How many hit points do you have?

[Celebrim]

Sure, the narration can be tricky sometimes, but the edged vs bludgeoning attack vs a water ooze doesn't seem so difficult to me. You could say an edged weapon slices through the watery creature without much disruption while a bludgeoning attack causes water to splash out all over the place and causes the creature to reel in response.

Ultimately, that's pretty much exactly what I adopted, but it felt very contrived.

 

[I'm A Banana]

They're aware enough to make decisions based on it.

I'd hesitate to say it was a precise awareness -- "I am at 24.5% of my maximum health" isn't an in-character statement.

But they know it enough to know if they could take another sword blow or a drop off that cliff or a flurry of crossbow bolts. They know it enough to make decisions on it.

This is in part because in my games HPs are always at least a little injury. So the guy thinking about taking a flying leap off the roof is thinking, in part, "this is gonna hurt...but I think I can take it."

 

[Hussar]

Of course, this all begs the question - How many decisions does a character actually make?

As [MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION] above said, unless the player is somehow able to induce a multiple personality disorder, the character cannot really know anything. AFAIC, the character is simply a filter through which the player makes decisions. Since the player cannot not know his hit points, then decisions will always be made based on remaining hit points.

But, from an "in world" perspective", the character has absolutely no idea if the next sword hit will kill him. Actually, that's not true. I take that back. The character always knows that the next sword hit will kill him, regardless of how healthy he is, because being hit with a sword kills you. But, until you whittle down something's hit points, that sword hit never occurs.

IOW, no one ever dies from minor cuts and bruises. And I don't have to beat something up first to kill it. It always baffles me when people talk like this as if it makes sense from an in game perspective. A hunter could never, ever kill a deer. A pony in 3.5 has 11 hit points (which would be about right for most deer) means that an arrow from a hunter won't kill a deer. Since hit points mean that the deer won't actually bleed out (unless knocked below 0 HP), you'd need to hit the deer multiple times before dropping it.

Which is utterly ridiculous. Hunting in a D&D world, if HP apply to everything and are objective, would be extremely difficult.

OTOH, if HP are a meta-game construct which only really applies to events that the game concerns itself with - high adventure, buckling your swashes - then this stops being a problem.

 

[pemerton]

I'm in the unusual situation of agreeing with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] at the same time.

The third is fairly radical, and would indicate that you can only observe objective consequences, like being dropped or perhaps (in 4e terms), being bloodied. You could be at 1/100 hp and not know that you were close to dying. At most, you'd realize you'd almost been stabbed a few times recently, but you wouldn't have any sense as to when your luck is about to run out.

In 4e you also know how tired you're getting and how sore you're feeling (as surges get used). I also take it that as hit points are lost, a character may be feeling weary; and that when healing is received, a character feels reinvigorated/inspired.

Of course players know their PC's hit points remaining and make decisions on the basis of that information.

 

[Ahnehnois]

For me, hit points are a player-knowledge proxy for an understanding of the nuances of their condition that the characters know but may find very hard to express clearly. It's a bit like knowing how able you might be to play football; you have a pretty good idea within yourself, but you might not be able to define it precisely to a coach or physician.

I think this is kind of how I look at it. The specific knowledge the character has is related to, but not the same as the hit point mechanics. Much the way that I have an intuitive idea of how far I can throw a ball even if I cannot necessarily calculate it using physics equations.

 

[Ahnehnois]

The players in my game and myself (as GM) have (for 28 years) assumed that HPs are in no way knowable by characters. They are a metagame marker for heroic staying power.
...
This usage doesn't affect our sense of versimilitude. I'm certain the antithesis would.

Which is fine, but, it seems, pretty atypical (though I'm not surprised by who chose that answer). I think the the idea of considering hit points as a purely metagame element would suggest that the character can't understand them, as it would essentially break the fourth wall if he knew things like that.

To me, where that leads is that there must be a separate set of rules in the reality the characters live in. That is, the characters in the world experience fatigue and wounds in some fashion, and they develop an understanding of how health and harm work. If that understanding does not reflect what is going on in the mechanics, it begs the question of what exactly is going on in their experience.

Do we assume that they live in a realistic world where people sometimes get an eye poked out or gangrene in their wounds, but that this reality simply never interacts with the hp system (i.e. those outcomes only occur through DM 'fiat'). Or do they live in a Hollywood world where no one of consequence ever gets hurt, but they lack the self-awareness to understand that? Or are they cartoonish characters that know they can't get hurt and jump off cliffs for fun?

 

[Ahnehnois]

3.5 had a similar ability with the Combat Awareness feat. So long as the character was maintaining his combat focus, he could learn the exact current hit point total of each adjacent enemy and ally.

It's been some time and I don't have their sheets anymore, all I recall is that it was a utility power that allowed him to find out the specific health of an enemy. Power even specified that he got to know the exact HP total of the enemy, not just "Bloodied or not" or "kinda hurt".

Thanks both of you. It's interesting; I thought that there might be rules wherein you learn the enemy's hp total, but I couldn't remember where they were. I can't say I'm a big fan of them either.

To me, this implies that the writers are assuming that you know your own hp already (otherwise you would know more about the enemy than you could ever know about yourself, which doesn't make sense). However, that isn't explicitly stated.

 

[Celebrim]

A hunter could never, ever kill a deer.

While the difficulty of a hunter in killing a deer is a problem I have deliberately introduced into my rules for a variety of reasons, including solving the problematic issue of scale between say farmers and house cats, I think you are exaggerating the problem here far beyond what actually exists in the RAW.

A pony in 3.5 has 11 hit points (which would be about right for most deer)

And there is your problem. I'd guess most deer have about 5 hit points, IIRC. Certainly in 1e they were 1/2 of 1 HD animals. A pony suitable for riding weighs between 500 and 1000lbs depending on the breed. Whereas a 200lb deer is a pretty big deer. If you have 11 h.p. deer, then the problem becomes why doesn't the deer just kill things since it greatly outclasses the hunters? Why are we assuming the commoner hunter has 2.5 h.p. when the animal of about the same weight has 11.5?

means that an arrow from a hunter won't kill a deer. Since hit points mean that the deer won't actually bleed out (unless knocked below 0 HP), you'd need to hit the deer multiple times before dropping it.

I've done enough hunting to have encountered the problem of a deer someone else stuck with an arrow, they didn't kill the deer and now the flesh has closed up around the point. While hitting a deer with a broad head from a compound bow usually kills it, it rarely drops it. Generally you have to track it until it bleeds out. A critical hit from a longbow does 3d8, and though I agree it shouldn't take 20 attempts to get a kill, if we assume deer are 1HD the problem becomes more logical. Historically speaking, stalking deer with bows was rarely the way they were killed because it is extremely difficult. Native American hunters preferred snare traps, for example. Bear were almost always taken with deadfalls, not bows. Bison were almost always taken by driving them off a cliff, or later by lance once horses came along.

Is it perfectly realistic? No. I've not encountered the system that manages that, despite playing around with GULLIVER for a while. But you are exaggerating the problem, or else you are dealing with problems introduced by poor monster design. An example of pervasive poor monster design in 3e is that everything has a constitution bonus (except elves). Constitution is vastly overestimated for most monsters if you are going for realism.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But, from an "in world" perspective", the character has absolutely no idea if the next sword hit will kill him. Actually, that's not true. I take that back. The character always knows that the next sword hit will kill him, regardless of how healthy he is, because being hit with a sword kills you.

This isn't true. People survive serious wounds sometimes. The human body is surprisingly resilient. People also die of not-that-serious wounds. One of the basic truths of battlefield medicine, until relatively recently, is that infections killed more combatants than the actual wounds did. Also, a nick to an artery can be more deadly than a gaping wound that misses one. The spread of outcomes is quite complex.

OTOH, if HP are a meta-game construct which only really applies to events that the game concerns itself with - high adventure, buckling your swashes - then this stops being a problem.

Well, yes, but that creates a rather large new problem.

Because now, if your ranger PC goes out and bags a deer without rolling an attack, the next time he sneaks up on an enemy, he says "Oh, I shoot the guy's horse." The DM asks him to roll an attack and damage (which won't kill it), but the player says "No, the horse is just dead now, that's how I do things apparently." What are you supposed to tell him? Quadripedal animals become more durable when they're important to the plot? The deer only died because you weren't swashbuckling at the time?

If the rules aren't applied in a consistent fashion (and moreover are applied selectively in ways that make the players' goals harder to achieve) they seem less to me like rules.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But, from an "in world" perspective", the character has absolutely no idea if the next sword hit will kill him. Actually, that's not true. I take that back. The character always knows that the next sword hit will kill him, regardless of how healthy he is, because being hit with a sword kills you.

This is part of why D&D feels like a heroic fantasy game to me -- you are playing people who do not die from being hit by dudes swinging swords at them. Normal people die when they are hit with a sword, sure. You are not playing the role of a normal person, you are playing the role of a fantasy hero, and part of what that means is that you can survive getting hit with a sword.

That is because when a fantasy hero gets hit with a sword, they turn that potentially lethal blow -- a blow that would kill any normal person -- into something lighter. It might not be much -- a cut, a graze, a scrape, a nick, a "flesh wound." Being a fantasy hero means being superhuman, being able to take a slice with a blade without falling to pieces.

I like that, because it makes D&D feel like a game of fantasy heroics. That's part of what HP functions as for me -- a genre mechanic. It's pulpy. It's unrealistic in the best way. In the story, your fantasy hero looks at the legion of town guards with blades flashing in the moonlight and knows that they can get out of this (though maybe not without a few cuts and bruises). As a player, you look at 4 1st-level guards armed with longswords, and your own HP total, and you know that even if they all hit and deal max damage, you aren't going down. You and your character are thinking the same thing. Roleplaying!.

It always baffles me when people talk like this as if it makes sense from an in game perspective. A hunter could never, ever kill a deer. A pony in 3.5 has 11 hit points (which would be about right for most deer) means that an arrow from a hunter won't kill a deer. Since hit points mean that the deer won't actually bleed out (unless knocked below 0 HP), you'd need to hit the deer multiple times before dropping it.

Which is utterly ridiculous. Hunting in a D&D world, if HP apply to everything and are objective, would be extremely difficult.

That issue is pretty much pure theorycraft, though. It's not something that ever comes up in actual play because the players are not deer hunters, they're adventurers. If you're not into the rules-as-physics, this is a non-issue.

But okay, sure. Lets say that there's a problem with that verisimilitude. There's a few reactions to this and I think all of them are acceptable:

• Go With It: In this world of heroic fantasy, deer are pretty much all heroic, fantastic deer, so common hunters who are not fantasy heroes have to content themselves with smaller prey. Killing a deer in this heroic fantasy world is not something hunters regularly do. Venison is prized. Maybe those who hunt deer do so in groups (more attacks, more damage). Maybe they use traps. This is awesome because it makes everything legendary and amazing, and adds some interesting texture to the world.
• Deer don't have that HP total: We can presume the ponies in the MM are more robust than a common deer (deer being gracile, wild animals, ponies being domesticated laborers). Deer might be 1 HD animals (4 hp), possibly even with a CON penalty. Ponies are hardier. Part of why they make better pack animals. This is awesome because it gives some meaningful distinction between creatures you might encounter in the game.
• NPC's have special abilities, too: Even without an ability score bonus (presuming all 10's), there's no reason to presume that an NPC hunter has no special skill. Perhaps NPC hunters have something like a ranger's Favored Enemy, and/or maybe something like the rogue's Sneak Attack. Perhaps they have some other ability that induces a bleed. Or maybe they make special arrows that deal ongoing damage. This is awesome because it means the world doesn't live just for the PC's and their experience, and builds out elements of the world that interface with them -- sure, you could get a +5 damage bonus vs. deer, if you wanted, but it's very specific. Maybe you could get your hands on those arrows -- sure would be useful!
• Use the Proper Rules: A hunter can kill a deer with a DC 10ish (maybe 12, 14) Survival check, which gives them enough food for themselves for a day. 12 or 14 because deer are kind of big and might provide enough food for a few folks. They don't need to roll attacks and damage because those rules aren't for hunting, they're for fighting. If a rampaging deer was coming at you with antlers bared and hooves glinting with blood in the moonlight, we're talking about a different kind of event than if a deer is trying to eat some grass or get a mate and some guy sneaks up on him and shoots him in the back. One is handled with combat rules, the other is handled using the rules for "getting along in the wilderness"

None of which is really even needed to enjoy a game of D&D, if you just accept the initial proposition that the numbers aren't the absolute physics of the world and that the rules for what happens offscreen don't matter a great deal.

OTOH, if HP are a meta-game construct which only really applies to events that the game concerns itself with - high adventure, buckling your swashes - then this stops being a problem

Which is fine, too. Personally, I find that diminishes my feeling of high adventure, because then what my character feels and what I feel are in conflict, rather than in harmony as representing heroic fantasy heroes. I feel like a dude with Asperger's at a party: always aware of the rules on display, never able to just feel them. And that's less fun for me.

Others ain't got that hang-up, though.