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

[Grazzt]

Ok for this comment about the limit!



Not ok for this second point.

First, called shots and targeting areas need not be part of the core rules. Most gaming groups don't use them, probably it's too much a level of detail for average gamers. If you're not using such additional rules, a character doesn't get a stab in the heart until the DM says so, thus there's no need to explain or know more.

About the second sentence... I know what are the common explanations, and they all carry more questions or need for explanation (which in turn make some group want more rules, and add design complexity). The equally common counterargument to those is that most of them shouldn't apply if the victim of the attack is unconscious, unaware or unable to react: all that's left as an explanation is luck (which is already in the dice rolls) and divine intervention which is not really a better explanation than "it just happens" or "it's magic". So then back to my question I could say... why aren't we content enough to say "it just happens" that HP are simply physical damage?

Could definitely do it without called shots. Just set hp = Con score. Done. It never increases unless your Con score does. (Similar to various games, Elric maybe, based on RQ where hp = avg of Con + Siz.)

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

Actually i think we dont want any changes to gameplay. Hp are a good simplistic system for representing physical damage in heroic fantasy. Keep hp as they were in the first three editions; they worked just fine. They allow for describing hp loss as wounds if desired but dont come burdened with wound subsystems. In my experience most peope use hp for physical damage. They have always used the "hp represents damage, skill, stamina, etc" angle to justify the abstraction, but a lot of people dont adopt that explanation at all.

 

[Mattachine]

First, to address injuries suffered from falling, and also, vats of acid and pools of molten lava, simply make damage from these things either a percentage of hit points, or outright death.

Fall 20': lose 25% of hp
Fall 50': lose 75% of hp
Fall 100': character dies
Fall into a vat of acid: lose 25% of hp per round
Fall into pool of molten lava: character dies

Many DMs play it that way in their own games already. That neatly and easily takes care of non-combat damage.

If you want hit points to represent actual hits only, you can easily play that game, as an OPTION. The d20 Call of Cthulhu rules did this, but in reverse:

Your hp at level 1 represent your hit point total for the rest of the game, modified by changes in your Con score and feats. The option was to gain hp per level.

The new edition of D&D could present the reverse: for DMs who want hp to represent physical toughness only, then simply remove the hp per level. Characters don't generally get much bigger or tougher with level (they get more skillful), so they shouldn't get more "physical" hit points.

 

[Hassassin]

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.

It's how they work in pre-4e, and I don't feel the OP was asking for anything new, although I could be wrong.

There are some problems that should be fixed but nothing major: magical healing should depend on target's total HP, some environmental hazards like falling should either bypass HP or use a percentage, etc. 4e fixed magical healing, but introduced a lot of new problems.

 

[herrozerro]

With occasional racial or class exceptions across various editions, your character doesn't function differently at 1 HP (on the verge of death or unconsciousness) than it does at 82 billion HP.

I find this to be a feature rather then a flaw. I hate death spiral systems, where once you reach a certain point it's just a slow descent into death that becomes harder and harder to climb out of.

 

[Naszir]

The problem I have is that if hit points represent physical damage how do you describe the single 50hp hit from the bite of an adult dragon against the 60hp fighter?

If you describe it as just physical damage then there is no narrative difference between the 5hp hit from the claw of the dragon and the 50hp hit from the bite. If you throw in that the 50hp hit also took away some of the ability of the fighter to dodge future attacks then it makes a bit more sense.

I'll totally admit that the way hit points and damage interact don't always mesh. It's a quirk of the game but to place hit points as representative of physical damage only decreases flexibility in the ability to describe what is going on, IMHO.

Personally I have always wanted to say attacks were "successful" rather than "hit". But rolling the dice and saying "that's a hit" is so ingrained in D&D culture it would be a hard habit to break.

Also I think we have to stop looking at hit points in a vacuum. A character has defenses. Hit points, Armor Class, Saving throws, Fortitude, Reflex, Will and Abilities have always been a part of a characters defenses. All of them are abstract in their own way and they all interact with each other.

 

[Hassassin]

The problem I have is that if hit points represent physical damage how do you describe the single 50hp hit from the bite of an adult dragon against the 60hp fighter?

If you describe it as just physical damage then there is no narrative difference between the 5hp hit from the claw of the dragon and the 50hp hit from the bite. If you throw in that the 50hp hit also took away some of the ability of the fighter to dodge future attacks then it makes a bit more sense.

No narrative difference? You can narrate the 5hp hit as anything that will take a good night's sleep to heal, while for the 50hp wound you can narrate a much more serious injury - just not one that would be especially debilitating.

 

[Mercurius]

To be honest, I'm always surprised when I read comments to the effect of "Hit Points only represent physical damage." No offense, but this is patently absurd - and in any edition.

Take, for instance, AD&D 1E. An ancient red dragon, one of the most feared opponents in any edition of D&D and a creature presumably weighing many tons, has 88 HP. A 7th level fighter (yes, 7th) with an 18 CON can have 98 HP. Think about that for a moment. There is simply no way that a medium (mortal) humanoid of any level can withstand more physical damage than an ancient red dragon. I would suggest that in all but the rarest of instances, a medium sized creature shouldn't be able to withstand more physical damage than a large creature, that physical damage capacity is a function of a variety of factors, including size, body density, muscle mass, thickness and hardness of skin, etc - most of which simply doesn't factor into a humanoid creature, and certainly would not increase (much) with level.

Later editions of D&D improved this monster-to-character HP ratio somewhat but in every edition, the ratio of character HP to monster HP has been absurd (if we take it to be merely physical damage capacity, that is).

I am not saying that in D&D Next, HP should not more closely represent physical damage and even physical damage only, but that is not how any edition of D&D was designed. Or, if it was designed that way, it was a flaw in the simulationism of the game.

To answer the OP, I think the reason it has represented things other than physical injuries is that it is simply a gamist mechanic that allows for a kind of epic, cinematic quality that has always been part of D&D combat. In reality, taking maximum damage from an attack would imply death - if an orc critical hits someone with an axe, doing the most damage it can possibly do, anyone should die - that is, if we're going for a realistic game. But in actuality, HP are an abstraction that represents the capacity to withstand attacks before dying, which of course includes the bodily element. AC, then, represents the capacity to prevent attacks, but once they "get through," HP are there to buffer actual mortal damage.

In truth, the AC/HP mechanic is awkward and rather unrealistic - they over-lap a bit and AC really should go with something more akin to body points. But the bottom line is that they work; they are fun.

This is not to say that it is "badwrongfun" to consider HP to be body damage only, but that it is an incorrect interpretation of the rules-as-written, and thus akin to a house rule, and one that actually makes very little sense. Hey, but we're talking about a fantasy game, so have fun with it! Let's just call a spade a spade and recognize that it is incredibly unrealistic and not what the rules intend.

All that said, there is no reason that the abstract nature of HP couldn't also include a physical component that represents at what point a character actually sustains physical damage. There are a couple ways to go about this without adding undue complexity to the game, one of which would look like this:

Have some kind of "physical damage threshold" that represents at what point, of a character's total HP, they start taking physical damage. This could be similar to 4E's "bloodied" but really mean it and, I would think, be much lower than half. Depending upon what 5E's HP scale looks like, I'm thinking the Constitution score X a size multiplier (e.g. x1/4 for tiny, x1/2 for small, x1 for medium, x2 for large, x5 for huge, x10 for gargantuan...or something like that).

In addition to the above, as a deadlier variant of the core game, critical hits could always do damage to the physical body. This could obviously be quite deadly, so I would suggest that it be an optional rule. Perhaps, also, it could include some kind of saving throw to see if the damage actually "gets through."

So, for example, a 1st level fighter with a 16 CON would have 16 Body Points and, say, 17-26 total Hit Points (or d10 above that, although I would suggest that if HP are rolled, there should be some rule that allows a player to "take half" of their max HP increase if they roll low, so the range at 1st for this fighter would actually be 21-26, or CON + 5-10). Let's say that at 11th level, CON has been increased twice to 18, so the character has 18 BP and 73-128 total HP.

 

[Naszir]

No narrative difference? You can narrate the 5hp hit as anything that will take a good night's sleep to heal, while for the 50hp wound you can narrate a much more serious injury - just not one that would be especially debilitating.

But in that moment of the combat how is the difference described? Describing something way after the fact is a little difficult unless you are writing down each how much damage each "hit" does seperately. I think most of us just subtract hit points from the total hit point pool, we don't have a list of the damage we have taken.

Hmm, though what if we did? Just trying to think of other ways to deal with hit points here ...

What if any hit that did less than 1/4 of your hit points in damage got recovered immediately after an encounter? That type of damage could reperesent the ability of a character to shrug off the minor bruises and cuts and move on. Any hit that does more that 1/4 damage would actually need rest or first aid or magical healilng to recover from?

 

[Minigiant]

The problem with always physical damage is it breaks down when the challenges and monsters get very powerful.

If a 20ft titan is successful with his greatsword attack and the target survived it, he had to dodge it so,ewat. If he takes that hit with your shield fully, it should kill the humanoid target.

A giant's club is deadly.
A dragon's bite is deadly.

These attacks can't really hit humanoids without killing them or causing debilitating injuries 90% of the time. That is why some "hits" can't really be hits. Some points of hit point damage can't always be actual physical damage.



Oh and Stamina/Body systems wont be core. Sorry.