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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aitch Eye" data-source="post: 1021086" data-attributes="member: 385">That may be what they say now, but they got the concept of hit points from earlier editions, where it was quite explicit that they didn't all represent physical damage. If the arguments people are making here that are bunk, then so are hit points, since those arguments are paraphrases of the earlier justification for them. From the 1e DMG (p. 82):"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 that does 4 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 skill in 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)."From the 1e DMG again:"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 fighters exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attach at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 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."If the way monsters are assigned hit points is inconsistent with that, it's a problem with the way monsters are assigned hit points. But hit points themselves only make in-game sense -- however much or little it may be -- when they don't just represent physical damage.Unless of course there's some explicitely stated "vital energy" or something that infuses the characters and lets them take multiples of the damage that a human (or horse) body alone can take (which could explain what happens with monster classes in Savage Species as well). Have I missed something like this anywhere in the books?</blockquote>

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