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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Little Raven" data-source="post: 5923678" data-attributes="member: 10095">Nothing contradicts. Hit points are an abstract representation of the combination (A) your ability to withstand physical damage, (B) the skill involved in avoiding serious physical damage, (C) protection from supernatural sources, and (D) luck. He then clarifies, several times, that withstanding physical damage itself is probably the smallest part of the abstraction that is hit points, because it's silly to assume that just by leveling up, a dude becomes more resistant to stabs in the heart.I'm calculating it with the AD&D 1e Player's Handbook, which states on page 12 that only Fighters get a +3 or +4 bonus to hit points per level for Constitution, and all other classes get a +2 maximum.If 2 hit points is physical damage, then one "real" hit is pretty likely to kill the fighter given the average damage values.ForeverSlayer claimed that 1e (Gygax) made the split between hit points being physical/metaphysical was a 50/50 split. So, I looked in the actual 1e books that Gygax wrote and found that this was not the case if you compile all of the information and break it down methodically and logically. He meanders and he's bad at organizing an instructive text, but all the information is there and it doesn't contradict anything.Here's my methodology:Hit Points = Hit Die + Constitution modifier (fact)(1) tells us that your ability to actually withstand comes from your Constitution bonus since it explicitly interjects that it is indicated by the Constitution bonus, with no indicatition that it is represented by Hit Dice. (fact)(2) tells us that the bonus to hit points from Constitution is composed of both the ability to withstand physical damage and the ability to avoid physical damage through sixth sense/luck/so on. (fact)None of that is contradictory in any way. And here are my assumptions based on those facts.(A) Hit Dice are not mentioned as the ability to withstand physical damage when Constitution is explicitly mentioned because they do not represent that, they represent the skill/luck/divine protection/etc that hit points also represent. There is nothing else in the 1e books about Hit Dice that counter this assumption.(B) Since Constitution bonus hit points are composed of 2 disparate elements, and for the majority of characters the maximum bonus they can get each time they gain hit points is 2, then each of those factors (physique and fitness) must be worth 1 hit point for those characters. If you wished, you could adjust the fighter's Constitution bonus to be weighted to one side or the other if you wished, but it's just as reasonable to assume they hold equal weight.Thus, my conclusion: Constitution hit points are the sole source of physical damage hit points, but Constitution hit points are not exclusively physical damage hit points.</blockquote>

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