A Little Perspective

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Eh, I've always found it to be a dumb argument. I don't know if I've ever used HP to mean "Your actual physical health" in any D&D game. It's just one of those artificial constructs you say "You know, this game would really suck without this, so let's keep it around."

One thing I am constantly pondering with is the idea of just trying to implement hit points differently.

Torg didn't have hit points. You took shock damage or wound damage, and it was pretty "static" - theoretically, you could die in one hit. But whenever you take damage, you spend a possiblity point to reduce the damage.

Is this approach more satisfying from a "simulationist" perspective? The rules without possibilities emulate the real world - you get 4 wounds and 8 shockpoints if you're hit hard by a .45 Magnum.
But the possibilities add the... "cinematic" element - because you're important, you undo the hit - you basically enter a reality where the hit wasn't that bad at all...

In Torg, possibilities where not just a game construct- they were also part of the setting. Storm Knights most distinctive feature were their status as "possibility-rated" being, so they where also simulationist, I guess.

But you don't have to make them part of the real game world, since it might feel like an intrusion to your worlds setting.

The question, again, is:
Would such a mechanic be actually more satisfying? Or is it just a way to complicated method to achieve the same effects of hit points? I mean, first you go through all the pain of "simulating" the real world, and then you add rules to allow you to ignore the rules for the real world? It is just a gamist or narrativist (Torg had both elements, also allowing you to tap into character traits or world axioms to gain such benefits) added to a simulationist way, and the game woud be just as good with just the gamist and narrative elements?

Will 5E maybe try to reconcile all types of games - simulationist, narrative and gamist - by removing level based / ablative hit points, and expand the action point system to handle also the ablative nature of hitpoints stuff, and possibly also add dramatic/narrative uses for action points?

 

[Mostlyjoe]

Been there, argued that.

Ah, but it's always good to hear the classics.

 

[Pbartender]

Not true: that's the way hit points have always been described.

Well... That's the way hit points have always described in the rulebooks.

It's NOT the way hit points have always been described my most DMs.



As said above, it's the actual rules to support that description that's finally forcing people to wrap their brains around the concept.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

As said above while every edition has had flavor text stating the OPs point as the Gygax quote shows they never really meshed with the mechanical functions of HP. 4e is the first time HP are mechanically as well as narratively abstract and that is a change.

Funny thing about abstraction is that it's ABSTRACT. 4e hitpoints are the one system I don't complain about. Because in making HP mechanically abstract it also means that while Kzach describes them as being near-misses they work equally well for my MOAR METAL style where they represent pure "meat points." The abstraction works both ways without jamming up and that facilitates play for everybody regardless of style.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Right, no damage at all. 4e is the first edition to stress that. In all other editions any hit dealt damage and was described as such. Now it's fatigue, a bruise, etc. And that is new to 4e.

No. No. No.

Hit points don't represent damage to the physical body of a character. You can have some other system entirely to represent that if you would like. Technically, a character can be mortally wounded and have full hit points. Hit points are just a measure of how long a character can stay in a fight.

Characters in my game will have to think about treating their physical wounds as well as their hit points. I'm not going to bother to have an extra system for this, as long as they take some precautions, but careless PCs will find themselves fighting off infection, at least, if they don't take care of their wounds.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment.

I hate to quote an overused counter-argument, but why is this ridiculous in a world where you can shapeshift into a dragon or kill someone via their nightmares?

The problem I see is not that the system is screwy but that everyone is tenaciously clinging to this concept of "magic =/= reality". Drop that for a minute and what do you get? A cleric invoking a god to heal wounds through words makes just as much sense as a warlord using words to invoke someone's fighting spirit to heal wounds. In fact every aspect of the entire "it's too fantastic" debate goes away.

 

[Kzach]

 

[Pbartender]

Damn. That horse has a lot of hit points.

 

[Will]

Sometimes I run HP as heroic endurance, so it's literal damage.

Typically I run HP as real damage, but on a nonlinear scale. So the first 50 hit points represents bruising and some cuts, and it's not until you get close to 0 that damage is really visible and severe.

But yeah, there were always flaws about HP as non-literal damage:
Why does Con have such a huge effect (at least in 3.5)?
Why isn't healing magic scaled? What IS healing magic?

4e's ability to hit both of these points (I think Con has less effect and healing DOES scale) solidifies the idea.

 

[Domon]

I hate to quote an overused counter-argument, but why is this ridiculous in a world where you can shapeshift into a dragon or kill someone via their nightmares?

The problem I see is not that the system is screwy but that everyone is tenaciously clinging to this concept of "magic =/= reality". Drop that for a minute and what do you get? A cleric invoking a god to heal wounds through words makes just as much sense as a warlord using words to invoke someone's fighting spirit to heal wounds. In fact every aspect of the entire "it's too fantastic" debate goes away.

that's not the same thing. a fighter is a mundane warrior. maybe he's even super-human, but describing his twenty 3-pf wounds from goblin archers as actual arrows piercing his body does not only stretch believability for most people, it's outright dumb. or hilarious.