Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="see" data-source="post: 8589140" data-attributes="member: 10531">The problem is very simply that D&D hit points (as they were explicitly defined by the game's original author) are a grab-bag of things too vague to meaningfully analyze. How much favor-of-the-gods should a gunshot cost a character compared to a sword stab?Now, if you choose to redefine D&D hit points as resistance-to-physical-force, sure, then you can then discuss damage in terms of pure physical force.  But then you're also declaring that it takes less physical force to stab straight through three warhorses to kill a fourth than it takes to cut through a thin layer of a 10th-level character's skin and muscle to reach the carotid or femoral artery. You'll get a really coherent model of how much damage each weapon should do . . . and as a consequence produce results such as characters being able to take a gun and shoot themselves in the head to intimidate their foes.Which is perfectly acceptable if that's the way you want to have things work in your game, but most people playing D&D, historically, aren't aesthetically on-board with that. And if you ad hoc your way around such consequences of a definition of hit points, all you're doing is pushing "hit points are not a simulation of resistance to physical force" under a rug.</blockquote>