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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6604690" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Mutual exclusivity. In relatively formal terms: you cannot predicate of the same thing, at the same time, in the same sense, both the presence (A) and absence (not-A) of the same specific fixed quality. The arguments I have always seen are, more or less, "hit points are EXCLUSIVELY MEAT" vs. "hit points are not exclusively meat." (Note: "not exclusively meat" means they could be partially meat, but not ALWAYS 100% meat.) The two positions cannot both be true at the same time. Accepting that hit points *may* be luck/skill/divine favor/etc. means rejecting that they are exclusively meat.Really now? I find that...incredibly surprising. So...you're basically saying that the reason it's meat is because...the whole system is magical? The wounding is repaired by magic, so it doesn't have to follow any rules we know about actual wounds? I really, truly don't understand your position here. If it's All Magic All The Time, why not just say HP are a mystical "life force" that people either possess, or don't? Then it ceases to be meat-points and becomes whatever the heck "Cure Wounds" spells affect...and thus doesn't seem ANY different from my position.Like...you are very clearly saying that you see HP as the physical representation of an entity's structural integrity and internal functions. But the above sounds indistinguishable from an argument that they are *not* those things, and rather Magical Stuff That Keeps You Going. Can you explain?Considering that you declared that HP *had to be* purely physical *because* they could only be regained "in practical terms" via magic (a logical connection I still don't understand), I'd say this is a pretty significant difference. That is, I agree that it's a difference of practice: I just think that "a difference of practice" is the only meaningful difference there COULD be, given how you framed this above.I didn't say unbelievable; I said "unphysical," which is very different*. And no, it's not common sense. There are numerous examples of incredibly significant human beings whose individual contributions turned the tides of battles, even wars. And they die just as easily as any other human does.For God's sake, Alexander the Great died of malaria. Attila the Hun may have died of a nosebleed. Genghis Khan probably died from falling off his horse or from an infected wound (possibly from a mere *hunting accident*). Audie Murphy, among the most decorated US Army soldiers ever, died in a plane crash. The most "epic" real human beings are still squishy as heck and can die of the stupidest things. It's not "common sense"--in the real-world physical sense--that someone who's done great and impressive things has far more endurance than is warranted by the physical material of which they're made.Unless, of course, you're willing to consider that their physical material could be...augmented, somehow, as if by some mystical force, possibly one that arises purely out of what amazing things they've done....*Unphysical: a situation which is not physically possible. Unbelievable: a situation which cannot even be conceived. Clearly it is possible to conceive of a human being who, despite being made of the same physical "stuff" as any other human being, is somehow (preternaturally?) more durable than other human beings are. Thus, it is a situation which physical models cannot describe--unphysical--but it is not a situation which is logically impossible by any means.</blockquote>

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