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".

 

[Minigiant]

The character (men) concept meshes well with how I see HP. I mostly see the Mass Effect method.
Different creature type has different proportions of different defenses. Humanoids run on mostly Dodges, Blocks, and Luck. Giants are too big to dodge and tank hits with Meat. Whereas Celestials run on Luck and your attacks just... miss.

Post on Grognardia says the stats in this game were percentiles.

Yeah, it uses percentiles. So your HP would be ~11 if all 50.

 

[MGibster]

After 30+ years of gaming I've never been able to reconcile hit points and what they actually mean. If it's just narrative luck points then how does healing work? It just recharges your luck points. If getting stabbed for 1d4 damage the equivalent of me being stabbed in the real world? i.e. Does it leave a bleeding wound? I stopped asking these questions long ago because I could never find a satisfactory answer.

 

[Lanefan]

After 30+ years of gaming I've never been able to reconcile hit points and what they actually mean. If it's just narrative luck points then how does healing work? It just recharges your luck points. If getting stabbed for 1d4 damage the equivalent of me being stabbed in the real world? i.e. Does it leave a bleeding wound? I stopped asking these questions long ago because I could never find a satisfactory answer.

The existence and use of poisoned weapons forces one to answer this, at least in part, in a way that allows poisoned weapons to function as they should regardless of the target's current hit point total.

And that answer has to be that no matter how high the luck-to-meat ratio might be, hit points always have to represent at least a tiny little bit of meat or else poisoned weapons cannot work as intended.

 

[Jimmy Dick]

Increasing AC, HP, ATK roll modifiers, etc., all are part of the character progression. Were we to eliminate those, character growth would be reduced significantly. I get that Arneson and Gygax were miniature wargamers, but I'm pretty sure Gygax or someone realized that character growth was pretty important in order to get the game audience to grow. I personally think that character progression is a major factor in why D&D become so popular. I remember the first time I leveled up my first character back in 1979 and it was a wonderful feeling. Based on the questions I get asked a lot by people in my role as a GM, leveling up is a major concern of theirs as well.

 

[lingual]

Increasing AC, HP, ATK roll modifiers, etc., all are part of the character progression. Were we to eliminate those, character growth would be reduced significantly. I get that Arneson and Gygax were miniature wargamers, but I'm pretty sure Gygax or someone realized that character growth was pretty important in order to get the game audience to grow. I personally think that character progression is a major factor in why D&D become so popular. I remember the first time I leveled up my first character back in 1979 and it was a wonderful feeling. Based on the questions I get asked a lot by people in my role as a GM, leveling up is a major concern of theirs as well.

It would be a horrible feeling to get one-shotted by some lucky orc with a bow when you are high level and have invested a lot of time in a character.

A hit points ARE meat system could very well have stuff like that happen 5 percent of the time. Maybe someone has a good system out there that can accommodate meat points and sustained character growth.

 

[ronaldsf]

Didn't Arneson come up with that system in an OD&D of targeting and tracking health on different parts of the body? That's all consistent with the idea of "hit points as meat."

 

[Charlaquin]

After 30+ years of gaming I've never been able to reconcile hit points and what they actually mean. If it's just narrative luck points then how does healing work? It just recharges your luck points. If getting stabbed for 1d4 damage the equivalent of me being stabbed in the real world? i.e. Does it leave a bleeding wound? I stopped asking these questions long ago because I could never find a satisfactory answer.

4e’s answer was pretty solid, what with healing having to draw from your pool of healing surges, which essentially represented will to fight. “Healing” was just a catalyst allowing to tap into your reserve of energy instantly, where you would otherwise need a few moments to catch your breath, gather yourself, steel your nerves, etc.

 

[Charlaquin]

The existence and use of poisoned weapons forces one to answer this, at least in part, in a way that allows poisoned weapons to function as they should regardless of the target's current hit point total.

And that answer has to be that no matter how high the luck-to-meat ratio might be, hit points always have to represent at least a tiny little bit of meat or else poisoned weapons cannot work as intended.

Not really. A poisoned weapon requires more luck to avoid being killed by than a not-poisoned weapon, since a tiny scratch is a potentially lethal blow, which is not the case with weapons that are not poisoned.

 

[Stalker0]

It’s interesting that he favored strength over stamina (aka con) in terms of hit points

 

[Lanefan]

Not really. A poisoned weapon requires more luck to avoid being killed by than a not-poisoned weapon, since a tiny scratch is a potentially lethal blow, which is not the case with weapons that are not poisoned.

True, but that's not my point.

My point is that "a tiny scratch" represents meat.