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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6153361" data-attributes="member: 27160">But, if they can have a sense of how relatively "close to death" they are, why not how "close to gaining (another) aliquot of capability"? The two are analogous, surely?I don't really see or require that they get exact numbers for any of these things - do you get a numerical sense of how fatigued you are? I certainly don't, and yet I get a reasonable sense of "how much" fatigue I have, nevertheless. So let's assume, for the purposes of this thought experiment, that they D&D character gets a similar gauge of their own "lifefulness".Human beings cannot know how many hit points they have left (because they never had any), so why is what a human is capable of relevant to these alien beings who not only have such things but are capable of assessing (roughly or exactly) what proportion of them they have left? The workings of an ability don't have to empirically discovered under such an alien scheme; the character can simply sense whether or not s/he currently has the capacity to use it or not. In much the same way that I know whether I am hungry or not, they will know if they have the ability to perform their "schtick" right now or not.After a reasonable education, both theoretical and practical (and thus, at times, painful) I have a reasonable idea of "how tough I am" - but the concept (and also the reality, I am convinced through evidence) is nothing at all similar to "hit points".A sword (or, more likely, a knife) used to attack me might impact upon my "toughness" in a whole variety of ways. Biomechanical damage (up to severing whole appendages), breaking the integrity of the cardiovascular system (resulting in bleeding that will result in my death if not stopped) and otherwise superficial damage that may result in shock (potentially fatal if not treated), infection (ditto) and physical impairment through pain are all possible. Losing "hit points", frankly, isn't.If our D&D characters are so utterly different from us in the ways that their bodies receive and react to physical damage, why oh why must we assume that their mechanisms of fatigue, hunger, physical capability and physical incapacity are closely modelled on our own? This, I suggest, "makes no sense" (by which I mean it is inconsistent and without logical justification).It seems to me that there are two supportable models, if we presume the use of "hit points" or their equivalent:1) Hit points, and all similar game mechanical conceits, represent luck, divine favour, heroic capacity and other things that are intangible to the characters in the game world and exist only to regulate the running of the game in the external ("real") world.2) The characters are actually quite alien to humankind, and we are free to invent whatever game-world physics and character capacities and capabilities (along with limits to those capabilities) we please.To say that, arbitrarily, some of the characters' capabilities are quite alien to the evidence and experience of human existence while others "cannot" be different seems inconsistent, unreasonable and insupportable. To say that we like such a curious and ill-assorted mix would be entirely reasonable, but to insist that it cannot be otherwise is a stretch too far.</blockquote>

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