Narrating Hit Points - no actual "damage"

hbarsquared · Feb 20, 2018

I know, I know, the verisimilitude of hit points has been an ongoing argument for decades...

This is something I would like to try when I start up my next game: All hit point "damage" is simply small, accumulated weariness.

Damage is not broken arms, sliced open bowels, or arrows to the back. It's the blow to the shield that takes a little more out of you, it's the sore muscle from stepping out of the way, it's the stitch in your side. Nothing physical, nothing that could be permanent, even without magic, and that can easily be visualized to recover after a long rest.

When one is reduced to zero hit points and needs to make death saving throws... There, that's when there is actual damage from that last blow. That time the arrow hit you, the sword cut you open. That's what requires magical healing or multiple long rests to recover.

Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

Sunseeker · Feb 20, 2018

I always narrate HP this way. The last 10% or so of HP is when I start talking about real physical injuries being inflicted (except for ya know, a special ability that calls for a special physical injury).

ccs · Feb 20, 2018

Yeah.

Krachek · Feb 20, 2018

It is pretty much the official definition since 1ed.
As we can read in ADnD phb:

Each character has a varying number of hit points,' just as monsters do. 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. A typical man-at-arms can take about 5 hit points of damage before being Killed. Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution,foratotalof85hitpoints.ThisIS theequivalentofabout18hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic flghter 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 paints aresymbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

The Crimson Binome · Feb 20, 2018

hbarsquared said:
Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

Nah, that would cause way more issues than it solves. If seven damage out of fifty isn't the same as seven damage when they only have five, then it raises the question of what seven damage even is, and how the cleric can distinguish between a non-wound that requires Cure I to fix and a non-wound that requires Cure IV to fix. It's also a huge pain in the narration, to try and describe how you keep not-wounding the enemy in ways where it's apparent that they're still taking HP damage. It just gets very meta-gamey very quickly, and to no real benefit.

MechaPilot · Feb 20, 2018

hbarsquared said:
Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

Yes. That's my preferred method for describing HP loss. Occasionally a new-ish player (or a player who takes issue with HP not inherently being physical) might inquire as to why her character lost HPs when the blow was narrated as being narrowly parried or evaded. Usually this is taken care of by explaining that HPs are merely representations of staying power in combat, that the rules definition for HPs include several non-meat factors, and that exciting narration of action takes precedence over assigning percentages of meat and non-meat parts of each individual HP.

The only times you'll probably need to describe a mechanical hit as a narrative is hit are 1) on the final blow, and 2) when a poison with an inherently physical effect (i.e. something other than HP loss) or some kind of disease rider comes into play.

Valmarius · Feb 20, 2018

I run it both ways.
Attacks that target the heroes are typically grazing blows, shallow wounds, or narrow misses that take a lot of energy. Eventually that energy gets worn down, or the enemy lands a Crit, and that's when serious wounds happen.
But for enemies, it's the opposite. Every strike that hits deals real damage, and by the time a Hill Giant's bag of HP is getting low they're covered in gashes and sporting several arrows.

FrogReaver · Feb 20, 2018

hbarsquared said:
I know, I know, the verisimilitude of hit points has been an ongoing argument for decades...

This is something I would like to try when I start up my next game: All hit point "damage" is simply small, accumulated weariness.

Damage is not broken arms, sliced open bowels, or arrows to the back. It's the blow to the shield that takes a little more out of you, it's the sore muscle from stepping out of the way, it's the stitch in your side. Nothing physical, nothing that could be permanent, even without magic, and that can easily be visualized to recover after a long rest.

When one is reduced to zero hit points and needs to make death saving throws... There, that's when there is actual damage from that last blow. That time the arrow hit you, the sword cut you open. That's what requires magical healing or multiple long rests to recover.

Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

I haven't but I have thought about the issue extensively.

HP being totally non-physical just doesn't feel right. Healing doesn't seem to work right when it's no meat. Hitting an orc with your greataxe for 12 damage mechanical just feels off when it's narrated as basically a miss. Also, if HP doesn't represent something physical or tangible in the game it's hard to characters to make informed in game decisions.

However, I do think we often overexaggerate how much meat is actually being affected. I think you are right that having your characters sliced open and arrows sticking out of their backs isn't always genre appropriate. In general for PC's I would have 1-2 hp from most blows consist of actual physical trauma like scractches and bruises and such. The other hps lost from the hit would be morale, windedness, luck etc. This distinction doesn't need tracked it just needs recognized that hp is always a combination of meat and non-meat. When monsters are hit by players I would allow the narrative lean more meat heavy because I believe that will be more enjoyable to my players. They want to see their great axe slicing deeply into the ORC. They want their fireball spell to genuinely burn it's flesh. The only truly major physical trauma players should take is when they are knocked to 0 hp IMO.

HP was made ambiguious for this very reason. It can be narrated as mostly meat when desired, as mostly non-meat when desired and it doesn't have any actual affect on the mechanics and rules. This approach should jive more with 5e's quick recovery timeframes for players and since most monsters generally don't ever need recovery rules then we are free to narrate successful attacks against them as more meaty as we won't have to worry about explaining the quick natural recovery time they would otherwise have.

Jester David · Feb 20, 2018

I tried it a little in 4e and found it tricky. When the vampire drained blood from the paladin, when the assassin stabbed the sleeping warlock, when the ranger fell in the pit of acid. It was harder to describe that as less physical damage. Plus, without also tracking the hit points of all my PCs, I never knew when they crossed over from the vague "fine" to the more serious "nearly dead" hp thresholds.

It also didn't work well with the flow of my description. I'd roll the attack, often with the damage dice, then check if it hit. If I received a confirmation I'd describe the blow, narrating the impact based on what I rolled, capping that with the damage itself. I find that if I say the damage first and then narrate, the players are doing math instead of listening.
The catch with the OP's method—where only the final hit is "real"—is that you can't know what to entirely narrate until after you declare the result. But when the PCs drops, everyone on the table starts thinking tactics and how to turn the fight around, and then I'm narrating to walls. The drama of the story has been trumped by the drama of the mechanics.

And I think everyone has seen the big epic crunching critical hits that have left a player character with 1 or 2 hit points, followed by a bitch slap of an attack that knocks them down. It's a little anticlimatic for the mega hit to just be a glancing blow while the pathetic goblin stab dealing minimum damage is the only blow that lands true.