Hit Points and High Levels

[Mark]

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.

Of course there is quite a bit more to that quote but it does support allowing all sorts of ways one can explain hit points, and their loss, during game play. It isn't very well defined and leaves room to a great deal of individual interpretation. It doesn't seem to support the idea that a hit should be described as a miss, though, merely that the damage is absorbed and perhaps defies the reasoning of a person viewing that damage to explain how it might have been absorbed.

Also, for instance, "some characters" doesn't help to define the relationship between loss of hit points and high level monsters, since they are not characters, per se. It also doesn't help to define which characters are "some characters" and that leaves me wishing they hadn't included it, but it is there. What of a high level character with many hit points that doesn't have a divine connection of any kind? It's my feeling the designers were allowing some leeway in the description (of damage) by DMs to their players to avoid the very debate in which we are engaged.

Personally, I explain things to players as I outlined in my previous post, but of course, others are welcome to discard my own method in favor of their own. Whatever works for your group, at your table, is what should be used. There's not much worse than a game being stalled by a debate on the semantics of a description, IMO.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I seem to remember that problems arose when Unearthed Arcana introduced the Harpoon to First Edition. On a successful hit, the harpoon became lodged/buried in the target, and the trailing line could then be used to pull the victim off balance.

The problem was, this assumed that any hit caused a puncture wound. And First Edition specifically described hit points as including combat skill, luck, and magical influences.

There are (vaguely) similar effects in 3E - poison, energy drain, a Sword of Wounding - how do these work if a "hit" could just be a shaving away of some luck?

-Hyp.

 

[MythandLore]

We always play it as being hurt.
Like if some one get shot with an arrow for 4 points of damage.
A first level wizard with 5 hp might have took it square in the chest.
Where as to a 168 hp fighter it was just a small cut as the arrow flew past his hand.
Both times they were hit and hurt with real damage.
Fatigue, etc would be more along the lines of subdual damage.
Heavy fatigue would be like ability score damage (like energy drains)
You can't get back very many real damage hit points by resting so it can't be simple fatigue, but you can get hit points lost due to subdual damage pretty fast.

 

[Kirowan]

Thanks Aziraphale and SableWyvern. It seems so obvious, but that's the best description of healing magic I've heard. I know the PHB talks about every hit making actually contact, but I think that leads to some really outrageous situations ("You were almost killed by those 15 arrows! Look at all the scratches on you!"). Besides, we can't always listen to everything the rules say. On one page, the PHB talks about how HP loss is relative, and on the next, it introduces the death from massive damage rule and treats 50 points of damage to anyone as absolute (a rule I don't use, BTW).

 

[Vaxalon]

To me, hit points aren't just defensive skill, toughness, or vitality... they're a cosmic force.

It is as if there is a book somewhere, where the story of the universe is being written. As you do great deeds, whether for good or for ill, you get your name written into the book more and more. As this happens, you get more and more plot immunity... bad things don't happen to you as often because you're too important to the story to just die when the first arrow comes in. On the ground, this LOOKS like luck... an arrow that should have skewered you instead gives you a scratch... and at high levels this can get miraculous.

 

[drnuncheon]

First, hit points have to be "real damage". The system falls apart otherwise. ("So, the arrow missed me, but I somehow still got poisoned?")

Second, a high level fighter getting hit by an arrow is not like what you saw at the end of Fellowship of the Ring. (Unless it's a critical or a sneak attack or some such.) Just because an arrow hit for 5 points of damage doesn't mean that it's sticking out of the character's chest.

Third, D&D doesn't operate on realism, especially at high levels. It operates in the sort of cinematic epic heroic fantasy that lets heros carve through dozens of opponents and survive things that would kill a lesser man. If you want "realism" GURPS is around the corner and down the block.

Basically, I play hit points as different based on the character. If they're a "tank", more of the hits are described as solid blows that the character is able to shrug off through sheer willpower and stubbornness. If they're fast and nimble, then they're dodging through the hail of arrows, twisting and turning as they lodge in clothing and armor but never seem to get a solid hit in (until the hp are low, of course).

It's an abstraction, and as such it doesn't work if you look at it too hard. My advice is (to paraphrase the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000): "Just repeat to yourself, 'It's just a game', you should really just relax!"

J

 

[dcollins]

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.

This appears to be another of those "theoretical" problem-questions, in that you haven't actually gotten to high level play to see how it works out. Just for starters (and this wasn't obvious to me either until I tried running clever low-level monsters against a high level party), your example of dozens of town guardsmen shooting arrows at a high-level character basically isn't an issue. In reality, you'll find that the high-level character has far too high an AC for any guardsman to hit them with anything less than a natural 20 -- so they simply won't ever suffer a peppering like you've visualized here.

 

[Darklone]

houserules...

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

I got a houserule (ALERT ALERT ALERT)

If you get healed, you get additionally to the points from the cure the following back:

(BAB+Con modifier (both of the cured person)/2) * spell level of the cure spell.

Works out fine till now. Guys with more hitpoints (fighterclasses) or high con like to get healed.

 

[Darklone]

Now that's nice

To me, hit points aren't just defensive skill, toughness, or vitality... they're a cosmic force.

It is as if there is a book somewhere, where the story of the universe is being written. As you do great deeds, whether for good or for ill, you get your name written into the book more and more. As this happens, you get more and more plot immunity... bad things don't happen to you as often because you're too important to the story to just die when the first arrow comes in. On the ground, this LOOKS like luck... an arrow that should have skewered you instead gives you a scratch... and at high levels this can get miraculous.

Good enough written to simply quote it

 

[SpikeyFreak]

Basically, I play hit points as different based on the character. If they're a "tank", more of the hits are described as solid blows that the character is able to shrug off through sheer willpower and stubbornness. If they're fast and nimble, then they're dodging through the hail of arrows, twisting and turning as they lodge in clothing and armor but never seem to get a solid hit in (until the hp are low, of course).

This is pretty much the way I do it too.

--Copy Cat Spikey