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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6502496" data-attributes="member: 42582">Not exactly.Gygax's DMG, pp 61, 81:As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures as well) are concerned. Therefore, the location of hits and the type of damage caused are not germane to them . . . Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the last handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections. . . . [R]ecall the justification for character hit points. That is, damage is not actually sustained - at least in proportion to the number of hit points marked off in most cases. The so called damage is the expenditure of favor from deities, luck, skill, and perhaps a scratch . . . [T]hus the saving throw [versus poison]. If that mere scrach managed to be venomous, then DEATH. If no such wound was delivered, then NO DAMAGE FROM THE POISON.What is clear from this is that up until the last handful of hit points, hit point loss does not correspond to physical damage, except perhaps a nick or scratch. Any such nick or scratch is not physically damaging in any meaningful way, and hence questions of hit location and damage type are not germane.The hit point essay on p 82 also indicates that when a high level fighter is healing for a month to regain all his/her hit points, the bulk of that recovery must be of "metaphysical" hit points - because assuming that s/he had not been reduced to 0 or fewer hit points (which introduces its own, condition-based, rules and healing requirements), s/he can't have suffered a wound that cannot be physically healed in a few days. (Because a 0-level character with just a handful of hit points could also suffer, and then recover, from such a wound.)The main differences between Gygaxian hit points and 4e hit points are:(i) dropping to zero hp is treated differently - in 4e it is more Schroedinger-y than in Gygax's AD&D; (ii) whatever physical damage that is suffered that is not potentially fatal (ie that does not drop to zero or fewer hp) in core 4e debilitates for only the time it takes to have a long rest, whereas in AD&D it can debilitate for at least a couple of days; (iii) metaphysical hit points take a long time to recover in AD&D, whereas in 4e metaphysical hit points can be very quickly recovered by inspiration, whether from the words of an allied battle captain, a benediction spoken by a cleric,  getting one's second wind, or some other form of surge-dependent healing.To reply to  [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] on the issue of verisimilitude, 4e is no different from AD&D as far as point (ii) is concerned - in both systems, the combat system has no capacity to deliver injury results that are not potentially fatal, but that take extended periods of rest to recover (eg no broken limbs).In my view it is no different as far as (iii) is concerned either. There is nothing inherently versimilitudinous about "metaphysical" hit points (luck, grit etc) taking minutes or days to recover. Personally I find that pacing of 4e corresponds better to action fiction of the superheroic or Conan-esque variety.The biggest pressure on verisimilitude in 4e, in my view, arises at point (i). In AD&D this is not particularly realistic either - any injury that is potentially fatal, but that does not kill, can be recovered from in a week or so, which is much quicker than real life. In 4e many occasions of being dropped to zero hit points are more like a swoon or a temporary dizziness, rather than a potentially fatal wound (analogues are found in boxing, when a fighter falls to the canvass and then gets up; and in LotR, when Frodo faints after being "stabbed" by the troll) but the game system doesn't tell us which is which until after the death saving throw/recovery process has been resolved.5e is more like 4e than AD&D in this respect: being dropped to zero hit points doesn't in and of itself impose any significant debilitation, and hence you can't tell whether or not a blow that dropped someone to zero hit points was a serious, potentially fatal, injury until they have failed three death saves (at which point, as in 4e, you know that it was potentially fatal, and that that potentiality was realised).</blockquote>

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