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The Necroswanso
2008-05-31, 01:36 PM
The short answer is: Whatever you want it to mean. There's no right or wrong answers.

The PHB lists HP as somewhat of a driving force that keeps you going in battle. Your will to live under constant pummeling, if you will. Which I guess is why you have to do saves against massive damage or be royaly done for. But that's cool.
Alot of people say it's blood loss. That's cool to. However when you treat HP loss as blood loss, you have to look at piercing weapons and weapons that deal extra damage through blood loss.
If you are truly dying through losing blood, should a piercing weapon not deal more damage? Should you then remove effects such as Bearding; which already deal extra damage through blood loss? Maybe. But who knows if mechanically it would work out.
That brings me to my next point. D&D is whatever you want it to be. No more, and certainly not any less. Certainly you should change it if it doesn't work out. If you feel better about your character bleeding half to death every time he's hit, that's great. It's theatrical, and create a good illusion of the game. However it's also a bit broken by Magic. And semblence of realism is disillusioned the second someone touches you and three of your vital organs as well as 14 pints of blood are back.
But that's okay, because it's fantasy, it's beleivable, and it's just plane awesome.

So, in conclusion, however you view HP, you're right. If D&D was all about realism, you'd have like, 7 HP at level 30. :P


As for the problem with 4th edition and resting granting your HP back, if that's not how you played before, then certainly don't change. Just remove that rule and replace it with the 3.x natural healing. What is D&D afterall if it's not maleable?

Well, can we all agree that we won't always have the same views on the game and that's okay?

SolkaTruesilver
2008-05-31, 01:42 PM
Harry Potter, that'S what HP means.

ok, I'll stop kidding around. Yhea, you are right. It's a pretty abstract thing. Ever learned the Warhammer Fantasy system? there are "wound points", these are, for lack of a better explanation, all the wound you can take before a wound gets serious (arrr, it's only a flesh wound!)

when you drop to 0 Wound point, you have some maluses to your throw, but you aren'T dead. No. 0 Wound points means that every hit you'll get will be life-treathening ones. Because, you know, you are at your limits.

I prefer it this way, personnally. Warhammer treat Armor as "damage reduction", shield as "parry opportunity" + parry bonus. Oh, and every hit can be very, very dangerous. A high-level character, designed for combat, has only, like, a max of 25 wound points. If you consider that every hit does 1d10 + Strenght Bonus + (weapon bonus) - (armor bonus) - (toughness bonus of the victim), it can end up very, very nasty after a few 9s or 10s (specially when you think that you get to re-roll the 10s)

Tsotha-lanti
2008-05-31, 01:54 PM
Yes, a million RPGs do "injury" and "modelling real combat" much better than D&D. Doesn't really matter here, though. (Some also do it in much more detail, but they usually also do it worse overall. See Rolemaster - detailed as heck, and totally unplayable and often ridiculous.)

The first post also applies to levels, incidentally. They're likewise not a measure of actual experience - measured in time or in number of battles or other encounters - but rather a dramatic abstraction that usually correlated slightly with dramatic importance. (Which is why in my games the average level of the world seems to go up as the game progresses, although at a fraction of the speed the PCs' levels rise; and why high-level minions make perfect sense.)

Some people will, of course, wrongheadedly insist that these attributes are not abstractions but some kind of objective measurements, which is pretty silly when you examine the issue...

RoboticSheeple
2008-05-31, 01:55 PM
Hit Points

RukiTanuki
2008-06-02, 05:46 PM
I agree with the 4e PHB: HP represents your combined will and ability to keep fighting. I avoid trying to break down the abstraction much further than that.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-02, 05:51 PM
Pssht, Necro. Your kung-fu is weak. THIS is what HP means, right out of the pros mouths:

What do hit points represent? Here's a quote from Saga Edition:

Hit points (sometimes abbreviated "hp") represent 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 graze or near miss. As you become more experienced, you become more adept at parrying strikes, dodging attacks, and rolling with blows such that you minimize or avoid significant physical trauma, but all this effort slowly wears you down. Rather than trying to keep track of the difference between attacks and how much physical injury you take, hit points are an abstract measure of your total ability to survive damage.

Hit points are not a universal gauge of concrete, physical toughness. If a soldier and a small tank both have 100 hit points, that doesn't mean the soldier is physically as tough as the tank! Hit points are deliberately abstract so that the same measure of damage can be applied to an inanimate object (such as a wall), an animate object (such as a tank), a massive creature (such as a Krayt dragon), or a high-level character. Consider what hit points mean to each of them:

The high-level character's durability comes mostly from avoiding attacks, rolling with blows, and so forth. Only a fraction of his survival is based on his physical ability to absorb damage.

The Krayt dragon's hit points include skill and speed, but a much greater portion comes from its sheer size and bulk. In other words, it's hard to hit something that big in a way that will cause critically injuries.

The tank's hit points are completely physical in nature, but they aren't determined only by its size and mass. They also account for qualities such as the resiliency of the tank's systems, the volatility of its fuel and payload, the number of redundant and backup systems, and so on.

The wall's hit points are completely physical and almost entirely determined by simple physical characteristics such as the type of material used to build the wall, the thickness of the wall, and so on.

Over the years, some players have developed a terrible misconception that a character with 100 hit points can be shot almost a dozen times in the chest. Not true! Both a high-level soldier with 100 hit points and a stormtrooper with 10 hit points will be grievously injured and possibly killed by a single blaster wound to the chest. However, the high-level soldier will dodge the first nine shots, and the stormtrooper won't. (If it helps, imagine that a high-level hero has a reserve of "virtual hit points" to offset attacks that would otherwise be lethal. Once he has exhausted his reserve, the blow that finally reduces him to 0 hit points will solidly connect and cause serious physical trauma.)

holywhippet
2008-06-02, 05:59 PM
I'd say it's combination of physical toughness (when you taking falling damage, morale has nothing to do with it), determination (hence why minions have only 1 HP, they are just cheap grunts who lack the will to win) and your characters understanding of how to avoid taking serious damage.

For the last one, say an enemy manages to get through your defenses and stabs you. A low level character isn't used to being stabbed so they take more damage. A high level character knows how to twist and dodge to make the stabbing not hit somewhere quite so vital.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-02, 06:01 PM
I'd say it's combination of physical toughness (when you taking falling damage, morale has nothing to do with it), determination (hence why minions have only 1 HP, they are just cheap grunts who lack the will to win) and your characters understanding of how to avoid taking serious damage.

For the last one, say an enemy manages to get through your defenses and stabs you. A low level character isn't used to being stabbed so they take more damage. A high level character knows how to twist and dodge to make the stabbing not hit somewhere quite so vital.

Take a look at me olde poste.

Or just hear the gods speak:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/sw20070322jc101

Bleen
2008-06-02, 06:04 PM
HP, or "hit points," are an abstraction of how close you are to death.

I win the thread with my clear-cut definition that no one can ever disagree with.

Zocelot
2008-06-02, 06:06 PM
A wise man once said "You know how sometimes your character will get the stuffing beaten out of him? Well HP is how much stuffing he has."

Worira
2008-06-02, 06:13 PM
when you drop to 0 Wound point, you have some maluses to your throw, but you aren'T dead.


Unless you're adjusting insurance premiums, I think "penalties" is the word you're looking for there.

nagora
2008-06-02, 06:21 PM
Yes, a million RPGs do "injury" and "modelling real combat" much better than D&D.
Don't confuse "more complex" with "more realistic". All RPG combat systems are tripe.

FlyMolo
2008-06-02, 09:27 PM
Unless you're adjusting insurance premiums, I think "penalties" is the word you're looking for there.

I think it's a common second language error. Especially from languages where bon means good and mal means bad. So pretty much all the Latin-derived ones.

And HP can be how well you dodge blows, or pure physical resistance. Yes, it makes no sense after level 6. It's unrealistic, we know. But it is damn cool. And heroes in movies always take unrealistic levels of punishment and keep on trucking, so why not DnD?

JaxGaret
2008-06-02, 09:33 PM
An interesting tangent is that 4e has introduced the "bloodied" condition to the abstract HP system, and IMO it is best to treat it as a recognizable condition which you can flavor however you want as the situation merits: you're limping a little bit, you're favoring one arm, you've been nicked and are trickling some blood, you took a blow to the noggin and are a trifle woozy, whatever you like.

Sir_Dr_D
2008-06-02, 09:53 PM
Hp abstraction is mostly an excuse. The first person who came up with the HP concept, likely wasn't thinking of abstractions. Then people wanted more realism, so HP was later described as an abstraction. It was an abstraction that didn't make much sense, because the healing system made it seem like physical damage. In 4E D&D the asbtraction finally makes a lot more sense, do to charcters being able to heal themsleves, and clerics always healing a percentage of a persons HP. It makes the PC's seem less really injured, and more just banged up.

Still I would prefer a system that radically changed the HP concept. The number of HP your character gets at first level, is the only HP you should get. No HP from leveling. Leveling would just increase defenses, and the ability to dodge.

Fishy
2008-06-02, 09:54 PM
Well, here's one of the places D&D kinda falls flat on its face, in my opinion. If HP doesn't represent physical health, then weapon damage doesn't represent physical damage. But if that's the case, why does a longsword deal more damage than a rapier? Why do piercing weapons have a higher critical multiplier?

JaxGaret
2008-06-02, 09:55 PM
Hp abstraction is mostly an excuse. The first person who came up with the HP concept, likely wasn't thinking of abstractions. Then people wanted more realism, so HP was later described as an abstraction. It was an abstraction that didn't make much sense, because the healing system made it seem like physical damage. In 4E D&D the asbtraction finally makes a lot more sense, do to charcters being able to heal themsleves, and clerics always healing a percentage of a persons HP. It makes the PC's seem less really injured, and more just banged up.

Sounds about right.


Still I would prefer a system that radically changed the HP concept. The number of HP your character gets at first level, is the only HP you should get. No HP from leveling. Leveling would just increase defenses, and the ability to dodge.

GURPS.

Changing the HP system to a more realistic one changes everything.

Sir_Dr_D
2008-06-02, 10:08 PM
I know it changes almost everything. I am waiting for some genious to come up with a solution. :smalltongue:


Hp is my biggest problem with D&D. It ruins any immersion process.

Chronos
2008-06-02, 10:46 PM
And HP can be how well you dodge blows, or pure physical resistance. Yes, it makes no sense after level 6. It's unrealistic, we know. But it is damn cool. And heroes in movies always take unrealistic levels of punishment and keep on trucking, so why not DnD?Personally, the way I see it, it takes about 200 points of damage to reduce a human body to a chunky pile of hamburger. Most folks, of course, will die long before that point. That first-level wizard who died after a single hit from a sword? Really, his body is almost completely intact. He's only taken a small fraction of the damage his body could take before being completely destroyed. But the 20th-level barbarian just keeps fighting, and about the only way to stop him is to reduce him to the afore-mentioned hamburger.

Yeah, you don't see people in the real world taking that much damage and surviving, but that can be explained as, first of all, 20th-level folks are extremely rare, second, that level of violence is also very rare in our world, and third, if a 20th-level fellow does happen to find himself in a violent situation, since his opponent probably isn't 20th level too, he's likely to get himself out of the situation before he gets that seriously injured.

nagora
2008-06-03, 04:08 AM
Hp abstraction is mostly an excuse. The first person who came up with the HP concept, likely wasn't thinking of abstractions.
No, it was pretty well intended as an abstraction from day one.


Then people wanted more realism, so HP was later described as an abstraction. It was an abstraction that didn't make much sense, because the healing system made it seem like physical damage.
I don't think that's entirely the case, although it partly true due to the, er...abstract nature of hp.


In 4E D&D the asbtraction finally makes a lot more sense, [due] to charcters being able to heal themsleves, and clerics always healing a percentage of a persons HP.
That makes no sense at all. In the old system, a cure light wounds spell healed about one sword blow's worth of hp for everyone. Now it heals a variable amount depending on who you are? Dumb.


Still I would prefer a system that radically changed the HP concept. The number of HP your character gets at first level, is the only HP you should get. No HP from leveling. Leveling would just increase defenses, and the ability to dodge.

Massively hard to balance in any simple system. 3ed already showed how difficult it is to pull off, with the minion rules being brought in to fix the problem. What you're suggesting was in fact partly done in the original "before it was called Dungeons and Dragons" game that Dave Arneson wrote.

As to realism - there are flying dragons and the PCs are supposed to be able to fight them. I don't think realism is at the top of the priority list with design goals like that.

hamlet
2008-06-03, 07:12 AM
Massively hard to balance in any simple system.

Actually, Compleat Arduin managed to do static HP rather well. Each PC starts out with maybe 20 or so HP (less if you're a pansy elf or something like that, much more if you are an ogre or throon) and it never changes under normal circumstances (barring very powerful magiks, divine reward, curses, or horrifying injuries). HP really represented physical durability.

In practice, it works out very nicely, though it does have the habit of making PC's far more breakable.

Oslecamo
2008-06-03, 07:29 AM
Over the years, some players have developed a terrible misconception that a character with 100 hit points can be shot almost a dozen times in the chest. Not true! Both a high-level soldier with 100 hit points and a stormtrooper with 10 hit points will be grievously injured and possibly killed by a single blaster wound to the chest. However, the high-level soldier will dodge the first nine shots, and the stormtrooper won't. (If it helps, imagine that a high-level hero has a reserve of "virtual hit points" to offset attacks that would otherwise be lethal. Once he has exhausted his reserve, the blow that finally reduces him to 0 hit points will solidly connect and cause serious physical trauma.)

Excuse me, but if my epic barbarian with 20 con is naked, completed tied up with enchanted adamantine chains, pined by a tarrasque monk 20 and has just failed his save against three diferent kinds of hold monster effects(aka no chance in hell of dodging), and mr kobold mook over there pulls out a bow and start shooting at him, he'll need lot of arrows to kill my barbarian, and there's
simply no chance in hell that he can one shot me.

Not to mention lava swiming. You can'd dodge or parry lava when you're inside it.

Honestly, I can't understand. Everybody is twisting the laws of reality with their attacks on one way or another. What is the dificulty to imagine that as they level up, all the supernatural stuff PCs go trough simply makes them much harder, and the fighter can have his guts pulled out and keep fighting?

Why can't the fighter flesh be so toughned up by a thousand combats that when the enemy lands an axe blow in the epic fighter's neck, the blade simply gets stuck in the steel like muscles wich can tear apart rock easily?

nagora
2008-06-03, 07:33 AM
Excuse me, but if my epic barbarian with 20 con is naked, completed tied up with enchanted adamantine chains, pined by a tarrasque monk 20 and has just failed his save against three diferent kinds of hold monster effects(aka no chance in hell of dodging), and mr kobold mook over there pulls out a bow and start shooting at him, he'll need lot of arrows to kill my barbarian, and there's
simply no chance in hell that he can one shot me.

In 1ed, he could. Well, actually in that case the kobold would be better of just walking over and slitting your throat, due to a kobold's low attack rating, but that would not apply if he was just standing beside you. Btb, that would be an instant kill.

HP's can be overridden, or they can if the DM's got half a brain.

nagora
2008-06-03, 07:35 AM
In practice, it works out very nicely, though it does have the habit of making PC's far more breakable.
Well, I meant that it's hard to do a balanced static hit point system where the characters can still do Conan-esque adventures, or Die Hard type scenarios but not be simply indestructable.

Attilargh
2008-06-03, 07:38 AM
there's simply no chance in hell that he can one shot me.
Natural 1 on your Fortitude save against a Coup de Grace, and it's curtains for Choppy the Barbarian.

Oslecamo
2008-06-03, 07:59 AM
Natural 1 on your Fortitude save against a Coup de Grace, and it's curtains for Choppy the Barbarian.

First, nat 1 is a fail only in an attack roll. 1 or 20 on a save doesn't give you any special bonus or penalty.

Second, you can't coup de grace with bows.

SamTheCleric
2008-06-03, 08:02 AM
First, nat 1 is a fail only in an attack roll. 1 or 20 on a save doesn't give you any special bonus or penalty.

Second, you can't coup de grace with bows.

Wrong... and wrong.

Saving Throws (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm)

Automatic Failures and Successes

A natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) on a saving throw is always a failure (and may cause damage to exposed items; see Items Surviving after a Saving Throw). A natural 20 (the d20 comes up 20) is always a success.

Coup De Grace (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm)

Coup de Grace

As a full-round action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are adjacent to the target.

Attilargh
2008-06-03, 08:02 AM
First, nat 1 is a fail only in an attack roll. 1 or 20 on a save doesn't give you any special bonus or penalty.
Sorry, wrong. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm#automaticFailuresandSuccesses )


Second, you can't coup de grace with bows.
And again, wrong (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm#coupdeGrace).

As a full-round action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are adjacent to the target.

Ędit: Thrice-cursed ninjas. :smallannoyed:

Tokiko Mima
2008-06-03, 09:33 AM
I still think the best way to imagine HP is a nebulous combination of physical resilience, luck, avoidance, and sheer willpower. A "hit" may do 20 HP damage, but the character with enough HP emerges with barely a scratch, if even that. However, no one stays lucky, can dodge, and take damage forever so as HP depletes each successful attack has a higher chance of actually slicing something vital. Obviously massive damage can break through this protection, but even that is less and less likely as your character gains more experience (and higher Fort saves.)

I do see the point of people that say that it doesn't make sense for higher level characters to live longer in lava or in pits of acid. It really doesn't. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense for people to survive *at all.* Any player that dives into lava or runs through a burning, crumbling building or swims in acid knowing that they have the HP to survive the trip is gaming the system in the first place. It's RAW, and I won't argue that, but it's cheesy to let player's get away with no penalty for doing something that should kill them automatically.

nagora
2008-06-03, 09:37 AM
I do see the point of people that say that it doesn't make sense for higher level characters to live longer in lava or in pits of acid. It really doesn't. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense for people to survive *at all.* Any player that dives into lava or runs through a burning, crumbling building or swims in acid knowing that they have the HP to survive the trip is gaming the system in the first place. It's RAW, and I won't argue that, but it's cheesy to let player's get away with no penalty for doing something that should kill them automatically.

QFT, as the kids say. Jumping into lava = death, HP notwithstanding. Apart from those few points at the bottom, HP represent your ability to avoid injury. If you actively do something that must injure you then you lose the protection of that portion (possibly the vast majority) of your hit points.

Oslecamo
2008-06-03, 05:38 PM
Sorry, wrong. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm#automaticFailuresandSuccesses )


And again, wrong (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm#coupdeGrace).


Ędit: Thrice-cursed ninjas. :smallannoyed:

Well curse me...

Still, the mook can't one shot you if you're not adjacent to him. No dramatic scene where the heros gets killed from an arrow out of the crowd.

two_fishes
2008-06-03, 09:58 PM
Honestly, I can't understand. Everybody is twisting the laws of reality with their attacks on one way or another. What is the dificulty to imagine that as they level up, all the supernatural stuff PCs go trough simply makes them much harder, and the fighter can have his guts pulled out and keep fighting?

Why can't the fighter flesh be so toughned up by a thousand combats that when the enemy lands an axe blow in the epic fighter's neck, the blade simply gets stuck in the steel like muscles wich can tear apart rock easily?

You are my hero for this. I've always wanted to play a D&D campaign where all the goofy abstractions (HP, levels, etc) were realities and known in the game world. Throw out real physics and build the gameworld around the abstractions. It'd be crazy.