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".

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I personally find the luck points idea pretty silly, and some things you just can't really evade with only skill and experience, so meat is certainly a factor, although everyone just being super durable also doesn't quite work in a lot of ways (you can survive a meteor to the face, but a few hundred arrows will kill you anyway).

My interpretation is that whenever you lose hit points, you were actually hurt at least a little bit. The skill and luck aspect merely means you might not be hurt as badly as less heroic person would. So that twelve point hit might be a serious wound for a first level character but just a scratch for a high level one. But both were still actually injured.

Now what I can't explain is why healing more heroic individuals takes more potent magic... One thing I liked about 4e healing surges was that they allowed healing to be proportional to the recipient.

 

[Vaalingrade]

People say meat points are 'realistic' because you die from one stab, happily ignoring that people have survived being stabbed a dozen times, falling from terminal velocity or having rebar pinioned through their brain.

Luck is basically WAY more realistic than meat points.

 

[Stalker0]

As long as a midlevel character can fall from terminal velocity and not only survive but be expected tk survive…hit points cannot be purely meat.

 

[robus]

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.

Precisely, the hits are landing, but your character’s HP (i.e. skill, luck etc) deflect the blow enough that the physical damage is minimal, scratches, bruises, singes etc. Until that runs out and a potentially lethal blow finally lands taking your character down.

This is where healing potions frustrate me, I think there should be a difference between healing HP and healing wounds. HP restoration should be like getting some energy supplement, sort of like the potion in Asterix & Obelix whereas wound healing should require something more substantial such as ministrations from a cleric.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

The best answer I ever came up with for PCs and similar creatures at least is that hit points are, effectively, a fixed value that is actually representing dividing damage (because of skill).

This doesn't solve the healing problem, of course, but then, I don't think anything really can as long as healing works the way it does in every D&D variation I know of.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

As I've noted, can happen in other games (though not likely in most) and people somehow manage to live with it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

I think the point was that hit points have to include at least some degree of wounding; it can't be entirely just avoidance and luck.

 

[Vaalingrade]

As I've noted, can happen in other games (though not likely in most) and people somehow manage to live with it.

There is a reason I would absolutely never play those.

Multiple reasons actually because lethality often correlates to certain tones and genres I also don't enjoy.

 

[sevenbastard]

It's best not to overthink the rules I mean how can three people block a 15 foot wide corridor or how can you can have a 18 strength and a 3 constitution or why a fighter with all 18s in stats moves slower in combat than a rouge with all 10s.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is a reason I would absolutely never play those.

Your choice, but there's a difference between "I'd find it horrible..." and "It'd be horrible." Obviously plenty of people don't find RuneQuest or Savage Worlds horrible.

Multiple reasons actually because lethality often correlates to certain tones and genres I also don't enjoy.

Eh. Savage Worlds covers a great range of genres, many of which are as heroic focused as most versions of D&D.