D&D General What “hit points” is?

[Hriston]

To answer this question, you have to go back 48 years to 1971, the date of publication of D&D‘s predecessor, Chainmail. Chainmail is primarily a set of rules for resolving large-scale medieval battles, and, as such, it’s primary combat-resolution mechanic answers two basic questions, which are: After one minute of melee combat, did your opponent kill any of your men, and did you kill any of your opponent’s men? Getting to the kills without a lot of extraneous fiddling around is key to speed of play in this type of game.

The basic play loop, then, as it relates to melee combat, is as follows: the fictional positioning is established that melee is occurring between two or more units through use of figures on a play surface, which triggers the use of the fortune mechanic. Again, in its most basic form, this involves the participants rolling a number of d6s (up to 4) for each unit depending on the relative troop-types of both the attacking and defending units. Sixes (and, in some cases, fours and fives) rolled are “hits” and count as kills, which makes sense given that a solid blow from a sword or some other lethal weapon is likely to result in the target’s death. Thus, it is established that, in the fictional battle, some number of men have been killed.

Flash forward to 1974, D&D is a set of rules for playing a fantasy hero in an ongoing campaign. Survivability of the individual figure becomes an issue, and an additional fortune mechanic, hit points, is appended onto Chainmail’s combat resolution mechanic. On a hit, instead of the fiction resulting in the target being killed outright, further mechanics are triggered: a d6 is rolled (damage), and the total is subtracted from the target’s hit points. Then, if the target has any hit points left, the resulting fiction is that the target wasn’t killed, and only if all the target’s hit points are taken away does the fiction result in the target being killed. Thus, hit points interpose themselves between a “hit” and a kill.

The question being answered by the resolution mechanic in both systems is the same: Does the attack kill? I think hit points, as a mechanic, causes an issue when, on a hit, the “to hit” roll is made to feed directly into the fiction without first completing the resolution mechanic by rolling damage and comparing the total to the target’s hit points. Only then has it been resolved if the target was killed or not.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Excelling post!

I will expand on this, if I may, to say that this is why the narrative of the resolution becomes so important. The fortune mechanic doesn't care how the combat happens, only the result at the end: life or death.

 

[Krachek]

Hit point is what you loose when your character take damage.
and damage is what make you loose hit points.

 

[Hussar]

Excelling post!

I will expand on this, if I may, to say that this is why the narrative of the resolution becomes so important. The fortune mechanic doesn't care how the combat happens, only the result at the end: life or death.

I disagree.

The narrative of the resolution doesn't matter one whit. Whether you are narrating wounds, or numbers springing out of the character's forehead, the game doesn't care. The combat mechanics of D&D in no way guide the narrative of what happens during combat outside of "you die".

 

[DND_Reborn]

I disagree.

The narrative of the resolution doesn't matter one whit. Whether you are narrating wounds, or numbers springing out of the character's forehead, the game doesn't care. The combat mechanics of D&D in no way guide the narrative of what happens during combat outside of "you die".

Umm.. you realize you're saying the exact same thing? I mean, did you read the last sentence of my post???

 

[Celebrim]

To put it simply, it is a measure of how hard something is to kill.

It doesn't explain why something might be hard to kill. If that thing is a Brontosaurus, the mass of the creature is a fairly large part of why one might think it ought to be hard to kill, and in turn why you might assign to a Brontosaurus a large number of hit points. If that thing is Conan or John Carter, then there are a number of other reasons why you might think it hard to kill, be it agility, cunning, skill, luck, or hardiness and so assign Conan or John Cater a large number of hit points.

But the system doesn't really care.

This only starts to go awry when someone starts defining the hit point in a concrete manner, and says that the hit point is some simple concrete thing rather than saying its the mechanical implementation of any number of different reasons why something should be hard to kill. This is why the two sides of the "meat" and "not meat" argument are both wrong.

The only really baffling thing is how often this keeps coming up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. The combat mechanics of D&D in no way guide the narrative of what happens during combat outside of "you die".

And, well, if you're playing 4e or attacking in melee in 5e, it's more like "are defeated" because you can choose the KO instead of killing the creature you reduce to 0hp.

 

[Hussar]

Umm.. you realize you're saying the exact same thing? I mean, did you read the last sentence of my post???

No, no I'm not.

You are saying that the "the narrative of the resolution becomes so important". I'm saying that the narrative of the resolution doesn't matter at all.

So, since I'm apparenlty missing something, what do you mean that the narrative becomes so important? Important to what or to whom?

 

[StormbringerAUS]

The only really baffling thing is how often this keeps coming up.

Yes I find it confusing why so many discussions about it - it is a game system none will be perfect this one does however seem to work well for alot of people.

 

[Maxperson]

I disagree.

The narrative of the resolution doesn't matter one whit. Whether you are narrating wounds, or numbers springing out of the character's forehead, the game doesn't care. The combat mechanics of D&D in no way guide the narrative of what happens during combat outside of "you die".

That's not true, either. The combat mechanics say this...

"When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious."

So it's clear that the mechanics are guiding you to describe bodily damage based on what percentage of hit points are left. 100-50%, 49-1%, and 0%.