According to the quoted text, it sounds like 2E is suggesting a proportional wound system, so a hit for 9/90 would be the same scratch as someone getting hit for 1/10; and 3E is in line with that.
What I'm curious about is, how do you get from that model, to your model where HP damage can equate to a parried blow or clothing damage? Where do you make the jump to the idea that HP damage can correspond to no physical injury whatsoever? Because it doesn't say that in the books
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s quote was from Gygax's DMG (p 82).
The previous page contains the following passage:
For those who wonder why poison does either killing damage (usually) or no harm whatsoever, recall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not actually sustained - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch, and thus the
saving throw. If that mere scratch managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON.
Perhaps a scratch. That is to say, hit point loss need not correlate to physical injury.
From p 61 of the same book:
Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections.
A mere nick or scracth. Also, from the previous paragraph,
damage is not actually sustained - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. Which is to say that the loss of 1 hp, 3 hp or 7 hp can all be the same thing, in terms of physical injury (ie perhaps a mere nick or scratch). What is being worn down is luck, favour, endurance, verve, the will to fight, etc.
The only oddity of this system, in 1st ed AD&D, is that healing is not proportional, so the fighter who has lost "metaphysical" reserves needs a Cure Serious or Critical Wounds spell, while the dying MU can be restored to maximum hp (though not full health) with a Cure Light Wounds spell. 4e corrects this particular oddity with surge-based healing.
(A proportional interpretation - that losing 1 in 10 hp correlates to losing 10 in 100 - also faces the same oddity of non-proportional healing in AD&D.)