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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 4542097" data-attributes="member: 18280">"However, the amount of damage 1 hit point represents is not on an absolute scale, but corresponds instead to the hit point total of the being hit."You are quoting what hit point increases reflect, now what the hit points themselves represent.  IOW, why hit points do not scale absolutely.  Mr. Gygax is not saying that hit points themselves represent intangible things, but that the hit point system, while representing tangible damage, scales on the basis of intangibles.Three feet of steel through the guts of 10th level warrior or first level noob is the same amount of "damage" within the context of the game world.  The 10th level warrior, however, is hit less severely by the same strike that would impale the noob because he avoids most of the blow.  That he can do this is, indeed, the result of intangibles.  It does not, however, make the damage itself, intangible.  The fighter's hit points themselves do not represent intangibles.  That hit points can increase represents some intangible qualities.To better illustrate, let us say that Mr. Gygax designed a system wherein everyone had 8 hp, but in which every time you took damage you got a roll to avoid taking damage.  The 8 hit points would always mean the same thing, and the roll would represent intangibles.  However, one would then wonder why, if you took no damage, you could be poisoned by a hit.  Such a system would have many of the same problems as 4e's system does.Instead, Mr. Gygax designed a system in which hit points are not absolute.  The 1st level noob has, say 8 hit points, and the 10th level fighter 80.  In this specific case, every 10 of the 10th level figher's hit points scales to 1 of the noob's (edit:  Scales roughly, I should have said.  The first 10 hp of damage the 10th level fighter takes is far less than 1 hp of the noobs, and the last hit point the 10th level fighter takes is far more than 1 hp of the noob's full total.  This is also true for the noob; until he takes his last hp, his first damage taken scales differently than does the blow that kills him).  Just as the noob's are not intangible, neither are the 10th level fighter's.Which is why, as you note, Gary makes certain to tell us llater in the passage you quote that each "hit" does inflict some amount of physical damage.You conflate hit points with the explanation for hit point scaling.  The passage you quoted gives no "intangible, non-physical sources of hit points".  Actually, that doesn't bother me.  I call it "fainting".  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It just has nothing to do with hit points are they were used from OD&D through 3.5e.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />It points out that there is a difference between what damage totals mean for different characters/creatures, based upon their hit point capacity.  It explains scaling of hit points, and should not be taken to mean that hit point damage ever occurs without real damage also occurring.  As you also noted that Gary said.RC</blockquote>

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