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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4222041" data-attributes="member: 3424">I think the key assumption here is that hit points are somehow a property of the person, and that they shouldn't have to change based on circumstances. Instead, what changes is the lethality of the circumstances. A character may trip and fall one day and only take one point of damage because the DM rolled low on 1d6. The second time, he may have critically fumbled a Dexterity check, or some other circumstance occured which increased the damage from the fall to 3d6, and the DM rolled three sixes. In both cases, the results are fully consistent with the fact that he had 4 hp, and will continue to have 4 hp unless there is some change to the person (say, gaining a level, or losing Constitution).Interestingly enough, I recall an anecdote from a TSR staffer that in the early days of D&D (when a character's Hit Dice were expressed as XdY in the rules), he used to roll hit points for the PCs every session. So, a character with 5d8 Hit Dice could have 20 hit points one session and 40 hit points the next. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> If that approach had become the standard, it would be much easier to describe minions and paragon-level fighters dying due to falling off horses. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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