innerdude
Legend
To understand hit points, you have to understand what they're actually modeling: the status of a given entity to operate at a minimum level of nominal effectiveness.
When you see it from a war game standpoint, it makes total sense. "Hit points" at a squadron level is equal to the squadron's ability to continue operating nominally as a unit. Once "hit points" for the squadron reaches zero, the squadron as a unit is no longer operating at a level that makes it nominally effective. The affected unit is no longer is a viable threat to an opponent, no longer requires tactical or strategic awareness on the part of the opponent, and is thus removed from the game.
If you cared about the in-game fiction (in war games you usually don't), removing a squadron wouldn't necessarily mean that every member of the squadron died. It would just mean that even if there are survivors, they no longer have the physical means, equipment, and/or inclination to continue the fight. That piece, or unit, is removed and no longer accounted for.
The problem with applying hit points to an individual PC in an RPG is obvious---the most direct way of modeling "reduction of nominal effectiveness" for a single human/elf/dwarf/whatever is to assume that it has suffered physical debilitation or personal injury.
But in truth, moving between the higher-level, broader abstraction of "nominal effectiveness" into the lower-level, more specific abstraction of "suffers personal injury" is always going to be a mess---consider the well-documented nonsense of a 12th-level fighter falling 200 feet, picking himself off the ground and saying, "Huh, better be more careful next time."
In many cases it would be easier to model "reduction in nominal effectiveness" outside the hit point pool entirely. Fall damage, for example, works far better if you accept the idea that falling 200 feet reduces your "nominal effectiveness" by simply killing you outright, rather than merely reducing your "hit point" pool by some randomized number.
When you see it from a war game standpoint, it makes total sense. "Hit points" at a squadron level is equal to the squadron's ability to continue operating nominally as a unit. Once "hit points" for the squadron reaches zero, the squadron as a unit is no longer operating at a level that makes it nominally effective. The affected unit is no longer is a viable threat to an opponent, no longer requires tactical or strategic awareness on the part of the opponent, and is thus removed from the game.
If you cared about the in-game fiction (in war games you usually don't), removing a squadron wouldn't necessarily mean that every member of the squadron died. It would just mean that even if there are survivors, they no longer have the physical means, equipment, and/or inclination to continue the fight. That piece, or unit, is removed and no longer accounted for.
The problem with applying hit points to an individual PC in an RPG is obvious---the most direct way of modeling "reduction of nominal effectiveness" for a single human/elf/dwarf/whatever is to assume that it has suffered physical debilitation or personal injury.
But in truth, moving between the higher-level, broader abstraction of "nominal effectiveness" into the lower-level, more specific abstraction of "suffers personal injury" is always going to be a mess---consider the well-documented nonsense of a 12th-level fighter falling 200 feet, picking himself off the ground and saying, "Huh, better be more careful next time."
In many cases it would be easier to model "reduction in nominal effectiveness" outside the hit point pool entirely. Fall damage, for example, works far better if you accept the idea that falling 200 feet reduces your "nominal effectiveness" by simply killing you outright, rather than merely reducing your "hit point" pool by some randomized number.
Here on enworld we love to eff the ineffable!
