Narrating Hit Points - no actual "damage"

[Lanefan]

I think "hit points = weariness" is all fine and dandy until you start using monsters with abilities that very clearly require a physical wound. I'm not just talking about spiders and snakes that deal poison damage. There are fiends that can deal infernal wounds that keep bleeding. There are creatures that can light you on fire. And so on.

Any hit can (and probably should) involve minor physical injury - a nick, a scratch, etc. - which is all you need to get those abilities going. But the rest is best described as fatigue, I think; until you're down to the last 5-10 h.p.

This is where a wound-vitality or body-fatigue hit point system comes in handy - the vitality/fatigue points are those minor nicks and scratches, fatigue and weariness, etc.; while the wound/body points are serious damage and pain. PCs and so on have (relatively speaking) few body points and lots of fatigues, where most monsters are the other way around; this ties in nicely to the narration methods people have described upthread.

 

[Li Shenron]

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?

Sure. It is possibly the preferred way in order to make healing make most narrative sense, despite the fact that instinctively most people would want to see damage as actual physical wounds (this is what practically every beginner does in a natural way, until you patronize them about not doing so).

OTOH, if only gaming groups wouldn't always approach every combat encounter to the death, you could still interpret damage as physical wounds and keep natural healing narratively sensible.

 

[Shasarak]

Has anyone experienced treating HP in this way?

Sorry man, I have never experienced anyone treating HP that way.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Yep, this is precisely what I do for PCs, and it works great for me. For monsters, I narrate HP as real damage and I don’t have them do Death saving throws.

This is basically what Gygax said way back in his DMG - for PCs (and NPCs whose degree of physical toughness should resemble the PCs), most hp loss is not physical injury - it's nicks at worse, and wearing down the luck/stamina/etc. But for most monsters, a hit is a hit: the hit points of an ogre or giant or dragon represent that it has a lot of meat!

 

[Azzy]

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.

Yep. This is pretty much what I default to.

I had posted a big article on hit points on the WotC forums before they went extinct. Wish I could put that (and other articles) back up somewhere (though I don't know where).

If I were going to designate an exact amount of hit points that represent the ability to take physical damage, I'd probably just say that the hit points from first level ar physical, and the rest skill, luck, etc.

 

[cthulhu42]

What I don't understand is, if hit points represent some sort of nebulous "energy" then why are there specific damage types? A long sword does slashing damage, so it seems safe to assume that when it does damage it is actually a slash, not just a hard blow against armor.

If you have armor that gives you resistance against one type of damage, it seems like the damage type suddenly becomes very important and can't be chalked up as "energy loss" or what have you.

I get that thinking of hit point damage as "energy loss" enables the eight hour heal, but it still seems at odds with all the different damage types in the game and how important they are.

 

[Nevvur]

I take slightly different approaches handling attacks against PCs and attacks against NPCs.

For the former, I usually just describe the attack and declare damage, rather than describing exactly what the damage looks like. Leaves plenty of space for the players to fill in the blanks with their imagination. I say, "The dire wolf lunges at you from behind and chomps down on your leg. Take 8 damage." Paladin Pat's player might picture the wolf wrenching his knee a bit, but the teeth don't pierce his metal greaves. Wizard Will's player might picture the wolf's teeth sinking into his flesh. I say, "The goblin lets loose an arrow, and its aim is true. Take 5 damage." Randy Rogue can pretend he dodges in the nick of time, but his luck is running out. Carrie Cleric can decide it's a glancing blow off her half-plate, but she's getting exhausted dancing around like this. And so on. If the player wants to narrate what the damage looks like, that's fine by me, but it usually doesn't happen.

For the latter, I usually describe a hit as a hit, in all its bloody, gory detail (moderated by the % of max HP done). I hand over that narrative to the player when its a KO. Once in awhile the bad guys have a healer and one or more baddies who I grant death saving throws. In those cases I might retcon a player narrative if their description would make healing impossible, e.g. decapitation. I'm also open about my intent so as to prevent any hard feelings. "Hey Jon, this guy isn't your run of the mill mook, and I decided beforehand he gets death saving throws. There's also a healer in the enemy group. How about you just run him through the gut instead of chopping off his head?" This sort of situation has only come up three times over 150ish sessions, and in none of those cases did the player seem deflated.

 

[5ekyu]

What I don't understand is, if hit points represent some sort of nebulous "energy" then why are there specific damage types? A long sword does slashing damage, so it seems safe to assume that when it does damage it is actually a slash, not just a hard blow against armor.

If you have armor that gives you resistance against one type of damage, it seems like the damage type suddenly becomes very important and can't be chalked up as "energy loss" or what have you.

I get that thinking of hit point damage as "energy loss" enables the eight hour heal, but it still seems at odds with all the different damage types in the game and how important they are.

Actually, just imagine it as the target not trying as hard against the resisted damage plus some of the effect dissipated and it still holds up clise enough for a bendy-wendy hitty-missy fight tracker.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I tend to keep it visceral. Attacks smash, slash and tear. Blood sprays and teeth crumble. Nothing disabling unless its' warranted due to a special attack or finishing blow, though. Just like a pulp novel the heroes bounce back after a quick rest and some bandaging.

 

[Ratskinner]

IME

The conflicts you run into are:
1) "Healing" makes less sense.
2) contingent effects like poison and contagion seem to think you have been pierced.
3) missiles get to sound weird after a while.

The (re)solution to these, IMO. Would be simply handled with a "wounded" condition. This condition is triggered any time:
A) you drop below half MaxHP from a physical attack.
B) you are hit by an arrow
C) you miss a save vs poison or similar.
D) an attack deals more than (some amount) of damage to you
E) you drop below 0 HP from a physical attack

Effects that "Heal" cannot target a person who is not suffering from the wounded condition. By default, there is no other effect of the wounded condition. Some DMs might wish to attach other riders to the condition (like disadvantage on saves) to add a death spiral.

Additionally, folks who like more complication could create a ladder of conditions with different adjectives like "serious" and "critical", the absence of which render similarly-named effects useless. But that's a bit old fashioned.

By default, HP recovery via resting is unaffected by the wounded condition. If a character undertakes healing by natural means, they can make a DC 15 Con save after each long rest to remove the condition.

Anyway, such a system would remove Schrodingers injuries. Which are a bugaboo of mine.

Toodles.


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