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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4288260" data-attributes="member: 32164">Exactly. No matter how inspiring someone is, it's only going to help you if you have reserves to dip into.I'll just add to the 'real life' examples. I swordfight (stage combat, mostly) as a hobby. I should add that I do stage combat at renaissance faires, where we have to fight on target (and maybe a bit out of distance) due to having an audience all around us. Because of that, we can't take the typical stage cheat of fighting off-line. As such, we train by doing real sparring at quarter to half speed - a renaissance training technique called á tiempo (Italian for "at time"). Fighting at full speed, even choreographed stage combat, is exhausting. Á tiempo is less exhausting when you're going slow, but drains you rapidly the faster you go. At nearly full speed, which I've done a couple times, you're wiped out in a few minutes, tops.Now, we stop when we get tired, because we don't want someone to get hurt. And if we kept going, one of those strikes would penetrate defenses and someone would get hit. It's happened a few times. But with 5 minutes rest, a chance to catch your breath and drink some water and you're (largely) good to go again. You can do this for a while, but NOT indefinitely.And that's without someone trying to KILL me.Now, there's a level at which that recovery limitation persists (for me and my friends) from one day (or even one week) to the next. But I'm not an action adventure hero. I can attest that there are times when, if I was to have to perform a fight after a full day, I'd definitely get hurt. In 4E D&D terms, you could say I stop when I'm borderline "bloodied" (and out of healing surges).The next day, I can do it all over again. Sleep is wonderfully restorative.Basically, "hit points" are Con-based because, in combat, they're mostly a factor of endurance. And they're called "hit points" because they represent your ability to turn a "hit" (i.e. a good, on-target attack) into a near miss (or, at most, a superficial injury).In a modern game (one where more firearms are involved), I'd argue that they represent your ability to keep being missed (or grazed). And again, how long you can keep exerting yourself to avoid being hit is a function of endurance. And in D&D, endurance is Constitution, pure and simple.I agree that the wonky part of earlier editions wasn't the hit point system itself, or even the description of what hit points represent, but the mechanics for healing.Clearly, Gary felt that it could take weeks to recover all your reserves. His phrase in the 1e DMG was, IIRC, "it can take the character a long time to reach the physical and metaphysical peak of X hit points." But he's quite clear that there was never any notion that 48 hit points represented the ability to take 6 lethal (albeit non-critical) hits from a longsword. Feel free to check out "What hit points represent" on page 82 of the 1e DMG to read it for yourself.The point is that whether you can recover overnight (as in 4e), or whether it takes a week (or a few weeks), hit points have just never been meant to model "real" damage or serious injuries. That's just never been part of the system.Now, I can see the validity of a rule that says that falling below 0 hit points should inflict a serious injury penalty of some kind. However, I'm just not sure that it's a good "default" rule, so much as something that should just be houseruled in by those who want to have a mechanic for inflicting serious injuries.If you're so inclined to consider the latter, something like the condition track from Star Wars Saga Edition might be a good place to start.My two cents.</blockquote>

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