D&D General Are Hit Points Meat? (Redux): D&D Co-Creator Saw Hit Points Very Differently

D&D co-creator Dave Arneson wasn't a fan of hit points increasing with level. According to the excellent Jon Peterson's Playing at the World he felt that hit points should be fixed at character creation, with characters becoming harder to hit at higher levels.

Of course, this is an early example of the oft-lengthily and vehemently discussed question best summarised as ‘Are hit points meat?’— a debate which has raged for over 40 years and isn’t likely to be resolved today! (but no they’re not)

Arneson's Hit Points for Characters

Game Wizards is very decidedly not a book about who invented which system in D&D. But early drafts of the book did track one design choic...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

Arneson later created a hit point equation in his 1979 RPG Adventures in Fantasy which was a game in which he hoped to correct "the many errors in the original rules".

 

[jmartkdr2]

Hit points serve as a good abstraction for this maybe better than wound levels and saving throws against same which tend to add complexity without better results.

From a ludonarrative standpoint, hit points are really bad. They abstract a whole bunch of very different things into a single game mechanic, which messes with how the fiction maps to the rules.

But we've know that for well over 40 years, and in that time no one's come up with anything better. There are alternatives that work, but hit points are just more fun for DnD which is why nothing else sticks.

 

[Ancalagon]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

In 5e, hit points have to be meat, and heroes are demigods. Any reasonably healthy PC at level 5 or so can, every evening, walk off a 5 story building and land on the cobblestones below (5d6), to to bed, and feel 100% fine the following morning.

The fact that this can be done EVERY DAY means it can't be "luck". Of course sometimes people fall from 5 stories and are fine (ish), but the great majority of the time, such a fall is lethal. The heroes aren't ducking the ground.

 

[Kannik]

In 5e, hit points have to be meat, and heroes are demigods.

"Have to be" is not the accurate phrasing to be using here. Besides the myriad of other ways that it could be viewed and explained, and besides the various edge cases that D&D rules have always had and have been 'incapable' of explaining, there are the words of Gygax himself:

Thus, the majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

Gary Gygax, 1st Edition AD&D Player's Handbook, pg. 34

Just following this phrase, if the characters are truly favoured or on par with the gods, then those gods could very well be guiding your 'luck' every day to keep you alive as you repeatedly step off the mountain.

Now, whether those same gods, or your DM's, patience will one evening eventually run dry is another matter...

 

[LoganRan]

One thing I find odd: why does constitution add so much to your hit point total (via a bonus to hit points at each level) if the vast majority of hit points are a representation of non-physical aspects (skill, luck, magical forces, etc)?

I think 4E actually got this right (gasp...I actually said something nice about 4E! ) by having your CON score be your meat (your total constitution score was the basis of your starting hit points), while the rest of the hit points you gained by leveling up were representing increases in skill, luck, etc. and your CON no longer added to hit points beyond first level.

 

[Mannahnin]

The probelm is that the correct answer is "yes, but not really" - to every attempt to define what hit points are and aren't. They're a mash-up of a lot of things, like meat points, parry points, divine favor, luck, endurance, and more.

One thing I've suggested but never actually bothered with is breaking up hit points by source, so that you would actually have a pool of meat points form your Con, and other types of hit points form class/etc. It would make describing things (and reconciling the fiction) a little easier even if each hit point works the exact same way regardless of source.

I've seen a few such systems discussed on these forums or described elsewhere.

One of the most interesting recent OSR games similar to D&D I've seen discussed here, The Nightmares Underneath, has Wounds and Disposition, as well as attribute damage. Wounds are meat damage. Disposition is basically HP.

Overview in this post:

OSR - [Let's Read] The Nightmares Underneath: 2nd Edition

Hello everyone and welcome to my next Let’s Read! I realize it’s been a long time coming, but a lot of stuff’s been going on in life that disrupted my regular schedule. However, now that I have more time to devote to writing, I’m fulfilling my promise to those who voted for this book way back in...

www.enworld.org

 

[jmartkdr2]

I've seen a few such systems discussed on these forums or described elsewhere.

One of the most interesting recent OSR games similar to D&D I've seen discussed here, The Nightmares Underneath, has Wounds and Disposition, as well as attribute damage. Wounds are meat damage. Disposition is basically HP.

Overview in this post:

OSR - [Let's Read] The Nightmares Underneath: 2nd Edition

Hello everyone and welcome to my next Let’s Read! I realize it’s been a long time coming, but a lot of stuff’s been going on in life that disrupted my regular schedule. However, now that I have more time to devote to writing, I’m fulfilling my promise to those who voted for this book way back in...

www.enworld.org

That looks very similar to the wounds and vitality system introduced in 3e's Unearthed Arcana, which was the default for Star Wars d20. Both about 20 years ago, though I'm pretty sure the idea is older.

And then they went back to just hit points, because wounds/vitality didn't catch on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For a wounds/vitality system to catch on with the general D&D populace, you'd have to catch the interest of a far larger population of end-users than is likely given most of them, well, just don't care. That's the price of being the largest game in the market with concurrent inertia.

 

[Lanefan]

So? The loss of hit points doesn’t have to represent the tiny scratch.

Not entirely, but the tiny scratch has to be part of it or else poisoned weapons don't work.

It could represent the expenditure of energy, good fortune, divine favor, or whatever, that allowed you to avoid getting that tiny scratch, which might otherwise have killed you.

To me that's a narration of the poisoned weapon missing, not hitting. If it hits, you take damage, and at least a small part of that damage has to be meat in order for the scratch to occur.

If you're talking about narration of a made save against the poison, I can maybe see it; but I always assume the scratch still occurs (this is what forces the save to be rolled) and a made save indicates either the poison never entered your bloodstream or your body rejected it or by sheer luck it got wiped off in time or whatever. You've still got a scratch there.

 

[Lanefan]

Precisely, the hits are landing, but your character’s HP (i.e. skill, luck etc) deflect the blow enough that the physical damage is minimal, scratches, bruises, singes etc. Until that runs out and a potentially lethal blow finally lands taking your character down.

This is where healing potions frustrate me, I think there should be a difference between healing HP and healing wounds. HP restoration should be like getting some energy supplement, sort of like the potion in Asterix & Obelix whereas wound healing should require something more substantial such as ministrations from a cleric.

Preach it! Body-fatigue hit point system for the win!

 

[Aldarc]

If hit points are meat, then the people in D&D 5e are sitting on an untapped gold mine industry. Just shave a bit of HP meat off something (or someone), sell that meat in the market, then wait for those HP to come back overnight, and then repeat.