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Message: <blockquote data-quote="harpy" data-source="post: 5799992" data-attributes="member: 85243">I've been mulling over the nature of hit points lately.  One thing that keeps cropping up is the issue of their “incoherence.”  That is, hit points are seen as both an abstract model, but also a “realistic” model (and I put those quotes around realistic for a reason, don't go there!).  On the one hand hit points are supposed to represent a broad range of factors, including physical health, luck, skill, divine grace, etc.  However when hit points have to be recovered naturally the recovery is at a rate that better represents bodily damage.The incoherence began right from the start with Old D&D, however I'll skip over it because the game was still in an “accretion” state where game elements and assumptions were still forming.  The references to hit points and there recovery are very brief and still assume some afterglow to miniature wargaming which is rife with deliberate abstraction.  I'll also skip over Holmes Basic D&D because the language is terse to get a succinct rules package assembled.It's when we get to Advanced D&D where Gygax has license and page count to go into a great deal of depth on what hit points represent and how they are recovered.  It's here where the contradiction comes into high relief.  He even tries to address it pretty head on in the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide, but the explanation doesn't seem to quite fit.Already there is a problem here.  Gygax pushes hard right at the beginning that hit points do not merely equate physical damage, and that as you gain levels the inflation of hit points means even less the capacity to absorb damage.  Most of the hit points lean towards a sixth sense, luck, magic and divine protection.  However, in that last sentence the sixth sense and luck are collapsed into a corporeal notion of “fitness.”  He's trying to make a distinction between physique and fitness, but both analogies are tied to the body and not the more abstract notions of luck, fate, divine providence, or even just plain skill to avoid being hit.Above Gygax goes into more depth of how hit points can be broken down conceptually with a character.  There are the hit points you gain from the class, and there is also the hit points gained from Constitution.  There is some assumption that character's simply become tougher over time through the level inflation of hit points.  Adventurers become inured to the hostile life and gain a kind of pain tolerance or willpower that can hopefully see them through tough situations.  And so if you were to slice hit points into different categories, the corporeal hit points that represent health, pain tolerance, willpower, etc. versus the incorporeal hit points that represent luck, magic, divine grace and the avoidance of damage through skill, what happens is that the minority of them are every the corporeal hit points.   Just as the first paragraph, this above paragraph seems fine until that last sentence.  Once again we're given an explanation of how hit points function that seems to be at odds with itself.  Gygax once again divides hit points into two broad categories, the physical hit points and the metaphysical hit points.  If one wanted a sense of verisimilitude in their game, then it makes sense that the physical hit points one has need a good deal of rest and recuperation if you were to lose them.  If someone in real life gets stabbed by a sword it could take weeks, months, years or even permanent damage that can never be recovered.  So in that regard long rest periods do make sense.The incoherence comes from the metaphysical type of hit points needing the same amount of rest to be recovered.  Why is luck, skill, divine favor or magic tied to the biological healing process?  Why does a god only dribble out divine favor?  Why is luck tied to tissue recover rates?Today, unlike in the 1970s, one could make an argument that skill and general performance are impacted by things such as PTSD, so there is some overlap between wounds healing and a more ephemeral mental recovery, but the metaphysical is also pushed hard in the hit point explanation and it doesn't fit well together.I've gotten ahead of myself a bit because we haven't looked at how hit point recovery happens in 1st edition.  This is where the incoherence really hits hard because recovery rates are rather brutal, and the metaphysical elements are marginalized in specific ways.For natural healing, true rest (no combat, spell casting, etc.) can be performed.  A character gains 1 hit point per day in the first week.  In the subsequent weeks they gain 1 hit point per day, plus their Constitution bonus per week.  If a character rests continuously for 4 weeks they gain all of their hit points back regardless of the amount to be gained.  You can of course use magic to accelerate all of this.  Spells, points, and other magic items will give you hit points at a much more accelerated rate.  All of these magical effects are specifically defined as healing wounds.However, that magic or divine grace is not as helpful you if you have gone to 0 hit points or less unless it is very powerful.  The character is automatically in a coma for a bit even if they gain positive hit points, and more devastatingly, they simply can not function and must rest for a week, even if they were brought to maximum hit points.  The only thing they can do is stumble out of the dungeon and find a bed to collapse into.  I'm walking through all of this because I just have to ask, why were hit points envisioned this way?  Why stress the metaphysical when it came to absorbing damage, but when it came to recovery it was slanted towards the physical?  The alternative is seen today in a variety of mediums.  Most video games today with a health bar, which is just hit points presented in a different manner, generally have some kind of auto regeneration effect.  Take your typical shooter today and how the health bar works is that if you take too much damage in a short period of time then you could die, but if you are able to duck, hide or generally pull yourself out of the line of fire you'll get your health back and can then rejoin the battle.  This approach isn't realistic.  If you get shot in real life you're pretty much shut down due to pain, bleeding and shock.  However conceptually it emulates the metaphysical a bit more.   In a sense you're not truly getting hit, instead you're getting grazed, or need to duck and your nerves are being overwhelmed, to the point where you finally do take an incapacitating hit.  Likewise, with 4th edition of D&D there is finally an introduction of a more explicit metaphysical statement of hit points through healing surges and second winds.  Characters have the capacity to regain some of their hit points in a variety of ways, including just taking a breather for a moment to collect themselves.  Anyone who plays a sport or has been in highly physical situations knows full well that your capacity to output energy has a limit, but that if you manage the pace of that expenditure it can be sustained over a long period of time.   So 4th edition is trying to address the kind of ebb and flow of a person's performance in stressful situations through hit points.So having some of those alternatives out there now, why weren't these ideas being used or considered back in the 1970s?  Why wasn't there a “second wind” or say after five minutes of rest you'd regain half of your hit points, or any other metric where at least a portion of the metaphysical hit points could quickly come back to a character?</blockquote>

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