D&D General Are Hit Points Meat? (Redux): D&D Co-Creator Saw Hit Points Very Differently

D&D co-creator Dave Arneson wasn't a fan of hit points increasing with level. According to the excellent Jon Peterson's Playing at the World he felt that hit points should be fixed at character creation, with characters becoming harder to hit at higher levels.

Of course, this is an early example of the oft-lengthily and vehemently discussed question best summarised as ‘Are hit points meat?’— a debate which has raged for over 40 years and isn’t likely to be resolved today! (but no they’re not)

Arneson's Hit Points for Characters

Game Wizards is very decidedly not a book about who invented which system in D&D. But early drafts of the book did track one design choic...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

Arneson later created a hit point equation in his 1979 RPG Adventures in Fantasy which was a game in which he hoped to correct "the many errors in the original rules".

 

[Jaeger]

‘Are hit points meat?’

Yes, and No...

Most other RPGs that don't have exponential HP increases; HP = meat points, and they typically have some other 'meta' currency to mitigate the occasional bad roll or lucky hit: "hero points". WFRP fate points, CoC luck points etc..

D&D traditionally does not have a 'hero point' meta currency, because for D&D the HP increases per level (HP Bloat) fill in for that. Which of course has always muddled the waters of: 'what do HP represent"...

HP Bloat is D&D's 'Hero Point' meta mechanic. Hit Points in D&D are 'meat points' and 'hero points' all rolled into one.

Pre 3e D&D had limits on that though as PCs stopped gaining hit dice around level 10 or so... Not so much in the post 3e game. Now PCs gain hit points every level.

This of course leads to scaling issues with the math in every subsequent edition of the game. Which is why they all have issues the higher in level the game progresses. Stuff like CR, and the right amount of HP for x at high levels are off because it is just too much to playtest and calculate ahead of time given all the variables introduced into the system via spells and class abilities.

IMHO people were really on to something with the E6 mod for 3.x edition D&D.

For me Arneson was fundamentally correct:

D&D co-creator Dave Arneson wasn't a fan of hit points increasing with level. According to the excellent Jon Peterson's Playing at the World he felt that hit points should be fixed at character creation, with characters becoming harder to hit at higher levels.

This is how most non D&D based RPGS do it. The PC's get better at defending themselves and in dealing out the hate as they get more powerful. They also tend to add a 'hero point' meta mechanic on top of that as well...

This is my preferred PC dynamic in RPG's.

That being said - first mover status is huge. And HP bloat was in D&D since the beginning. For many reasons aside from the fact that the fanbase would revolt; I do not see D&D giving up HP bloat ever.

 

[cbwjm]

I just accept that all of this stuff is purely to create a game to play and everything is in service to the game (with only a small handwave towards the fiction that is layered on top of the game.)

The fact you could take the Attack rolls / damage rolls / AC / HP and reskin them all to create a Social Combat system that works just the same (if the game cared about having rules for determining the "winner" of philosophical debate) shows us that the fiction isn't the important part for all of this existing-- it's the attack roll / AC into damage roll / HP dance of the game rules is what matters.

Getting too concerned about the story not layering perfectly over the game rules kind of misses the point I think.

This has been my position ever since I started playing with the rules cyclopedia where back then it would take much longer for a high level PC to heal to full than a 1st level PC. I wouldn't think about it too often, but when I did it would be invariably end with "this is just how the game works". Playing a large number of video games with health bars and hit points probably helped me not worry about it as well.

 

[Jaeger]

in that time no one's come up with anything better. There are alternatives that work, but hit points are just more fun for DnD which is why nothing else sticks.

I disagree.

D&D was the first mover. So people are used to HP bloat

And while some things about the game have changed, we all know that there are certain sacred cows that D&D designers cannot touch without risking fanbase revolt because they do not like things changed that they are used to.

Being better is irrelevant when D&D's sacred cows and fandom are concerned.

I'd think that having your normal AC defence already assumes that you're darnest to not get killed instead of just standing there like a lemon.

Yes. This is the abstraction. Which is why I tend to think about the 'to hit' roll more as a "Roll to damage".

"Roll to hit" has become the default terminology because it is a more natural vernacular. (If imperfect in meaning)

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, not working for me. I'd think that having your normal AC defence already assumes that you're darnest to not get killed instead of just standing there like a lemon. But whatever, if it works for you, then great.

It does assume that. It’s just that some attacks take great effort to avoid getting killed by, and some don’t. Which one a given attack is, is determined by the result of the attack roll.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It does assume that. It’s just that some attacks take great effort to avoid getting killed by, and some don’t. Which one a given attack is, is determined by the result of the attack roll.

Yeah, 'great effort' is way too nebulous definition of hit for me.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, 'great effort' is way too nebulous definition of hit for me.

As I said, it isn’t for everyone. But it is internally consistent.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This has been my position ever since I started playing with the rules cyclopedia where back then it would take much longer for a high level PC to heal to full than a 1st level PC. I wouldn't think about it too often, but when I did it would be invariably end with "this is just how the game works". Playing a large number of video games with health bars and hit points probably helped me not worry about it as well.

Of course there's a cart and horse thing there: a large number of video games are heavily influenced by D&D, either directly, or down the generational thing. That's why you'll see bizarre artifacts in some MMOs (CoH comes to mind here) where you see levels, "magic items" and consumables even in theoretical genres where such things should have little or no weight, because its how other MMOs do it, because that's how D&D which is the sun-source did it.

 

[jhingelshod]

That looks very similar to the wounds and vitality system introduced in 3e's Unearthed Arcana, which was the default for Star Wars d20. Both about 20 years ago, though I'm pretty sure the idea is older.

And then they went back to just hit points, because wounds/vitality didn't catch on.

Yes, SPIs Dragonquest had Endurance and Fatigue (wounds and vitality) which were (pretty much) fixed at character creation. I can't remember off hand when 1e DQ was published, but we played 2e in the early '80s and it had been around a few years then.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Falling damage is one of the most egregious cock ups in the rules IMHO. It doesn’t take any account of momentum. The dice should scale with size (being a rough equivalent to mass).

So:

Tiny, no damage.
Small, Xd4
Medium, Xd8
Large, Xd10
Huge, Xd12
Gigantic, Xd20
And X should scale more rapidly. (hand wave ).

An alternate take is that it intentionally works as it does in order to model the fiction the game is based upon, rather than attempting realism. In fantasy fiction, falls very rarely kill powerful characters. Even when such a character is presumed dead, it's almost inevitable that the character will return at some point, alive and well.

The tropes of fantasy fiction don't always dovetail cleanly with realism.

 

[pemerton]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

In 5e, hit points have to be meat, and heroes are demigods. Any reasonably healthy PC at level 5 or so can, every evening, walk off a 5 story building and land on the cobblestones below (5d6), to to bed, and feel 100% fine the following morning.

The fact that this can be done EVERY DAY means it can't be "luck". Of course sometimes people fall from 5 stories and are fine (ish), but the great majority of the time, such a fall is lethal. The heroes aren't ducking the ground.

At the risk of sounding like a broken rebutter . . .

We don't know that, in the fiction, this can be done every day. Inferring from the method we use to resolve those occasions when it happens to the conclusion that it would happen like that every time in the fiction is treating a metagame/fortune-in-the-middle mechanic as if it is a model of an ingame causal process. When in fact it is not.

Now if, in fact, you play a game in which mid-level PCs insist on performing the dive you describe on a daily basis the fiction will become stupid. But that doesn't show that hit points are meat; it just shows that hit points, like most other metagame/FitM resolution frameworks, have fictional tolerances beyond which they will break.

A parallel that has been with us since AD&D times is this: the fighter chained to the rock and breathed on by the dragon. The saving throw which permits survival can be narrated as some sudden moment of luck; but if we try to apply the saving throw mechanics to a situation where a dragon breathes on the chained fighter every morning, and then allows the fighter to recover hit points, we'll get the inanity that the fighter is always lucky. D&D simply isn't designed to deal with such cases. They are deviant fictions, relative to the rules.

 

[Minigiant]

HP in D&D is a combo of Meat, Stamina, Mental Stamina, Luck, Blessing, etc

One option I originally though 5e would do is have a option of separating the bucket as a variant.

Like a level 6 fighter could be 1d10+Con Meat, 3d10+Con Stamina, 1d10+Int Guile, and 1d10+5 Luck.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This of course leads to scaling issues with the math in every subsequent edition of the game. Which is why they all have issues the higher in level the game progresses. Stuff like CR, and the right amount of HP for x at high levels are off because it is just too much to playtest and calculate ahead of time given all the variables introduced into the system via spells and class abilities.

Well...I mean, 4e had no problem with balance or playtesting. Fights could be lengthy to resolve (though definitely no moreso than 3e), but they weren't super weird about that.

Part of the reason 4e worked as well as it did is that characters did not have two sources of bonus HP. That is, you added your Con score at first level, not your mod at every level. This means that max-level 3e (and 5e) characters actually tend to have higher HP than even max-level equivalent characters in 4e, because a 4e character only ever gains 29*(class's flat HP). E.g. a level 20 Fighter in 5e, with 20 Con, has 15 (level 1 HP) + 19*(6+5) = 224 HP, while a level 30 Fighter with theoretical maximum Con (starting 20, investing +8 from levelling up, and getting another +2 from Epic Destiny) has 15 (base HP) + 30 (Con score) + 29*6 (static HP per level) = 219. And, again, this is spread out over 30 levels, not 20, and considering the most extreme comparable case in the game.

Also, 4e's equivalent of CR--the XP Budget--was actually highly effective, very rarely having issues. The vast majority of the time that it did have issues was when you took extremely high-level monsters and scaled them down to extremely low levels, such as a down-scaled dracolich (a common discussion example at the time). The only exception I can think of that was generally understood to be out of line was the Needlefang Drake Swarm, and that's really only because they had unusually high damage on top of being a Swarm. (4e Swarm creatures are resistant to melee and ranged attacks, but vulnerable to close and area attacks.)

 

[jmartkdr2]

I disagree.

D&D was the first mover. So people are used to HP bloat

And while some things about the game have changed, we all know that there are certain sacred cows that D&D designers cannot touch without risking fanbase revolt because they do not like things changed that they are used to.

Being better is irrelevant when D&D's sacred cows and fandom are concerned.

I categorically reject the idea the DnD players will not allow changes to the game (or we'd all still be playing Basic) or that they don't know what fun feels like.

If versions of DnD contain a thing and players like it / it makes the game better, it tends to stick around. CF ascending AC, races separate form classes, nonmagical healing, balanced classes, bards as a based class, warlocks, et al.

 

[Stalker0]

Vitality/wounds is a wishlist for 6e for me, I think it solves so many of the narrative issues with hit points and healing, and offers new mechanics.

the reason it failed for Star Wars IMO was the allowance of crits/sneak attacks to bypass vitality. It just turned high level combat into “who can crit first”.

remove that and you can create a really solid system.

 

[Minigiant]

Vitality/wounds is a wishlist for 6e for me, I think it solves so many of the narrative issues with hit points and healing, and offers new mechanics.

the reason it failed for Star Wars IMO was the allowance of crits/sneak attacks to bypass vitality. It just turned high level combat into “who can crit first”.

remove that and you can create a really solid system.

One of my bigger hopes for 5e initially was an official Resolve/Luck/Vitality/Wounds variant rules. I still hope for one for 6e.

Allowing groups to decide which types of buckets are in their campaign and building the matching narrative would really fix a lot of issues.

 

[Dausuul]

the reason it failed for Star Wars IMO was the allowance of crits/sneak attacks to bypass vitality. It just turned high level combat into “who can crit first”.

This is exactly the problem with most wound/vit systems I've seen. The whole point of vitality is to act as a shield against random death. If you allow crits, which are totally random, to bypass it, then the shield no longer works and the whole mechanic was a waste of time.

I wouldn't mind seeing D&D embrace a wound/vit system (without allowing crits to bypass vit, obviously), but I can't imagine it will ever happen. Hit points get the job done well enough and have both simplicity and tradition on their side.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, SPIs Dragonquest had Endurance and Fatigue (wounds and vitality) which were (pretty much) fixed at character creation. I can't remember off hand when 1e DQ was published, but we played 2e in the early '80s and it had been around a few years then.

First Edition was, indeed, published in 1980.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I categorically reject the idea the DnD players will not allow changes to the game (or we'd all still be playing Basic) or that they don't know what fun feels like.

If versions of DnD contain a thing and players like it / it makes the game better, it tends to stick around. CF ascending AC, races separate form classes, nonmagical healing, balanced classes, bards as a based class, warlocks, et al.

While its easy to blow off too much of carry-over to habit, I don't think its any more sensible to argue that some elements only stick around because people actively like them; more accurately some stick around because people are used to them and don't actively disike them. That's all that's needed, really.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is exactly the problem with most wound/vit systems I've seen. The whole point of vitality is to act as a shield against random death. If you allow crits, which are totally random, to bypass it, then the shield no longer works and the whole mechanic was a waste of time.

Eh. There's a middle ground there, where it functions to prevent routine sudden death, but bad luck is still a risk. It tends to work better in systems where most damage doesn't vary as much as D&D does, though (i.e. where a single crit isn't a given to kill you the way it can in D&D with a wound system because you can spend a good part of your career fighting things who's expected damage will do that, as compared to spending most of it fighting things where one hit won't likely do you in).

 

[Voranzovin]

I've always been tremendously frustrated by how difficult it is to make a coherent fiction out of hit points...but I also think they're inevitable. I've tried a lot of alternate systems and found most of them to be wanting in one way or another. WP/VP, for instance, strikes me as just being hit points under another name. If you were to remove the thing where crits go straight to WP (which, as has been pointed out by a number of posters already, undermines VP's role as the buffer between you and actual damage), all it really does is fix the point at which "damage" is actually damage rather then leaving it floating around, without really solving any of the issues with HP (healing and poison, for instance, still make absolutely no sense). Systems that use a small number of hit points and use DR or luck points or something to increase survivability don't really provide a reliable barrier against harm, and don't work well (in my experience) with DnD's zero-to-hero-to-superhero arc (though they may be great for other games).

That oft-quoted passage from the 1e DMG seems like a case in point to me. On the one hand, I think that passage means a lot less then it's generally imputed to mean. Maybe Gygax intended hit points to represent bundled meat/luck/skill/divine favor, but the game he actually released treats them as meat points in it's mechanics and terminology. A few paragraphs in the DMG don't outweigh how the game actually acts when played. If this weren't true, we wouldn't still be arguing about this. At the same time, it's hard to see what else he should have done. Hit points are such a good game mechanic that their destructive effect on fiction is something we're forced to rationalize away, just as Gygax was.

What I've started doing is trying to use one of the worst aspects of hit points--that they're such a vague and leaky abstraction--to my advantage in terms of widening the kinds of characters the system can support. Right now I'm playing a Cambion in a Planescape game, represented as Teifling + Barbarian/Path of the Beast, with the class and subclass refluffed to represent a demonic physiology. If another member of the party takes eight points of damage from a sword thrust, they parried at the last second and avoided most of the blow. If she does, she got stabbed in the chest--which mainly has the effect of pissing her off. And her wound will, quite literally, heal overnight.

For all their failings, the abstract nature of hitpoints lets me play distaff Hellboy in a party that's otherwise at a normal human level of bodily durability. I've considered DMing an entire campaign this way, where all PCs are demigods or immortals of some kind, without changing any of the rules at all.

Basically, if we didn't have hit points, we'd be forced to invent them. They are wonderful and terrible, simultaneously. Which is extremely on-brand.