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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnivorous_Bean" data-source="post: 4086758" data-attributes="member: 57974">Okay, since my attempt to explain my viewpoint was derided as "condescending" and a "rant," I'll try to make it clearer this time.Hit points in D&D are an abstraction.When a 1st level fighter takes 10 points of damage, he dies. All of that damage is physical.When a 10th level fighter takes 10 points of damage, he is barely inconvenienced. He is the same person, but 9 additional levels makes him able to take 10 times more damage before dying.This can be seen as implying one of two things. -- One is that the fighter is taking precisely the same amount of physical damage, but is now, in some fashion, able to sustain a dozen or more previously fatal wounds before dying. This idea also assumes that every hit produces an injury, and that very likely, nobody will ever come out of a fight without multiple serious wounds.-- The other is that the fighter is no more able to sustain damage than he previously was, and that the additional hit points represent his fighting skill and ability to avoid damage. When he loses hit points, he is losing the ability to defend himself from a killing blow. He is placed at a disadvantage, becomes more tired, shows his opponent his defensive style which his opponent is now better able to counter, etc.The idea of a second wind and all that appears to be a logical extension of the second assumption. Taking months to heal from being progressively tired out and placed at a disadvantage is, under the second assumption, as absurd as the idea that you can second wind your way out of 8 or 9 ordinarily-fatal wounds under the first assumption. For an example of this, see the movie "Troy" -- specifically, the fight between Hector and Achilles. Both of them start out with high hit point totals, in D&D terms -- yet Hector is at low hit points before he's even injured, when one blow finally succeeds in killing him. That is why the blow kills him -- his ability to defend himself from the killing blow has been whittled away by the superior skill of Achilles (in short, he's taken more hit point damage, even though he's not physically wounded in every round of melee). Yet, if Hector had been able to break off the combat before the killing blow, doesn't it seem probable that he would have been able to go into battle again, if necessary, 6 hours later? All of his 'hit point damage' was in the form of exhaustion and tactical disadvantage (and lessening morale, IMO), up to the point when the final attack dropped him below 0 hit points with physical damage.The second wind/6 hour recovery mechanic seems to be logical under the assumption that hit point damage is mostly this exhaustion/disadvantage type of damage, which is also an explanation for inflating hit points which I happen to prefer.It is illogical under the idea that inflating hit points represent increased "meat resilience" of high level heroes. But that idea itself is so unrealistic and problematic, that I submit that it's better to include a mechanic which at least implies inflating hit points represent skill from a realism/verisimilitude viewpoint. I agree that it would be even more realistic to have two different pools of hit points -- one representing skill at protecting yourself from harm, which could be recovered by second wind/6 hour recovery effects, and one representing physical damage which could be healed only by magical healing or natural healing over time, and I might even houserule something to that effect. But IMO, this would be far too complex to include in a system like D&D, which has always tried to streamline damage effects to a single form of tracking (i.e. things that raise or lower hit points).</blockquote>

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