How does striking an opponent heal your allies?

[Shadeydm]

It makes sense because our new Fruit Rollup masters have declared that casting healing spells is unfun and this is fun. All other reasoning is irrelevant. Now be quiet and take your WotC pill, it will make you feel much better.

 

[Sir Sebastian Hardin]

And finally, I'd like to point out that the game gives us an ironclad way to see how much of HP are physical.

It's called the Con bonus.

At most, Con represents 40% of a fighter's HP, since a max Con fighter gets 40% more HP.

But that 18 Con fighter might still wind up with fewer HP than the 10 Con fighter who rolls really well on his HP.

Why is that?

Because HP don't represent the body.

What??????????????

You mean that, if my wizard has 6 Constitution score: -2 penalty, he has no phisical part in his hit points?? He has no body, then? Further, he has -2 penalty... he has a negative body?

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -- Winston Churchhill. Same applies to the concept of hit points. It's a cludgy system with tons of silly special cases and places where it simply doesn't work right but it's still one of the simplest and most elegant systems we have for simulating heroic adventuring.

It's not about the nature of Hit Points. It's about a really unreallistic game mechanic. We have agreed with you that a mighty blow from the party leader could make your allies happy and keep fighting and stuff. Ok. But it doesn't translate to HP healing in the game rules.

It's like when you are playing soccer that twist your ancle. But you see your coach saying "Go boy, you can do it!" and You see your mom waving at you, your little brother cheering you up (he wants to be just like you btw) and you see the girl you like shouting "Do it for me!!!" You stand up! You keep fighting!!! The adrenaline makes you go on inspite of your twisted ancle... you score 2 goals, you win!!!! BUT AFTER the game is over... your ancle is screwed! It hurts and it is the size of a watermellon. What happened? Your didn't "heal", you got temporary HP (or maybe even a raise in CON, beacuse you end up far worse) and after the encounter, the pain returns.

 

[Crashy75]

As I said before, there should be a mechanic that represents being hurt but not dying. I think that's what the bloodied condition represents. This is perhaps the best of both worlds (well, more likely a reasonable compromise) between "realistic" and "just accept it."

 

[Vigilance]

What??????????????

You mean that, if my wizard has 6 Constitution score: -2 penalty, he has no phisical part in his hit points?? He has no body, then? Further, he has -2 penalty... he has a negative body?

No, what I'm saying is that his physical body imposes a -2 HP per level penalty on his HP, so there's an effect, but the Con bonus clearly demonstrates that luck is more important than the physical.

For example, if HP are physical entirely, how is it that a 18 Con Fighter can have fewer HP than a 10 Con Fighter?

The 18 Con Fighter could have 50 HP, while the 10 Con Fighter could have 100 HP.

Similarly, your 6 Con mage could have 20 HP at 10th level, while a 10 Con Mage could have 10.

So clearly, there's more than physical health involved in HP.

That's all I was saying.

HP are an abstract concept. They don't mean any one thing.

 

[Crashy75]

...
HP are an abstract concept. They don't mean any one thing.

This is true. But they do mean some things more than others. I'm not going to go into the odds of wizards with those HP but we're talking .25 to the 10th(EDIT: I forgot the 1st level max HP, one is .25 to the 9th and the other is impossible)! The bell curve keeps that kind of luck in check. The fact is HP are modified by a die roll, con mod, and an odd bonus here and there (3.x of course). Many of the descriptions I've read make it almost seem that dex, at the very least, should also modify HP but as of now, it doesn't. Just con. Dex is not going to help you wade through that pool of lava or skip over it. Just con.
Now, I'm not exactly in the "realistic" camp. Too much realism is boring. But too much abstraction interferes with believability. Compromise is a wonderful thing.