D&D 5E Hit points explained

[Tony Vargas]

I explicitly want fighters and rogues to be non-magic. I can buy into "Hollywood physics", but that's as far as it goes. If I need magic to explain why a Fighter is tough, he's no longer a Fighter. Better to say, "Don't look behind the curtain."

Sure, but at least it's self-consistent.
Of course, at that point, 'realism' is just plain gone, so of course your Highlander can heal from a mortal wound overnight, wrestle dragons to the ground or mind-control enemies into politely queuing up to be hit - or ablate some of that same sort of magical toughness even if his blade didn't /quite/ hit the enemy. ;P

 

[The Crimson Binome]

While I also didn't adopt 4e, either, I'm not trying to bash it. I think that "bloodied" is (at least) as good a concept as any concerning hit points throughout the game's storied history. I was just perplexed (and amused) by the use of "historically" (which generally implies a long tradition or history) to describe the concept.

Of course, it's difficult to reconcile being bloodied at half with the 5E mechanic that sharks and shark-like creatures gain advantage on attacks against creatures who simply are not at full. It certainly implies that the first point of damage necessarily draws blood.

And to prove that I'm also not trying to bash 4E where it doesn't deserve, I will say that I really liked damage-on-a-miss for fighters. It works especially well with the 5E concept that making contact with an enemy is trivial, and the attack roll is mostly about overcoming armor. It just means you're hitting so hard that they still get hurt, even though they defended themself correctly; it's like chipping damage in a fighting game.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

I explicitly want fighters and rogues to be non-magic. I can buy into "Hollywood physics", but that's as far as it goes. If I need magic to explain why a Fighter is tough, he's no longer a Fighter. Better to say, "Don't look behind the curtain."

Obviously, YMMV.

So I guess you're not a fan of the Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster?

 

[Mercule]

So I guess you're not a fan of the Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster?

They're fine. No worse than any other form of multi-class. Just because I want a purely martial fighter to be purely martial doesn't mean I'm against characters who want to dabble in magic. If you want to say that the EK just taps into that same energy as the Champion, just in a different way, now I'm wondering what you're smoking.

 

[Azzy]

Of course, it's difficult to reconcile being bloodied at half with the 5E mechanic that sharks and shark-like creatures gain advantage on attacks against creatures who simply are not at full. It certainly implies that the first point of damage necessarily draws blood.

Sure, but hit points have been difficult to reconcile with themselves in every edition of the game that's tried to describe their narrative (which not every edition does) because there's always been some weird corner case or some such.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sure, but hit points have been difficult to reconcile with themselves in every edition of the game that's tried to describe their narrative (which not every edition does) because there's always been some weird corner case or some such.

I guess some people can find fault in anything. Personally, I never had any trouble taking HP damage at face value (as a measure of how beaten up you are) in either 2E or 3E.

 

[MechaPilot]

Except by RAW fireballs don't miss.

When's the last time you made someone roll to hit with (or to aim) one?

When a player wanted to shoot the bead of fire that booms into the fireball through a narrow opening.

 

[Hriston]

But a long time ago I actually asked Gygax when I was attending Gen Con. He told me to think of it as "points until you get hit."

This is how I prefer to think about hit points. Barring the obvious corner cases like venomous snake bite puncture wounds, hit points are a character's power to negate hits that otherwise would have hit them.

Thanks for the Gary quote.

 

[Maxperson]

...but not entirely. I think somebody dropped the ball on this, and that it needs to be addressed in future printings, as it is incompatible with a target taking poison damage before being reduced to half hit points.

Hey Rob! The 5e rules are not actually incompatible with poison attacks. I'll quote the text below.

"When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury."

The word typically is hugely important for what you are talking about. It means that there are atypical situations where you show signs of injury prior to being at half or lower hit points. Poison attacks would be one of those atypical situations. Alternatively or additionally, you could also go with specific beats general. The above would be the general rules of injury, and the poison attacks would be one of the specific ways to beat it.

In other words, "you take 6 points of piercing" doesn't necessarily equate to "the goblin shoots you with an arrow for 6 points of piercing damage." The arrow doesn't have to actually puncture your skin to deal the damage. It can be abstracted as the stamina reduction of dodging out of the arrow's path. If you have some sort of physical or magical resistance to piercing damage, you could abstract that as your adamantine armor means you don't take full stamina damage from dodging - because you don't have to dodge by leaping out of the way - but the physical blow of the arrow hitting you might leave a bruise, you still flinch, and that distracts you.

Yes. The abstract nature of hit points allows for all of that, which I think is fantastic. I've always run it that way, with hit point damage becoming physical at some point, and then more and more physical as the PC approaches 0.

The trouble is HP as abstract isn't very satisfying as a story element. That's understandable, as this whole shebang developed as an expansion of tactical wargaming rules. And once anyone noticed, it was The Way We Do Things, and now it's so firmly traditional that to change it would change the flavor of D&D to its detriment. That makes resolving the discussion, as others have pointed out above, a fool's errand. All we can do is cope with it as best we can. Personally, when I DM I try to remember how each PC can conceivably take physical damage, so as to describe the HP reductions in a way which is consistent with my concept of "HP as abstract." That's as far as I can go without porting over the Rolemaster combat rules - which I have considered!

I'm not so sure. Hit points as abstract means you can run them however you like. Some DMs do run them as purely physical, treating them like Dragonball Z. Other run it like I mentioned above. One DM I play with apportions each hit as partly physical and partly endurance, luck, skill, etc. I think it can be the satisfying story element you are looking for if you want to run them that way. Unless I'm misunderstanding you.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hit points are a lie and can easily by seen through at any moment with just a bit of introspection. They are but a shadow of shadows of all the different things they can represent. They are constantly in flux and often change their nature by being one thing when they are lost and another thing when they are recovered. Because of this they are meaningless on their own. Yet, they are everything WITH us. They are whatever we need them to be at the time we are dealing with them. They are the ultimate abstraction.