Well that was fast. One thorough, reasoned OP, and six pages of posts that don't even try to make a case to the contrary. I'm still waiting for a real answer as to what the other side of this argument is. Seems to me like logic and reason against spite and vitriol. A microcosm of many things, I suppose.
To be fair, it is considered gauche to tout your credentials while hiding your identity. Most of the snide responses seem to be directed towards the OP's faux pas in that regard.
That said, I agree with the sentiment that "damage on a miss" is inherently contradictory, and doesn't make sense; that's part and parcel of accepting the "hit point loss as physical damage" stance over that of "hit point loss as a variety of factors that culminate in loss of combat effectiveness" (which I think "damage on a miss" is an extension of). Moreover, the arguments in favor of this latter idea seem to employ some fairly tortured logic. The biggest proponents of the idea tend to put forward one or more of the following:
1)
Hit points as physical damage doesn't make sense because it means an absolute representation of a wound. The basic idea here is that your average commoner would die from a single attack that did, say, 8 hit points of damage. Ergo, that single attack would represent some instantly-lethal blow, such as being decapitated or skewered through the heart.
A lot of pro-"hit point loss is not physical damage" people hold that this representation ("8 hit points of damage in one attack is a lethal blow") is an absolute; that is, it's true across every instance of damage that deals 8+ hit points in the game. Since there are obviously characters, such as the PCs, that not only routinely survive such wounds, but often do so in rapid succession while still fighting, then the only way to reconcile this is to discard the entire notion of hit points as physical damage.
The problem with this reasoning is its absolutist nature. You can maintain the "hit points as damage" stance while discarding "absolute representation" in favor of damage scaling. "Damage scaling" here means that hit point loss represents a physical wound whose seriousness is represented by how large a proportion it is of the character's total hit points. So for a commoner with only 6 hit points, that 8 hit points of damage from one attack is indeed a one-hit killshot. But for the character with 80 hit points, that same blow for the same 8 points of damage is a deep cut or a large bruise, nothing more.
In other words, the "hit point loss as damage" mechanic doesn't marry the fluff to the crunch so tightly that it breaks the entire concept.
There are some popular counter-arguments here. The first is that this gives rise to a "bitten to death by ducks" scenario, where someone with 80 hit points can be whittled down by 1 hit point over eighty hits, until they suddenly drop dead from that eightieth scratch. That never struck me as a very weighty complaint, simply because it seems plausible that you can take many small wounds that, collectively, can add up to being lethal in scope.
The second rebuttal usually comes in the form of noting how healing magic becomes less effective for higher-hit point creatures under this model. That is, the cure light wounds spell, which was healing commoners from life-threatening injuries, won't heal our 80-hit point hero of more than a few scratches. That's a valid charge, but is something of a corner-case; it's not enough to justify discarding the entire "hit point loss as damage" concept, at least to me.
2)
Hit point loss as damage is a faulty concept, because there's no simulationist aspect to that damage. The idea here is that characters that take severe amounts of physical damage should show the effects of that damage under the game rules. That is, being wounded near death should have some mechanical representation with regards to a character's ability to fight back, to move, etc. Ergo, since no such debilitating effects are modeled by a loss of hit points, then hit point loss therefore cannot represent physical damage.
The problem with this reasoning (that I find) is that it demands a greater level of simulationism than D&D provides for (in any edition). Rather than acquiescing that the game doesn't, and doesn't intend to, go to this granular of a level, this rationale holds that it does indeed provide for that level of detail, and since it does, the game must therefore be conveying that hit point loss doesn't represent physical damage. This ignores the idea that, taken to extreme, this line of thought means that no one ever suffers severe physical wounds, or can die of damage, in the course of the game, since there's no mechanical model for that in the game.
3)
Gary didn't use the "hit points as damage" idea. Gary wrote, back in the 1E DMG, that hit point loss didn't represent physical wounds, saying that it was a combination of luck, stamina, divine protection, and other stuff. Hence, that's the original interpretation of what hit points are right there.
There are a number of problems with this idea. First, Gary seems to have been subscribing to the "damage as an absolute wound" idea listed above, with all of its attendant issues. Given how new D&D was at the time (about five years or so), I'm given to wonder if the idea of damage scaling simply wasn't around/hadn't occurred to him at that point.
Second, Gary didn't have an absolute position. Rather,
Gary was inconsistent. He also came up with spells titled
cure light wounds which restored hit points - there's a reason he named the spell as healing wounds, rather than calling it
cure light mixture of stamina, luck, and divine providence. There are multiple parts of the 1E game books that can be read for and against each stance on the issue of what hit points represent. Gary's ideas are, like a lot of 1E, open to interpretation.
Third, Gary's opinion with regards to 1E shouldn't shape the debate, particularly about later editions. The nature of an edition change is that some of the assumptions of the preceding edition will be changed or discarded. Further, the question of what hit points represent is (at least in part) a question of logic - an appeal to authority doesn't help there.
Finally, the writings in the DMG aren't the "original interpretation" of what hit points represent. Hit points come from the old wargames where a single unit represented a number of troops. Each hit point represented a single individual, and therefore hit point loss was the death of that many soldiers. In other words, the first use of hit points was as physical damage, if we want to look for precedent (though precedent, like an appeal to authority, is of limited use when the debate is over an issue of logic).
On a personal note, the idea of "damage on a miss" where "hit point loss isn't physical damage" always reminded me of kids on the playground putting their fingers an inch away from another kid and yelling "We're not touching you! We're not touching you!" over and over. High heroics, there.
