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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4218818" data-attributes="member: 32164">Okay, now I believe we have the possibility of getting somewhere. I agree with you that it's counterproductive to make a ludicrous assumption and then get upset about its implications. So instead, let us make a decision that whenever we are confronted by the implications of an assumption that we will first question the assumption itself to see if it is, indeed, ludicrous. If it is, it is the assumption that needs revisiting, not the implications.I also like the direction here because it lets us question ridiculous things like a housecat that can kill a commoner (or a 1st-level wizard).So, I would agree with the point that little Tim might cut himself with a knife without inflicting a lethal injury. Or skin his knees while playing, or anything similar. Clearly, for our 1 hit point commoner, he seems to have the ability to take some degree of non-lethal damage.Again, I would mostly agree with this (with a proviso I'll get to). At least so far as it concerns low-level commoners. When we're talking about characters with many, many hit points, we can get into some different interpretations. I'll get back to that in a minute, but I want to address another point first.Your first point is the one that I want to dwell on briefly. You said "Hit points represent your ability to avoid dying from life-threatening injuries." I would argue that that's only "sort of true." Rather, I would argue that "hit points represent your ability to avoid dying from potentially life-threatening injuries." That may sound like nitpicking, but hear me out.By inserting "potentially," we can argue that a 1 hp wound is a wound that can be inflicted by a serious knife, a shuriken or even a lesser injury from a sword or axe. This can kill anyone, but is less than what all these weapons are capable of. Similarly, a knife wielded with lethal intent is capable of inflicting an injury that's sufficient to kill some people (anybody with less than 4 hp) in a single blow. But what does this 1 hp mean to a character who has 10? Further, has villager Bob (who has 6 hp) taken an injury equivalent to the one received by his 1 hp neighbor? Perhaps. But this only makes sense up to a certain point.Emphasis mine. That is actually my preferred interpretation of what hit points, and the loss thereof, represent. Yes, characters can, to a degree, have minor injuries without losing hit points. But they can also (and this is especially true of experienced adventurer types) lose hit points but have only minor injuries. Basically, that minor injury is a tiny fraction of the character's resistance to injury. At first level, it's 1/8th of a hit point, or less, and we just fudge it as not relevant. By the time we're dealing with characters that have 80 hp, they can react to a sword blow that would split a normal man in half (10 hp!) and end up with nothing more than a slight cut. It was the same strike, but a different result, because the target made it different.Moreover, this interpretation allows characters who we have established are not going to die from their injuries to still be "injured" (in the sense of having nicks, scabs, bruises and flesh wounds) but be at full hit points. It also allows things like the Warlord's inspirational healing, the Second Wind ability, and similar to make a lot more sense.The way I see them, hit points represent your ability to turn a potentially lethal (or disabling) injury into one that is non-lethal. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, wear you out, or potentially leave you bruised, cut, or bleeding. It just means that you aren't in danger of death. Now, I also hold to the theory that a "hit" doesn't even have to hit, as long as it wears down your ability to avoid future injury. Now, there are some corner case things here. Poisoned attacks have to be described as "hits" that draw blood for the condition of "poisoned" to make any kind of sense, even if they do only one point of damage to a character possessing hundreds. Similarly, if I was, for example, running a duel with the characters playing to "first blood from the torso" (or somesuch), I would probably rule that the character had only been pinked when they hit the "bloodied" condition. Anything before that might be a cut to the arm, or a bruise, or a near miss, but it isn't "first blood."Now, first touch? That's the first attack that does hit point damage. My interpretation.By the way, it has been confirmed that when your blow would drop an opponent to negative hit points, you can choose to "pull the blow," knocking them out rather than killing them. I believe it was in Rodney's blog, but I'm not sure.</blockquote>

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