Why do we really need HP to represent things other than physical injuries?

[wedgeski]

"As good on the verge of unconsciousness as you are at full health, all else being equal" is an absolute mainstay of the kind of heroic fantasy D&D represents to me. The Hit Point abstraction is just an expression of that design, in my opinion, but a good one. I would not like to see it removed, and I wouldn't adopt any rules, optional or otherwise, that started us on the wounds/vitality/morale/permanent injury path. If they're available as an optional module for the grittier game, that's all to the better, but it just isn't D&D to me.

 

[Bluenose]

This isn't a problem if you interpret HP as physical damage, but 1 HP as different for different targets. 10 damage to an uninjured 10th level fighter is a minor flesh wound, while 10 damage to a 1st level fighter is a serious wound that will take a week to heal.

So hit points are representing your ability to turn serious wounds into light wounds. Rather than purely physical wounds as the OP is talking about.

I have no objection to the concept of hit points representing purely physical damage. I do think that if you do it that way, then advancing hit points - at least, advancing them as fast and as far as D&D does it - becomes hard to explain. Witness the disagreements in this thread. If higher level characters had improved defences, but not improved hit points, that would make more sense in a "hit points as purely physical damage" system. But that's not been the way D&D runs, and I'd suggest a lot of people would object strongly to changing the game in this particular fashion.

 

[Andor]

This is why the game assumes some of those "hits" never actually hit. Some are real hits, some are just touches of the weapon, and some are actually misses forced by the defender.

Hit Points represents stamina used to dodge and parry, morale to keep fighting, combat knowledge used to turn make blow misses and grazing hits, luck, divine intervention, and other factors used to make attacks not hit; for a reason. Weapon attacks are rather lethal in D&D. So the game assumes most beings never take a good hit until you are killed to prevent OHKOs all the time or guys walking around with brain wounds.

The trouble is that this is simply wrong. No offense, You're right that this is what the D&D rule books have always claimed were happening when hit point damage was taken.

But they were wrong too.

There are simply too many "corner" cases where the claim that no physical damage was done is demonstrably false, or utterly at odds with physics.

Most blatently falling damage. I had a dwarf back in 2e with 125 hitpoints. Falling damage capped out at 20d6. Unless he was already wounded a fall simply could not kill him. He could skydive without a parachute, and he knew it. "luck" cannot explain that.

Poisoned or diseased weapons are another test. Every hit demands a save, ergo every hit had to break the skin and introduce the toxin into your blood stream.

Tie a guy to a post and shoot arrows at him, drop rocks, stand in a fire, etc. Build enough "corner cases" and there's no room left in the center.

It works the other way too, btw. In theory any wound is at least a point of damage, but I could be covered with small animal bites and not noticably closer to death, yet I don't think I have any great ability to soak damage. I do not want to take a baseball bat to the head, yet in D&D that's only, what, 6 or 8 points of damage? I've had easily more bites or other minor wounds than that on a single bad day at the zoo. Still not dead.

So, yeah, hit points are not a great damage modeling mechanic. But they are simple, easy and fun. But pretending they have no actual in game existence is pointless. The best 'in game' explanation I've ever heard is that HP represent your souls ability to hang on to your body, even when it might normally have let go. Between resurrection, gods, speak with dead, etc there is no doubt that the soul exists in D&D. I see no reason why you can't run with that explanation even for a 'mundane' class like a fighter.

 

[Hassassin]

So hit points are representing your ability to turn serious wounds into light wounds. Rather than purely physical wounds as the OP is talking about.

The amount of hit point, yes, lost hit points no. It's "lost hit points may have been just loss of luck or morale" that I have a problem with.

I have no objection to the concept of hit points representing purely physical damage. I do think that if you do it that way, then advancing hit points - at least, advancing them as fast and as far as D&D does it - becomes hard to explain. Witness the disagreements in this thread. If higher level characters had improved defences, but not improved hit points, that would make more sense in a "hit points as purely physical damage" system. But that's not been the way D&D runs, and I'd suggest a lot of people would object strongly to changing the game in this particular fashion.

I'm all for making hit point progression slower, but we don't need to get rid of it to have a consistent system where damage is physical.

Edit: And for consistency the main requirement is that I know at the time of the hit how I can describe it without causing narrative inconsistencies later if some kind of ability or power is used.

 

[Rhenny]

As DM I don't need to explain what HP represent other than if your HP gets to 0 you go down unconscious with a chance of dying.

Usually, when a PC or creature takes damage, I just look at how much they take compared to their remaining HP and narrate the attack based on that. If the creature still has 80 hp, any hit is usually just a scratch or nick. If it has 20 or less..then I narrate more serious slashes, punctures or bashes. Everyone has fun and the game moves forward.

 

[Hassassin]

You have a 10th level fighter should survived 15 short sword attacks.

If they are all hit him and caused damage, he has over a dozen wounds. You know have to describe all those wounds as paper cuts to make sense.

It's not a problem unless you assume every hit opens a wound. Some might hit armor or with the flat hard enough to cause a nasty bruise. Or helmet and cause a minor concussion. Even a simple (partial) bone fracture somewhere where it isn't debilitating might heal in the max two weeks it takes the fighter to heal naturally.

 

[Minigiant]

The trouble is that this is simply wrong. No offense, You're right that this is what the D&D rule books have always claimed were happening when hit point damage was taken.

But they were wrong too.

There are simply too many "corner" cases where the claim that no physical damage was done is demonstrably false, or utterly at odds with physics.

Most blatently falling damage. I had a dwarf back in 2e with 125 hitpoints. Falling damage capped out at 20d6. Unless he was already wounded a fall simply could not kill him. He could skydive without a parachute, and he knew it. "luck" cannot explain that.

Poisoned or diseased weapons are another test. Every hit demands a save, ergo every hit had to break the skin and introduce the toxin into your blood stream.

Tie a guy to a post and shoot arrows at him, drop rocks, stand in a fire, etc. Build enough "corner cases" and there's no room left in the center.

It works the other way too, btw. In theory any wound is at least a point of damage, but I could be covered with small animal bites and not noticably closer to death, yet I don't think I have any great ability to soak damage. I do not want to take a baseball bat to the head, yet in D&D that's only, what, 6 or 8 points of damage? I've had easily more bites or other minor wounds than that on a single bad day at the zoo. Still not dead.

So, yeah, hit points are not a great damage modeling mechanic. But they are simple, easy and fun. But pretending they have no actual in game existence is pointless. The best 'in game' explanation I've ever heard is that HP represent your souls ability to hang on to your body, even when it might normally have let go. Between resurrection, gods, speak with dead, etc there is no doubt that the soul exists in D&D. I see no reason why you can't run with that explanation even for a 'mundane' class like a fighter.

This is the issue with hit points. It could be anything. 8 damage doesn't tell you what happened.

One thing the next edition of the game need is rules for superficial and always deadly attacks. Even coup de grace and massive damage doesn't work at a certain level.

I always loved my "landed on the soft part of the X" explanations for falling damage and my "but X can't sit still and the attack misses" for attacks on the helpless though. I'd miss not being abler to knock each other out in one bit with DM aid.

"That's disgusting. Poke out my eyes"
"Can't since there are no called shot rules."

 

[Ahnehnois]

There is no good reason hit points should represent the ability to deflect blows or luck or anything like that.

Frankly, if there was ever a sacred cow that needed killing, hit points are it. It's just so hard to do. You drop them off a mountain and they still survive...

 

[malkav666]

Most of the time when I see folks talking about hp representing other things aside from physical damage it tends to be in a theoretical sense rather than a practical one. For example I see a lot of folks talking about what HP is when discussing the relevance of non divine healing for example. But in actual play HP tends to almost always represent physical wounds. I would never tell a player "man that troll just hit you for 9 points of stamina, dodge , and will to fight with her giant troll claws and fangs."

TBH D&D doesn't need HP to represent other types of stuff aside from raw physical damage. We have many other subsystems that better fit the idea of non HP damage concepts.

For example:

1.We have a plethora of status effects that cover stamina, will to fight, and the general concept of a wound: like panicked, fatigued, exhausted, disabled, dying, frightened, staggered, nauseated, and sickened.

2. There is already a subsytem using HP for glancing easy to recover from bits. Its the Sub dual damage vs. Lethal damage rules.

3. We have ability score damage damage for more pointed and harder to get over wounds of the body and mind.

4.We have massive damage rules that explicitly deal with outright dying from taking too much HP damage.

5 We have the concept of drain to represent a permanent "needs a miracle" to resolve kind of wound. Although to be fair its not often used in that way.

6. We have morale checks in pre 3e games and in 3e optionally to deal with will to fight.

7. And finally we have a great saving throw system as a catch-all for every thing else.

The only time I ever hear about HP being anything other than the damage your toon has piled on, are on message boards like ENworld here, in discussions that have left the game table and traveled into the realms of the metagame and perceptual justifications for mechanical abstractions in various systems. Just recently the folks around here had a lot of scraps...er discussions about warlords. That entire debate is hedged largely around the definition of what a hit point is. As this was a recent debate you still have folks walking away from it with their shiny new definitions of HP and what that definition justifies; and that will bubble over into other threads. All of that will pass with time.

In the end though the actual definition of HP doesn't have a real effect on the game as it is an absolute concept. I could for example tell my players that HP represents their crunchberry levels. But when those crunchberry levels reach zero the toons still become dying their bodies being unable to continue with such low crunchberry levels they begin to fade away a a little each round. Now if one of the other characters has a good sense of berrylore they might be able to stabilize the dying toon and prevent further crunchberry loss. Now most toons will naturally recover a few points worth of crunchberries every day (more for complete bed rest), if thats just not good enough, they can seek the help of a crunchpriest to call down some extra berries from heaven or a berrylord to shout and inspire some berries in from the ether. And then everyone gets lollypops of justice.

Its just a name for an easy to manage abstract process of toon going from unwounded to dying or dead. Every mechanic that interacts with HP either makes the toon closer to unwounded or closer to dead.

love,

malkav

 

[Minigiant]

It's not a problem unless you assume every hit opens a wound. Some might hit armor or with the flat hard enough to cause a nasty bruise. Or helmet and cause a minor concussion. Even a simple (partial) bone fracture somewhere where it isn't debilitating might heal in the max two weeks it takes the fighter to heal naturally.

That is the current rationale for HP damage. I assume the people claimed to want more physical damage want more grievous wounds than bumps, scratches, boo boos, ouchies, and owwies.