NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8963674" data-attributes="member: 6801252">Interestingly, the way I think of HP is simulative, but not to the real world, its to a world that happens to make for a fun game, and to some kinds of fantasy fiction that I think are a good fit for the games themselves and are most popular these days. So for instance, this is what a character might look like at full HP: <img src="https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ae/96/99/ae96993fc20a660a42c18520eefdfcd4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 174px" />Here's the same character after they've lost some hit points:<img src="https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/beb4f8d0-85a5-4e5c-a09a-215b04dd9071/d7t6qqh-8a934d9b-f9ae-4f68-8eb4-c43d889e5b1d.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JlYjRmOGQwLTg1YTUtNGU1Yy1hMDlhLTIxNWIwNGRkOTA3MVwvZDd0NnFxaC04YTkzNGQ5Yi1mOWFlLTRmNjgtOGViNC1jNDNkODg5ZTViMWQucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.HZgyRuo8DB7w6hhuBMD0D8ZcLxkLHGeKso_j1FFIabs" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 126px" />There is an awful lot of fiction, much of it which IS even more closely aligned with modern TTRPG fantasy (e.g. swords and elves and orcs and wizards), that uses a dynamic like this most of the time. Where characters can take a bunch of hits (so you don't get the ludic dissonance of hits not really being hits), and you can see the damage on their body, but simultaneously none of it really compromises their fighting ability or represents a specific wound-- the closer they are to toppling over, the more exaggerated the generic battle damage is, maybe even starting to include things like a clearly broken arm, but as far as any of it goes, it's still pretty abstract-- you don't track the broken arm the same way you don't track facing, despite your character obviously facing a certain way. This is pretty much hit points as 4e conceptualized them-- you could say the second picture is a depiction of being 'bloodied' which to that game means half HP. To me, this can still be a perfectly good simulation, because the world it simulates is one where combatants have this ability to take hits well beyond what you or I can, and the way this durability is understood is that individual parts of them don't break the same way, but the body as a whole can take enough of a beating not to go on. HP is actually kind of an ideal mechanic for simulating that state of battle damage, and 4e actually did a great job because it created the bloodied condition, which then lets it hang things off of that state-- like someone getting stronger when they've taken enough damaged to be pushed, which is actually a GREAT SIMULATION of some of the things we see in this kind of fantasy fiction.</blockquote>

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