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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jeffh" data-source="post: 3879616" data-attributes="member: 2642">Heck, there are multiple times hockey players have done that for themselves.Here are some comments I posted here about four years ago, which are applicable to the current debate.Hit points don't represent skill, luck etc so much as scale with these things.Every hit deals at least some real damage (evidence: if a high-level fighter takes 100 seperate 1 hp bites from poisonous snakes, he has to make 100 seperate Fortitude saves, not some smaller number).However, at higher levels you get better at avoiding damage; a 10 hp hit represents less damage when it happens to a character with 150 hp than it does to a character with 15 hp.This doesn't mean the first character is physically tougher. (Actually, he probably is, but not by nearly enough to explain having ten times as many hit points).It also doesn't mean that there are seperate hit points for luck, skill, divine favor, physical damage, willpower and so on. That "flavoured hit point" model leads to silly results as soon as you look at it for too long, the fact that the first-edition DMG seems to endorse it notwithstanding. Luck, for example, does not ablate as it is used, on most understandings of what luck is.It means the 150 hp character, by whatever means, manages to mitigate some of the damage the 15 hp character would have taken. The correct model is not {hit points} = {physical damage} + {luck, skill etc}, it is more like {hit points} = {physical damage} x {luck, skill etc} - combat skill and so on act as a scaling factor, which in practice is approximately equal to experience level.I believe that this model has two advantages over every alternative model I have seen: it is (at least tied for) the most consistent with the rules as written, and it is the least weird in terms of what hit points correspond to from an in-character standpoint. The only thing in the game this fails to model is healing spells, which need serious work to make game-world sense no matter what model of hit points you use.Regardless, I am of the opinion that as long as you have one or more hit points remaining, you aren't too seriously injured; it's only once you hit zero or negatives that you can be considered badly hurt.(As posted by Jeff Heikkinen to the ENWorld message boards 10/5/2003, with minor clarifications added since.)(And here's Bradd W Szonye, more recently and on a different list)Gamers frequently complain that D&D lets heroes soak up ridiculousamounts of damage, even though the rulebooks say otherwise. Hit pointsdo represent the ability to survive attacks, but that doesn't(necessarily) mean that characters take it on the chin and then soak thedamage! For most heroes, it means that they deflect the blows or rollwith the punch, or the bullet hits the cigarette case in his pocket, or"two inches to the right and I would've been dead." Attacks do /not/cause serious harm unless they take the character to 0 hp or below.Anything less than that gets parried, dodged, lucked out, divinefavored, fated away, or anything else appropriate to the character.(Maybe even soaked up, if you're playing that kind of hero.) There's nosingle rationale for this; the rules say to use anything that makessense for your character.....It's no different from creating a character for an action movie. You cancome up with rationales for his amazing feats, you can just shrug andaccept it, or you can whine about how it's not really logical. I knowwhich kind of person I /don't/ like to sit next to in a movie theater.</blockquote>

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