same thing regardless of how big that health bar is), but no one explanation fits all the cases. D&D in general tends not to faithfully match anything so much as its own tropes/continuity, though.

[NichG]

Well, D&D is one thing, but when designing from scratch I tend to make systems where there's a resource that you explicitly spend to 'deal with' potential meat hits, and different ways of spending change how e.g. poison works (basically, it's expensive to dodge but cheap to convert to a glancing blow). Meat hits are then very coarse grained things rather than ablative resources or pools - you're fine vs your leg is broken vs you're dying. This makes for different kinds of healing as well - an effect that helps you catch your breath won't heal a punctured lung no matter how many times you're subjected to it.

[Glorthindel]

In my opinion, half the problems with the game "not making sense" stems from adopting the idea that hit points equal meat points.

I lose count of the amount of times you hear the puzzled complaints of "how did the Rogue manage to avoid that fireball without moving, he was right in the middle of it?", "how can the fighter survive a fall from that height?", and "how can a Rogues dagger do more damage than a Greataxe?", "How is that creatures armour pristine, we hit him about 30 times?". The simple answer is that none of those things happened. They only seemed to happen because you crossed off (or didn't) x amounts of hit points, and somehow interpreted that as a wound. But if you read the only "wounds" as the ones that put you down, and interpret all other losses of hit points as fatigue, bruising, concussions, or lucky events which turn the attack that should have killed you into one that only staggered you, then it is much easier to understand.

Did that Rogue dodge the Fireball without moving? No, she was caught in the blast like everyone else, but was quick enough to drop, cover her eyes with her arm, and tumble with the blast wave, so she came back to her feet with a few scrapes, a few cosmetic burns, but still good to go, while everyone else has a couple of serious burns, is a bit stunned by the concussion and the hard fall to the ground, and their vision is blurred by the heat and smoke.

[Kardwill]

D&D HP is an odd mishmash. You could see it as proportional meat (losing 10 or 25% of your health bar means the same thing regardless of how big that health bar is), but no one explanation fits all the cases. D&D in general tends not to faithfully match anything so much as its own tropes/continuity, though.

If you want a mess, try D&D in French : HP has been translated to "Points de vie" (life points)...

[MrSandman]

Wasn't there the exact same topic on this board a few weeks ago?


It does seem to come around every so often.


I believe that the current canon for HP in games like D&D is that taking HP damage represents losing control of the fight, running short of luck etc. rather than actually being injured by a weapon [yet getting hit by a poisoned weapon forced you to roll against a poison save :smallamused: ], while other games like Exalted measure your health as actual injuries, keeping track of how high a penalty you face for how many hits you've taken. Which do you prefer, why, and which do you think D&D should use going forward?

If we're talking about D&D and its clones, I just think and talk about hp loss as hp loss, just like a videogame. I do that because I find any other option utterly incoherent and nonsensical, so I treat hp as what it is: the amount of punishment a character can take before getting taken out.

If we're talking about other games, I prefer systems like Fate and Fudge, or anything that has some sort of wound system, preferably with a mechanic to alleviate or ignore certain wounds.

[Mechalich]

HP is a bizarre amalgamated mechanical abstraction that is terrible at properly representing anything reasonable in the fiction but at the same time immensely useful in actual gameplay - which is why so many video games use a version of it.

At the end of the day, playing a high-combat game where characters take realistic amounts of damage from hits in terms of what a human body can actually survive just does not work, you simply cannot have high-lethality high-combat in a game setting without a cheat like HP. As a result it's pointless to debate what HP is meant to represent at the fiction level because HP is designed primarily to bypass the reality of the fiction where 'you got stabbed and are now dead' is not viable for play.

Ultimately, high combat games in a low-tech setting (in a high tech setting you can use something like 'shields' as an alternative to HP) involve characters getting into far more fights than they could plausibly survive, especially without accruing permanent disabilities of some kind in the process and HP is part of the suspension of disbelief that you have to buy into to play the game. If that buy in doesn't work for you, so be it, play something else, but trying to massage HP into something reasonable is really beside the point.

[Mastikator]

Except HP is obviously meat points since you take HP damage from things that can only be injury like environmental damage. HP represents two mutually exclusive systems simultaneously, that is why I prefer Exalted's take.

[Anonymouswizard]

To me, hit points ate meat, end of, and when I'm running D&D the full consequences of this are played straight (with the addition that wounds which treated cause you to lose additional hp at a rate between 1/minute and 1/round).

Also, we have to remember that 1st level D&D isn't overly realistic if we go by meat.

Then again, I tend to run systems where your hp begins relatively higher (you can absorb two to four average attacks), but where scaling is lessand there's probably a death spiral in play. When combat is nasty brutish and short players tend to avoid it and achieve their goals through other means.

[Morty]

D&D hit points have straddled the fence between "meat" an "luck" for a while. Sometimes they're one, sometimes the other, without much rhyme or reason. The only way to make it work is just not think about it too hard. Some people are more comfortable with it than others. It's more pronounced in recent editions, which make healing without magic easier.

I likewise prefer other methods of ensuring characters can get into fights and not die, for combat-heavy systems. Exalted 3E's initiative system is quite elegant. Some other systems just have two damage pools, one for "light" damage and one for "heavy" damage when things get serious.

[aaron819]

The rules treat it as meat in some ways and as abstract "bad things don't happen yet" points in ither ways. Just don't think about it and the game works perfectly fine.

[Conradine]

What puzzled me is that undeads , oozes and constructs should get much more hp than living creatures. These things can really get a spear that stakes them side-to-side and keep going without problems.

Anyhow, good examples of hp as meat ( very high Constitution ) could be Theokoles and the Egyptian ( from Spartacus BaS ) and the chained monster of Xerxe's Immortals ( 300 ).

[Zhorn]

HP is HP.
It can be luck. It can be meat. It can be anything the DM of your table deems it to be.

This is one of those topics that there will not be a united consensus on.
It won't matter how long a thread goes on a topic, there's always going to be a group on either side saying the book(s) agree with their particular interpretations, and the other side is wrong.

Personally I prefer HP as being meat-like: a successful roll to hit is a contact-making-hit that takes a toll on the recipient. Beyond that I leave it up to the context of the game at the moment. Maybe it drew blood, maybe the character rolled with the hit.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are we talking about D&D-style hyper-scaling HP in particular?

If HP = meat, then it's goofy because it means characters end up able to take more and more of the same wound as they level... the same wound that would have reduced them to dying in a single hit can eventually be absorbed over and over again with no ill effect.

If HP = meat+luck+etc, then it's just as goofy because it means that the same exact roll that hits by exactly the same margin and the rolls exactly the same damage... is either a miss, a graze, or a solid hit, depending on how many HP the target has... and it's bad design because it both blurs up several unrelated fiction-level elements, and fights with other mechanics for the same fiction-level elements.

If you're telling me that HP = luck... then when a character is "lucky", do I represent that with more HP or with free rerolls? If you're telling me that HP = evasiveness... then when a character is "evasive", do I represent that with more HP or with a better AC? Etc.

[False God]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we all got it wrong, HP stands for cHutzPah.

[jjordan]

If we're talking about D&D and its clones, I just think and talk about hp loss as hp loss, just like a videogame.That really does seem to be the design intent of the creators. I know the whole short rest/long rest dynamic was the biggest mental adjustment I had to make when I came back to D&D after last having played AD&D in the early '90s. As a DM I've wrapped my brain around this by considering player characters to be the equivalent of Navy SEALs. They are, in general, healthier and, more importantly, they have the do or die and never quit mindset. So I've split the HP into meat points and motivation/endurance points and adjusted my narration accordingly.

[Segev]

If HP = meat+luck+etc, then it's just as goofy because it means that the same exact roll that hits by exactly the same margin and the rolls exactly the same damage... is either a miss, a graze, or a solid hit, depending on how many HP the target has... and it's bad design because it both blurs up several unrelated fiction-level elements, and fights with other mechanics for the same fiction-level elements.

I disagree that it's goofy or bad design. I acknowledge that you find it unsatisfying, but you do have a consistent refusal to accept that the two blows did not "hit by the exact same margin" in the narrative layer, precisely because the higher hp total of the higher-hp target (presuming that the higher hp are from something like class levels rather than a very obvious presence of "more meat") represented a (non-infinite) portion of his ability to avoid taking that hit to a vital area. I know you dislike that AC and high hp both contribute to a narrative "miss" (or "cosmetic damage"), while hp represents some amount of luck or energy expenditure that can't be kept up forever but AC represents something he can do all day, but that doesn't make it bad design. Just unsatisfying to you.

[Max_Killjoy]

I disagree that it's goofy or bad design. I acknowledge that you find it unsatisfying, but you do have a consistent refusal to accept that the two blows did not "hit by the exact same margin" in the narrative layer, precisely because the higher hp total of the higher-hp target (presuming that the higher hp are from something like class levels rather than a very obvious presence of "more meat") represented a (non-infinite) portion of his ability to avoid taking that hit to a vital area. I know you dislike that AC and high hp both contribute to a narrative "miss" (or "cosmetic damage"), while hp represents some amount of luck or energy expenditure that can't be kept up forever but AC represents something he can do all day, but that doesn't make it bad design. Just unsatisfying to you.

If "endurance" is included in D&D's HP, then why don't heavy exertion or exhaustion expend significant HP?

If "luck" is included in D&D's HP, then why isn't the Lucky feat set up as more HP or an extra Hit Die or something related?

[HouseRules]

Add to Max_Killjoy

What does luck circumstantial bonus not counting all of your hit points as bonus to hit, or bonus to damage?

[PeteNutButter]

I always thought of HP as meat.

The other way seems more like an excuse than explanation. If we are in business of excuses (which D&D forces with its ridiculous hp inflation) than we might as well just use a hp as meat excuse. Whatever amount of physical damage 10% of your max hit points is is how much damage 10% of your max hit point is, regardless of what that number actually is. The inflation of actual damage numbers vs your hit points is purely a game mechanic.

[Arbane]

If "endurance" is included in D&D's HP, then why don't heavy exertion or exhaustion expend significant HP?

If "luck" is included in D&D's HP, then why isn't the Lucky feat set up as more HP or an extra Hit Die or something related?

Because D&D was first designed in the 1970s by wargamers who had only the vaguest idea what they were going, and has since become a sacred cow of the system as a useful abstractions of 'harm surviving ability' even as other systems have come up with more-coherent alternatives.

[Âmesang]

I've always seen HP as being more "meat" like, considering a high-HP character can be submerged in a pool of lava, climb out, pick up their sword, and keep fighting…

…of course there's also the issue of low-level — and especially NPCs — having two few HP, leading to the "Cat VS Commoner" situation. :smalltongue:

[Jay R]

In my graduate Mathematical Simulation class, the professor said, "You can only get out of a simulation what the designers put into it." His example was that you can't separate simulated shoppers into different categories if the simulation model treats them all identically.

HP is a simplistic simulation of the ability to continue to act, deliberately over-simplified for game purposes because the workings of a human body are far too complex to simulate quickly and easily.

Therefore the question is meaningless. The HP simulation is not complex enough to represent either luck or meat, or anything other than how long the character can continue to act..

If you think about a simulation too much you start asking questions like, "Why is a Danish Prince speaking English in iambic pentameter?, or "How can we see into this private bedroom?"

Or even, "Why don't they all run away when the monster's theme music starts playing?"

These questions pull you away from the entertainment.

Stop thinking about the HP model. Use it to think about the ogres who are attacking your wizard.

[Segev]

If "endurance" is included in D&D's HP, then why don't heavy exertion or exhaustion expend significant HP?

If "luck" is included in D&D's HP, then why isn't the Lucky feat set up as more HP or an extra Hit Die or something related?

There are effects which ping away at endurance/exhaustion and do hp damage to represent it. Environmental damage from extreme heat or cold, for example, which are oft scoffed at by the "but that just means it's meat, and you're lying when you say it's more than that" crowd, are exactly hp representing a part of your endurance. Why aren't you collapsing from cold? Because you've more (but finite) endurance to go.

As for the "lucky" feat, why isn't it represented by doubling your bonus to the roll, or a flat bonus to the roll?

I forget if you can use Lucky to force others to re-roll and take the worse value; if not, then why can't "lucky" factor into AC to keep you from being hit? If so, then your answer is already present, because instead of bonus hp, it's its own expendible resource that operates on the AC end of not-taking-a-lethal-blow. In a sense, forcing a re-roll which makes a hit into a miss IS bonus hp by virtue of not taking damage from the hit. But I know that's not what you mean, so I'm mostly just making a point that AC and hp both represent not taking more than cosmetic damage a lot of the time, so anything that operates on the AC end of that still can represent roughly the same thing.

"Luck" is such an intangible, anyway, that questioning why it's represented one way or another is guaranteed to allow somebody who wants to find fault with it a case where they can scream about it making no sense.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you think about a simulation too much you start asking questions like, "Why is a Danish Prince speaking English in iambic pentameter?, or "How can we see into this private bedroom?"

Or even, "Why don't they all run away when the monster's theme music starts playing?"


Because the audience the play was written for was English-speaking, and it's hard to tell people things, story or otherwise, in a language they don't speak. If you want a really strange one, a friend of mine was telling me about a German movie she saw about Conquistadors, in which the "Spanish" Conquistadors spoke German, and the Aztecs spoke English with German subtitles, then there were English subtitles added under all of it in the version she saw.

Because it's hard to tell a story when you can't see or hear the characters -- we're not seeing through the walls, we're being shown what's going on with these characters in this place.

Because the characters can't hear the music, it's there to "enhance" the audience's "experience". Now, that said, the use of music in TV and movies is often horrible, telegraphing events or distracting entirely.




These questions pull you away from the entertainment.


Welcome to my experience of "entertainment".

[jjordan]

Use it to think about the ogres who are attacking your wizard.The ogres shoot an arrow at my wizard and make a successful attack role. Does my wizard have an arrow sticking out of him or did he expend some of his energy dodging the arrow?

From the standpoint of game mechanics the answer to this question doesn't make any real difference. From the standpoint of narrative and player choices and consequences it makes a difference. I think that's why people keep asking about this.

[Segev]

The ogres shoot an arrow at my wizard and make a successful attack role. Does my wizard have an arrow sticking out of him or did he expend some of his energy dodging the arrow?

From the standpoint of game mechanics the answer to this question doesn't make any real difference. From the standpoint of narrative and player choices and consequences it makes a difference. I think that's why people keep asking about this.

The answer from narrative and player choices standpoint is: "What makes more sense to you right now?" The goal is to improve your verisimilitude. Choose accordingly.

[Morty]

Because D&D was first designed in the 1970s by wargamers who had only the vaguest idea what they were going, and has since become a sacred cow of the system as a useful abstractions of 'harm surviving ability' even as other systems have come up with more-coherent alternatives.

As usual, probably the best and most concise explanation of the problem.

[NichG]

The most cosmologically grounded way I can think to do it if we're talking about D&D is to say that HP is literally excess positive energy stored in the reservoir that exists where body and soul are connected (or negative energy for undead). If someone sticks a sword through your heart, you should die, but that positive energy keeps your body working and forces it to repair itself to a stable state rapidly, as long as enough energy exists to do so. As a result, as long as you have even 1 hitpoint left, that means you are presently uninjured, but at the same time you very well may have withstood injuries along the way (they were just very short-lived).

Once that last hitpoint is gone, weapons become legitimately dangerous and the only thing keeping you alive is your biology. So things like bleeding out become possible. The bleeding/stabilization/-10/etc rules are all just complex ways of saying 'things are different when you don't have your buffer'. Stuff that causes bleeding effects at >1hp has some special counteragent that reduces the effectiveness of a person's innate pool of positive energy. Fast Healing means that you have a biology that actively generates positive energy and refills its own buffers; Regeneration is Fast Healing plus the fact that your biology can heal itself even without help from positive energy (so you can recover from arbitrary negative hp as long as the method doesn't shut down your biological healing).

With undead, negative energy is animating their body in a state that would manifestly not work biologically, so at 0 they just stop.

If you take HP damage you can be poisoned, because the weapon actually went through you - it just happens that you got better from the over damage, but the foreign substances in your body don't get ejected by positive energy's sudden healing effects.

Higher level characters have bigger reservoirs, and spells that heal hitpoints are just topping up the gas tank - that's why you need a different spell to restore a lost limb and the like.

[Pedantic]

The answer from narrative and player choices standpoint is: "What makes more sense to you right now?" The goal is to improve your verisimilitude. Choose accordingly.

Verisimilitude is damaged simply by asking that question. I know what I'd prefer, but not having one and having to adapt a different narrative stance is way more damaging to suspension of disbelief than either choice.

[Vknight]

Answer is both.


D&D
2e its just meat because any damage can and will end you with your tiny piddling HP pool
3e its mostly meat but with some luck representing things because of negatives and more(same with Pathfinder)
4e its mostly luck as things like spheres of annihilation are just hp damage so its the luck you didn't get a big hit. And healing surges representing more the meat and/or patching up the actually dangerous wounds from a battle
5e leans more back too meat but straddles more a 75meat / 25luck split as resting to heal damage takes a lot of time unlike 4e


World of Darkness
Old World / New World : Depends on the supplement
Things that regen its generally 100% meat
Things that have damage reduction its generally 100% meat
Things that don't have one or the other most wounds are about 80%


Exalted(if i remember its health correctly)
-0 : Is all luck and scratches(0% Meat)
-1 : Nasty scratches from the back and forth(15% Meat)
-2 : Actual wounds which will take time(30% Meat)
-5 : Major wounds(100% Meat)
No i didn't do this because i am bored and just wanted too say meat a lot... not at all

FATE
Stress Damage : 100% Luck : It instantly heals between scenes its all the lucky rolls and more before a blow hits home hard
Consequences : 100% Meat : Its damage that takes depending on the consequence 1 Scene to 1 Story arc to heal

Call of Cthulhu
100% Meat also you are now squid and dead or insane thankyou come again

Little Fears
Works much like Exalted except its early stage is probably 10% meat
Second 25%
Third 50%
Fourth 100% (I mean its called : I Feel Cold)

Palladium
Why are you playing this? OH oh right the meat to luck ratio. Its 100% meat here and it notes it what with intricate repair and healing rules along with more but seriously 3d6*10 damage why do that to yourself?

Ironclaw
The first 2 levels of wound are luck based
The third is 100% meat as its an injury that can take up too 1 month to heal
The fourth is a 50-50 mix
The fifth is 100% meat
And the sixth is you are chunky salsa


Anima Beyond Fantasy
Largely depends on how you build your character.
Low HP : Leans more meat
High HP : Leans more luck
Low Regen : Leans more meat
High Regen : Leans more luck
So the party could have a tank whose 50-50 and a mage whose 100-0 and a paladin that is 0-100
Oh dear no help me he's just making up numbers i mean they make sense with the correct thought process its 100meat 0luck vs a 50-50 of both and a 0meat and 100luck

Mutants and Masterminds is 100% luck in the 3rd edition but in 2nd it depends on the damage type and more so yeah


Shadow of the Demonlord
Its hard too say but its honestly a 50-50 split rather perfectly from how easy it can be too heal compared too how hard along with the general lethality provided.


Shadowrun
Like all the other systems with stages of damage lower tiers of damage are luck based well higher levels become meat.
Things same with stun damage vs physical damage. Stun is mostly luck well physical is meat
So the more and more you get of both the less it becomes luck and the more it becomes meat until you pop like a wet balloon.

[Segev]

Verisimilitude is damaged simply by asking that question. I know what I'd prefer, but not having one and having to adapt a different narrative stance is way more damaging to suspension of disbelief than either choice.

Maybe your suspension of disbelief is, but the ability of the mechanics to simulate a particular combat is not damaged by asking that question, any more than asking whether the attack missed because of the +2 to AC from Dex 15 or due to the +1 from the Buckler or from the +2 from the leather armor.

[HouseRules]

The most cosmologically grounded way I can think to do it if we're talking about D&D is to say that HP is literally excess positive energy stored in the reservoir that exists where body and soul are connected (or negative energy for undead). If someone sticks a sword through your heart, you should die, but that positive energy keeps your body working and forces it to repair itself to a stable state rapidly, as long as enough energy exists to do so. As a result, as long as you have even 1 hitpoint left, that means you are presently uninjured, but at the same time you very well may have withstood injuries along the way (they were just very short-lived).

Once that last hitpoint is gone, weapons become legitimately dangerous and the only thing keeping you alive is your biology. So things like bleeding out become possible. The bleeding/stabilization/-10/etc rules are all just complex ways of saying 'things are different when you don't have your buffer'. Stuff that causes bleeding effects at >1hp has some special counteragent that reduces the effectiveness of a person's innate pool of positive energy. Fast Healing means that you have a biology that actively generates positive energy and refills its own buffers; Regeneration is Fast Healing plus the fact that your biology can heal itself even without help from positive energy (so you can recover from arbitrary negative hp as long as the method doesn't shut down your biological healing).

With undead, negative energy is animating their body in a state that would manifestly not work biologically, so at 0 they just stop.

If you take HP damage you can be poisoned, because the weapon actually went through you - it just happens that you got better from the over damage, but the foreign substances in your body don't get ejected by positive energy's sudden healing effects.

Higher level characters have bigger reservoirs, and spells that heal hitpoints are just topping up the gas tank - that's why you need a different spell to restore a lost limb and the like.

That's why I said that 1 hp = 1 quart of blood in the previous thread.

[Max_Killjoy]

The ogres shoot an arrow at my wizard and make a successful attack role. Does my wizard have an arrow sticking out of him or did he expend some of his energy dodging the arrow?

From the standpoint of game mechanics the answer to this question doesn't make any real difference. From the standpoint of narrative and player choices and consequences it makes a difference. I think that's why people keep asking about this.

And my problem is that the mechanics don't differentiate the two, so it gets hard to model "I take take 20 arrows" and "I can evade 20 arrows" as separate things... and that the answer to which is which on any particular day is "shrug, it depends". There's no sync between the fiction layer and the mechanical layer, effects cannot be predicted, inputs don't match outputs consistently... and so it causes verisimilitude loss.

[Segev]

And my problem is that the mechanics don't differentiate the two, so it gets hard to model "I take take 20 arrows" and "I can evade 20 arrows" as separate things... and that the answer to which is which on any particular day is "shrug, it depends". There's no sync between the fiction layer and the mechanical layer, effects cannot be predicted, inputs don't match outputs consistently... and so it causes verisimilitude loss.

Did your metal armor tank 20 arrows, or did you dodge it all, or did you block it with your wooden shield and do you still have some stuck in it? AC doesn't answer these questions, either.

[Max_Killjoy]

Did your metal armor tank 20 arrows, or did you dodge it all, or did you block it with your wooden shield and do you still have some stuck in it? AC doesn't answer these questions, either.

Yeah, and that's not great, but it's also not the core subject of the thread. Start a thread about AC, and I'll gripe about it there.

[Mastikator]

Maybe your suspension of disbelief is, but the ability of the mechanics to simulate a particular combat is not damaged by asking that question, any more than asking whether the attack missed because of the +2 to AC from Dex 15 or due to the +1 from the Buckler or from the +2 from the leather armor.

The simulation is up to the DM and maybe player, it's less important that any one option is chosen and more important that the next option doesn't contradict the former, with HP this is going to happen a lot. One second HP is going to be meat the next it's going to be luck. There is no longer any correlation between fluff and mechanics and you can't predict the fluff from the mechanics or vice versa. THAT breaks anyone's suspension.

[Max_Killjoy]

The simulation is up to the DM and maybe player, it's less important that any one option is chosen and more important that the next option doesn't contradict the former, with HP this is going to happen a lot. One second HP is going to be meat the next it's going to be luck. There is no longer any correlation between fluff and mechanics and you can't predict the fluff from the mechanics or vice versa. THAT breaks anyone's suspension.

That's a big chunk of it -- especially when combined with the fact the parts aren't consistently part of the thing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I find NichG's explanation to be the best "HP = meat" version I've seen, at least for 5e. In fact, I made a similar version canon in my setting.

[Max_Killjoy]

I find NichG's explanation to be the best "HP = meat" version I've seen, at least for 5e. In fact, I made a similar version canon in my setting.


Yours is the first thing it reminded me of.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yours is the first thing it reminded me of.

They're strangely similar, actually. Great minds and all that.

Sure, it does have consequences that some don't like. For example, it throws out the notion that fantasy!creatures are basically the same (internally/physiologically) as earth!creatures. Or that the underlying physical[1] basis for the universe is like ours, just with magic tacked on or with magic "breaking the rules". I'd argue, however, that that's a feature, not a bug. Until we discard that notion and realize that D&D!physics is more or less an extension of Aristotelian mechanics, not Democratus's ideas or Newtonian mechanics. There are no atoms in D&D, no molecules, no (chemical) elements. There are only the four elements + 2 energies, in various mixtures. Things fall because it is the nature of material objects to seek lower ground, not due to warped space-time. Etc.

On the surface (things that could be determined by pre-Scientific-Revolution tools and methods), they behave the same. But that's a cosmic coincidence, really. The underlying principles are completely different.

[1] and chemical, and biological, etc.

[Phhase]

Honestly, I see it as lucky meat. It's really hard to believably make it seem like you were hit or took damage while simultaneously describing it as neither of those. For me anyway. The way I reconcile Commoner vs Lvl 20 demigod is that the same damage number means different things to different people. For a commoner with 1 hp, 5 damage is a sword cleaving through your collarbone, unto grisly death. For a bigboi adventurer though, it might just be a sword poking through a chink in your armor a little and giving you a light slash.

I still think it's silly that a housecat is a mortal enemy for a commoner though.

[Shoreward]

I've always seen HP as primarily a combination of "meat" and exhaustion, with a little luck. The reason it goes up as you level is where the "luck" might be seen to come in, because you're getting better at turning major injuries into minor injuries or rolling with the hits you receive - or simply getting luckier and taking more superficial injuries where you wouldn't have before - and not because you are slowly becoming some kind of Akira-esque meat-monster. Some might find this explanation inadequate, but I'm just happy for the simple abstraction that doesn't require too much tracking. I find that other systems 'feel' different than HP, so if I want a different feel, I'll find a system that uses a different, er... system.

[KineticDiplomat]

If we're talking D&D specifically, on the human-scale-but-powerful-character (typically PCs, but not always) end there is no compelling or consistent answer. As we've noted before, D&D is pure power fantasy to the absolutely Nth degree. It does not try in any way to be "realistic" or to "model" anything. All HP represents is an abstraction of "he's so bad-ass that he could fight a werewolf/giant scorpion/orc war band and win!" versus "he's not bad ass enough yet to fight a lich king" or "that guy is way more bad-ass than that other guy"

Attempting to categorize it as a logical system is a futile endeavor. At lower levels maybe you could write it off as grit or meat or whatever...but it would quickly fall apart as levels piled on. Just accept it as nonsensical as a thirty second training montage representing a month of real time turning a fat socially awkward nerd into a masked ninja superhero who regains his confidence and gets the love interest. Whatever the movie magic is that allows that, that's HP.

[Max_Killjoy]

If we're talking D&D specifically, on the human-scale-but-powerful-character (typically PCs, but not always) end there is no compelling or consistent answer. As we've noted before, D&D is pure power fantasy to the absolutely Nth degree. It does not try in any way to be "realistic" or to "model" anything. All HP represents is an abstraction of "he's so bad-ass that he could fight a werewolf/giant scorpion/orc war band and win!" versus "he's not bad ass enough yet to fight a lich king" or "that guy is way more bad-ass than that other guy"

Attempting to categorize it as a logical system is a futile endeavor. At lower levels maybe you could write it off as grit or meat or whatever...but it would quickly fall apart as levels piled on. Just accept it as nonsensical as a thirty second training montage representing a month of real time turning a fat socially awkward nerd into a masked ninja superhero who regains his confidence and gets the love interest. Whatever the movie magic is that allows that, that's HP.


The sections in your post I bolded are big parts of WHY D&D's HP are so aggravating to me as a game mechanic -- because there are no compelling or consistent answers, because it refuses to be a logical system.

At least the movie montage is trying to represent months in the timeframe of a movie, so while it has become a silly cliche, it's one of a few solutions to presenting certain sorts of stories without telling the audience "OK, come back and watch part two of the movie in a year when the character has completed his training". :smalleek:

There are actual alternatives to the hyerscaling HP, that account for endurance and evasiveness and "luck" and "fighting spirit" and so on, without presenting them all as a "maybe it's this, maybe it's that, you'll never know" mystery mashup of all those elements with actual physical resilience against injuries.

[Tanarii]

HP are a mechanical representation of how long before you die. Or in more modern versions, stop being able to effectively fight. Nothing more.

They're a game construct, not a simulation of anything.

[Xuc Xac]

In my opinion, half the problems with the game "not making sense" stems from adopting the idea that hit points equal meat points.

I lose count of the amount of times you hear the puzzled complaints of "how did the Rogue manage to avoid that fireball without moving, he was right in the middle of it?", "how can the fighter survive a fall from that height?", and "how can a Rogues dagger do more damage than a Greataxe?", "How is that creatures armour pristine, we hit him about 30 times?". The simple answer is that none of those things happened. They only seemed to happen because you crossed off (or didn't) x amounts of hit points, and somehow interpreted that as a wound. But if you read the only "wounds" as the ones that put you down, and interpret all other losses of hit points as fatigue, bruising, concussions, or lucky events which turn the attack that should have killed you into one that only staggered you, then it is much easier to understand.

Did that Rogue dodge the Fireball without moving? No, she was caught in the blast like everyone else, but was quick enough to drop, cover her eyes with her arm, and tumble with the blast wave, so she came back to her feet with a few scrapes, a few cosmetic burns, but still good to go, while everyone else has a couple of serious burns, is a bit stunned by the concussion and the hard fall to the ground, and their vision is blurred by the heat and smoke.

I find it telling that even people arguing "HP loss isn't physical injury" can't describe it without using examples of physical injury. Seriously, that Rogue "tumbled with the blast wave" but ended up in the same spot? So she "tumbled" two feet away and didn't have to take even a five foot step?

Saying "bruises and concussions aren't real injuries" is the same shallow, superficial reasoning that said "beating someone to death with a heavy mace doesn't draw blood so it's kosher for clerics".

The only explanation of HP that made sense to me is one that I heard from one of Gygax's original players. "Hit points represent how many hit points you have; running out of hit points represents not having any more hit points." Calling what they did "role-playing" was just confusing for people who weren't there when they made the game in the first place. The characters were just playing pieces for the game. D&D wasn't made or originally played as an exercise in immersing yourself in the role of a living breathing character in a fictional world. It was a wargame played from a first-person perspective and had all the roleplaying depth of an arena death match in Unreal Tournament.

If you want HP to make sense from an in character perspective, just make it outright magical (and do the same for thief/rogue skills and other "mundane" things that are impossible). How does a Rogue "dodge" an explosion without leaving ground zero? The same way they can climb a smooth wall like a gecko or hide in their own shadow: supernaturally good avoidance.

I think this is what the Earthdawn setting did. Every class had magical talents. Wizards used their magic to summon and control elements, talk to the dead, or make illusions. Warriors were supernaturally strong and tough, archers could make impossible shots like a comic book mutant hitman, and so on because they were tapping into magical power just as much as the wizards were. In D&D terms, wizards were wizards, fighters were sorcerers with a lot of self buffs, rogues were sorcerers with all the stealth and deception magic, etc.

[shawnhcorey]

D&D evolved from war gaming. Originally it was the HP of a group of fighters. For examples: 10 first-level fighters would have 10 HP; 10 second levels would have 20 HP. A decrease in HP meant the lose of fighters in the group.

When hero units were added, they would have unusually high HP for individuals. This is when HP stopped making sense. But keeping HP made playing war games easier since other units also had it.

When Chainmail came out, it dropped the group units and keep the heroes. It also kept HP. Chainmail was rewritten as D&D, which kept the legacy of HP.


Answer is both.

GURPS: 100% meat. If you lose all but 1/3 of your HP, your Move and Dodge is halved. At 0 HP, you are unconscious. At -1x, -2x, -3x and -4x HP, succeed at a health roll or die. At -5x HP, die. At -10x HP, your body is completely destroyed.

[Segev]

I find it telling that even people arguing "HP loss isn't physical injury" can't describe it without using examples of physical injury.

That's because this is a straw man. Nobody's saying it's not any amount of physical injury. In fact, most of the time, hp loss comes with some at least cosmetic damage. But the 35 hp lost to that fireball on the 2-HD wolf leaves a fricaseed lupine corpse, while 20-HD barbarian nearby managed to roll with it, cover himself, and maybe even cut through the fire with his axe to create a cooler space, and only is singed with his fur cloak covered in smoldering embers. Both took 35 hp of damage. The barbarian just has 260 hp left, and the wolf is way, way below -10. So the Barbarian hasn't taken more than cosmetic damage, but he still can have taken cosmetic damage.

The rogue probably looks little different from the barbarian, even though the rogue took no damage, because it's cosmetic. The difference is that the rogue can keep dodging fireballs all day (as long as he can keep making his reflex save) while the barbarian eventually runs out of luck and stamina to deflect and protect against the fire (when he runs out of hit points).

[jjordan]

They're a game construct, not a simulation of anything. Which is true, and frustrating. Because "You did 10hp of damage. Next player." is nowhere near as satisfying as "You sneak under his guard, slashing across his chest. His cry of pain turns into a growl of promised vengeance as blood drips down his armor."

[Max_Killjoy]

Which is true, and frustrating. Because "You did 10hp of damage. Next player." is nowhere near as satisfying as "You sneak under his guard, slashing across his chest. His cry of pain turns into a growl of promised vengeance as blood drips down his armor."

It's true for a certain set of players, and also one of the major sources of disconnect.



I find it telling that even people arguing "HP loss isn't physical injury" can't describe it without using examples of physical injury. Seriously, that Rogue "tumbled with the blast wave" but ended up in the same spot? So she "tumbled" two feet away and didn't have to take even a five foot step?

Saying "bruises and concussions aren't real injuries" is the same shallow, superficial reasoning that said "beating someone to death with a heavy mace doesn't draw blood so it's kosher for clerics".

The only explanation of HP that made sense to me is one that I heard from one of Gygax's original players. "Hit points represent how many hit points you have; running out of hit points represents not having any more hit points." Calling what they did "role-playing" was just confusing for people who weren't there when they made the game in the first place. The characters were just playing pieces for the game. D&D wasn't made or originally played as an exercise in immersing yourself in the role of a living breathing character in a fictional world. It was a wargame played from a first-person perspective and had all the roleplaying depth of an arena death match in Unreal Tournament.


It might make sense from a purely mechanistic POV, but it's also entirely unsatisfying... it is utterly uninformed by the fiction layer, and provides no information to the fiction layer.

[Cadex Sideris]

I mostly play GURPS, where HP is (as someone else said above) 100% "meat". Every single loss of HP represents something happening to the body itself, and has consequences appropriate to the notion that your muscles, bones, organs, blood vessels, cells, etc. are being damaged. Meanwhile, the abstractions that comprise "HP as luck/momentum" in DnD (and other systems) are divided among other mechanics in GURPS (e.g., more "active defense" mechanics, armor as damage reduction rather than accuracy modulation, fatigue points, hit locations, more modifiers for combat situation).

When I play DnD I don't really worry about "realism" since the impression I get is that the game overall has a more "video game"-like feel. Not quite to the level of narrative dominance of systems like Exalted and FATE, but there's a clear intention of streamlining in the "I just want to do things" kind of way.

[Segev]

Which is true, and frustrating. Because "You did 10hp of damage. Next player." is nowhere near as satisfying as "You sneak under his guard, slashing across his chest. His cry of pain turns into a growl of promised vengeance as blood drips down his armor."

I don't understand why you think "hp as a combination of luck, stamina, je ne se qua, and meat" precludes that. Did that slash across his chest do mortal damage, dropping him to disabled or unconscious? No? Then it's bloody but shallow. But you're free to describe the hit exactly that way, and it makes perfectly fine sense within the mechanics of hp.

[Mastikator]

I don't understand why you think "hp as a combination of luck, stamina, je ne se qua, and meat" precludes that. Did that slash across his chest do mortal damage, dropping him to disabled or unconscious? No? Then it's bloody but shallow. But you're free to describe the hit exactly that way, and it makes perfectly fine sense within the mechanics of hp.

As soon as you do that you're connecting the construct to the idea that HP means meat or luck and the player will start expecting one or the other and when those expectations are not met their disbelief is no longer suspended. That is the problem with a Schrodinger's mechanic.

[Jay R]

You still can't get out of a simulation what the simulation designers didn't put into it.

D&D has not been unambiguously designed to say that HP is luck (or CON wouldn't give you more hit points).

D&D has not been unambiguously designed to say that HP is entirely meat (or experienced fighters wouldn't have ten or twenty times as many of them).

You're asking a question about a simulation that the simulation does not cover.

You can't consult Tolkien to get the names of everybody living in Minas Tirith, because Tolkien didn't name every person in Minas Tirith.

You can't consult the Avengers movie to find out if Captain Marvel can lift Thor's hammer, because the writers of the movie didn't consider whether Captain Marvel can lift the hammer.

And for the same reasons, there is no answer to whether HP is luck or meat, because the rules and structure of D&D weren't designed with a clear answer to that question.

[Arbane]

You still can't get out of a simulation what the simulation designers didn't put into it.

D&D has not been unambiguously designed to say that HP is luck (or CON wouldn't give you more hit points).


I'm pretty sure every edition since AD&D has a description of Hit Points that goes out of its way to unambiguously state the they're not supposed to be Meat Points, and nobody ever believes it.

I just think of D&D HP as Ablative Plot Armor, any other approach invites madness.

[jjordan]

As soon as you do that you're connecting the construct to the idea that HP means meat or luck and the player will start expecting one or the other and when those expectations are not met their disbelief is no longer suspended. That is the problem with a Schrodinger's mechanic.This.

And I have adapted to the idea of HP as a combination of meat/motivation/skill/luck. Purely for my own reference when narrating I've broken it out into ways to understand it. It's imperfect but it's fairly consistent and works for me.

[MrSandman]

I'm pretty sure every edition since AD&D has a description of Hit Points that goes out of its way to unambiguously state the they're not supposed to be Meat Points, and nobody ever believes it.

That's probably because they then add a whole bunch of things (poison, disease, damage reduction, regeneration, tear, free grapple and trip checks, frost swords, et al) that unambiguously contradict their definition of hit points.

[Segev]

As soon as you do that you're connecting the construct to the idea that HP means meat or luck and the player will start expecting one or the other and when those expectations are not met their disbelief is no longer suspended. That is the problem with a Schrodinger's mechanic.

I have literally never run into this problem based on descriptions. I don't know why you assume even a plurality, let alone a majority or everybody, would have this issue.

Connecting the construct to specific instances is precisely the point. It is an abstract resource, but each time it is expended, it does represent something happening specifically in the fictional narrative. At this point, I can't really take these objections seriously, as they come across as, "I don't like it, so it must be inherently bad." They come across this way because they keep insisting on subjective things as objective fact, and ignoring countervailing subjective testimony.

If something takes YOU out of the fiction, I can't really help that. Especially if you're in a minority (even one that is a plurality). It's not the fault of, say, vancian spellcasting if the notion that some magic is "memorized" and some (like, say, a dragon's breath weapon) is not takes a person out of the narrative, and it doesn't mean that either mechanic is inherently bad.

[Morty]

I'm pretty sure every edition since AD&D has a description of Hit Points that goes out of its way to unambiguously state the they're not supposed to be Meat Points, and nobody ever believes it.

I just think of D&D HP as Ablative Plot Armor, any other approach invites madness.


That's probably because they then add a whole bunch of things (poison, disease, damage reduction, regeneration, tear, free grapple and trip checks, frost swords, et al) that unambiguously contradict their definition of hit points.

This, but I think another stumbling block is healing, not damage. In 3E and older editions, regaining hit points at any decent rate required magic - spells or items. So it was very easy for people to get locked into thinking that they're purely physical, descriptions notwithstanding. 4E and 5E both lean on HP as morale and luck by making non-magical healing better (5E far less so, but a full rest still heals you fully). Some people have rolled with this change, others haven't, and so this merry-go-round happens every so often.

[Segev]

Right: restoring vitality via healing magics can mean restoring meat (closing wounds, healing burns, removing bruises, even fusing broken bones) or it can mean restoring energy. You're less tired, less distracted, more energized and able to focus like you're fresh from warming up for the day.

As to effects which increase the damage done by a weapon, anything making a weapon do more damage simply represents how much more dangerous that weapon is and how much harder one must work to turn a potentially mortal blow into a glancing one or a near-miss. That flaming sword or frost sword may have only grazed you, but the additional burning cold or fire means it came closer to you than it otherwise would, and you had to dodge or avoid it somehow. Or maybe it DID do some "meat damage" and has slowed you down just that much because of it.

The reason most hp damage leaves some kind of cosmetic mark is also associated with the things most often brought up as "contradicting" the notion that hp is a combination of things (as opposed to purely meat): that poison dagger may not have dug deeply, but the scrape of a flesh wound still got poison into it. The rat bite may be minor in terms of meat damage, a light scratch on your cheek that is painful but ultimately wouldn't even kill a first-level commoner (which is why the 6 damage it did is actually a bite out of that commoner's neck, since the commoner lacks the skill and instincts to avoid the jugular strike). But it's infected with disease.

Note that it can also BE meat. It isn't exclusive. And if your fiction layer makes more sense with it as meat for a particular creature, more power to that creature. The rat bite really didn't do nearly as much damage to the giant on whom the bite is as a flea bite would be on a human, for instance. That particular barbarian really did deflect a sword with his well-oiled pecs, taking a mear scratch where a lesser man would have been bisected.

[Mastikator]

I have literally never run into this problem based on descriptions. I don't know why you assume even a plurality, let alone a majority or everybody, would have this issue.

Connecting the construct to specific instances is precisely the point. It is an abstract resource, but each time it is expended, it does represent something happening specifically in the fictional narrative. At this point, I can't really take these objections seriously, as they come across as, "I don't like it, so it must be inherently bad." They come across this way because they keep insisting on subjective things as objective fact, and ignoring countervailing subjective testimony.

If something takes YOU out of the fiction, I can't really help that. Especially if you're in a minority (even one that is a plurality). It's not the fault of, say, vancian spellcasting if the notion that some magic is "memorized" and some (like, say, a dragon's breath weapon) is not takes a person out of the narrative, and it doesn't mean that either mechanic is inherently bad.

This style of argument of yours is frustrating, I don't know why you claim I am making assumptions that I have obviously not made so I'll put out this fire right away and I hope you don't immediately start it again.

1) I do not assume that a plurality or majority or everybody has this issue. I am explaining MY issue. Why shouldn't I explain MY issue? Is my opinion not worth saying, but your is? With all due respect please direct this selfish attitude in some other direction because it is infuriating to on the receiving end of it.

2) In a vacuum there is no problem with HP being ambiguously meat or luck and in a vacuum it's fine to use it for both. The problem arises when the player comes to believe that the DM prefers one way, comes to rely on it being one way, starts to plan on it being one way, imagines the world in that one way and the DM then switches. The switch breaks the disbelief because it becomes very apparent that the DM and the player has a different view of what is happening in the game. Views about things of consequence for the narrative. Sometimes it might actually matter for the story whether a character has a huge gaping wound or a tiny scratch.

If none of the above has ever happened to or around you then good for you but that doesn't mean it never can happen to anyone and saying that just because you don't see it it's not an issue is just annoying and unhelpful. I'm not a member of your gaming group, you don't have to change anything to suit my needs. If my issues mean nothing to you then you are free to ignore me.

3) I'm not it's a bad mechanic, having hp represent either meat or luck are both fine options. Both options are good. The problem arises if you use HP to mean both in the same game in an unpredictable way.

[Jay R]

I'm pretty sure every edition since AD&D has a description of Hit Points that goes out of its way to unambiguously state the they're not supposed to be Meat Points, and nobody ever believes it.

A. Nobody believes it because the rest of the rules contradict it. If Constitution adds to hit points, then they are physical. The phrase "Cure Light Wounds" implies that lost hit points are always wounds. And "Potions of Healing" shouldn't give you luck back.

B. No, actually, the rules have never been unambiguous. I remember these same arguments based on the rules back in the 1970s.

Original Dungeons and Dragons, Men & Magic, page 18 : "the number of points of damage the character could sustain before death. Whether sustaining accumulative hits will otherwise affect a character is left to the discretion of the referee." [Note that "points of damage" has no clear meaning. This just defines the game mechanic points as being game mechanic points.]

D&D 3.5, PHB p. 145: "Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power." [At least this one tries to define what in-world effect the game mechanic represents. Note that psionic damage has just been defined as physical.]

But also PHB, p. 309: "hit points (hp): A measure of a character's health or an object's integrity. Damage decreases hit points, and lost hit points return with healing or natural recovery." [Note that this does not include the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one, as defined in the same book.]

When there rules are not clear, then it's up to the DM to make a judgment.


I just think of D&D HP as Ablative Plot Armor, any other approach invites madness.

A perfect example of a DM judgment call. It's not taken from the rules, but if it satisfies your players, then it works. But it also doesn't answer the question. It defines the game mechanic as being a game mechanic.

My judgment call is to leave the question unanswered, because no answer actually serves the game.

DM: <rolls dice> The ogre hits Filboid Studge for 37 points. He's really feeling the results of this one. <rolls again> The second ogre hits Clovis for 4 points. You notice it, but it's not a big deal.

Did it slice meat, or did it use up some of your luck, or did it cause you to burn up some energy blocking the shot? The rules don't say, so I don't say.

[Segev]

This style of argument of yours is frustrating, I don't know why you claim I am making assumptions that I have obviously not made so I'll put out this fire right away and I hope you don't immediately start it again.

1) I do not assume that a plurality or majority or everybody has this issue. I am explaining MY issue. Why shouldn't I explain MY issue? Is my opinion not worth saying, but your is? With all due respect please direct this selfish attitude in some other direction because it is infuriating to on the receiving end of it.That's fair, then; I apologize for my misunderstanding of your position and the consequential sharp reply. You are, indeed, fully entitled to explain why it doesn't work well for you, and it is not my place to tell you your subjective experience is wrong; your subjective experience is, obviously, yours.


2) In a vacuum there is no problem with HP being ambiguously meat or luck and in a vacuum it's fine to use it for both. The problem arises when the player comes to believe that the DM prefers one way, comes to rely on it being one way, starts to plan on it being one way, imagines the world in that one way and the DM then switches. The switch breaks the disbelief because it becomes very apparent that the DM and the player has a different view of what is happening in the game. Views about things of consequence for the narrative. Sometimes it might actually matter for the story whether a character has a huge gaping wound or a tiny scratch.

If none of the above has ever happened to or around you then good for you but that doesn't mean it never can happen to anyone and saying that just because you don't see it it's not an issue is just annoying and unhelpful. I'm not a member of your gaming group, you don't have to change anything to suit my needs. If my issues mean nothing to you then you are free to ignore me.Ah. Any sort of communication problem can lead to this sort of issue, I've found. When I describe hp damage, I tend to mix it up depending on the circumstance, and there's usually enough reason to go both ways that my players will know what I mean.

I am curious, though: how do you make plans around it being one or the other that can be stymied by it being mixed/circumstantial? Mechanically, hp are still hp. What plans can you make to rely on it being, say, "all meat," that it including luck/skill/stamina/je ne se qua would foil?


3) I'm not it's a bad mechanic, having hp represent either meat or luck are both fine options. Both options are good. The problem arises if you use HP to mean both in the same game in an unpredictable way.For me, it's only as unpredictable as your ability to describe it. Heck, as a DM, I'm inclined to let players describe the hits they take, essentially stunting how their hp are lost. With caveats like requiring them to include some cosmetic damage that fits to, say, the poison save they have to make.

[sktarq]

There was an optional rule in 3.5 ...I think in Unearthed Arcana that dealt with this.

People had both HitPoints and Vitality Points.

Vitality came from Con score and not much else
HP came from adding levels.

HP basically was about turning -should be lethal damage into bareable damage...singe instead of burn....and if you ran out things went and damaged your Vitality points.

Critical hits went strait to your vitality points but did not multiply damage IIRC

I do recommend it if you are okay with higher risk high volatility games

[Tanarii]

Which is true, and frustrating. Because "You did 10hp of damage. Next player." is nowhere near as satisfying as "You sneak under his guard, slashing across his chest. His cry of pain turns into a growl of promised vengeance as blood drips down his armor."
I disagree. I find the former far more satisfying.

Edit: to be clear, if those were my only two choices. Personally I like something in between. Damage, simple action description (4-5 words tops), next player. But given those two choices, the latter is just wearying and wasting my time.

[NichG]

I wonder if this would be nearly as confusing if we spoke of HP penalties rather than HP damage or loss. We're used to thinking of multiple independent penalties to a single roll or action. If HP is a 'can I succeed in getting an action this round?' check, then it makes sense that it could be penalized both by injury and by exhaustion.

"You dodge the blow with a desperate maneuver, forcing the air out of your lungs and putting strain on your ankle. That will be a -4 penalty to HP"

"The arrow pierces your bicep, and you're slowly losing blood. That's a -8 penalty to HP."

[FaerieGodfather]

Hit Points represent a metaphysical life force that allows your body to resist and repair injury.

A greataxe critical that makes you dead cleaves your skull and plops your brain on the floor. Same greataxe critical when you're ten levels higher draws a line of blood across your forehead where the blade bit into your skull.

Same logic with orbital re-entry and all of the other edge cases people complain about.

[jjordan]

I disagree. I find the former far more satisfying.

Edit: to be clear, if those were my only two choices. Personally I like something in between. Damage, simple action description (4-5 words tops), next player. But given those two choices, the latter is just wearying and wasting my time.Fair enough. Your approach is certainly more in keeping with the design intent for 5e. And I should have been more careful in my writing to be clear that my preferred style is only my preferred style, no value judgments are implied.

[Telok]

Some day I'm going to get to play a character native to Limbo. For some reason the answer there is 'frogs'. Which means that character's hit points would be frogs tied to them.

It makes as much sense as some of the other stuff going around.

[Tanarii]

Fair enough. Your approach is certainly more in keeping with the design intent for 5e. And I should have been more careful in my writing to be clear that my preferred style is only my preferred style, no value judgments are implied.
No no, opinions need to be stated with the force of law. Forum rule. :smallbiggrin:

[Zhorn]

Some day I'm going to get to play a character native to Limbo. For some reason the answer there is 'frogs'. Which means that character's hit points would be frogs tied to them.

It makes as much sense as some of the other stuff going around.

As long as it maintains the consistency of a successful roll to hit actually hitting the target (hp =/= avoidance); then I would vote in support of this system.
For the sake of this concept, I push forwards a motion to adjust the meaning of "HP" to mean "Herptile Points", and it represents the number of frogs and similar reptile/amphibians strapped to your body.

All in favour say aye! :smallbiggrin:

[Willie the Duck]

I mostly play GURPS, where HP is (as someone else said above) 100% "meat". Every single loss of HP represents something happening to the body itself, and has consequences appropriate to the notion that your muscles, bones, organs, blood vessels, cells, etc. are being damaged. Meanwhile, the abstractions that comprise "HP as luck/momentum" in DnD (and other systems) are divided among other mechanics in GURPS (e.g., more "active defense" mechanics, armor as damage reduction rather than accuracy modulation, fatigue points, hit locations, more modifiers for combat situation).

GURPS does a very good job of this, and does a great job of highlighting why this is not a universally hewed-to alternative. GURPS has some real issues if you actually want a combat-intensive game -- it's deadly, it has a serious death-spiral issue, high powered characters simply replace huge HP totals with huge DR totals, etc. I love GURPS for hyper-realistic play (and HERO SYSTEM for 'hyper-genre-conforming' play), but I really have to have that as a primary goal before I pick up those systems.


When I play DnD I don't really worry about "realism" since the impression I get is that the game overall has a more "video game"-like feel. Not quite to the level of narrative dominance of systems like Exalted and FATE, but there's a clear intention of streamlining in the "I just want to do things" kind of way.

I would agree, except that people keep using 'video-game[y]' as a perjorative, as though an entire other field of gameplay emulating (or convergently evolved) an idea is somehow a bad thing. D&D found a simple solution to the problem of healthy to out-of-fight pacing and it works well for the X(unknown, but apparently high) percent of people for whom the messy details and the occasional logic-break just aren't that important. For those for which they are deal breakers, the game probably was never going to be their favorite anyways. Overall, I think it works for everyone, excepting that TTRPGs have an unusual level of hegemony. If D&D (/PF) were 'merely' 50-75% of the TTRPG market-share/open tables (or of course less), I think everything would work out for everyone*.
*excepting the hypothetical person who is upset that a game with a setup outside their preferences exists at all.

[Morty]

I haven't been very impressed by what I've heard about Starfinder, but it seems like it's managed to fix this pretty easily, by just splitting health into stamina (luck) and proper hit points (meat).

[Chauncymancer]

But the 35 hp lost to that fireball on the 2-HD wolf leaves a fricaseed lupine corpse, while 20-HD barbarian nearby managed to roll with it, cover himself, and maybe even cut through the fire with his axe to create a cooler space, and only is singed with his fur cloak covered in smoldering embers. Both took 35 hp of damage. The barbarian just has 260 hp left, and the wolf is way, way below -10. So the Barbarian hasn't taken more than cosmetic damage, but he still can have taken cosmetic damage.
By that logic, a level one commoner who has four HP left should need MORE healing to return to full health than a high level fighter, but instead they need less.



I am curious, though: how do you make plans around it being one or the other that can be stymied by it being mixed/circumstantial? Mechanically, hp are still hp. What plans can you make to rely on it being, say, "all meat," that it including luck/skill/stamina/je ne se qua would foil?

If the party archers have repeatedly fired arrows at a huge or larger creature, dealing damage, can I use the arrows that are sticking out od the creature as handholds for a bonus to my Climb check? Not if HP represents dodging attacks I can't, because the arrows aren't actually in him.
Some rather creative player plans can hinge on "does a hit represent physical contact?". Including goals, nets, ballistae shot connected to chains, reduce object.

I eventually came to the conclusion that HP 'should' represent hit amelioration, and that in turn such mechanics as fall damage, falling into the calderra of an active volcano, being lit on fire, and being covered in acid (to name a few) should not use HP rules at all. What the Helpless condition 'should' do, is reduce your HP to zero.

[Arbane]

By that logic, a level one commoner who has four HP left should need MORE healing to return to full health than a high level fighter, but instead they need less.


A magical draught that can bring a commoner back to perfect health from anything short of decapitation is what the high-level fighter drinks as a quick pick-me-up. Because they're just that powerful, it takes more healing to affect them.

[Mendicant]

By that logic, a level one commoner who has four HP left should need MORE healing to return to full health than a high level fighter, but instead they need less.


If the party archers have repeatedly fired arrows at a huge or larger creature, dealing damage, can I use the arrows that are sticking out od the creature as handholds for a bonus to my Climb check? Not if HP represents dodging attacks I can't, because the arrows aren't actually in him.
Some rather creative player plans can hinge on "does a hit represent physical contact?". Including goals, nets, ballistae shot connected to chains, reduce object.

I eventually came to the conclusion that HP 'should' represent hit amelioration, and that in turn such mechanics as fall damage, falling into the calderra of an active volcano, being lit on fire, and being covered in acid (to name a few) should not use HP rules at all. What the Helpless condition 'should' do, is reduce your HP to zero.

Or just bypass it as is already done with coup de grace. Most of the time when these things happen you end up bypassing HP for the actual "meat only" defense of a Fort save anyway, via the massive damage rules.

[Segev]

By that logic, a level one commoner who has four HP left should need MORE healing to return to full health than a high level fighter, but instead they need less.The fighter and the commoner are both physically fine enough to be fully functional at 1 hp. The rest of the healing is mostly cosmetic and "re-energizing." The fighter can take a lot more re-energizing because he's got more energy to expend on defending himself from lethal blows.


If the party archers have repeatedly fired arrows at a huge or larger creature, dealing damage, can I use the arrows that are sticking out od the creature as handholds for a bonus to my Climb check? Not if HP represents dodging attacks I can't, because the arrows aren't actually in him.
Some rather creative player plans can hinge on "does a hit represent physical contact?". Including goals, nets, ballistae shot connected to chains, reduce object.

I eventually came to the conclusion that HP 'should' represent hit amelioration, and that in turn such mechanics as fall damage, falling into the calderra of an active volcano, being lit on fire, and being covered in acid (to name a few) should not use HP rules at all. What the Helpless condition 'should' do, is reduce your HP to zero.
If it's a huge creature, meat is as reasonable an explanation as "near misses." It's between you and the DM whether there are arrows sticking out of it, but if you want handholds that are useful, you probably need to spend a few attacks putting the arrows where you want them, anyway. Talk to the DM. You're already negotiating for the plan to work; ensuring that you're picturing the same thing he is should have already been your first step.

In short: this shouldn't be a surprise that prevents a plan you were working towards, because you should already have specified the steps leading up to it and clarified what the situation was.

[Tanarii]

Personally I'd be fine with a system that had Vitality Points and Ablative Points (or whatever names), where losing VP meant mechanic penalties and fixed healing from spent resources, and AP meant no penalty and %healing from spent resources, except for one thing ...

There always seems to be a way to bypass AP and do damage direct to Vitality. The point of dividing them up is so some portion has no penalty associated with losing it and having more of that doesn't make healing less effective. Not so you can just skip it.

[Telok]

I haven't been very impressed by what I've heard about Starfinder, but it seems like it's managed to fix this pretty easily, by just splitting health into stamina (luck) and proper hit points (meat).

In theory perhaps. But they've done odd things with it. Everyone but PCs just uses hit points, usually in excess of what a same level PC will have in sp and hp combined. Healing potions and spells only heal hit points, so the healer class is more effective at healing NPCs than PCs. There's definite hyperinflation too, everyone gets generally 10+ points per level. It's not uncommon for the 'low hit point' classes to break 100 points at about 8th level.

[RazorChain]

I think it should be obvious that HP in D&D represent meat.


I mean bigger things do more damage, stronger things do more damage. High Constitution gives you more HP.


Using 5e this becomes obvious when you place a 20th level blind and deaf fighter in front of a squad of crossbowmen. He is unarmored and does not know that he is being shot at at close range. Now all the crossbowmen hit but the fighter survives on account that he has 204 HP. Either he has some kind of a luck forcefield around himself or he is just superhumanly tough. Now we can "restore his luck" or heal him and put him in the same situation over and over again and he'll always survive even though he is just sitting there like a sack of potatoes. Now you tie up the fighter as well and still he survives


Now you take the same guy tie him up and drop him down a 100' feet cliff and if you "restore his luck" or heal him you can do this repeatedly without him dying, you can even paralyze him and drop him down and he will get lucky enough to survive every single time if you "restore his luck"

[Segev]

Or the blind fighter is just that good and senses the arrows by means of preternatural skill and uncanny awareness, just enough to dodge and weave and such. And, yes, be lucky enough for the random placement of arrows to proffer him he opportunity to dodge them.

Or it’s a coup de grace.

Or it’s a cut scene death.

Or, sure, it’s meat because he’s always been portrayed as supernaturally tough.

[Zhorn]

Or the blind fighter is just that good and senses the arrows by means of preternatural skill and uncanny awareness, just enough to dodge and weave and such. And, yes, be lucky enough for the random placement of arrows to proffer him he opportunity to dodge them.
I know debating this whole thing is silly since none of this changes any mechanics of the game and it's all just thematic fluff, but the hp as avoidance concept just feels so out of touch.


Attack Rolls
When you make an attack, your attack roll determines whether the attack hits or misses. To make an attack roll, roll a d20 and add the appropriate modifiers. If the total of the roll plus modifiers equals or exceeds the target’s Armor Class (AC), the attack hits.

Again, arguing about it is silly. Do what works for your table. If the mechanics operate the same, then describing it as one way over another is harmless.

But still, a hit is a hit, and a dodge is not a hit.
Narrative wise; avoidance is already tied into AC.

I know it was written in jest, but Telok's frog related hp comment makes more sense to me than hp as avoidance.

Anyway, just needed to get that out of my system. Continue with your hp as luck method if that's what works best for you.

[jjordan]

I think it should be obvious that HP in D&D represent meat.Since I think the designers of 5e went with a video-game approach to the design I don't think it's obvious at all. I think HP should mostly represent meat, but that's just the opinion of an old AD&D guy. And I honestly don't care what it represents so long as I have an explanation I can use to be consistent in my narrative. Something other than "You do ten points of damage."

[Segev]

I know debating this whole thing is silly since none of this changes any mechanics of the game and it's all just thematic fluff, but the hp as avoidance concept just feels so out of touch.

"Well that's just, like, your opinion, man." :smalltongue:

More seriously, that IS a subjective point of view, and you're free to hold it, but when you get into how it "feels," you're discussing preferences more than objective "can it work?" questions. This is fuzzy, mind, because if it "feels out of touch" for a vast majority of players, then it IS a problem, but I don't think we're there.

[Willie the Duck]

Since I think the designers of 5e went with a video-game approach to the design I don't think it's obvious at all. I think HP should mostly represent meat, but that's just the opinion of an old AD&D guy. And I honestly don't care what it represents so long as I have an explanation I can use to be consistent in my narrative. Something other than "You do ten points of damage."


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

Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 Constitution. This character would have an average of 5.5 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.

While I'm not against your position, I'd say that AD&D is sufficiently expansive that it can be read to support whichever position one wants it to.

[jjordan]

While I'm not against your position, I'd say that AD&D is sufficiently expansive that it can be read to support whichever position one wants it to.It certainly is. When I came to the game in 81 every table I played at played HP as pure meat. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just what I was used to.

[Morty]

In theory perhaps. But they've done odd things with it. Everyone but PCs just uses hit points, usually in excess of what a same level PC will have in sp and hp combined. Healing potions and spells only heal hit points, so the healer class is more effective at healing NPCs than PCs. There's definite hyperinflation too, everyone gets generally 10+ points per level. It's not uncommon for the 'low hit point' classes to break 100 points at about 8th level.

It's still Paizo, so I guess the mechanics are going to be clunky on a good day. Splitting PCs' and NPCs' health this way sounds weird. Still, I do think it's a good direction in general. It'd basically make the "luck and fatigue" description part of the rules and prevent the inconrguity that many people feel. Plenty of systems already do it, in some way or another.

[Tanarii]

While I'm not against your position, I'd say that AD&D is sufficiently expansive that it can be read to support whichever position one wants it to.It kind of depends what level of play you're talking about. Remember, it coild take a few years of play to reach the name levels the quotes are decribing. Whereas a character at levels 4-5 might easily be in the 'mostly meat' hit point ranges.

[TheIronGolem]

My HP mean whatever I want them to mean right now, for my character, in the particular situation that character happens to be in at the moment. That can, will, and should change frequently. It's fine that they aren't consistent with other scenarios where HP are lost, because they don't need to be. Their job is to measure how close my character is to losing the fight, not to tell me what "losing the fight" looks like. That's between me and the DM.

[Vknight]

D&D evolved from war gaming. Originally it was the HP of a group of fighters. For examples: 10 first-level fighters would have 10 HP; 10 second levels would have 20 HP. A decrease in HP meant the lose of fighters in the group.

When hero units were added, they would have unusually high HP for individuals. This is when HP stopped making sense. But keeping HP made playing war games easier since other units also had it.

When Chainmail came out, it dropped the group units and keep the heroes. It also kept HP. Chainmail was rewritten as D&D, which kept the legacy of HP.



GURPS: 100% meat. If you lose all but 1/3 of your HP, your Move and Dodge is halved. At 0 HP, you are unconscious. At -1x, -2x, -3x and -4x HP, succeed at a health roll or die. At -5x HP, die. At -10x HP, your body is completely destroyed.

I'd argue based on that its more like that the first 1/3 is luck and everything after is meat because your not talking penalties at 2/3 or 1/2 hp course been a quick minute since i last played GURPS

[RazorChain]

I'd argue based on that its more like that the first 1/3 is luck and everything after is meat because your not talking penalties at 2/3 or 1/2 hp course been a quick minute since i last played GURPS

Nope it's all meat in GURPS. Losing 2/3 of your HP in Gurps is nothing because you go into the negative, a normal person has 10HP but only makes his first death save at -10HP and then again at -20HP if he crosses -50HP then he's automatically dead. He starts to roll conscious checks when he reaches negative HP. That same person can receive crippling injuries by losing 6 HP in one blow and losing 6HP in one blow could also stun or knock him out if the blow is to the head. So a normal person could lose max 6 HP out of potentially 60HP without adverse effect, if he takes all 6 HP in one blow he could potentially by crippled, stunned or knocked unconscous depending on where the blow lands.

This means that PC's generally don't want to get hurt in GURPS.

[Segev]

My HP mean whatever I want them to mean right now, for my character, in the particular situation that character happens to be in at the moment. That can, will, and should change frequently. It's fine that they aren't consistent with other scenarios where HP are lost, because they don't need to be. Their job is to measure how close my character is to losing the fight, not to tell me what "losing the fight" looks like. That's between me and the DM.

Well said. This is largely the point of contention, I think, with those who are annoyed by the "inconsistency." They want it to map the same way every time, and either don't grasp how it's possible to have it map to "anything that explains why I'm not dead yet," or don't care that it CAN make sense; they don't like it and, I think in some cases, confuse not liking it with it not making sense to them.

[Willie the Duck]

Well said. This is largely the point of contention, I think, with those who are annoyed by the "inconsistency." They want it to map the same way every time, and either don't grasp how it's possible to have it map to "anything that explains why I'm not dead yet," or don't care that it CAN make sense; they don't like it and, I think in some cases, confuse not liking it with it not making sense to them.

While there is undoubtedly someone out there like that, I think it is unfair to lump all people "annoyed by the 'inconsistency'" into a the categories presented. There can also be a set of people who are annoyed by the inconsistency, are aware of how said inconsistency makes sense and can be valuable to others' games, yet still really dislike it based upon their own preferences and value-weights.

[Max_Killjoy]

My HP mean whatever I want them to mean right now, for my character, in the particular situation that character happens to be in at the moment. That can, will, and should change frequently. It's fine that they aren't consistent with other scenarios where HP are lost, because they don't need to be. Their job is to measure how close my character is to losing the fight, not to tell me what "losing the fight" looks like. That's between me and the DM.


Well said. This is largely the point of contention, I think, with those who are annoyed by the "inconsistency." They want it to map the same way every time, and either don't grasp how it's possible to have it map to "anything that explains why I'm not dead yet," or don't care that it CAN make sense; they don't like it and, I think in some cases, confuse not liking it with it not making sense to them.

To me that's just begging for the game to bog down in "negotiating" between the player and DM, every time a character "takes damage" or something happens that could affected by what actually happened in previous "damage".

Of course, the fact that it's called damage (and healing) would seem to hint at it being, you know, damage and healing, not "whatever we agree on at the moment that makes you closer to losing the fight". And the fact that an unsuccessful attack is called a "miss" in the text, not a "attack that didn't reduce the target's ability to keep fighting". Almost all of the language in the books reads as if it's hits and misses on attack rolls, and then actual physical damage when an attack is successful etc.

[Willie the Duck]

To me that's just begging for the game to bog down in "negotiating" between the player and DM, every time a character "takes damage" or something happens that could affected by what actually happened in previous "damage".

Can you give an example (with example of how it would be different in an alternate system where this isn't the case). In general, 'you are hit and take 6 damage' is not really the point where negotiating is the real trouble point. Generally I find negotiating to happen in places where the ruleset goes towards the overly-complex, rather than the 'exceedingly straightforward, but potentially verisimilitude-breaking.'


Of course, the fact that it's called damage (and healing) would seem to hint at it being, you know, damage and healing, not "whatever we agree on at the moment that makes you closer to losing the fight". And the fact that an unsuccessful attack is called a "miss" in the text, not a "attack that didn't reduce the target's ability to keep fighting". Almost all of the language in the books reads as if it's hits and misses on attack rolls, and then actual physical damage when an attack is successful etc.

Yes, we got it. We know. The language of the game treats attack rolls as the determination of 'wound (y/n)?' in many-to-most cases, but then goes back and declares that hp are 'more than just wounds.' Segev even acknowledged it as an "inconsistency" in the post you quoted.

[Segev]

To me that's just begging for the game to bog down in "negotiating" between the player and DM, every time a character "takes damage" or something happens that could affected by what actually happened in previous "damage".

I don't really see how. It's rarely going to be so important as to require pushing one way or another. Let the one receiving the hp loss describe it, with the only caveat being that it must make sense with what mechanically follows.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Am I the only one who doesn't narrate combat except for
a) killing blows
b) natural 1s (which are always misses, nothing more)?

Not so much for mechanical reasons, but just because it takes way too much time and effort to narrate every attack, especially since that's well below the level of abstraction of the system.

That avoids the entire issue, since HP is just an abstract counter at that point.

Sure, I have a system where in-universe, HP has some meat-based analogue. But that's for writing single-author stories, not playing the game. Or for figuring out those odd cases involving things the system doesn't even try to cover.

For me, the big thing I want out of a combat system is a combination of granularity (so not just a single "roll Fight" event) and speed of individual action resolution. I'd much rather have people (including myself) get to take lots of very simple actions, each resolved and narrated instantly, rather than a few very big, very thorough actions.

[Segev]

I don't always narrate combat, but a lot of the time, there's post-combat description of the state of things.

[Max_Killjoy]

Can you give an example (with example of how it would be different in an alternate system where this isn't the case). In general, 'you are hit and take 6 damage' is not really the point where negotiating is the real trouble point. Generally I find negotiating to happen in places where the ruleset goes towards the overly-complex, rather than the 'exceedingly straightforward, but potentially verisimilitude-breaking.'


Whether there are physical wounds makes a lot of difference on things like whether poisoned blades taking effect makes sense, whether infection is a concern, how long it will take the character to recover without medical or magical healing (or with, depending). Looking upthread, there's the example of whether the arrows missed the dragon or embedded in its thick scaled hide, which would tell you whether there were arrows there as handholds for an agile character to use, or not, I guess. Whether that big damage hit was actual damage or just "expending luck" would make a difference on whether the character can walk or use their arm or talk, depending on where they took the hit. Etc.

And more generally, I just want to have an idea of what's going on without having to parse out whether it's meat or luck or evasion or whatever this time, and I don't want to have to parse out which mechanic that's partially covering something to use each time -- is this instance of evading a hit actually AC, or HP, or a Save, using the D&D example.

I've always gamed with people who would catch an inconsistency in a heartbeat, too. As a GM, if I contradicted myself between two sessions on how something worked, I'd have heard "wait, last time it was _______" or some variation of that.




Yes, we got it. We know. The language of the game treats attack rolls as the determination of 'wound (y/n)?' in many-to-most cases, but then goes back and declares that hp are 'more than just wounds.' Segev even acknowledged it as an "inconsistency" in the post you quoted.


With the quotes, I read "inconsistency" as dismissive, not an acknowledgement.

[Segev]

Whether there are physical wounds makes a lot of difference on things like whether poisoned blades taking effect makes sense, whether infection is a concern, how long it will take the character to recover without medical or magical healing (or with, depending). Looking upthread, there's the example of whether the arrows missed the dragon or embedded in its thick scaled hide, which would tell you whether there were arrows there as handholds for an agile character to use, or not, I guess. Whether that big damage hit was actual damage or just "expending luck" would make a difference on whether the character can walk or use their arm or talk, depending on where they took the hit. Etc.

And more generally, I just want to have an idea of what's going on without having to parse out whether it's meat or luck or evasion or whatever this time, and I don't want to have to parse out which mechanic that's partially covering something to use each time -- is this instance of evading a hit actually AC, or HP, or a Save, using the D&D example.

I've always gamed with people who would catch an inconsistency in a heartbeat, too. As a GM, if I contradicted myself between two sessions on how something worked, I'd have heard "wait, last time it was _______" or some variation of that. I'm one of those people who insist on consistency between rulings and sessions. However, if the ruling was that hp represent a number of things, but they always have the same mechanical effect, I'd never raise a stink over it. I understand what they represent and how to use it.

All those "problematic" scenarios of "uncertainty" over whether hp were meat to any degree or not in the above quote are easily solved with a touch of communication. Communication of the sort that I have literally never seen any combat, let alone any game, function without. "DM, a quick clarification: we've been shooting arrows at the dragon for rounds and rounds, now. Are there many embedded in the dragon's scales that could be used as handholds and footholds?"

Furthermore, even if the DM ruled it as meat, and only meat, there's no guarantee the arrows are sticking out in a way that allows for this "handhold" stunt. You still have to ask the DM if they're there and in a way you can use them. So this feels like making a mountain out of a molehill, or trying to complain that you can't see the movie because somebody who's head isn't even visible above the seat in front of you sat in the seat in front of you.

The "but poison!" gripe is even more clear-cut: obviously it DID at least graze you enough to draw blood if it got poison into your system. Heck, maybe the Fortitude save isn't "I got poison in me, but my mighty Constitution shrugged it off," so much as it is, "I barely dodged, and it brushed my skin, but my skin was tough enough to keep it from getting any poison into my bloodstream."

It doesn't have to be. But it's a possibility.


With the quotes, I read "inconsistency" as dismissive, not an acknowledgement.It is "inconsistent" in the sense that it is not only one thing and thus the same thing every time, just like 100 cents is inconsistently either a greenish rectangle of paper, four silverish coins, 20 silverish slightly smaller coins, 10 silverish tiny coins, or 100 copperish coins, or a single colorful chip redeemable at the casino's counter.

When you say "Bobby Bigbux is a billionaire," you are not consistently referring to him having at least one billion greenish paper-and-silk rectangles with George Washington's face printed on them. You're not even consistently referring to him having that much money he could immediately write a check for. You're referring to his money, yes, but also his business, his stocks, his bonds, his real estate, his big-ticked luxury items, his multiple homes, etc. etc.

You are, however, consistently referring to his overall wealth. How far he is from being poverty-stricken.

Hit points consistently refer to how far from being unconscious/dead the creature is. What it is that overall is keeping the creature from that state is less consistent.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm one of those people who insist on consistency between rulings and sessions. However, if the ruling was that hp represent a number of things, but they always have the same mechanical effect, I'd never raise a stink over it. I understand what they represent and how to use it.

All those "problematic" scenarios of "uncertainty" over whether hp were meat to any degree or not in the above quote are easily solved with a touch of communication. Communication of the sort that I have literally never seen any combat, let alone any game, function without. "DM, a quick clarification: we've been shooting arrows at the dragon for rounds and rounds, now. Are there many embedded in the dragon's scales that could be used as handholds and footholds?"

Furthermore, even if the DM ruled it as meat, and only meat, there's no guarantee the arrows are sticking out in a way that allows for this "handhold" stunt. You still have to ask the DM if they're there and in a way you can use them. So this feels like making a mountain out of a molehill, or trying to complain that you can't see the movie because somebody who's head isn't even visible above the seat in front of you sat in the seat in front of you.

The "but poison!" gripe is even more clear-cut: obviously it DID at least graze you enough to draw blood if it got poison into your system. Heck, maybe the Fortitude save isn't "I got poison in me, but my mighty Constitution shrugged it off," so much as it is, "I barely dodged, and it brushed my skin, but my skin was tough enough to keep it from getting any poison into my bloodstream."

It doesn't have to be. But it's a possibility.


It is until it isn't... it isn't until it is...





It is "inconsistent" in the sense that it is not only one thing and thus the same thing every time, just like 100 cents is inconsistently either a greenish rectangle of paper, four silverish coins, 20 silverish slightly smaller coins, 10 silverish tiny coins, or 100 copperish coins, or a single colorful chip redeemable at the casino's counter.

When you say "Bobby Bigbux is a billionaire," you are not consistently referring to him having at least one billion greenish paper-and-silk rectangles with George Washington's face printed on them. You're not even consistently referring to him having that much money he could immediately write a check for. You're referring to his money, yes, but also his business, his stocks, his bonds, his real estate, his big-ticked luxury items, his multiple homes, etc. etc.

You are, however, consistently referring to his overall wealth. How far he is from being poverty-stricken.

Hit points consistently refer to how far from being unconscious/dead the creature is. What it is that overall is keeping the creature from that state is less consistent.


Which is simply a disassociated meta-mechanic with no real meaning.

The money analogy just puts the issue of treating HP as a currency or medium of exchange in starker relief.

[Willie the Duck]

And more generally, I just want to have an idea of what's going on without having to parse out whether it's meat or luck or evasion or whatever this time, and I don't want to have to parse out which mechanic that's partially covering something to use each time -- is this instance of evading a hit actually AC, or HP, or a Save, using the D&D example.

I've always gamed with people who would catch an inconsistency in a heartbeat, too. As a GM, if I contradicted myself between two sessions on how something worked, I'd have heard "wait, last time it was _______" or some variation of that.

Ugh. Yes, Max, we know. And I will be the first to say that your preference set (which I will defend that you at least mostly have been good about mentioning is what you are talking about, not what others should do) does not fit with what D&D has done. You. and. this. game. are. not. a. good. fit. for. each. other. You have a monofocus on your own credulity/verisimilitude/and personal sense of consistency which overrides all other concerns. I do not dispute that D&D does this particular focus short service. It is when you call it bad design and similar that I balk. Because I've played most all the games that do this better -- be they Fate where of course it doesn't break verisimilitude, since the narrative descriptor of what happened it the primary effect incurred, or simulationist games like GURPS which treat combat like the dirty and gritty horror show that it is (and honestly I have no idea why anyone would ever play a combat heavy GURPS game since it is just too deadly) -- and they all have serious downsides that a nice simple 'you have X hp and don't worry too much what they are, but if you run out of them you are down for the count' avoids. There is a legitimate reason for both games and both playstyles. If you value one or the other and that informs your decision about which games to pick up, more power to you. If you're ever in the Twin Cities, I might even have some Hero System 5e books to offload on you. It is this constant axe-grinding that just makes it seem like you genuinely resent the very existence of game systems which serve preferences other than your own.


With the quotes, I read "inconsistency" as dismissive, not an acknowledgement.

I have no idea what the quotes mean, and honestly I'm past caring. We're all talking past each other so much here, one more won't matter.

[Max_Killjoy]

Ugh. Yes, Max, we know. And I will be the first to say that your preference set (which I will defend that you at least mostly have been good about mentioning is what you are talking about, not what others should do) does not fit with what D&D has done. You. and. this. game. are. not. a. good. fit. for. each. other. You have a monofocus on your own credulity/verisimilitude/and personal sense of consistency which overrides all other concerns. I do not dispute that D&D does this particular focus short service. It is when you call it bad design and similar that I balk. Because I've played most all the games that do this better -- be they Fate where of course it doesn't break verisimilitude, since the narrative descriptor of what happened it the primary effect incurred, or simulationist games like GURPS which treat combat like the dirty and gritty horror show that it is (and honestly I have no idea why anyone would ever play a combat heavy GURPS game since it is just too deadly) -- and they all have serious downsides that a nice simple 'you have X hp and don't worry too much what they are, but if you run out of them you are down for the count' avoids. There is a legitimate reason for both games and both playstyles. If you value one or the other and that informs your decision about which games to pick up, more power to you. If you're ever in the Twin Cities, I might even have some Hero System 5e books to offload on you. It is this constant axe-grinding that just makes it seem like you genuinely resent the very existence of game systems which serve preferences other than your own.


If we were specifically in one of the D&D subforums, I'd agree, I shouldn't get into it, and I've been trying very hard not to post on these sorts of issues in for example the 5e forum. HP are used in more systems than just D&D.

But even sticking to D&D, every post here that says "Depends, it's all this stuff unless it isn't this stuff, figure it out as you go" is not really answering the question posited in the thread title. And most of them come across as activity avoiding an answer because they don't want to be tied down to the ways in hich a specific answer would conflict with or clunkily overlap with the rest of that system.

At least the idea of "it's literally 'internal life magic' in a setting full of magic" gives a direct answer to the question of what HP actually are.


E: as for whether it's just my concern, I think people I've gamed with would dispute that it's just my personal little bugbear... as I noted.

[TheIronGolem]

But even sticking to D&D, every post here that says "Depends, it's all this stuff unless it isn't this stuff, figure it out as you go" is not really answering the question posited in the thread title. And most of them come across as activity avoiding an answer because they don't want to be tied down to the ways in hich a specific answer would conflict with or clunkily overlap with the rest of that system.

The question that I'm supposedly not answering is "do you prefer meat hipoints or luck hitpoints?".

I'm answering it with "I like both to be options, I don't need to choose one or the other because it's a flexible system that can fluidly switch between them on the fly".

[Segev]

It is until it isn't... it isn't until it is... Not quite. What it is is determined when it's expended.


Which is simply a disassociated meta-mechanic with no real meaning. No, it has real meaning, just as money has real meaning.


The money analogy just puts the issue of treating HP as a currency or medium of exchange in starker relief.You say this like it's a problem. HP is a meter measuring how close you are to nonfunctionality due to physical harm. Whether that nonfunctionality due to physical harm is far away because you're just that tough or because you've got lots of luck and stamina with which to exert desperate skill to avoid taking lethal physical harm, that's what hp represents.

Repeating "it is until it isn't" over and over doesn't actually make a point. It either makes you seem to be dense and incapable of grasping the concept, or it makes you seem to be claiming that your dislike of it makes it inherently bad and incapable of actually translating to something in a narrative. It makes you sound stupid or disingenuous, and I'm pretty sure you're neither.

What frustrates me is that I can't tell if you genuinely don't GET it, or if you just dislike it so much that you're confusing dislike for objective assessment of quality. Because you keep making claims about it not translating to anything in the story/narrative/game setting/whatever-you-call-it, just because it doesn't translate to the same thing every single time 1 hp is dealt. Or at least, I seem to see thsoe claims in what you're saying.

[Max_Killjoy]

Not quite. What it is is determined when it's expended.

No, it has real meaning, just as money has real meaning.

You say this like it's a problem. HP is a meter measuring how close you are to nonfunctionality due to physical harm. Whether that nonfunctionality due to physical harm is far away because you're just that tough or because you've got lots of luck and stamina with which to exert desperate skill to avoid taking lethal physical harm, that's what hp represents.


If it were just "how close you are to nonfunctionality due to physical harm", then that would be "meat".

But you turn around in the very next sentence and describe is as sometimes not "meat", as not the capacity to endure physical harm... but rather as "luck and stamina".

One is the ability to endure, the other is the ability to avoid -- not the same thing, at all. And this is compounded by the fact that the ability to avoid is also covered by other parts of that same system (AC, saves, etc). And there's also some coverage of the ability to endure (again, saves).

(Yes, I'm repeating myself there, but at this point I'm just thoroughly frustrated that the answer keeps coming down to something self-contradicting, at least in that the terminology used makes it sound like kinda a thing and kinda not a thing at the same time, kinda.)




Repeating "it is until it isn't" over and over doesn't actually make a point. It either makes you seem to be dense and incapable of grasping the concept, or it makes you seem to be claiming that your dislike of it makes it inherently bad and incapable of actually translating to something in a narrative. It makes you sound stupid or disingenuous, and I'm pretty sure you're neither.

What frustrates me is that I can't tell if you genuinely don't GET it, or if you just dislike it so much that you're confusing dislike for objective assessment of quality. Because you keep making claims about it not translating to anything in the story/narrative/game setting/whatever-you-call-it, just because it doesn't translate to the same thing every single time 1 hp is dealt. Or at least, I seem to see thsoe claims in what you're saying.


If it can translate to anything, then it translates to nothing.

If X can be a measure of A, B, C, D, or purple, then just having a value of so many units of X tells you absolutely nothing.


Maybe the core disconnect here is between the view of HP (or anything else in a gaming system) as a measure of something, versus the view of HP as a "currency" or "resource" to be expended. I'll never buy into the notion of HP as an expendable resource or currency to be expended, or exchanged for something else.

[Segev]

If it were just "how close you are to nonfunctionality due to physical harm", then that would be "meat".

But you turn around in the very next sentence and describe is as sometimes not "meat", as not the capacity to endure physical harm... but rather as "luck and stamina". You're misinterpreting what I said. I don't blame you; that was not the clearest I could have been. Let me try again:

When you are out of hp, you are physically KO'd. You've taken a mortal or at least disabling blow or set of blows and your body (and likely your brain) is not functioning well enough for you to move or act. When you have at least 1 hp, you are physically still able to function at more or less 100%. I say "more or less," because there are no mechanical penalties for being at 1 hp no matter what your full hp value is, other than the fact that you ARE at 1 hp and that makes you very easy to deal a mortal physical blow to.

When you are at a number of hp high enough that any single blow isn't likely to knock you into negatives, your hp are measuring how far you are from being physically incapacitated, but they need not be "meat." Or at least, not all "meat." Luck, skill, stamina, divine blessing, or a green bar that you hold between you and anything that would harm you and gets shorter the more you use it, hp are keeping you from being nonfunctional due to physical harm. They measure how far away from that nonfunctionality due to physical harm you are.

Your misaprehension of what I said comes from extending the end point (nonfunctionality due to physical harm) to mean that hp are directly measuring how much physical harm you can take without becoming nonfunctional. That isn't what I'm saying they are. Not alone. HP are a measure of how far from nonfunctionality due to physical harm you are, using any depleting resource that is not otherwise accounted for elsewhere in the system to keep yourself from that final debilitating physical damage.


One is the ability to endure, the other is the ability to avoid -- not the same thing, at all. And this is compounded by the fact that the ability to avoid is also covered by other parts of that same system (AC, saves, etc). And there's also some coverage of the ability to endure (again, saves). Since ability to avoid is accounted for in AC, does that mean saves make no sense? Or vice-versa? Why are you okay with two mechanics for avoidance, but not three? Especially since the other two don't even have the distinction of being depleted as they're used?


If it can translate to anything, then it translates to nothing.Nonsense. First, it can't translate to "anything." HP cannot translate to gp that you use to buy goods and services (not without other mechanics entering into it, anyway). HP cannot translate to your ability to hit the enemy. HP cannot translate to nonsensical things like that green bar I facetiously brought up earlier, not outside of a crack comedy game.

HP translate to anything that fits a particular set of criteria. The hard and fast one is that they must translate to something that is preventing the creature losing them from being rendered physically nonfunctional. The second hard criterion is that they must translate to something that makes sense with all rider effects (e.g. if there's poison effects from an injected poison, the hp must include at least a little bit of "meat" to allow for the injection). The looser criterion is that it must make sense within the setting/narrative/fiction/whatever that the way the hp are translated to "reality" would keep the creature from, as we say in gaming, dropping, while still being something they can't keep up forever.

That's broad! That's a lot of things you could translate hp loss to! But it's not literally anything, and it clearly doesn't mean "nothing," either, since dropping to 0 or lower hp has direct mechanical consequences. Pretending it means "nothing" takes gross misunderstanding.


If X can be a measure of A, B, C, D, or purple, then just having a value of so many units of X tells you absolutely nothing.Can A, B, C, D, and purple all keep you from "dropping" if you have them? Oh, look! That's something having so many units of X tells you!


Maybe the core disconnect here is between the view of HP (or anything else in a gaming system) as a measure of something, versus the view of HP as a "currency" or "resource" to be expended. I'll never buy into the notion of HP as an expendable resource or currency to be expended, or exchanged for something else.Absent extra mechanics, I don't think we're discussing systems where it can be "exchanged." It represents something you have, though. A resource that is losable but replenishable which, as long as it's above a certain threshold, keeps you from dying/being KO'd.

"I'll never buy into the notion of hp as an expendable resource" sounds to me an awful lot like "I'll never buy into the notion of magical spells as things you memorize, possibly multiple times, then forget individual instances of as you cast them."

They seem equally valid, equally motivated statements with equal value wrt objectivity vs subjectivity.

[Max_Killjoy]

Since ability to avoid is accounted for in AC, does that mean saves make no sense? Or vice-versa? Why are you okay with two mechanics for avoidance, but not three? Especially since the other two don't even have the distinction of being depleted as they're used?


I'd rather evading attacks was covered in a single mechanic instead of spread indistinctly across 2+.

If the thread was about all the D&D mechanics that are wonky, I'd be going into that sort of thing as well.

[Segev]

I'd rather evading attacks was covered in a single mechanic instead of spread indistinctly across 2+.

If the thread was about all the D&D mechanics that are wonky, I'd be going into that sort of thing as well.

You probably shouldn't be bringing up other mechanics you think are wonky as proof that the mechanic under consideration is wonky.

Would you have this issue if hp were "points that prevent you from taking a serious hit" and you had one "wound" you could take before you are incapacitated? Larger, nastier creatures have more "wounds," independent of how many hp they have, and higher-level characters who haven't magically gotten tougher have lots of hp to avoid that fatal wound, but still only have the one?

[Pedantic]

You probably shouldn't be bringing up other mechanics you think are wonky as proof that the mechanic under consideration is wonky.

Would you have this issue if hp were "points that prevent you from taking a serious hit" and you had one "wound" you could take before you are incapacitated? Larger, nastier creatures have more "wounds," independent of how many hp they have, and higher-level characters who haven't magically gotten tougher have lots of hp to avoid that fatal wound, but still only have the one?

That's totally reasonable as a system, but it has implications in the narrative layer. What is this resource characters are spending? How is it measured? Is it visible? Does it affect the sword that's been swung at before it's sliced into your flesh, or work on your flesh afterward?

Obviously the rules as is for HP are wonky. Everyone more or less agrees that at least it's awkward there are rules for not getting "hit" by swords that exist completely separately of what happens to you after the sword does "hit" you, and the rules for taking damage specifically say they might modify you being hit in the first place (well, at least in the general description of hit points).

The disagreement really comes down to what's the more difficult suspension of disbelief. Either characters are stupidly hardier than normal people and/or the damage caused by a given sword swing is weirdly proportional to a character's level, or the concept of an "hit" or "missed" attack is ambiguous. Personally, I think the most important think for immersion is direct and temporally absolute mapping between player decision making and character action, and find fighters swimming lava easier to cope with than attacks that hit results in near misses.

[Max_Killjoy]

You probably shouldn't be bringing up other mechanics you think are wonky as proof that the mechanic under consideration is wonky.


It's all one big wonky family.




Would you have this issue if hp were "points that prevent you from taking a serious hit" and you had one "wound" you could take before you are incapacitated? Larger, nastier creatures have more "wounds," independent of how many hp they have, and higher-level characters who haven't magically gotten tougher have lots of hp to avoid that fatal wound, but still only have the one?


No, I would not be happy with that, because expendable resources to represent skill aren't great in general. If you're good at avoiding hits, you're good at avoiding hits, not "good until your run out of avoidy-ness points".

[RazorChain]

Am I the only one who doesn't narrate combat except for
a) killing blows
b) natural 1s (which are always misses, nothing more)?

Not so much for mechanical reasons, but just because it takes way too much time and effort to narrate every attack, especially since that's well below the level of abstraction of the system.

That avoids the entire issue, since HP is just an abstract counter at that point.

Sure, I have a system where in-universe, HP has some meat-based analogue. But that's for writing single-author stories, not playing the game. Or for figuring out those odd cases involving things the system doesn't even try to cover.

For me, the big thing I want out of a combat system is a combination of granularity (so not just a single "roll Fight" event) and speed of individual action resolution. I'd much rather have people (including myself) get to take lots of very simple actions, each resolved and narrated instantly, rather than a few very big, very thorough actions.


I usually narrate combat but then again I don't run a very combat heavy campaign. There is on average maybe one combat scene in a 5-6 hour session, this varies of course, some sessions there is no combat while another might be a non stop action.

The system I use explains very well what is happening in combat. You roll to hit and either use a random hit location or aim at a bodypart before you roll. Then the opponent tries to dodge/parry or block. If you manage to get through his defenses then you see what effect your hit does, how much damage and if there is an additional effect like, severed or crippled limb, decapitation, stunning blow etc.

This of course is the simple version but the system actually relays what is actually happening and I just have to have to add embellishments

[PhoenixPhyre]

I usually narrate combat but then again I don't run a very combat heavy campaign. There is on average maybe one combat scene in a 5-6 hour session, this varies of course, some sessions there is no combat while another might be a non stop action.

The system I use explains very well what is happening in combat. You roll to hit and either use a random hit location or aim at a bodypart before you roll. Then the opponent tries to dodge/parry or block. If you manage to get through his defenses then you see what effect your hit does, how much damage and if there is an additional effect like, severed or crippled limb, decapitation, stunning blow etc.

This of course is the simple version but the system actually relays what is actually happening and I just have to have to add embellishments

So that system requires to resolve each attack, at minimum:

* A decision (which part to target) or another roll (for randomization)
* 2 rolls, each with different conditional modifiers applies (I'm guessing that different hit locations have different attack/defense consequences)
* and a conditional table lookup (conditional on the body part)?

Ugh. My rule of thumb is that the success or failure of each action should only take a single randomizer use, with modifiers that don't change in the majority of circumstances. I'd rather add additional dice than have a fixed modifier that varies situationally. Contested rolls should be rare. Table lookups are horribly slow even if you have the table memorized. Even worse are conditional lookups (and modifiers). I'm willing to give up tons of detail for speed of resolution. I've found that except under highly constrained circumstances, the number of edge cases and weird, non-narrative-aligned results that flow from highly specified systems (no matter how good they are for the general case) is much higher than from more abstracted ones.

Ideally for me, each person gets to make lots of actions, each of which is resolved very simply. I'd like the median time for a turn to be minimal--30s max. Time spent mechanically resolving things is time where everyone else can tune out. Especially when playing with my teenage students, who are already prone to that.

[Tanarii]

I used to play a (war) game called Centurion, which had a super complex series of combat rolls and armor defenses and damage templates that were box grids and table look ups of crits etc. Each combat round took about an hour to play. Each combat round was nominally about 1 minute.

Your hover tanks arrived at full speed from the edge of battle blasting away, your drop troops descended doing the same, and it was complete carnage. The tag line was something like 'the average lifespan on the battlefield is three minutes'. Although my experience was it most of the casualties happened in round 1.

More recently I've played Star Wars Armada, also a war game with complexity. And it basically works the same way, a round of initial maneuvering, 2-3 rounds of furious blasting away, and everything is dead.

All that complexity is fine in a war game, designed to have the entire session be a few rounds of combat. It's not fine when you want multiple rounds of combat (or some other resolution) to be a small fraction of the session. That's why I never really got into super crunchy TRPG systems like Gurps or Shadowrun. The mechanics make doing anything, not just combat, take most of a session.

[Telok]

I think that in the current editions of D&D hit points are really an unstated meta-currency for "able to participate in combat". They don't work logically as anything else.

I, and my table, enjoy systems detailed enough to support wounds like maimed hands, and death effects that include things like 1d5 meters of blood spray or cooking off the victims grenades. Yes there is a little die rolling overhead, and that's worth it to us. We don't get as much fun out of rounds that go "22 to hit, 17 damage. 18 to hit, 12 damage. It falls over. Next thing, 17 to hit, 19 damage. Everything is dead. We wait 10 minutes and heal all our hit points."

Of course if you want to minimize rolling in order to speed things up there's stuff like the one roll engine and Amber, which is diceless. It's really just a personal preference trade off, people like different points along the continuum from "few rolls with few datails or options" to "many rolls, vary detailed woth many options".

Buy I don't think hit points mean or map to anything in modern D&D beyond being allowed to make combat moves or not.

[Psyren]

Wasn't there the exact same topic on this board a few weeks ago?

There was. And it was locked. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?587616-If-HP-aren-t-meat-how-do-you-narrate-combat&p=23911413&viewfull=1#post23911413) Unfortunately, there's no easy way for the OP to have known that.

I'll let the mods decide if we can reopen that discussion, but my position on the issue is articulated there.

[Segev]

That's totally reasonable as a system, but it has implications in the narrative layer. What is this resource characters are spending? How is it measured? Is it visible? Does it affect the sword that's been swung at before it's sliced into your flesh, or work on your flesh afterward?It's "visible" in the same sense that somebody's level, AC, Strength, Dex, or Con are. Or their Saves. Or any other statistic on their character page that isn't specifically and exclusively equipment.

It doesn't "affect the sword." It affects the creature losing the hp. He dodged, or parried, or got lucky and had a mere flesh wound, or (yes, possibly) had just that tough of a hide and muscles so that it was a shallow cut. And got hit where he was tough enough to take it. Losing that last hp represents running out of luck, or finally not dodging fast enough, or getting hit in a previously-made wound that lets it finally cut deep enough, or getting hit in a critical location (which critical hits also likely represent, but if there's enough hp not to go down, that means they just expended more of their stamina/luck/whatever to keep it from actually sinking in) that downs them.

And it's measured by hp count. I mean, that's...kind of the point. Did I misunderstand this question?


No, I would not be happy with that, because expendable resources to represent skill aren't great in general. If you're good at avoiding hits, you're good at avoiding hits, not "good until your run out of avoidy-ness points".So, if you're good enough to dodge a dodgeball thrown once, you're good enough to dodge a dodgeball thrown every six seconds by a precision dodgeball-throwing machine for as long as anybody testing you cares to keep the test going? 1 minute? A full minute? 10 minutes? An hour? 10 hours?

Let's say grazing hits don't count; it has to hit you and bounce off. The machine is also aiming specifically to hit you, with ability to try to work around shields or even attempt to calculate and lead your movement.

You can keep this up forever, right? Because you're good enough to avoid it once.

[Max_Killjoy]

So, if you're good enough to dodge a dodgeball thrown once, you're good enough to dodge a dodgeball thrown every six seconds by a precision dodgeball-throwing machine for as long as anybody testing you cares to keep the test going? 1 minute? A full minute? 10 minutes? An hour? 10 hours?

Let's say grazing hits don't count; it has to hit you and bounce off. The machine is also aiming specifically to hit you, with ability to try to work around shields or even attempt to calculate and lead your movement.

You can keep this up forever, right? Because you're good enough to avoid it once.


If I'm being generous, you're conflating endurance with skill. You're talking about endurance, not someone running out of avoidiness points or meatiness points.If you want your system to take endurance into account, then include an endurance mechanism, don't muddle it up with other things. Muddled mechanics produce strange results.

If I'm being not so generous, you're attacking a position I have not stated or taken -- as in I said "If you're good at avoiding hits, you're good at avoiding hits" and you're apparently attacking "If you can dodge one hit, you can dodge every hit ever".

[flat_footed]

The Fullmetal Mod: Restarting discussions from threads that are currently locked for review is not allowed.