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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7585477" data-attributes="member: 82106">Heh, true, but I remember Cargorn (14th? level ranger lord in 1e) doing exactly that, leaping off a 200' cliff in order to engage his enemies. At that level the damage was relatively inconsequential (well, he did have vampiric regeneration, so the demons at the bottom of the cliff were just more 'juice'). I think the consequences of absorbing a few 1000 hit points from demons was far more significant than the fall... So, yeah, its rare. I think that's why the abstraction survives. Within the paradigm of the original D&D game hit points were not really that problematic, and realism wasn't high on the agenda, beyond a sort of basic correspondence with reality that let players reason. In more modern games this is not so, and most post-D&D games with a story focus either use some kind of system which doesn't produce these odd results, or moves the focus entirely away from whether or not you live or die.You can see this in 4e, where hit points are clearly separated to a larger degree from the narrative than in previous editions (at least explicitly). You basically have some hit points, then you have an injury state (bloodied) and then some more hit points, and then you become incapacitated (but that simply involves a mechanical set of game states, how it is narrated is really up to the participants, the game simply provides some adjectives which establish a baseline default approach). The "non-lethal attack" rule makes this even more clear, as there is no distinction of 'stun points' or something like that vs 'real' damage. Only the intent of the final 'killing' blow matters. Note how even a fireball can be 'non-lethal'. This is part of the general movement of 4e away from strictly traditional play structure and concepts. Healing Surges add another layer such that hit points really are more of a plot device than anything else. Once the fight finishes up everyone gets patched up and is good to go again, much like the way a Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone gets a bandage slapped on that gunshot or whatever and then theatrically winces a bit now and then but isn't really disabled in any plot-significant sense (so, you could skin something like being dazed or slowed in a future combat as something like "the enemy grabs hold of your wounded arm and your vision goes red as you scream in agony" if you wanted, though few players are really interested in that level of detail). HoML gives you extra options, you can trade out some of those points for extra power uses, or pay them to gain successes via use of practices in a challenge, etc. You could even spin this kind of thing as wounds reopening or something like that in some situations.</blockquote>

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