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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ourph" data-source="post: 4101742" data-attributes="member: 20239">It won't matter at all, because your definition, and the other players definitions and the DM's definition don't have any impact at all on the way the game plays.  The definition is just how you imagine the gameworld to be functioning in your own head.Your character can easily sense fatigue, slowing down, cuts, bruises, injuries, all of which you can imagine him experiencing during combat.  The point is that HP are not directly tied to those things in any meaningful way.  The HP define a narrative and you are free to interpret that narrative however you want in your own imagination.  Your fighter doesn't need a way of understanding or sensing HP, you the player, the one making the decisions about the character's fate are the only one who needs to track those things.  You make decisions based on your character's HP, but the character's motivations aren't based on HP, they are based on whatever narrative you've constructed of the ongoing action in your head.  If you decide, based on the abstract measure of HP, that your fighter character needs some help from the party Cleric, you can imagine any reason for this you want (a nasty gash, a stunning blow, etc.) to justify the character asking for help. You, the player, know the character is in trouble when HPs run low.  Your character knows he is in trouble when you, the player, decide he knows.  The rationalization you come up with for deciding your character thinks he's in trouble is up to you.  It could be he's feeling tired.  It could be he feels the life draining out of him.  It could be that he just feels like he's lost his mojo.  The point is, HP don't represent any concrete thing in the gameworld other than your character's ability to continue to participate in the fight.  Whatever HPs tell you about the results of combat is simply slotted into the narrative which you create in your own imagination.Who says you went from fine to dead?  You do.  If you have a problem with it, then it's your job as the player to imagine a different narrative within the gameworld.  HP are there to tell you when your character is bloodied, unconscious and dead, nothing more.  If you are having trouble with the idea that a character who is very physically injured (i.e. at 1hp) spontaneously healing his physical injuries through sheer willpower (Second Wind) then stop imagining a character being reduced to 1hp as "very physically injured" and Second Wind as "healing physical injuries through sheer willpower".  No one is forcing you to define HP in that way, in fact, from what I've seen of the 4e rules, they actively encourage you not to.  Everyone agrees that a single sword stroke can kill a perfectly healthy man, if it hits in the right spot.  Did that sword stroke do 500hp damage to a guy with 499hp, or did it do 2hp damage to a guy with 1hp?  That's a metagame question, in the gameworld, the effect is exactly the same.</blockquote>

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