Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 6144029" data-attributes="member: 21169">You're absolutely right that the explanation of hit points in the game text, the most detailed being in 1e, has always been that hit points have both a physical and non-physical component. However this explanation didn't square well with the way hit points actually functioned in rules terms - their loss is irrelevant until a character is down to zero, which seems to indicate that they represent nothing important, either physical or non-physical; healing spells are named Cure X Wounds, which seems to indicate that they are purely physical; hit points take a long time to recover, which also seems to indicate that they are physical; there are game features which affect morale, luck, skill and so forth but these don't seem to have a bearing on hit points, for example the spell bless in 1e affects morale but not hit points.So there's always been this contradiction, where the rules said one thing and the explanation of hit points said another. I think most D&Ders either, like me, never really bothered about it in actual play, or went with the rules over the explanation and thought that hit points were physical.</blockquote>