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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 4220917" data-attributes="member: 1879">That's because you're mis-applying the test, at least as I see it. I usually get labeled as a simulationist in these things so let's assume I am. As a simulationist, I don't care in the least if the game models our reality well. I care about whether or not it consistently models it's own reality well.HP may be toughness, "Meat points" as someone put it. It may show the supernatural strength of will that Wizard has aquired over the years which allow him to function when suffering a wound that would kill a lesser man. They may be a learnt ability to keep body and spirit together when they should have parted. They may be something else.But whatever they are, they are. Inside that game world they are an absolute and inconrovertible fact of life. Indeed it would be pretty easy for anyone to find out exactly how many HP they have by simply letting someone pelt them with blowgun darts until they pass out. Count the darts and you know your HP total. When HP start to be contextual, it as though you were to say that a bridge might be made of concrete one day when it's being used by humans, but somehow became a bridge of papiermache the very next day when some centaurs tried to cross it. Note that the problem a lot of non-simulationists have is when they try to insist, for whatever reason, that things which appear concretely in the rules are not actually there. That a sword in the game should be capable of doing the exact same thing it does in our world. Really? Should they also frequently break, as they do in our world? Bend? Roman accounts are full of gauls and celts haveing to stomp their blades back into shape in mid-battle. A person in our world can die from a single cut it is true. On the other hand the chinese had a torture technique called the "Death of a thousand cuts" where the victem isn't supposed to die till the last cut. Should we then assume that all people have 1000 hp? I don't want or need a game that models our reality exactly. My house has doors for that very reason. I do want a game where my character can reasonably expect things to work the same way twice running.</blockquote>

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