How Hit Points Ruin SoD

[fanboy2000]

I took Suspension of Disbelief out behind the barn and shot him with a 12 gage just before I decapitated it, burned the remains, and scattered the ashes at the four corners of the Earth. People kept using him to justify removing all the fun I was having.

 

[Minigiant]

I describe most of my "hits" as last minute parries, dodges, and backflips. When I actually say something about blood outside of a bad cut, someone is dying or dead.

My cousins just call high level games "Lucky Parry Fest" and suspend.

 

[Krensky]

PS to General Public: 'Near miss' is a pet peeve of mine, so please consider what it actually means before using it. A near hit is a narrow escape; a near miss involves large amounts of blood and/or flaming wreckage. Thank you.

The dictionary disagrees with you.

 

[Alex319]

How about this explanation of hit points:

Your character has a certain amount of "life energy" inside of him. Hit points are simply a unit of measurement of life energy, in the same way that liters are a unit of measurement of volume. When you are hit, the "life energy" is spent to stabilize the wounds and allow you to keep fighting. When you have no more "life energy" this process no longer works and you fall unconscious.

This explains pretty much all the features of hit points.

Why can you survive being impaled by a spear? Because the magical "life energy" stabilizes the wound.

Why do you fight just as well reduced to 25% hit points as you do at full hit points? For the same reason your cell phone gets just as good reception when its battery is only 25% charged as when it's fully charged.

How do healing surges work? They're just another form of energy that can be converted into "life energy", in the same way that a battery converts chemical energy into electrical energy. This also explains why some magical items require healing surges to use.

Why do you keep getting more and more hit points, and increase your healing surge value, as you go up in level? Because your internal "life energy" system gets more efficient.

Why can you recover all your hit points and healing surges in just eight hours? It's just like recharging a cell phone, except that instead of plugging into an external source of power, there's energy just floating around that you can extract.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

How about this explanation of hit points:

Your character has a certain amount of "life energy" inside of him. Hit points are simply a unit of measurement of life energy, in the same way that liters are a unit of measurement of volume. When you are hit, the "life energy" is spent to stabilize the wounds and allow you to keep fighting. When you have no more "life energy" this process no longer works and you fall unconscious.

This explains pretty much all the features of hit points.

Why can you survive being impaled by a spear? Because the magical "life energy" stabilizes the wound.

Why do you fight just as well reduced to 25% hit points as you do at full hit points? For the same reason your cell phone gets just as good reception when its battery is only 25% charged as when it's fully charged.

How do healing surges work? They're just another form of energy that can be converted into "life energy", in the same way that a battery converts chemical energy into electrical energy. This also explains why some magical items require healing surges to use.

Why do you keep getting more and more hit points, and increase your healing surge value, as you go up in level? Because your internal "life energy" system gets more efficient.

Why can you recover all your hit points and healing surges in just eight hours? It's just like recharging a cell phone, except that instead of plugging into an external source of power, there's energy just floating around that you can extract.

That's pretty much how I think of hp when I have to.

The dictionary disagrees with you.

Still farting the snarky one liners, eh folks? Okay, here's mine: Elementary logic/grammar agrees with me.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I think that hit points that increase endlessly ruin SOD. For instance, the old complaint that a high level fighter is cornered by seriously nasty enemies atop a mountain. She decides that rather than facing the monsters and dying, she'll jump off the mountain, take a relatively small amount of damage compared to her total hit points, dust herself off, and then look for a place to hide from the monsters.

 

[fissionessence]

Still farting the snarky one liners, eh folks? Okay, here's mine: Elementary logic/grammar agrees with me.

A near miss is a miss that was nearly a hit. It seems pretty straightforward.

As to the OP, I've seen 4E hit points described as Schrodinger's hit points. That is, you don't know whether your hp loss was due to 'morale' or actually getting wounded until you're healed. If it was magical healing, then it was a bloody, gaping wound; if it was 'martial' healing (eg warlord, second wind), then it was just morale and composure loss. For more understanding of the concept, Google 'Schrodinger's cat'. It's kind of a lighthearted comparison, but it's also very accurate

~ fissionessence

 

[vagabundo]

~ removed at vagabundo's request - PS~

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I'm guilty of the "It hits, dealing (Die roll) Damage!"
Being an old Palladium fan, I consider everything before "Bloodied" as minor scratches and bruises (a la SDC) Every hit after Bloodied is actually a wound causing the person to (strangely enough) BLEED. (Bloodied characters attract blood-seeking animals in my games too, Ie. Bears, vampires, stirges etc.)
When a person is unconcious and dying, that usually explains itself.

 

[TheNovaLord]

ive always gone with " you need something to represent the damage your taking" so just go with it with the odd bit of lyrical flourish

or

use a game that has descriptive /critical / hit locations wounds so you know where you have been hit, realise your weapon arms muscles have been slashed and are stunned and can see the hits/round you are loosing as you bleed out.....