So, if the 100hp dude isn't actually capable of withstanding significantly more physical injury than the 20hp dude, but is instead good at avoiding the full force of the blow, then presumably he's not getting as physically injured. Yet it's perfectly possible that he requires a lot more healing than someone with lower hit points, after taking less actual damage. Why? What privileges one particular hit point over another particular hit point?
Mearls: The core of D&D
- Thread starter TerraDave
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So, if the 100hp dude isn't actually capable of withstanding significantly more physical injury than the 20hp dude, but is instead good at avoiding the full force of the blow, then presumably he's not getting as physically injured. Yet it's perfectly possible that he requires a lot more healing than someone with lower hit points, after taking less actual damage. Why? What privileges one particular hit point over another particular hit point?
This, of course, being subjective opinion. Many people whom discover a damage system like M&M/True20 or Savage Worlds and find they never want to go back to hit points - especially, DND style hp, ever again.
What he's saying is that, while there are games out there that do things differently, hit points have won out in the "marketplace of ideas"- more games use them than don't- because they are perceived as having so many advantages over those other damage tracking systems.
Which is why, even after trying things like M&M or True20, you see people going back to HP systems- and even house-ruling them back in:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...hit-points-back-into-mutants-masterminds.html
True20 Adventure Roleplaying • View topic - Hit Points for True20
http://true20.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2377
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Raven Crowking
First Post
You know, I am absolutely sure that I already answered that.
But, I will do so again:
My full health (in hit point terms) is not the same as the full health of the prizefighter (in hit point terms).
When I am at full health, and he is at -80 hit points, we might have exactly the same physical injuries remaining. The only difference is that, because he is competent, those injuries hamper his ability, while they do not hamper my incompetence. But (and this is important) even hampered, he is still more competent that I.
0 hp damage =/= completely uninjured. Injuries can (and do) fall below the threshold of 1 hp in D&D.
If this still seems odd to you, imagine any pro athelete on his best day, and on a poor day. Full hit points in D&D, as hit points accumulate, begin more and more to represent that best day. Little things can throw the athelete off his performance, which you and I would hardly notice. Not because we are better, but because we are far, far worse. You will note that there is a real difference between that pro on his best and worst day.
Imagine, instead, that it is I on my best and worst day. Far less difference. In fact, you might not even notice. Low level hit points are like that.
Yet, even at only 20% of his best, the pro is at least twice as good as I. And, at 20% of his best, the pro might have fewer actual injuries than I do at full hit points.
Or, to (re)quote Gary:
Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5 1/2 hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm -- the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.
RC
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Celebrim
Legend
Well, of course it is subjective. That's not a particularly powerful observation. Of course there are some people who prefer M&M style damage tracks to hit points, and for some genera's I feel that a damage track works better than a hit point system. In highly gritty campaigns, you might want one hit to put you out of a fight - even if it didn't kill you - and perhaps every hit to be felt mechically. A damage track agruably does that better than hit points do. Likewise, in a lighter hearted campaign based on a genera where death is essentially unknown, a damage track can be a good way of measuring defeat without every getting to death.
But the point is that of the several different sorts of wound tracking systems that have been used, hit points have proven to be the most popular and the most widely adopted. To suggest that that is done out of ignorance on the part of the designers because they are too uncreative to think of something better, or because they are too hard headed to adopt this amazing alternative that you prefer is I think to be a bit arrogant. God knows I was back in the day as a 17 year old kid. I could recite chapter and verse about what was wrong with hit points. It took me a while of actually experimenting with other ideas before I started considering (or being even able to consider) what was right about hit points.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Patryn of Elvenshae
First Post
Yeah - I've never, ever been particularly excited by a +1 sword. A flamtongue, an orcbane sword, the ancestral relic of the Great [Whoever]?
Yes.
A +1 weapon? A +2 weapon?
No.
Natural healing (in most editions) scales appropriately. It's only the cure spells that are historically dissociated. And the reason for that basically boils down to "game balance" and "resource management".
The abstraction of the system is not "some hit points don't represent physical wounds". The abstraction of the system is "a 1 hp wound for character A might be a 6 hp wound for character B; the difference is due to character B being faster, luckier, tougher, blessed, or any number of other things". Like all abstracted systems, there are places where the abstraction breaks down. But, in general, the system works as intended.
See also Explaining Hit Points.
Doug McCrae
Legend
I have noticed that players often interpret hit points as being more physical than the explanations in the rules texts, such as those in 1e and 3e. When they are on low hit points they will sometimes 'play act' being in a bad way - moaning, etc - even though, ofc, there are no penalties to any other abilities for being on low hit points. I think the players are right, and the game text is wrong. There's a really important reason to allow the player characters a way of knowing they are on low hit points - survival. If hit points are just 'flesh wounds' until a character hits zero then how do the characters know they need healing, etc?
The other solution is to metagame it.
The other solution is to metagame it.
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You keep telling people that you have already answered their questions, but they clearly don't see it that way. So, walk us through how hit points work.
Our amazing swordsman -- with, say, 50 hit points -- cuts down numerous good-but-not-great swordsmen, taking "hits" and losing hit points to "damage" along the way.
The canonical pre-4E explanation is that he is indeed getting physically hit each time, but none of the blows lands quite true, so instead of costing him close to 100 percent of his hit points, each blow only costs him 10 percent of his hit points. He's getting battered, bruised, scratched up, etc.
As he gets progressively tired and beat down, more and more of the blows land harder and harder, and they cost him proportionally more and more of his smaller and smaller pool of hit points. A 5-hp hit is more physically damaging when you only have 10 hp left than when you are fresh as a daisy with 50 hp left.
That's all fine and good -- if you've accepted the subtle plot-protection and predictability built in to hit points as a good thing -- but it doesn't ring true when it comes time to recover those hit points. This is not a new complaint. Our master swordsman should be able to get his wind -- and thus half of his hit points? -- back in a matter of minutes.
If he's just fatigued and bruised, a quick swig of elf wine or orc liquor should get him back in the fight. But, by the rules, the same miraculous healing magic that could bring his victims back from near death cannot even get him his wind back? Really? Because even the slightest fatigue and bruising puts him at the level of his good-but-not-great foes?
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