Hit Points and High Levels

[Kirowan]

I understand that hit points represent both a character's ability to sustain real damage and turn potentially vital blows into minor wounds. I can accept this at lower levels of play, but not at higher levels. Imagine a 100 HP fighter. Say he is hammered by a volley of 15 arrows by the town garrison (many more archers missed). On average, they do 4 points of damage each. Our figher has only lost 60 HPs. Now, I just don't know how to describe this visually to my players. Sure, I can say 2 or 3 lodged themselves securely into his flesh without puncturing anything major, but how do I rationalize the other 12 just nicking him. It just seems ridiculous.

At first I thought about having the majority of most character's HPs represent the ability to perfrom extreme stunts to reduce vital blows, even to the point of the blow missing the character completely (to get rid of the problem of having a character walk around like a human pincusion). Hence, a character's normal AC defenses would represent his non-draining defenses while his hit point loss would represent taking flesh wounds and performing insane stunts that drain his vitality (a la Matrix). So, in the scenario above, our fighter might take an arrow solidly to his thigh, a few would nick him, and the rest would be avoided by his dazzling acrobatic prowess. Then I remembered cure spells. I mean, natural healing makes sense in this context, but applying a cure spell to someone just because they might be feeling physically drained doesn't.

All I'm looking for is help with describing combat to my players visually. I know characters in D&D are suppossed to be heroic. I'm just afraid that at high levels, combat will seem ludicrous. Note that I'm aware that people will be doing more damage because of magic weapons, so it is kind of relative. However, there will be instances when someone will be attacking a high level character with his trusty non-enchanted longsword and the high level character will walk away bleeding from 50 wounds that would have killed him if he weren't so skilled.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Umbran]

Part of the issue may be in re-thinking what physically happens when the enemy scores a "hit".

A "hit" on a low level character is usually simple - he actually gets hit. But on a high level character, many "hits" don't actually hit at all - they simply force the character to dodge, adding to fatigue.

Having lots of hit points doesn't just mean you can turn major wounds into minor ones - it means you can avoid any actual wounding entirely - instead, you burn through a little bit more of your epic luck, and those extra arrows never make contact at all.

Imagine Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or any action heronear the end of the movie. Lots of hit points lost, but usually very few wounds. Think of Satr Wars Stormtroopers - It isn't that the enemy is really such a bad shot, but that the character has become so heroic as to be nigh impossible to kill with mere physical damage.

 

[Kirowan]

A "hit" on a low level character is usually simple - he actually gets hit. But on a high level character, many "hits" don't actually hit at all - they simply force the character to dodge, adding to fatigue.

Having lots of hit points doesn't just mean you can turn major wounds into minor ones - it means you can avoid any actual wounding entirely - instead, you burn through a little bit more of your epic luck, and those extra arrows never make contact at all.

That's how I interpret them. However, healing spells don't make sense in this context, and fatigue is another condition entirely in 3E.

 

[Aziraphale]

That's how I interpret them. However, healing spells don't make sense in this context, and fatigue is another condition entirely in 3E.

Think about how healing spells work in D&D. The cleric class description makes it clear that rather than simply focussing on physical wounds, they are in fact the channeling of positive energy. This could just as easily be applied to karma/physical exertion/whatever you want hit points to represent in your campaign.

 

[SableWyvern]

I agree with Umbran on the issue of hits that don't actually hit. Even with the party still at low levels I sometimes, after a hit, describe the attack as just barely missing.

I also take a similar view Aziraphale, with regard to healing. The paladin and rogue/wiz in my party had an argument last session about how much "lay on hands" the paladin used. I quickly nudged the argument away from how much healing had occured, so that the characters were instead talking about "passing on the blessings of Heironeous".

If you want dnd combat to be explainable in more normal "hp damage = real damage" ways, then try some of the WP/VP stuff or DnDChicks critical hits rules (visit the House Rules forum).

As I've said before, HP are beyond mortal comprehension, and any attempt to truly define them is the beginning of a slow descent in the depths of utter and eternal insanity.

 

[Mark]

I think that the hit points are only representative of the total damage a character can take, not how many misses are included. It's pretty clear by descriptions in the PHB that any hit that scores damage is an actual hit. Once you describe it otherwise, you do negate the idea that healing is returning lost hit points (replenishing damage). That way lies madness.

I've always thought of a character's hit points in terms of percentages. Four points from an arrow does forty percent of a ten hit points fighter's total and only ten percent of a forty hit point fighter's total. Perhaps that way of thinking will help you, too. That same arrow might dig deep into the thigh of a low level fighter, while merely grazing the thigh of a higher level fighter. Further, it might go straight into the heart of a low level wizard.

I would suggest avoiding the temptation of describing a damage inflicting blow as being dodged or as a miss. It's counter to the actual rules and once you change that you need to change anything else based on the rules as written.

 

[SableWyvern]

According to the PHB, yes, hp = physical damage capacity. End of story.

This is a huge change from 1ed (and, I'm guessing, 2ed), where it was explicitly stated that hp were a lot more. The authors accepted that high level fighters being able to soak up stupid amounts of damage was hard on the old suspension of disbelief. Thus hp measured not only physical health, but also such amiguous concepts as luck, fate and the hand of the gods.

In the long term, I don't think it is more feasible to understand hp equating only to physical damage. Kirowan's whole problem began with the idea that each of 15 arrows that hit the fighter in question only scratched him.

If 15 arrows hitting home only scratch a target, how then can you argue that luck, fate or destiny was not somehow involved? Even moreso, how do you explain characters who walk through meteor swarms and emerge on the other side no less capable of continuing the fight?

As Aziraphale and I have both pointed out, altering healing spells conceptually from mere physical healing to overall blessing meshes fine with the "hp also equal luck/fate/ambiguous stuff" concept.

I have always played this way, and have yet to see it require any changes to the system. Mark, I'd be interested to know what sort of changes you think would be necessary.

 

[Mark]

According to the PHB, yes, hp = physical damage capacity. End of story.

This is a huge change from 1ed (and, I'm guessing, 2ed), where it was explicitly stated that hp were a lot more. The authors accepted that high level fighters being able to soak up stupid amounts of damage was hard on the old suspension of disbelief. Thus hp measured not only physical health, but also such amiguous concepts as luck, fate and the hand of the gods.

In the long term, I don't think it is more feasible to understand hp equating only to physical damage. Kirowan's whole problem began with the idea that each of 15 arrows that hit the fighter in question only scratched him.

If 15 arrows hitting home only scratch a target, how then can you argue that luck, fate or destiny was not somehow involved? Even moreso, how do you explain characters who walk through meteor swarms and emerge on the other side no less capable of continuing the fight?

As Aziraphale and I have both pointed out, altering healing spells conceptually from mere physical healing to overall blessing meshes fine with the "hp also equal luck/fate/ambiguous stuff" concept.

I have always played this way, and have yet to see it require any changes to the system. Mark, I'd be interested to know what sort of changes you think would be necessary.

I guess I'm saying that if you change one thing conceptually, you need to change other things conceptually, which is what you seem to be also saying.

To my mind saying that a higher level fighter is only scratched by fifteen arrows that each only do a couple/few hitpoints, where they would kill a first level fighter, is actually saying that the higher level fighter has had a good deal of luck/skill/fate.

Perhaps we are saying things in different ways, if we are in fact agreeing that arrows that do damage are indeed hitting, and not simply bouncing off a tough fighter while killing a lesser fighter.

As you say right out of the box "According to the PHB, yes, hp = physical damage capacity. End of story." So we are seemingly in agreement that a fifteen arrows are indeed doing physical damage, we're just finding different ways to explain the effect of that physical damage. *shrug*

 

[Hypersmurf]

According to the PHB, yes, hp = physical damage capacity. End of story.

Unless you read p128.

"The ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power."

-Hyp.

 

[SableWyvern]

Actually, I was saying that strictly speaking and according to the rules as written, they are hitting, but I don't play that they necessarily do. Which is a concept that would help solve the original problem in this thread.

It seems that we almost agree, but that you seem to think that extra step I've taken (ie, sometimes a hit is a miss), could cause problems.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just interested in what, appart from the concept of how a healing spell/ability works, needs to be altered in order to assume that some hits are misses.

(Yeah, and I realise that that at least _sounds_ stupid, even if in actuality its just the easiest way of saying something a little more complex).

Hyp: Ah. I only read the glossary entry. Its good to know things haven't changed that much.

Final admission for rules lawyers: The correction Hypersmurf made to my assertion doesn't change the fact the the rules still consider all hp damage to include some degree of physical damage (thus making my full interpretation not the "technically" correct one).