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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9753240" data-attributes="member: 78087">This is, of course, a debate as old as D&D and roleplaying - to what degree do your hit points, Health Points, Life Points, Stress Capacity etc represent your plot protection and luck in avoiding injury and to what degree does it represent actual injury? A couple of games - Star Wars d20 1E comes to mind - actually differentiate between HP and actual bleeding (I think Star Wars called them Vitality and Wounds? It meant that Force Choke was incredibly optimal since it did Wounds damage only).I think there's an essay by Gygax somewhere on this topic where he basically says most of your HP in D&D (especially at high level) is luck, using the example of the last duel in The Adventures of Robin Hood (IIRC) as an example - every time Robin and Guy of Gisbourne swing and narrowly miss, they're taking off each other's HP, until Gisbourne finally runs out first and loses. And that seems a perfectly valid interpretation, I don't know if Gary stuck with it.So, if your HP are mostly luck, could you spend them in other ways? Could you spend your HP to improve your rolls, especially for saving throws? Which leads to some interesting conversations at the table:Player: Damn, I rolled a 3. My save vs poison is 10, so I failed.GM: Then you die.Player: Well, that sucks. Can I spend HP to improve my saving throw result?GM: Sure, go ahead. That'll cost you 7 HP.Player: Better than being dead!I think that would be an interesting place to take it - it would be a relatively easy bolt-on to many systems.And of course, there's at least one RPG that does this - Cypher, which uses a d20 and which was designed by Monte Cook, who's very well steeped in D&D design to say the least. Cypher actually has three pools - Intellect, Might, Speed - which are reduced by damage and which you can spend to improve your rolls. I've never played or run a Cypher game but do wonder how that changes the flow of encounters. What do you think? Has anyone ever used this sort of thing as a houserule? How do you think, having played/run Cypher, the Pool/Effort system makes it different from other RPGs?</blockquote>

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