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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5597824" data-attributes="member: 21169">Good points. I agree that these are all important features of adventure fiction. But I don't think of hit points as a fiction-simulationist mechanic because:1) That wasn't the original intention.2) The mechanic has not been used in this manner, certainly prior to 4e. What I mean by this is that by the core rules PCs have always started at 1st level and thus have too few hit points to resemble fictional protagonists. Admittedly one can get around this by starting the PCs at higher than 1st level, as is the case in the original Dragonlance modules.3) Hit points don't do the job of fiction-sim sufficiently well -    They are the wrong mechanic to simulate mooks. A simpler rule, such as, “A Mook is always incapacitated when struck by a Hero”, is all that is required. A mook doesn't need a hit points stat at all. And it leaves open the possibility that a hero might deal insufficient damage to take one out in a single blow.They are the wrong mechanic to simulate protagonists. In adventure fiction, when the protagonist is visibly wounded and struggles on, what is going on there? Is he being whittled down? If he's struck a sufficient number of times will he be taken out? No, imo what's happening is that we need to see our heroes suffer before they can win. Rather than hit points, a Suffering stat would be more appropriate. Suffering would have to reach a certain value before the villain can be defeated.Protagonists in adventure fiction can certainly be incapacitated but when it happens they are not generally whittled down. It's instant – chloroform, blow to the head, sleep gas, hypnotic lights - and they wake up imprisoned or in a death trap. It's primarily a scene-switching device, though the experience would also add to the hero's Suffering.They are insufficient, as a mechanic, to simulate villains. You're correct that, in order to simulate adventure fiction, the confrontation with the villain needs to take a significant length of time. But are hit points the right mechanic here? Does the villain just have to be struck a certain number of times until the final blow takes his last few hit points, even if that final blow is a feeble at-will power? That's not how it works imo. The final blow has to be something special, it's not just one more bullet. For example the Terminator in the first film has to be crushed in a hydraulic press.The great strength of the hit point mechanic, in my view, is not that it simulates anything, but that it is simple and playable. Thus I do not see it as simulationist.</blockquote>

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