D&D General D&D as a Game- On the Origin of Hit Points and Start of the Meat Debate
Crimson Longinus
Legend
I would be really dissatisfied "they don't represent anything" approach. I'm fine with mechanics being abstract, but I still want them to represent something.
How I interpret hit points is that they are always at least partly meat. When the rules say you were hit, you were actually hit, when the rules say you take damage, you actually took damage. Now higher level characters are better at taking blows so they might just get a scratch rather than a mortal wound, and they might have more action hero adrenaline that allows them to keep going while wounded. But hit is still a hit and taking damage means you got hurt, even though the exact nature of hurt might be a tad abstract.
I also use gritty rests and healing kit dependency which makes the healing times slightly less absurd and make sense with this approach.
How I interpret hit points is that they are always at least partly meat. When the rules say you were hit, you were actually hit, when the rules say you take damage, you actually took damage. Now higher level characters are better at taking blows so they might just get a scratch rather than a mortal wound, and they might have more action hero adrenaline that allows them to keep going while wounded. But hit is still a hit and taking damage means you got hurt, even though the exact nature of hurt might be a tad abstract.
I also use gritty rests and healing kit dependency which makes the healing times slightly less absurd and make sense with this approach.
Kurotowa
Legend
The model I'm coming around to is that HP is cosmetic meat points. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense if they're entirely luck points, like poisoned weaponed and resistance to certain damage types, or how magical healing works. But instead of going full "The Fighter laughs at getting stabbed ten times", I'm picturing them as small nicks and cuts that are cosmetically visible but don't actually impair the character, action movie style. Like John McClain who's able to get beat to hell but just walks it off by the next scene. And it's only when you're pushed to 0 HP that you actually get stabbed center mass.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
Ultimately, that's why I stick with AC/HP. Warhammer frpg 2nd ed is much more realistic than D&D. People dodge, parry blows, and armor reduces damage. But it takes much longer to resolve a single attack. Is the realism worth it? I used to think so, but now I'm not so sure.I really appreciate the gameplay aspect of hp. No death spiral, quick resolution for combat rounds, easy evaluation of where you are at as the combat goes on. I find it makes D&D combat more fun for me than alternatives.
Well done Gygax.
I'll also note that realism can be "increased" by lowering HP and lowering the speed of natural healing. But even that has consequences - it might not slow down combat (heck, low HP will make it go faster!) but slow natural healing slows the game down too - not in combat, but because the party needs longer to recover after a battle, making the "5 minute adventuring day" problem even worse.
Voadam
Legend
GURPS, BRP/Rolemaster/Runequest/Call of Cthulhu, and Palladium all have the parrying and dodging and such as well. White Wolf has attack rolls, possible opponent parry/dodge rolls, then damage rolls and opponent rolls to soak up damage, all with multiple dice and possible complications of botches and rolling 10s for additional rolls, then applying penalties for the wound on all future rolls.
D&D is generally quicker resolution of attack to damage resolution which is great for the visceral feel of faster paced action in combat.
Others can be more visceral in the feel of actual active defense and your high skills directly deflecting blows and such, but for a group combat experience I like quick resolution that still has the individual attacks and damage and most versions of D&D rounds and hp damage are within my personal sweet spot for enjoying the combat part of the RPG (as opposed to turning combat into an abstracted 4e skill challenge or straight narrative or whatever or super crunchy multi-stage resolutions).
ezo
I cast invisibility
Which is exactly what they are in 5E. They are the points you expend to avoid serious injury. When they run out, you are hit.
The "points" can be whatever you want to label them: skill, luck, meat, favor, etc. or nothing at all but a simple game mechanic.
Kannik
Hero
I'd be curious to read more on what seemed uncomfortable to him... And another (strong?) aspect about this might well stem from overfamiliarity and internalization. As an analogy, this is something that has happened in various martial arts lineages and martial arts books, where certain aspects and fundamentals (of the body, of martial practice, of etc) are not taught or written about because, at the time, it is already 'common knowledge' or understood by either the master or by the wider community in which they train/practice. So they are either or both blind to it (because they've so internalized it) or they don't feel the need to mention it as everyone is already familiar with it and it would feel redunant.
In creating HP in the way he describes in both the PHB and the DMG, Gary might have so internalized the intent that it seemed so super obvious and clear to him that keeping traditional and familiar meat-based nomenclature elsewhere didn't occur to him as a point of potential confusion. His word choices of preposterous and ridiculous in the descriptions of HP might be a further clue towards this as well.
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
I draw a slightly different conclusion. Mind you, I'm not saying that I'm correct! But when I read what he says, I keep thinking, Thou dost protest too much.
I look at this way- Gygax's approach has certainly been validated by history. The increasing hit points (the gamification) as you level made combat fun and more predictable, and it's understandable why so many games (esp. videogames) adopted it.
....and yet. Gygax was a wargamer, and I think that it must have bugged him a little. You can't help but see all these references within the rules that seem to take "hit points" as a reference to "meat" (from the various curing spells, to the time to recover hit points, to constitution bonuses, and so on). When I read these passages, I read them not as a grand philosophy, but more of they typical Gygaxian "justification." He's trying so hard to square the circle and have it make sense, when he could have just as easily have said, "The game is supposed to be fun. This is fun. And you know it's fun!" Those words aren't meant for us; they're meant for him. And for Arneson.
In other words, "This is the way it is. Suck it, Arneson."
Kannik
Hero
And neither may I be correct... my time machine is on the fritz again and I can't go back to ask Gary our burning questions.
Add to that a third possible leg for our HP stool: the protesting too much might have more to do with the legal strategy/justification for AD&D is not D&D so I don't owe you any royalties... he knew it was a difference and wanted to highlight it in as much language as he could so that he could point to it should the ownership/royalty thing come to a head. Which is where I interpret it as a familiarity aspect, where the evolution of his game design is still tied to what he knows and has used before, relying on old tropes so to speak even if they don't quite fit anymore in the new 'paradigm'.
And it may well be "E - All of the Above in varying combinations."
Jaeger
That someone better
I really liked what Mongoose D20 conan did; as you kind of got the best of both worlds.
Your Parry and Evade were rolled against like armor class, and armor was Damage reduction. (Parry and evade could be made to work like in WFRP/RQ, but the just gave you the average roll of 10+ you skill level as the opponents target number.)
I'm a bit surprised nobody else has ran with the idea .
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