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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6306161" data-attributes="member: 6688937">The resolution of the abstraction has gotten increasingly finer over the course of the game's editions. What you're suggesting might be fine under minute-long combat rounds, but...at least since 3e, and for some of my 2e DMs back in the 90's, things haven't been very abstract for quite some time. Honestly, it doesn't have to. Fate's system works quite well, and isn't very hard or complicated at all. Apocalypse World has another system of interest (which doesn't look very complicated, but I have not used). MHRP's system is simple. I do not feel that the whole "HP are the simplest solution" argument is actually very well founded, at least on the PC side of things. Its not like the only two alternatives are HP system or detailed hit-location charts with medically-relevant consequences in three appendices. Sure, when you had a bunch of ships to keep track of, HP made some sense. But, when you've got a single PC to play, not so much.While I have no doubt that that's how you play it in your games, that wasn't actually what you were saying. You were saying that it would be consistent with the mechanics to narrate the majority of a PC's HP loss as non-physical-ish stuff; luck, divine favor, etc. Now, you have previously in this thread indicated your belief that the game mechanics effectively act as the laws of physics for the characters and that they would be aware of them. If so, how is it that they make sense of a world where what we would consider substantial physical injury is indistinguishable from the non-physical-ish stuff? I find the idea that all heroes are always (or even usually) aware of when they are about to down from the next hit....odd and counterintuitive. Additionally...what exactly does mostly-fine or almost-dead mean here? The mostly-fine hero will function exactly as well as the fine hero in every way easily measured by his comrades (jump as far, fight as well, hit as hard...etc.) If as you claim above, the level of abstraction is very high, then the hero certainly cannot make any such judgement about the next hit or not. At best, the hero might be able to declare something as vague as "I won't last much longer here." However, absent his ability to sense his own rapidly-reddening energy bar, we have no reason to believe or understand how he knows this.Now, to bring this back to the thread's question, this can be fine. In a Gamist/Gamey game, where the fictional details are mostly for color, its perfectly acceptable or maybe even preferable.  However, I don't think it does very well outside of that context. If D&D 5e holds strongly to its HP heritage, then it should definitely lean towards the Game end of things and away from the Simulation end of things.</blockquote>

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