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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9203038" data-attributes="member: 7026594">I disagree.  I think (perhaps unconsciously, by long accustomed mental habit) you're ignoring the complete absence of any sort of wound penalties for any damage short of dropping to zero HP, and the implications of that.And you're ignoring the apt examples of the unarmored 1st vs 10th level Fighters (in 1E or 5E, or any edition) being hit with two handed swords or by the tree-trunk club of a giant they're fighting.  Which both illustrate the ambiguities of hit point loss very clearly.I think you have a fair point re: HP recovery in AD&D, which is what I was referring to with my prior statement of "I can see why you choose to disregard Gygax's explanations of what hit points actually are and represent in AD&D and OD&D."  The rules for healing and recovering in TSR D&D seem to all support the premise that it's some kind of physical damage.Though even those have problems we already talked about.  Like it taking longer for a skilled Fighter with 30 HP dropped to 5 HP to recover than it does for a Magic-User with 12 HP to recover from being reduced to 2 HP.  The same degree of "injury" in proportion to their max HP,  the same degree of impingement to their actions, but the skilled hero inured to physical combat heals slower than the bookworm wizard.Second Wind, the use of Hit Dice to heal fully during a 1hr short rest, and full healing on a Long Rest all mean that the day to day play of 5E is also full of this same kind of ambiguous damage. You can argue (and have) that the absence of "damage on a miss" means 5E has a lower number of absolute instances of this dissonance/ambiguity, but I think that's straining at gnats while swallowing camels.</blockquote>

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