In the heat of battle, is hit point loss a wound?

[VannATLC]

There are two blows I narrate as significant, The one that introduced (in 4e) a bloodied condition, and that would usually be a minor scrap, cut or crush, and the blow that drops the monster, which could be significant or not, depending on whether it dropped it to over -10, or just below 0.

Monsters on 0HP drop, but don't die, in my campaigns.

 

[Dannager]

I think the word "hit point" should be used to describe actual physical damage from actual physical hits.

Why?

 

[Old_Skool]

We are asking the wrong question. What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?

 

[Dannager]

We are asking the wrong question. What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?

That question does not allow for a particularly nuanced answer.

 

[Zaukrie]

I don't really think about hitpoints as anything other than a number that goes down when creatures are hit, and goes up when they are healed. It is totally abstract to me. That way, I don't get all obsessed over what they mean and get all annoyed with rules and fluff and whatnot. Just like AC is a number that helps you adjudicate if you should subtract hitpoints or not. Totally abstract to me.

 

[Deadboy]

I voted for peanut butter and jelly because the upper end of the poll didn't have enough abstraction for me.

I did as well, for the same reason.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Why?

First, because that is the closest thing to a common language meaning for the term "hit point"; it's what someone who doesn't play rpgs likely thinks of, someone who hasn't been in endless message board debates about hit point philosophy.

Second, because, and I cannot stress this enough, combining all possible types of physical harm into one number is already an extremely abstract measure. Combining bruises, broken bones, bleeding wounds, injured joints, the interactions between all the different body systems, and the pain of injury into one measure is far more abstract than just about anything else in D&D. Trying to take that and make it even more vague by throwing in a bunch of metagame factors and other considerations creates endless confusion and tons of bad mechanics feeding off of this one fundamental mistake. Fix hit points, and all the healing, save-or-die, fighter vs. wizard, and any number of other endless debates are radically changed for the better.

 

[Raith5]

HP for me is a number that goes up and down. I laugh at my enemies when it goes up and I cry and hide behind the fighter when it goes down.

 

[CleverNickName]

We are asking the wrong question. What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?

Yep, that's the elephant in the room.

 

[Blood & Bones]

We are asking the wrong question. What we should be asking is: should the DM subtract hit points from a target regardless of the attack roll result?

If it's an abstraction, then the question becomes, "Is it balanced?" Evidence from polling suggests that very few people actually believes it is unbalanced - myself included. From a purely mechanical point of view, that's all that matters.

However, when dealing with a RPG, internal consistency/logic within the game along with a small measure of real-world logic has an affect on the ability of the players to immerse themselves into the game. My hypothesis was that Hit Points as merely abstraction is not how the majority of people actually think about hit points. With how this poll is shaping up, it looks like I might be wrong, or we might be looking at a 50/50 split.