Well, lets look at that for a second, shall we?
HPs include "fatigue." Reasonable to think since resting gets you back healing surges which means you get your HPs back I suppose. But lets look at things that fatigue people. Climbing, jumping and oh, say... running an ultra marathon. These things cause fatigue, do any of them cause HP loss in 4E? No. No they don't. I think it's pretty believable that someone that just ran a marathon, swam a lake, kayaked up a rapids, swung a sword for 10 minutes and climbed a cliff is not in the same fighting shape as someone who didn't. But there are no rules in 4E for physical or mental exertion reducing HPs. In previous editions exhaustion and the like often gave a penalty to attack and skill rolls. So I think it's pretty clear that HPs and fatigue are not in fact related at all.
Your claim that hit points are divorced from fatigue aren't true. Many of these examples fall into the realms of Endurance checks, and Endurance checks *can* cause loss of healing surges and hit point loss. "Climbing a cliff" wasn't specifically mentioned, but "climbing a mountain" is.
HPs include "moral." Well whats the most obvious case of moral break? Fear. What does fear from, say, a dragon do in 4E, does it reduce HPs? No, it involves an attack penalty, much like previous editions. In some cases it involves stunning or running away, but nowhere does loss of moral cause HP damage. Likewise a successful intimidation check against bloodied opponents doesn't drop them to the ground dead. So again, it seems pretty clear HPs and moral are completely unrelated according to the actual rules of 4E.
The fact that you can't intimidate someone until they are bloodied doesn't make you think that hit point loss doesn't have *something* to do with morale? Once an NPC surrenders, is allowed to retreat their hit points don't really matter anymore.
What causes HP damage? Being hit with things, fire, hostile magic and magical effects, falling off a cliff and all things that we associate with wounding, bone breaking and the like. Additionally removal of things required to sustain human life such as starvation, suffocation and dehydration will also, unsurprisingly, cause HP loss.
Or exhaustion from climbing a mountain, hiking through the cold, hot weather, or at a high altitude, or swimming great distances.
Or in the case of Astral Terror, reeling from divine terror.
Or in the case of Vicious Mockery, being sent into a blind rage.
Or in the case of Dishearten, having your will to fight sapped.
Or in the case of Ravening Thought, having your thoughts invaded by ideas barbed by contradictions and horrors.
Or in the case of Fortune's Reversal, having your luck and happiness turn into misfortune and sorrow.
Or in the case of Prophecy of Zhudun, having a vision flash into your mind that is so horrifying you lose track of your surroundings.
Or in the case of Spiteful Glamor, being filled with detest and loathing.
Or in the case of Dreadful Word, having your mind reel with terror.
Or in the case of Horrid Whispers, being heavily distracted and driven to obsession.
Those are just level 1 powers that have hit point loss from effects that cause fear, confusion, will power, morale and anger and similar descriptions. I left out things such as illusions or "mental blasts".
Although debates like this happened in previous editions because HPs are an odd abstraction, they were nothing like what we get in 4E with the addition of the utterly bizarre healing surge mechanic which has no parallel in real life. The only answer is to accept that it has no parallel, stop trying to call it moral or make some other excuse for it being a simplification or abstraction for something because it's not. Just accept it's a game mechanic and move along. NPCs are for killing or getting plot hooks from.
I've always thought that having a second wind does have parallels in real life, as well as in fiction. Healing surges are really just an extended hit points pool that you can't have all at once. Now I can't say that healing overnight has a parallel in real life, but neither does shooting magical fireballs and killing dragons.
But frankly, I'm baffled as to why this is even a debate. The game designers came out and said that it's not *just* wounds. They didn't imply it. They didn't hint at it. They flat out stated it. They gave examples of it. They flavored powers based on it.
Now if you don't like that, fine. If you don't want it to be like that in your game, fine. But for you to come in here and tell everyone that they are wrong for defining a game term in the very way that the game designer said that the game term is defined is absolutely ludicrous.
Furthermore, I'm completely and utterly confounded how the very people who refuse to see hit points as anything other than wounds then turn around and rail against the powers that don't fit their view. Of course it's not going to. If you reject the game designer's usage of the term, then of course some of the applications of that term aren't going to make sense.
You can say you don't like this representation, but saying this representation isn't true is nonsense.
