Why do we really need HP to represent things other than physical injuries?

[Crazy Jerome]

The purpose of hit points is to be limited but reliable protection versus death. As long as you have a decent amount of hit points left, your character is safe from being wiped out by a single lucky hit. However, that protection is exhaustible, so you can still die if you get in over your head. D&D expects player characters to get in a lot of fights, and the hit point system is a nice way to balance "PCs should live longer than half a session" against "PCs should not be invulnerable."

What this means is you need to have enough hit points that one hit can't kill you..[SIZE=-2].[/SIZE]

Yes. And then throw in-combat healing into the mix, and we have the other part of hit points, which is a combat pacing mechanic--to deliberately extend the combats longer than they otherwise would be while avoiding the extreme swings of a system where this is relegated to parries or dodges. We can argue about particular implementations of this pacing as too fast or too slow, but the "hit points are physical damage only" idea is ignoring this key piece of D&D at peril.

After all, RuneQuest has hit points as only physical damage, with parries and dodges, precisely to throw out this pacing. And you know how RQ fights go? It's all fun and games for a second or two, no one is appreciably hurt, then someone loses an eye. Grandma told you not to run around with ducks waving giant cleavers. Then someone gets a crossbow bolt or spear in the gut, and party over. As an optional, much grittier module for D&D, that kind of thing might have a place. But it is not the base D&D, and never should be.

Now, I'd say a more valid argument is along the lines, OK, hit points are physical damage, luck, morale, fatigue--already a lot of stuff--and now you want to tell me they are plot protection and combat pacing on top of all that? No wonder they have holes. They are trying to do too much.

If you then want to replicate the plot protection and combat pacing through some other means (almost assuredly metagaming mechanics if they are not to be too intrusive), then hit points could be nothing but damage/fatigue, and a breaking out into two scores wouldn't hurt too much, now that plot protection and combat pacing are not interacting wonkily with them. However, generally I've found that people that are most serious about hit points as physical wounds are not at all interested in something like a pool of action points or the like turning hits into misses, either. Plus, these systems tend to be slower to adjudicate than D&D hit points. So I guess I'd say the burden is to determine how you would replicate the plot protection and combat placing, rather than assuming that they don't matter.

 

[Bobbum Man]

TBH D&D doesn't need HP to represent other types of stuff aside from raw physical damage. We have many other subsystems that better fit the idea of non HP damage concepts.

For example:

1.We have a plethora of status effects that cover stamina, will to fight, and the general concept of a wound: like panicked, fatigued, exhausted, disabled, dying, frightened, staggered, nauseated, and sickened.

2. There is already a subsytem using HP for glancing easy to recover from bits. Its the Sub dual damage vs. Lethal damage rules.

3. We have ability score damage damage for more pointed and harder to get over wounds of the body and mind.

4.We have massive damage rules that explicitly deal with outright dying from taking too much HP damage.

5 We have the concept of drain to represent a permanent "needs a miracle" to resolve kind of wound. Although to be fair its not often used in that way.

6. We have morale checks in pre 3e games and in 3e optionally to deal with will to fight.

7. And finally we have a great saving throw system as a catch-all for every thing else.

love,

malkav

Seems to me that this is a great list of unnecessary sub-systems, many of which can be folded into Hit Points making for a far more efficient game.

I love you too.

 

[Hassassin]

People who do not like (and have chosen not to play) 4E due to the healing surge system, usually say its because hit point loss no longer represents physical wounds, because they can get removed by inspirational talk by warlords and the like. There is a disconnect there between the game mechanics and how they would choose to describe what is happening in-game. To them, it makes horrible narrative sense and breaks their immersion.

The difference is that in (e.g.) AD&D you can freely narrate most of those "hits" as a narrow escape and interpret the damage as loss of luck or tiredness. However, in 4e you can never narrate a hit as physical damage, since you never know if it will be restored by a morale boost, a second wind or a five minute breather.

I think the best 5e can do is have a system that works like AD&D, but mentions that depending on your play style you may not want to narrate all damage as physical wounds.

(Additionally there need to be some, probably optional, mechanics to support other effects of 4e-like healing, like those on pacing and class balance.)

 

[Hassassin]

And if everyone sees that the fighter just lost 50% of his hit points in a single hit of physical damage from the maw of a dragon he ... what ... I'm trying to figure out a way to describe this ... he was bitten badly but not badly enough that it broke any bones? He was just bitten by a dragon. The bite actually hit the fighter. Where's the wiggle room in the description of actual physical damage that the fighter took? A scrape isn't going to run the fighter down 50% of his hit points in a single shot.

If you want to consider HP physical damage, you might narrate it as an open wound in the fighter's shoulder.

If you want to consider HP loss of luck and tiredness, you might narrate it as a narrow escape that took a lot of the character's reserves.

There are probably a lot of other ways to narrate it that are consistent with the fighter's hit points restoring naturally in about a week, or more quickly with a few spells.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

If you want to consider HP physical damage, you might narrate it as an open wound in the fighter's shoulder.

If you want to consider HP loss of luck and tiredness, you might narrate it as a narrow escape that took a lot of the character's reserves.

There are probably a lot of other ways to narrate it that are consistent with the fighter's hit points restoring naturally in about a week, or more quickly with a few spells.

You can narrate it, often more realistically, as somewhat unknown. That arrow glanced off of your shoulder, which now is bleeding, but what it hit is still unsure until you get a chance to inspect it. All you know is that it hurts.

Then with a decent supply of hit points, you mix several of these in. Since hit points are fungible, it doesn't matter which ones the warlord shouts out. For all you know, the hit points he is curing are the ones you lost the first round dancing around the orcs charge, not the later ones that were narrated as actual blows. If you narrate everything one way, you lose this flexibility. Admittedly, it is more balls to keep in the air, and if you get distracted, you might drop one. "Hey, wait a minute, Bob got nothing but arrows to chest, and now you shout it out?" For me, that's a call to get in the habit of varying my narration, which fortunately I did in 1981 because of the issue with hit points in Basic.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The difference is that in (e.g.) AD&D you can freely narrate most of those "hits" as a narrow escape and interpret the damage as loss of luck or tiredness. However, in 4e you can never narrate a hit as physical damage, since you never know if it will be restored by a morale boost, a second wind or a five minute breather.

No.. what you're saying is that it's okay for us to go against what the game is telling us about hit points and just 'make up' or 'house-rule' new concepts and explanations about what hit points are... but it's not okay that you would have to do it.

You could just as easily make up or house-rule the game fiction to "fix" the issues you have with it. Like to say that Second Winds are actually magical Cure Light Wounds potions that everyone has a good supply of (enough that they can use them every encounter). Easy enough. Makes all the sense in the world and "fixes" your problem.

But the fact that you could do that but would rather not... just means that you chose not to play 4E. Which is fine. I have no problems with that. But that doesn't mean that because I DID play 3E and willingly bit my tongue and accepted the disconnect because I just wanted to play the game... doesn't mean therefore I'M the one who needs to compromise and go back to the way things used to be.

 

[Scribble]

I got a promotion at work last year.

It's awesome because now I can take more knives to the chest.

 

[Hassassin]

You can narrate it, often more realistically, as somewhat unknown. That arrow glanced off of your shoulder, which now is bleeding, but what it hit is still unsure until you get a chance to inspect it. All you know is that it hurts.

Sure, that's a good option.

Then with a decent supply of hit points, you mix several of these in.

That helps by making inconsistencies less common, but still doesn't solve the problem that *all* of them can be restored by Bob the Warlord or a five minute breather. Your maybe serious works, but no wound (that wasn't instantly lethal) is found to actually be serious, except possibly in retrospect after e.g. magic was used to heal it.

 

[Hassassin]

No.. what you're saying is that it's okay for us to go against what the game is telling us about hit points and just 'make up' or 'house-rule' new concepts and explanations about what hit points are... but it's not okay that you would have to do it.

No, what I'm trying to say is that one of the options can be interpreted in another way consistently, while the other cannot.

That's why I think it (damage is physical) is a better foundation for how hit points work in 5e. It is easier to lay modular options on top of it that allow quick and painless non-magical HP restoration, whereas starting from damage can be anything you would have to limit things to get to a physical damage interpretation.

 

[herrozerro]

Personally I view HP as whatever the player wants it to be. For instance if I want to play a big tough badass, i can narrate all of his major hits as wounds but his sheer force of willpower or constitution keeps him going.

My wife once played a shild sorcerer and all of her hits were just narrow misses, totally plot armor. the only blow that would actually hit here character would be the one that might drop her to 0 or below.

the same goes for healing, if we just have a warlord? his healing is just getting everyone inspired to press on or calm the nerves of the characters who use "Plot armor" hp.

I took alot of inspiration from the latest batman videogames, as you go on any damage you take gets bats more and more beat up and his suit by the end can be in tatters, but he just keeps trucking. He'll eventually rest up but that will be for another day.