Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4100870" data-attributes="member: 5143">Ever had that year of work that was just WAY too stressful?  You know when you decided you needed at LEAST a week of rest before you were willing to go back to that again?  Just imagine if your job was killing creatures who were 3 times your size and could turn you to stone.I'd rest for a week after every adventure as well.But, seriously.  It has ALWAYS been a MIX of wounds, luck, skill, divine intervention, fate, morale, and badassness.  If you took 6 hitpoints of damage, it might have been that you narrowly avoided the blow, that it just nicked you, that it knocked you over and you got bruised in the process but it didn't get through your armor, that your god deflected the blow at the last second, and so on.  Regardless of what the in character reason was, the game result was that you lost 6 hitpoints and needed some time to get them back(which varies in time depending on the edition).During the rest time you might have been healing back the large cut in your leg or you might have been sleeping all day and trying to forget the harrowing experience, it might be you drinking ale, carousing and telling stories about your greatness so you could feel better about yourself again.The whole point of an abstraction is that it is abstract.  If you define the details of it, then it is no longer an abstraction.D&D works in abstractions to avoid needing detailed rules for everything.If HP are wounds then you run into a problem with realism where PCs can survive being stabbed 20 times with a sword and not dying.  Also, you can recover from being on your death bed in just a day or two and go back to adventuring when in real life it might take years of physical therapy before you'd be able to even walk again.  Plus, wouldn't it be hard to swing a sword effectively if you are in that much pain with a big gash across your arm?If HPs are not wounds at all then you run into problems like "What happens when you fall 50 feet?  Do you miss the ground?" and "How can you go from perfect health to dead due to the goblin with the dagger who rolled a 1 on damage?"On the other hand, if you combine ALL the reasons into one and simply NEVER answer the question of "what are hitpoints anyways?" you get a mechanic that works really well for a fantasy adventure role playing game.  It is a rule that is easy to keep track of, easy to learn, and seems to simulate what we as players want it to fairly well.  Plus, it answers ALL of the questions at least half decently.</blockquote>

Verification