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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8616044" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think a wound/vitality split is probably cleaner and provides better play. In your version, we still have the weird attrition thing that is far from clear in the fiction, with there never being a clear moment when a dead PC actually received a mortal wound.In AD&amp;D combat, which does not track position once characters are engaged (Gygax actually calls for random determination of targets as the default for both melee and missile fire) and in which hit point loss that does not reduce to 0 tells us nothing but whether or not the PC is set back in the fight, there is no simulation: the mechanical processes are not modelling and yielding information about in-fiction causal processes and the resultant unfolding events beyond what we already knew going in - these people are fighting - and what we know at the end - these people are dead/dying.4e D&amp;D combat introduces a lot more information, and so (compared to AD&amp;D) is more simulationist, but not in virtue of its hp rules which are basically the same: it uses position and effects (including force movement, which iterates on position) to provide information about in-fiction events during a fight. This is what makes it much more visceral than AD&amp;D combat, at least in my experience.I don't have enough experience with late 2nd ed C&amp;T resolution, 3E or 5e to comment on the non-hp aspect of those systems.No one has said that hp are literally meaningless in every respect. They convey information about whether or not the character is losing the fight. [USER=22779]@Hussar[/USER] accepts that. They are meaningless as an indicator of what is actually going on in the fiction. They don't tell us how or why someone is losing a fight. And that's a design decision, as Gygax explained back in 1979.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8616044, member: 42582"] I think a wound/vitality split is probably cleaner and provides better play. In your version, we still have the weird attrition thing that is far from clear in the fiction, with there never being a clear moment when a dead PC actually received a mortal wound. In AD&D combat, which does not track position once characters are engaged (Gygax actually calls for random determination of targets as the default for both melee and missile fire) and in which hit point loss that does not reduce to 0 tells us nothing but whether or not the PC is set back in the fight, there is no simulation: the mechanical processes are not modelling and yielding information about in-fiction causal processes and the resultant unfolding events beyond what we already knew going in - these people are fighting - and what we know at the end - these people are dead/dying. 4e D&D combat introduces a lot more information, and so (compared to AD&D) is more simulationist, but not in virtue of its hp rules which are basically the same: it uses position and effects (including force movement, which iterates on position) to provide information about in-fiction events during a fight. This is what makes it much more visceral than AD&D combat, at least in my experience. I don't have enough experience with late 2nd ed C&T resolution, 3E or 5e to comment on the non-hp aspect of those systems. No one has said that hp are [i]literally[/i] meaningless [i]in every respect[/i]. They convey information about whether or not the character is losing the fight. [USER=22779]@Hussar[/USER] accepts that. They are meaningless as an indicator of what is actually going on in the fiction. They don't tell us [i]how[/i] or [i]why[/i] someone is losing a fight. And that's a design decision, as Gygax explained back in 1979. [/QUOTE]

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