D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

[Mannahnin]

1E AD&D PH:

CHARACTER HIT POINTS
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, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter 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 are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

Hit points are determined by hit dice. At 1st level a character has but one hit die (exception: rangers and monks begin with two dice each). At each successive level another hit die is gained, i.e. the die is rolled to determine how many additional hit points the character gets. Hit points can be magically restored by healing potions, cure wounds spells rings ofregeneration, or even by wish spells. However, a character's hit points can never exceed the total initially scored by hit dice, constitution bonus (or penalty) and magical devices. For example, if a character has 26 hit points at the beginning of an adventure, he or she cannot drink a potion or be enchanted to above that number, 26 in this case.

As an example, let us assume that the character with 26 hit points mentioned above is engaged in on adventure. Early in the course of exploring the dungeon, he or she falls into a 10' deep pit taking one six-sided die (1d6) of damage - 4 hit points so the character drops to 22 hit points. Next, he or she takes 15 points of damage in combat, so the character drops to 7 hit points. A Cleric in the party uses a cure serious wounds spell on the character and this restores 10 (for example, depending upon the die roll) of his or her lost hit points, so the character has a total of 17. Later activities reduce the character to 3 hitpoints, but the party uses a wish spell to restore all members to full hit points, so at that time the character goes up to 26 once more.

Rest also restores hit points, for it gives the body a chance to heal itself and regain the stamina or force which adds the skill, luck, and magical hit points.

Your character's class will determine which sort of die you will roll to determine hit points. In some campaigns the referee will keep this total secret, informing players only that they feel "strong", "fatigued" or "very weak", thus indicating waning hit points. In other campaigns the Dungeon Master will have players record their character's hit points and keep track of all changes. Both methods are acceptable, and it is up to your DM as to which will be used in the campaign you participate in.

The discussion in the 1E AD&D DMG is a little shorter, a full paragraph and part of another under Encounters, Combat, and Initiative:

As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned. Therefore, the location of hits and the type of damage caused are not germane to them. While this is not true with respect to most monsters, it is neither necessary nor particularly useful. Lest some purist immediately object, consider the many charts and tables necessary to handle this sort of detail, and then think about how area effect spells would work. In like manner, consider all of the nasty things which face adventurers as the rules stand. Are crippling disabilities and yet more ways to meet instant death desirable in an open-ended, episodic game where participants seek to identify with lovingly detailed and developed player-character personae? Not likely! Certain death is as undesirable as a give-away campaign. Combat is a common pursuit in the vast majority of adventures, and the participants in the campaign deserve a chance to exercise intelligent choice during such confrontations. As hit points dwindle they can opt to break off the encounter and attempt to flee. With complex combat systems which stress so-called realism and feature hit location, special damage, and so on, either this option is severely limited or the rules are highly slanted towards favoring the player characters at the expense of their opponents. (Such rules as double damage and critical hits must cut both ways ~ in which case the life expectancy of player characters will be shortened considerably - or the monsters are being grossly misrepresented and unfairly treated by the system. I am certain you can think of many other such rules.)

One-minute rounds are devised to offer the maximum of choice with a minimum of complication. This allows the DM and the players the best of both worlds. The system assumes much activity during the course of each round. Envision, if you will, a fencing, boxing, or karate match. During the course of one minute of such competition there are numerous attacks which are unsuccessful, feints, maneuvering, and so forth. During a one minute melee round many attacks are made, but some are mere feints, while some are blocked or parried. One, or possibly several, have the chance to actually score damage. For such chances, the dice are rolled, and if the"to hit" number is equalled or exceeded, the attack was successful, but otherwise it too was avoided, blocked, parried, or whatever. Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the lost handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections. With respect to most monsters such damage is, in fact, more physically substantial although as with adjustments in armor class rating for speed and agility, there are also similar additions in hit points. So while a round of combat is not a continuous series of attacks,it is neither just a single blow and counter-blow affair. The opponents spar and move, seeking the opportunity to engage when on opening, in the enemy's guard presents itself.

And some more under Hit Points, on page 82:

HIT POINTS
It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skillin combat and similar life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck,and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).

Harkening back to the example of Rasputin, it would be safe to assume that he could withstand physical damage sufficient to have killed any four normal men, i.e. more than 14 hit points. Therefore, let us assume that a character with an 18 constitution will eventually be able to withstand no less than 15 hit points of actual physical damage before being slain, and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character. The balance of accrued hit points are those which fall into the non-physical areas already detailed. Furthermore, these actual physical hit points would be spread across a large number of levels,starting from a base score of from an average of 3 to 4, going up to 6 to 8 a t2nd level, 9 to 11 at 3rd, 12 to 14 at 4th, 15 to 17 at 5th, 18 to 20 at 6th, and 21 to 23 at 7th level. Note that the above assumes the character is a fighter with an average of 3 hit points per die going to physical ability to withstand punishment and only 1 point of constitution bonus being likewise assigned. Beyond the basic physical damage sustained, hits scored upon a character do not actually do such an amount of physical damage.

Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution.This character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm -the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage,our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.

Recovery of Hit Points:
When a character loses hit points in combat or to some other attack form(other than being drained of life energy levels), there are a number of different means by which such points can be restored. Clerics and paladins are able to restore such losses by means of spells or innate abilities.Magical devices such as potions operate much the same way, and a ring of regeneration will cause automatic healing and revitalization in general of its wearer. Commonly it is necessary to resort to the passage of time, however, to restore many characters to full hit point strength.

For game purposes it is absolutely necessary that the character rest in order to recuperate, i.e. any combat, spell using, or similar activity does not constitute rest, so no hit points can be regained. For each day of rest a character will regain 1 hit point, up to and including 7 days. However a character with a penalty for poor constitution must deduct weekly the penalty score from his or her days of healing, i.e., a -2 for a person means that 5 hit points healing per week is maximum, and the first two days of rest will restore no hit points. After the first week of continuous rest,characters with a bonus for high constitution add the bonus score to the number of hit points they recover due to resting, i.e., the second week of rest will restore 11 (7 + 4) hit points to a fighter character with an 18 constitution. Regardless of the number of hit points a character has, 4 weeks of continuous rest will restore any character to full strength.

EDIT: Hat tip to @Voadam for spotting this other reference under poison:

p81, Poison Saving Throws For Characters:
For those who wonder why poison does either killing damage (usually) or no harm whatsoever, recall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not actually sustained — at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch, and thus the saving throw. If that mere scratch managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON. In cases where some partial damage is indicated, this reflects poisons either placed so that they are ingested or used so as to ensure that some small portion does get in the wound or skin of the opponent.

 

[James Gasik]

Just because this confuses me (since clerics were in OD&D core) are you talking about the fact the originally didn't get spells at 1st level as a cleric, or something else?



Though I have to say, I rarely remember needing natural healing in OD&D except at the lowest levels. Once you weren't in dungeon-time you just camped, recovered healing spells, rinsed and repeated. That may have had to do with the routinely large parties we were used to at the time.

Ignore that comment about the Cleric, lol. I didn't actually play that far back, and when I posted that earlier this morning I was going off a hazy memory of an older player I know making the claim that, when he started, "Cleric wasn't even a class"! Obviously that's not correct (unless he was trying to make the claim he played the game before it's publication- sadly he's no longer with us so I can't clarify at this point).

 

[Alzrius]

You say it's different. I say that it's the same. The loss of HP establishes what's being represented per the game's understanding of HP, but it still requires adjudication in terms of the specifics of what's being represented.

Except it's quite clearly not the same, because the "hp can be injury or loss of resilience" paradigm first requires you to pick one or the other: injury or loss of resilience. Then you go deeper into what the specifics are. Acknowleding that hit point loss/recovery is just injury starts you off as already having made the first determination that the other method requires you to adjudicate, meaning that your first action under that paradigm is already done for you.

Again, the game is silent about whether your burns go away. You choose to read "heal" to mean that "your burns go away," but in the context of 4e rules, we are told that healing only represents the regaining of HP, which are a variety of aspects of a character's combat vigor. Nothing more.

And because we're not told anything more, we then have to go in and fill in the blanks ourselves, rather than the game having done them for us. See the aforementioned problem of hit point loss that's injury, versus recovery that's upping your personal state of mind, to the point where you've successively lost more of the former and regained enough of the latter until it's hard to characterize how it is your character is still alive.

You are again losing sight of the forest for the trees. I have already referred you to the rules of healing and what they and HP represent in the context of 4e, so "helps them heal" is not the gotcha that you think that it is. I think that this is a consistent problem with your reading of 4e. You read it in isolated pieces. You don't try to understand the rules in the context of the big picture. You have little to no actual game experience with 4e.

What you're doing here is essentially saying that you shouldn't sweat the small stuff, which is an implicit acknowledgment that the small stuff matters even if you don't deal with it. Forests are, at the end of the day, made up of trees, and so examining them can give you an overall picture of the health of the forest. (The irony being that if 4E leaned a bit harder into the idea that inspiring word is "helping them heal" rather than being a boost to their mindset, it would be a lot less problematic.)

@pemerton addressed this already.

And I addressed that in turn.

One mechanic doesn't represent just two different things. It's not just wounds and everything else. In D&D HP represents a variety of elements that factor into a character's survival. Wounds are one among several others. Is that "more complex than if one mechanic presented itself as only one thing"? If so, it appears to be negligibly so for most people who are playing and enjoying the game. So despite what you would assert here, I would say that it is deniably more complicated, even if we were to agree that it was "more complicated."

Saying that hit point loss/recovery represents more than just injury or personal mindset only requires the players to make even further adjudications, though, if they want to map what the game's operations are telling them to what's happening in the game world. Again, I'll point to the example of the character who takes "fire damage" being indicative that they've taken injury from heat, and that can't be treated by someone giving a rousing speech, so that when they take successive injuries and yet regain hit points from more inspiring words, there's a cognitive gap in that they've been injured far past their hit point total, and yet it's still above 0 due to their state of mind being positive.

You may call it a semantic distinction, but I do think that it is helpful in that vagueness offers more explanatory power and is a more readily apparent problem that we regularly deal with in communication with little fuss in our daily lives. I think that "cognitive gap" tries to present a simple case of vagueness as a much more insurmountable technical problem of cognitive incomprehensibility than it actually is.

It's not helpful if it requires you to carry a load that the game itself could carry on your behalf. I can understand the idea that it's freeing to say that the game is putting forward absolutely nothing, and so nothing is holding you back from describing the in-character nature of what's happening in any manner of your choosing. But to a lot of people, myself included, that's an additional degree of work that I'd rather the game did on my behalf.

To extend the stair analogy, I'd rather buy a house that I might need to make some modest tweaks to than build my own dream home from the ground up. The interpretation that D&D makes of its own mechanical operations is a pre-fab house, and denying those is essentially knocking (parts of) it down so you can build something else. That's absolutely your prerogative, but it's undeniably a lot more work.

For comparison, vagueness of rules is lauded by some as a "feature" in 5e that empowers GMs to make rulings rather than be beholden to rules.

And I can understand the idea that there's a point where the game interpreting what's happening becomes cumbersome (which is typically found when there are excessive mechanical operations modeling information that the player(s) don't care about), but that's a continuum that different people will fall onto different areas of. That said, trying to have a single mechanic pull double-duty in terms of representing different things still necessarily requires the people playing to adjudicate which one is being used in any given instance of that mechanic's use. Ergo, that's too far in the other direction for people who'd rather the game handle that on its own.

It sounds like you are in danger of conflating yourself with the game here.

It's more accurate to say you're in danger of not keeping up with how 4E is different from other editions.

What this tells me is that 4e is internally consistent in word and deed with how the mechanics and operations of HP are reflected in the fiction. Way to go, 4e!

And didn't it turn out well for doing that. Great job there, 4E!

I said that your complaint involves an issue of vagueness about HP rather than an inherently problematic cognitive gap. I was not, however, saying that 4e was vague. I think that 4e is quite the opposite. It's quite explicit. 4e powers tell us a LOT about the fiction. The designers were wholly transparent and not one bit shy about what the mechanical processes, terms and keywords, and various operations of the game represent from an in-game standpoint, and it was fairly consistent in that regard. Things may not map perfectly (e.g., square fireballs) but we are told what the mechanics are meant to represent in the fiction.

On the contrary, 4E is extremely vague in terms of telling us what's happening from the in-game perspective, at least when compared to its predecessors. Hence why it can't make up its mind if hit point loss/recovery is an issue of injury or resilience. Remember, the vagueness comes from the fact that by having the same operation be one thing in one instance, and another in another instance, leaving the players to keep track of two different things via one mechanic over the course of play. That the individual applications aren't ambiguous isn't the issue; that they track them via the same operation is.

Please stop using the term "gamist" for things that you dislike or go against your own sense of self-proclaimed simulationism, because powers are very forthright in telling you what the meta-game operations represent for in-character happenings. You may not like what they are telling you they represent or are simulating, but they are telling you. There is a difference between those two positions, and it's not even a subtle one.

Please stop presuming that I'm using the term "gamist" only for things I personally dislike or that my use of "simulationism" is self-proclaimed, since neither of those are true, and saying otherwise only serves to derail the discussion (even more, I mean). The powers rely on telling you that different things are represented via the same mechanical operation, which means that you have one thing representing multiple different things in the game world, quite possibly at the same time, due to the fact that 4E puts a premium on a gamist presentation and reduces its focus on (coherent) simulationism.

We can't even agree that the stair is broken or not! That's the problem. You asserting the existence of a problem and a cognitive gap that others either don't see as being problem or believe exists at all. You are saying "this is broken and needs fixing!" Others are telling you, "this isn't broken and it's working as intended." If a cognitive gap exists, it's between these two positions more so than anything.

And when I ask others to describe that, they say that it's not a problem because they can either fix it, or ignore it altogether. That's not repudiating the idea that it's a problem in-and-of itself. Again, stepping over the broken stair doesn't mean it's not broken. Repairing it doesn't mean it's not broken. Tearing down the entire staircase doesn't mean it's not broken (though it being broken might actually be beneficial, then, since you have that much less work to do in breaking it down). All of those accurately extend the analogy to why some people don't find having one operation for hit point loss/recovery to be a problem, which is absolutely fine, but that doesn't mean that there's no issue there in the first place.

I know that you like to turn things back on people in "no you!" games, but I've read and played the rules of 4e. In contrast, I remember that you were surprised in one thread (or maybe here) about the existence of 4e healing surges and their associated rules when people told you about them.

I had a much more snarky response prepared, but that would go against the moderation note that was made earlier; I'll instead ask you to dial back the hostility.

I don't think that healing spells or powers restore "the same" HP that was lost by a fireball or a sword or by a monster bite. I think that HP can be restored by different sources and through different means. I think that it has never been as clear cut as losing 20 HP to a fireball and having a healing spell erasing 10 damage from those burn wounds. Do my burn wounds disappear within 24 hours just because I sleep in 5e? Do my burn wounds disappear when I take a short rest and spend HD to heal myself in 5e? I don't think that this is what these operations are meant to represent in the fiction. The same is true in regards to a warlord's abilities.

If they're not restoring "the same" hit points, then why does the character only have a single pool of hit points, from which all such operations take effect? That really goes to the heart of the issue here; if 4E had used a wound/vitality system, this wouldn't be an issue, and while I can certainly understand why it didn't (i.e. hit points having become a definitional characteristic of what D&D is), the fact is that the game unto itself suffered for it. If they're not "the same" hit points, they shouldn't be in "the same" pool.

You keep asserting and taking for granted in your argumentation the creation, existence, and problematic nature of this "cognitive gap" regarding HP, but I don't think that you are doing a good job of demonstrating these things in your argument, which comes across as a series of compounded assumptions. Does this cognitive gap exist? Is this phenomenon what creates it or is it something else? How is this even a problem?

Yes, the cognitive gap exists: when tracking hit point/loss recovery over the course of play, the onus is on the player to model the interplay of two different interpretations of the same mechanical operation in representing what's happening in the game world. There's a gap, in other words, that the game doesn't bridge, leaving it up to their cognition to handle. That some players don't care doesn't mean it isn't there. The phenomenon of tying two (or more, as you've asserted) different ideas to this single operation is what creates it. It's a problem because some players (not all, but some) would rather not handle this task, particularly since it should be trivially easy for the game rules to handle it (and indeed, we've seen multiple ways that the game has handled it previously).

Let's be clear here. You have an issue with it. You don't know how to reconcile these two things in accordance with your own idiomatic preferences. I and others don't necessarily share agreement that this "issue" exists. There is nothing for us to reconcile as it's perfectly consistent with our understanding of what the mechanics represent in the fiction. @pemerton and I have already shared our readings of this power and what this mechanic represents in the fiction, using the rules and text of 4e to do so even. So there is little point repeating myself here just because you choose to do so.

As I said, not everyone is going to have an issue with it. But enough people did that it impacted (in accordance with numerous other issues) 4E's overall reception. It wasn't a make-or-break issue, as far as I know, for a lot of people, but it was absolutely something that they held against the game, which is why it repeatedly came up in discussions related to it. "Damage on a miss," which is a related phenomenon (being related to hit point loss not being an injury) was brought up many, many times over the years, for instance.

Except they aren't Schrödinger's HP - which is hardly an apt use of Schrödinger's Cat - because the understanding of HP is consistently applied in 4e as being a variety of factors that contribute to the character's survival. 4e is loud and clear about its HP and what they represent.

Again, you yourself have noted that characters might not be regaining "the same" hit points that they lost. And yet there's only one pool of hit points. So which hit points are they regaining or losing in a given instance, and why should the player have to do the work of keeping those tallied over the course of play, presuming that they think that's important to do?

In fact, I think that it's the vagueness of HP in other editions that you liked, because it was that vagueness regarding HP and associated operations that empowered you to read HP in terms of your stated preferences.

I think it's important not to put forward that you know what someone else's state of mind is, let alone accuse them of disingenuousness, if for no other reason than it ruins the tenor of the thread.

 

[Alzrius]

It's inherent in every edition of D&D. It's implicit in fact that Cure Light Wounds can cure a peasant of a mortal wound. It's implicit in the fact that a 10th level Fighter can be "hit" with a giant's club and sustain no actual injury, no fracture, not be slowed whatsoever or even knocked backwards. We understand that, like an action movie hero, the PC has bit just barely grazed or has deflected the blow, at worst having a little bruising or having some wind knocked from them. No injury that will meaningfully impair their fighting prowess, other than to wear down their defenses (HP) and ability to ward off an eventual telling blow (HP).

It's not inherent; all of the examples you've posted either admit that a hit was taking place, or have you disregarding what the game says in order to use your own interpretation apart from what the game's telling us, which is that the 10th level fighter was in fact hit (no quotation marks needed) by the club. Now, supplanting the game's explanation for your own is fine, but it's still something that needs to be acknowledged. Likewise, I've already mentioned, twice now, why the lack of realistic effects that such injuries entail doesn't disprove this idea, and how the game's operations presenting themselves in the context of physical harm and recovery support it.

Gary explained the concept at multi-paragraph length in both the DMG and Player's Handbook. These explanations ARE the reason why there's no concomitant loss of personal prowess. Gary explained it to both players and DMs.

Gary also wrote absolutely no actual mechanics that supported that essay, as has been pointed out before. If hit points can be luck or divine protection, why can't you regain them by tithing to a church or picking four-leaf clovers? Why aren't the spells named restore luck and renew divine protection?

The scaling nature of how many hit points characters have at different levels versus the absolute values of the damage dealt isn't off-putting to me. It's not "unpleasant, disconcerting, or repellant" to me because I accept and embrace Gary's explanations of what hit points are and always have been.

And I accept and embrace Gary's presentation of how the operations of the game he co-wrote are presented by the game itself. You rest in bed to recover hit points, or get a heal spell, etc.

The only difference between how 4E treated HP and how every other edition treats HP is that 4E is arguably a little more clear and explicit about them. That and the Healing Surge concept making healing proportionate to maximum HP, which eliminated or at least reduced one of the more off-putting aspects of D&D healing, "Cure Light Wounds" healing a 1st level character of a mortal wound.

I am a bit tempted now to check the explanations of HP in other editions and quote them, though. I suspect that they're pretty consistent across the board.

I have no doubt that some version of Gary's essay has appeared elsewhere, but what I'm more interested in are instances of where the operations related to losing/regaining hit points are presented by the game itself as something other than injury/healing. While I suspect that there are a few out there in the pre-4E editions, they seem remarkably rare, showing that operation to have been extremely clear and consistent before 4E decided to actually apply that essay practically, opening up a very large can of worms.

 

[James Gasik]

MST3K simply does not work for everybody, and you know it. Simply telling people with these concerns to stop having them is extremely unhelpful, to the point of dismissive.

Why not? Other posters tell me my concerns don't even exist! And if you have a problem with how hit points are, collectively:

*Physical capacity to resist harm.
*Morale.
*Divine providence.
*Resistance to being put magically to sleep or blinded.
*Can be restored by magic that cures wounds.
*Can be restored by going to lunch for an hour.
*Can be restored by application of the Healer Feat (but not normal Medicine).
*Can be restored by a Fighter willing it so 1/short rest.

It's pretty obvious that the game itself doesn't care to pick a lane. So how could you?

 

[Mannahnin]

Ignore that comment about the Cleric, lol. I didn't actually play that far back, and when I posted that earlier this morning I was going off a hazy memory of an older player I know making the claim that, when he started, "Cleric wasn't even a class"! Obviously that's not correct (unless he was trying to make the claim he played the game before it's publication- sadly he's no longer with us so I can't clarify at this point).

Thief is the one of the "core four" which wasn't present in the original 1974 rules. It showed up a year later in Supplement I: Greyhawk, along with the Paladin, Half-Elf, and multiclassing rules as they existed for the rest of OD&D and AD&D.

 

[James Gasik]

Thief is the one of the "core four" which wasn't present in the original 1974 rules. It showed up a year later in Supplement I: Greyhawk, along with the Paladin, Half-Elf, and multiclassing rules as they existed for the rest of OD&D and AD&D.

The Thief I knew about (and it took awhile for the game to recover from the decision to make certain actions bespoke class abilities). My belief that the Cleric didn't exist I'm going to chalk up to my current stage of oldmanitis.

 

[Alzrius]

Thief is the one of the "core four" which wasn't present in the original 1974 rules. It showed up a year later in Supplement I: Greyhawk, along with the Paladin, Half-Elf, and multiclassing rules as they existed for the rest of OD&D and AD&D.

Fun fact: the thief's original debut was in Gary Gygax's Great Plains Game Players Newsletter #9 (June, 1974), where he acknowledged that the idea came from Gary Switzer, who (together with Daniel Wagner) had created the class for their home campaign (the "Aurania Gang") and called Gygax in May to share the idea. Its appearance in Supplement I: Greyhawk several months later was in a more polished form.

(There's more about that in Shannon Appelcline's Designers & Dragons Platinum Appendix, for those interested.)

 

[Red Castle]

As has been shown multiple times in this thread, 4e is very clear that damage is not just physical damage, but also stamina, will, lick, etc. 4e also made it very clear that a miss is not necessarily a total miss but might still brings different effects like a scratch, a little burn or exhaustion for trying to parry the blow, also shown earlier in this thread. Finally, the fact that a character can get back to full HP after just a little 5 minutes rest makes it pretty clear that there is no real, severe damage done during an encounter, also supported by the fact that the characters can still fight as if nothing happened until they reach 0HP. But it doesn’t mean that there is no physical damage either. But also,it’s not because there is physical damage that abilities like Second Wind and Inspiring Words don’t work in the fiction either. It’s actually pretty common in stories and movies to represent those two kinds of healing.

…..

As our hero is fighting against the bad guy, he gets beaten up pretty hard ,iis thrown out the window and fall from a two-story building. As he try to get the strength to get back up on his feets, he sees the bad guy coming down to give the final blow. As he spits blood on the ground, he find the resolve in him to get back up and continue the fight. Not today, he thinks to himself.

Our hero just used his Second Wind as a Standard action and a move action to stand up… he might take an Action point if he has one available to charge the bad guy.

……

Our hero is part of the army running up the hill, trying to get to the enemy fortress while there are explosions everywhere. Suddenly, an explosion comes too close and he gets propelled. As he lays on the ground, blood flowing to his eyes, he sees only corpses of fellow soldiers around him. But as he feels his energy leaving him and about to pass out, he hears the captain yells, his old friend from the village ‘Come out soldier! Get up! The realm needs you! The world needs you! We can’t let this Necromencer win!’ Our hero, hearing those words, find the resolve in him to get back up and continue to run up the hill.

Our hero, even injured, just got some HP back from the Warlord Inspiring Words.

…..

After a big fight, our heroes decide to take their breath before continuing. It was overall an easy fight, nothing serious, some scratch here and there. But as they decide to continue, one of them has trouble getting up. touching his abdomen, he realises that what he thought was just a scratch during the encounter was in fact a deeper wound that he didn’t felt because of the adrenalin. Looks like there is a wound to heal after all.

The cleric of the group then use Cure Light Wounds on what was believe to be just a scratch at first and they continue their journey as if nothing happened.

 

[Mannahnin]

It's not inherent; all of the examples you've posted either admit that a hit was taking place, or have you disregarding what the game says in order to use your own interpretation apart from what the game's telling us, which is that the 10th level fighter was in fact hit (no quotation marks needed) by the club. Now, supplanting the game's explanation for your own is fine, but it's still something that needs to be acknowledged. Likewise, I've already mentioned, twice now, why the lack of realistic effects that such injuries entail doesn't disprove this idea, and how the game's operations presenting themselves in the context of physical harm and recovery support it.

I think Hussar had a solid point that there's a language/worldview issue here interfering with mutual comprehension.

Gary also wrote absolutely no actual mechanics that supported that essay, as has been pointed out before. If hit points can be luck or divine protection, why can't you regain them by tithing to a church or picking four-leaf clovers? Why aren't the spells named restore luck and renew divine protection?

And I accept and embrace Gary's presentation of how the operations of the game he co-wrote are presented by the game itself. You rest in bed to recover hit points, or get a heal spell, etc.

I have no doubt that some version of Gary's essay has appeared elsewhere, but what I'm more interested in are instances of where the operations related to losing/regaining hit points are presented by the game itself as something other than injury/healing. While I suspect that there are a few out there in the pre-4E editions, they seem remarkably rare, showing that operation to have been extremely clear and consistent before 4E decided to actually apply that essay practically, opening up a very large can of worms.

It's not an essay, though I suppose this is a fairly trivial point. It's several paragraphs in each book explaining what hit points are to players and DMs.

The entire damage system bears out Gary's explanation. There being no wound penalties. No hit locations (he talks about that in the DMG too). The massive multiplication of ability to take hits with increasing level. Hit points are and always have been an abstraction of the character's ability to avoid defeat. To minimize or avoid harm and to be worn down gradually over time until they are actually at risk of an injurious blow laying them low.

It is completely fair and reasonable for you to point at the rules for hit point recovery and say "this looks like physical recovery from injury over time", but that's not all it is. As Gary explains, it's also rest permitting the recovery of "metaphysical" factors, along with physical ones, like exhaustion and any minor wounds.

And examples exist across editions of recovery being not purely physical. Song of Rest, Second Wind, and the use of Hit Dice during a 1 hour rest and bringing yourself to full HP are all common and core examples in 5E. The nature of any injuries which are a component of HP loss is necessarily minor and ignorable. And HP restoration is in practice often some factor, magical OR non, allowing the character to ignore scratches, burns, bruises, fatigue, psychic strain, or whatever for mechanical purposes. We can envision them recovering from and healing any (minor) actual physical harm gradually over downtime at whatever pace best suits our suspension of disbelief and our vision of the world.