Does losing temporary hit points hurt?

[jmax]

As a follow-on to this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?652796-Improving-Teleport-safety), where I'm looking at (among several other options) the possibility of using temporary hit points to offset the safety risks of teleporting children, there's a logical question to ask:

Does losing temporary hit points hurt? If so, how much does it hurt?


Certain effects give a character temporary hit points. When a character gains temporary hit points, note his current hit point total. When the temporary hit points go away the character’s hit points drop to his current hit point total. If the character’s hit points are below his current hit point total at that time, all the temporary hit points have already been lost and the character’s hit point total does not drop further.

In addition to being a poor definition generally, that actually doesn't say anything about how temporary hit points feel or what they really represent in "real life".

On the other hand, regular hit points are also fairly nebulous in definition:


What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner
power. When a paladin survives a fireball, you will be hard pressed to convince bystanders that she doesn’t have the favor of some higher power.

...

Effects of Hit Point Damage: Damage gives you scars, bangs up your armor, and gets blood on your tunic, but it doesn’t slow you down until your current hit points reach 0 or lower.


I think it would be reasonable to assert that, if HP damage that leaves you above 0 isn't a serious injury, "fake" damage that doesn't even touch your real HP could be trivial. Different sources of THP might also manifest in different ways - for example, an undead creature eating someone's energy (bestowing a negative level) gets 5 THP from that, which is probably a real surge of vitality. But Heart of Earth probably just makes you tougher, and Aid could be divine fortune protecting you from injury by luck. Others could be entirely up to interpretation, like Greater Heroism.


I did get a pretty good answer from ChatGPT, which generally lines up with my interpretation, but of course it can't cite sources:


In D&D 3.5, does a character feel pain when she loses temporary hit points? I mean from taking damage that only removes temporary hit points, not when they expire.

In D&D 3.5, temporary hit points do not represent actual physical damage to a character's body, so a character would not feel pain when losing temporary hit points. Temporary hit points represent a buffer against damage, and when they are lost, the character's actual hit points are not affected.

It is up to the discretion of the Dungeon Master whether a character would feel pain or not when taking damage that only removes temporary hit points. Some DMs might choose to describe the damage as feeling more intense or more superficial, depending on the situation. Ultimately, whether a character feels pain or not when losing temporary hit points is a matter of interpretation and role-playing, and is not something that is specifically addressed in the rules of D&D 3.5.

I generally agree, since they're a buffer against damage - although a 5E rules expert says (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/55609/is-a-concentration-check-required-when-temporary-hit-points-absorb-all-the-damag) that damage against THP still counts in Concentration check DCs, which would suggest otherwise.


It seems sufficiently all over the place that a reasonable argument can be made for almost any interpretation. I definitely don't see real rules for it.

For the use case I'm looking at, I think it would be reasonable to assert that a Teleport mishap whose effects are mostly absorbed by temporary hit points does hurt, but not seriously - like a superficial bump that makes a kid cry until you kiss it better. If it breaks through temporary hit points to real ones, they get scrapes and bruises, but nothing a kid wouldn't experience from falling during normal play around hard surfaces. A multiple-mishap teleport that takes them into legit negative HP would be a very serious and painful injury. All scenarios would easily and instantly treatable using readily available resources.

[Kurald Galain]

Does losing temporary hit points hurt?

Only temporarily.

[jmax]

Only temporarily.

I see what you did there :-P

Touché.

[Crake]

I think a reasonable fluff of temporary hit points is like, reactive healing. You get hit, but the wound instantly heals itself. It hurts as you’re being hit (hence concentration checks, and other things that trigger upon being hurt), but it doesn’t hurt after that.

[SimonMoon6]

My thoughts:

There are two types of hit points. "Meat" hit points and "Plot Device" hit points.

You get "meat" hit points from your physical size and toughness. A barbarian has more "meat" hit points than a scrawny wizard because he's bigger and tougher. I consider "meat" hit points to be the number of hit points that a person has at first level (monsters that start with hit dice may be different).

You get "plot device" hit points from everything else, like going up levels. I would put temporary hit points in this category. You're certainly not getting more "meat" from temporary hit points... at least from the sources that I am aware of.

I would consider losing "meat" hit points to hurt a lot. This is where you are taking damage that could actually kill you.

Losing "plot device" hit points could be painless. Instead of being hit, you actually dodged the blow or parried the attack. Maybe your cape got cut instead of you.

But... maybe, you got a tiny scratch on your cheek (and lost 28 hit points of the "plot device" variety). Or maybe a giant squashed you for 59 hit points and you get a small bruise on your elbow. That could hurt. I mean, it would sting a little bit. But it wouldn't hurt significantly. In no way would a loss of "plot device" hit points be a serious injury.

[Darg]

Hit points merely represent how much punishment, physically or mentally, a character can take before being brought to unconsciousness or death. A skilled rogue might simply have overextended themselves and so are incapable of preventing the knockout blow for example. So it can represent a wide variety of things: superficial harm, drained focus, drained stamina, etc. It should not represent debilitating fatal harm like a stab through the gut which is best represented by the dying state. The die hard feat represents moments where a character on death's door finds inner strength to continue fighting after such grievous wounds.

In my opinion temporary hit points are best represented as sharper focus, longer lasting energy, and possibly act similar to damage reduction (which can either represent hardness or regeneration). So for teleport protection it could be seen as the kids feeling drained energetically but not in an adverse way. No pain necessary.

[King of Nowhere]

the question is so fluff-based, it can only be answered by fluff. that is, ask your dm.
in your case, for your purpose, i do believe you could research a spell ad hoc. if i was the dm, i'd certainly let you do it.

[SpacemonkeyDM]

Does not hurt, just a few swipes of the pencil.

[spectralphoenix]

Most sources of temporary hit points are either a morale effect of some kind (Aid, Inspire Greatness) or some kind of boosted life force (False Life, Vampiric Touch.) In the former case I'd say it sort of hurts, but you don't really notice it because you feel powerful - sort of a psychosomatic kind of thing. The latter case is less clear, though I think the idea of "you get wounded and instantly heal" makes sense considering how positive/negative energy work in the universe. If you had a spell that actually toughened you up to prevent damage in the first place (Heart of Earth maybe? It's self-only though) that would probably prevent pain.

[Biggus]

Different sources of THP might also manifest in different ways - for example, an undead creature eating someone's energy (bestowing a negative level) gets 5 THP from that, which is probably a real surge of vitality. But Heart of Earth probably just makes you tougher, and Aid could be divine fortune protecting you from injury by luck. Others could be entirely up to interpretation, like Greater Heroism.


I think "vitality" is a good description for what temporary HPs give you: it can be either physical or mental/spiritual (Aid is a good example of the latter; the other bonuses it gives are morale bonuses, so it makes sense that the THPs work in a similar way) but either way it makes you more alive.

In that case, losing THPs wouldn't necessarily hurt in the same way that being cut with a blade would hurt, but it would definitely feel unpleasant. An analogy might be the feeling you get when you're coming down with a cold, or on the mental level, how a sports fan feels when the opposing team scores. A drop in your energy level.

That's how it makes most sense to me anyway.

[Particle_Man]

I would see it as relative. When you have temporary hp you might feel extra great but then losing them would mean losing that feeling which would at least feel disorienting and might hurt mentally.

Kind of like if I temporarily got the physique of Batman then that would be amazing and then if I then went back to my regular body then that would feel bad, even if the regular body didn’t have any wounds or bruises.

[martixy]

My thoughts:

There are two types of hit points. "Meat" hit points and "Plot Device" hit points.

You get "meat" hit points from your physical size and toughness. A barbarian has more "meat" hit points than a scrawny wizard because he's bigger and tougher. I consider "meat" hit points to be the number of hit points that a person has at first level (monsters that start with hit dice may be different).

You get "plot device" hit points from everything else, like going up levels. I would put temporary hit points in this category. You're certainly not getting more "meat" from temporary hit points... at least from the sources that I am aware of.

I would consider losing "meat" hit points to hurt a lot. This is where you are taking damage that could actually kill you.

Losing "plot device" hit points could be painless. Instead of being hit, you actually dodged the blow or parried the attack. Maybe your cape got cut instead of you.

But... maybe, you got a tiny scratch on your cheek (and lost 28 hit points of the "plot device" variety). Or maybe a giant squashed you for 59 hit points and you get a small bruise on your elbow. That could hurt. I mean, it would sting a little bit. But it wouldn't hurt significantly. In no way would a loss of "plot device" hit points be a serious injury.

What you're hinting at here is Vitality and Wounds (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm).
Or Pathfinder's Wounds and Vigor (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/wounds-and-vigor/).

[Rebel7284]

As pointed out above, losing REAL hit points doesn't have to hurt, since hit points are an abstraction for a bunch of different things.

In general, I would not treat temporary HP loss any different from regular HP loss. Your pool of HP going over maximum mechanically doesn't necessarily change anything.

Now specifically, do teleport mishaps hurt?


...Mishap

You and anyone else teleporting with you have gotten “scrambled.”

Most of the time, it probably would, although, it doesn't have to necessarily, we don't have pain receptors everywhere after all.

Edit: Ease Pain explicitly says that damage is not directly linked to pain (but ongoing damage seems to likely be painful):

It does not heal any damage or other effects not directly related to pain.

If the target creature is under some effect that causes continuing damage, the pain is eased only for a moment

With that said you can probably use Ease Pain as a backup contingency in case damage does happen (ideally also while healing the damage)

[Psyren]

HP are not (necessarily) meat, temporary or otherwise. The amount of pain you get from damage should be determined by how that instance of damage is narrated, not a general overarching rule.

For example, if damage causes you to lose concentration on something, it's fine to narrate that instance of damage being rather painful. But another instance where you don't, or where you weren't concentrating at all, might actually be represented by you avoiding the blow almost entirely, at the cost of losing some luck, incurring strain or fatigue etc.

TL;DR narrate the pain associated with a blow on a case-by-case basis. There is not (nor should there be) a general rule.

[Promethean]

Counter-theory to the current most popular suggestions: HP makes more sense to be "meat", otherwise healing mechanics make much less sense.

As a character goes up in levels, itbecomes increasingly difficult for them to heal to full when low. The only healing that scales with the recievers level is nat healing, everything else suddenly works Much less effectively from the character's perspective as they get stronger.

Temp HP doesn't really make sense as reactive healing either, because there are spells and effects that do that Explicitely in both mechanics and lore. Temp HP more closely represents a reinforcement of existing flesh or some kind of exoskeleton than any kind of healing.

[AnonymousPepper]

Personally as a GM I always fluffed it as basically a magical shield, like some form of metaphysical bubblewrap. People taking hits that only damage temp HP don't feel any pain, nor do, provided the effect that applies them normally deals HP damage, on-hit effects get applied (for example poisons or undead drain effects). Makes no sense for a vampire to be able to drain your blood if they basically just bit into magical styrofoam and didn't actually get any skin, yknow? Whereas, of course, something like Enervate has no need to deal any damage to screw you over.

This is in no way backed by RAW, but it's how I handle it.

[Ramza00]

They, the designers, do not want to nail down what hit points are in order to give the DM and the players narrative freedom of how to describe the effects in a narrative / linguistic way.

Aka what hit points actually are … are left open to allow people to tell stories that trigger the rule of cool, or get those Greek muses going with its creative juices.

[Darg]

Counter-theory to the current most popular suggestions: HP makes more sense to be "meat", otherwise healing mechanics make much less sense.

As a character goes up in levels, itbecomes increasingly difficult for them to heal to full when low. The only healing that scales with the recievers level is nat healing, everything else suddenly works Much less effectively from the character's perspective as they get stronger.

Temp HP doesn't really make sense as reactive healing either, because there are spells and effects that do that Explicitely in both mechanics and lore. Temp HP more closely represents a reinforcement of existing flesh or some kind of exoskeleton than any kind of healing.

Not necessarily. Stamina is inherently tied to the tearing of muscle fiber and the build up of waste. You can heal fatigue just as well as repairing grievous harm as they are practically the same thing physiologically, just on different scales.

[Promethean]

Not necessarily. Stamina is inherently tied to the tearing of muscle fiber and the build up of waste. You can heal fatigue just as well as repairing grievous harm as they are practically the same thing physiologically, just on different scales.

Stamina is tied to the tearing of muscle fibers, but they aren't the same thing.

"Stamina" refers to 3 things: pain tolerance, muscular/mental energy(which boils down to glucose or lipids), and lactic acid build-up, all of which are limiters and warning indicators. When people "regain stamina", they refer to the process of the body replenishing free glucose/lipids, the brain's release of natural pain killers, and/or the liver flushing anerobic toxins, none of which actually heal anything and instead just shuts off the body's "warning lights" after running diagnostics.

TL;DR: Fatigue doesn't "heal" when you regain stamina, it's compensated for. Real Healing is a separate process that takes Days.

[Darg]

Stamina is tied to the tearing of muscle fibers, but they aren't the same thing.

"Stamina" refers to 3 things: pain tolerance, muscular/mental energy(which boils down to glucose or lipids), and lactic acid build-up, all of which are limiters and warning indicators. When people "regain stamina", they refer to the process of the body replenishing free glucose/lipids, the brain's release of natural pain killers, and/or the liver flushing anerobic toxins, none of which actually heal anything and instead just shuts off the body's "warning lights" after running diagnostics.

TL;DR: Fatigue doesn't "heal" when you regain stamina, it's compensated for. Real Healing is a separate process that takes Days.

You basically agreed with me. Temporary hit points can simply be reservoirs to restore that which was lost and toxin remove. HP is simply a very broad abstraction that basically boils down to your ability to continue fighting. A very shallow cut on your forehead can literally blind you and take you out of a fight, but at certain angles a sword through the gut can be guaranteed fatal but not kill you for hours to days. A hammer blow to the armor on the arm might not cause actual harm, but still deaden the feeling of the nerves. Combat is also very mentally taxing even if not quite as physically so. That is what hp represents.

[Promethean]

You basically agreed with me.

Very much No, I didn't.




HP is simply a very broad abstraction that basically boils down to your ability to continue fighting.

I disagree, it's the measure of how close something is to "Dead". This is highlighted by the fact we have an entirely separate mechanic for fatigue and exhaustion that is specific to physical stamina.



Temporary hit points can simply be reservoirs to restore that which was lost and toxin remove.

This doesn't really work.

Getting the fatigued status effect doesn't lower your HP. Getting healed doesn't remove exhaustion unless the specific healing spell has a specific secondary effect that calls that out explicitly. HP and stamina have nothing to do with each other.

The only case where they overlap in any capacity is a forced march, and even then it's non-lethal, which explicitly Do Not deduct the nonlethal damage number from your current hit points, it's a separately measured stat.


A very shallow cut on your forehead can literally blind you and take you out of a fight, but at certain angles a sword through the gut can be guaranteed fatal but not kill you for hours to days. A hammer blow to the armor on the arm might not cause actual harm, but still deaden the feeling of the nerves. Combat is also very mentally taxing even if not quite as physically so. That is what hp represents.

What you just described are a collection of things covered by mechanics other than HP, which are Blinded status effect, Bleed damage and the Dying status effect, Non-lethal damage, and however many mental status effects, none of which are affected by or affect HP.