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

[DEFCON 1]

That's why I think it (damage is physical) is a better foundation for how hit points work in 5e. It is easier to lay modular options on top of it that allow quick and painless non-magical HP restoration, whereas starting from damage can be anything you would have to limit things to get to a physical damage interpretation.

Personally, I'd rather they just say that hit points are hit points. No more, no less. They aren't wounds or injury, AND they aren't stamina or energy. They are a metagame concept which exists purely to define how far away a character is from being dead.

If that means for some people they then can interpret hit points to equal physical wounds... great. The game can be set up to treat them that way for those players. If that means hit points = energy, same exact thing. If that means hit points are something in between... hopefully there are rules to treat them that way as well for those players who wish it.

But to say that the game should default to one side or the other and the other side should be a "module" is to insinuate that the game rules defining what combat and injury are make more sense and work out more logically to the defaulted side.

And D&D damage and hit points HAVE NEVER made any real logical sense on EITHER side. So without making massive changes to the hit point system... there's no reason to default to either one.

Hit points are a game mechanic. Let's keep them that way.

 

[Li Shenron]

Finally, I'll point out what the system's creator, Gary Gygax, had to say about the matter. To paraphrase him, it's absurd to think that a mid level fighter could absorb as much physical punishment as several warhorses. Hence, a small fraction of hp represents the ability to actually take physical injuries, while the majority represent other factors. If you'd like, let me know and I'll post the relevant (PHB 1e and DMG 1e) quotes for you.

Yes, I remember that, but then even Gygax did not seem to keep his own concept when he had to make the rules for resting.

If only a small fraction of HP are physical, then resting should heal you much faster.

But then if you always heal very fast or completely in a day or between adventures and with healing surges... do we still have physical injuries at all in the game, or only when you actually die/drop unconsious?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yes, I remember that, but then even Gygax did not seem to keep his own concept when he had to make the rules for resting.

If only a small fraction of HP are physical, then resting should heal you much faster.

But then if you always heal very fast or completely in a day or between adventures and with healing surges... do we still have physical injuries at all in the game, or only when you actually die/drop unconsious?

Therein lies the dilemma. And why neither side has ever been truly happy.

 

[Halivar]

Hit-points are whatever your group wants them to be. That's the elegance of such an abstracted system. Detailing a more specific (and therefore more narratively intrusive) system would be a huge step backwards.

 

[El Mahdi]

Mine is a very naive and honest question. Why can't we just live with HP representing only a creature's ability to take physical damage and injuries before dropping? What are the bad things that will happen to the game if we do that?

Because then you open up the need to track the other aspects that are rolled into the abstract quantification of Hit Points.

And personally, I find that if one wants to remove anything from the equation that is Hit Points, it's best to remove the Physical Damage part and leave the others - using Hit Points and a Wound/Condition tracking mechanic - rather than removing all the other parts that make up Hit Points.

Some might argue that tracking those other things isn't necessary. But I would expect that even in their games, the occasional fringe situation or question occurs where knowing the state of those things seems important. it seems the only alternative if those things aren't tracked is to simply hand wave past them. Which is fine, but is only fine for some and not all groups/gamers.

Sure, there are systems that can model physical damage, physical energy, luck, turning a killing blow into a scratch, etc. in much better and accurate ways. But such systems also add complexity, complication, and longer resolutions.

As abstract as Hit Points are, and with their rational disconnect inherent with them: I've found that after trying practically every alternative system, that Hit Points that combine all the things they do, and not just physical damage, are the most effective and efficient way to track and resolve the things that Hit Points represent.

 

[Kannik]

Mine is a very naive and honest question. Why can't we just live with HP representing only a creature's ability to take physical damage and injuries before dropping? What are the bad things that will happen to the game if we do that?

I, personally, would phrase the question the other way: "why can't we just live with that HP has always been more than just physical damage inside the game." It is how Gary Gygax wrote AD&D, it is how every edition since 1e has described them. Do they bring up odd instances, questions, circumstances and inconsistencies? You bet! And it’s how we’ve played and loved our D&D for 30 years.

If we choose to model HP as nothing but pure physical damage capability, then the fundamentals of the game will have to change: we will need a greater emphasis on defensive rolls and a more tight modeling of how armour works to deflect or mitigate weapon hits. We’ll be rolling more, tracking more, doing more calculations, and the game could get quite swingy, with a good sword hit felling a level 18 character in one swoop. There are great games out there that model that; I would argue that it is not the style of heroic fantasy that D&D is known for.

All that said, given the way healing was allowed (or not allowed really -- healing was very limited, slow by natural means and only quick by divine magic means) in most editions it is not surprising that HP got collapsed with “only physical damage” in our gamer minds (else why wouldn't you regain HP faster?). It’s just not what the game was based on, and it broke verisimilitude aplenty to view it that way (even as we thought it didn’t – just shows how well we can align anything to our view that we choose to see). I’ve posted this quote from the 1e PHB many a times, so I’ll just sum up here my favourite part of it: “It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment... Thus, the majority of hit points are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.”

Peace,

Kannik

 

[Fanaelialae]

Yes, I remember that, but then even Gygax did not seem to keep his own concept when he had to make the rules for resting.

If only a small fraction of HP are physical, then resting should heal you much faster.

Again, to repeat what I said from the post you quoted, luck (as well as most of the non-physical hp factors) is an abstract. Who's to say that it replenishes any more quickly than a cut or a broken bone?

There is no measurable real world rate at which luck/divine favor replenishes, so factor x can replenish at any rate you desire. Want to say that it takes a long time, say that it represents mostly luck/divine favor and since you've stretched it to the limit, that luck will take a long time to replenish. Want it to return overnight? State that it's mostly fatigue/morale, and that a simple night's rest is all you need to feel refreshed.

But then if you always heal very fast or completely in a day or between adventures and with healing surges... do we still have physical injuries at all in the game, or only when you actually die/drop unconsious?

That's up to your narration, as it's always been. Again, you can even explain hp in the anime-style where the fighter is nearly cut in twain and has the tenacity to keep fighting as if nothing had happened. It's peculiar to my sensibilities, but you can.

As for myself, I narrate most attacks as either near misses (if all they do is damage) or being nicked (for attacks that impose conditions or effects). If an attack reduces a character to zero hp, I tend to describe it such that it might or might not be a lethal blow. For example, the goblin strikes Ragnar in the chest and he crumbles. That strike might have been through a major organ (if Ragnar dies) or it might have just glanced off a rib (if he lives). In the fog of war, who's to say?

My point is, you can narrate it however you want. Your approach will determine certain flavor implications. If you narrate damage as purely injury, you're necessitating a certain type of setting where PCs and monsters can survive and even ignore injuries that would kill lesser men. If you narrate a 20 damage attack differently for a low level fighter than a high level fighter, then non-physical factors are implicit but you can have a system that more closely models typical fantasy settings or even the real world.


EDIT: In the fairness of disclosure, I will say that back in the 2e days (continuing into 3e) my group instated a house rule pretty early on to the effect that characters healed their level + Con modifier every night. That narrowed the discrepancy quite significantly, since recovery speed roughly scaled with level.

 

[billd91]

Yes, I remember that, but then even Gygax did not seem to keep his own concept when he had to make the rules for resting.

If only a small fraction of HP are physical, then resting should heal you much faster.

I don't necessarily agree with that. For one thing, even in 1st edition, hit points can heal a lot faster than real wounds do. Four weeks and you're up to full no matter what your injuries were. That's not slow if you were on death's door considering there are real life injuries that never really heal.

Initial healing could be slow, sure, but there's no real yardstick how fast your other non-physical injury hit points should heal. Do you regain your luck, spiritual resources, elan, or whatever faster than your physical hit points? Who can say? Take the healing from later editions (like 3rd) and you've got a pretty good balance between slowish and fastish recovery of hit points.

 

[Dausuul]

Terminology is important. If my character is "hit" by an "attack" inflicting "damage" which costs me "hit points," and the way I recover those hit points is to "heal," I expect to see a ballpark resemblance between what the words mean in English and what they mean in the game. I am not on board with any system* that claims "hit" mostly means "miss" and "damage" means "you didn't get hurt but now you're tired" and "heal" means "take a five-minute break."

My customary way of narrating combat is that every attack which inflicts hit point damage causes physical injury, but how serious the injury depends on the ratio of damage dealt to target's hit points. If a monster claws you for 10 points of damage, and your normal max is 15 hit points, you got torn up pretty bad. If your max is 100, you took a grazing cut but nothing serious. If your max is 5, your guts are in a pile on the floor and you're bleeding to death. Sure, natural healing is unrealistically fast, but the difference is of a magnitude I can live with--a week or two instead of a month or six. It still has the effect of causing problems that persist beyond a single night's rest.

There are other cases where this approach gets a bit strained, but in general it's pretty good at reconciling game terminology, the Hit Points Are Not Physical Toughness Paragraph, and the actual (pre-4E) hit point mechanics. 4E threw a big wrench in the works and I've never quite managed to fix it to my satisfaction. I would be much happier with the 4E system if they'd taken the trouble to overhaul the terminology when they changed the mechanics.

[size=-2]*At this point, somebody will probably go into one of the older editions and find a version of the Hit Points Are Not Physical Toughness Paragraph which suggests that loss of hit points can mean a near miss. So let me state up front that no, I am not on board with that version of the Paragraph, no matter what edition it's in. In the edition wars, I'm a mercenary--I fight for whatever edition offers me the rule I like best for the topic at hand.[/size]

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Terminology is important. If my character is "hit" by an "attack" inflicting "damage" which costs me "hit points," and the way I recover those hit points is to "heal," I expect to see a ballpark resemblance between what the words mean in English and what they mean in the game. I am not on board with any system that claims "hit" mostly means "miss" and "damage" means "you didn't get hurt but now you're tired" and "heal" means "take a five-minute break."

...

There are corner cases where this approach gets a bit strained, but in general it's pretty good at reconciling game terminology, the Hit Points Are Not Physical Toughness Paragraph, and the actual (pre-4E) hit point mechanics. 4E threw a big wrench in the works and I've never quite managed to reconcile it to my satisfaction. I would be much happier with the 4E system if they'd taken the trouble to overhaul the terminology when they changed the mechanics.

Sure. I'd rather they kept the mechanics and changed the terminology, while others would rather that they kept the terminology but changed the mechanics. Variations on that are probably the heart of the dispute since the first player complained about hit points in some way.

Heck, I would have been happy if they had gone back explicitly to the wargaming roots in one respect: Keep the mechanics more or less in place, name "healing surges" as "hit points" (which you now have very few of, and each one is critical). Then rename "hit points" into something else--fatigue, luck, "energy"--depending upon how it is flavored, maybe provide several options here. Knock the numbers down a bit, cause failed death saves to drain the "hit points" (i.e. the current surges), and you die when you run out of "hit points".

There are several obvious cases where that would need to be tweaked to address mechanical issues and fall better into line with your point--especially in "hit point" restoration. For example, cure light wounds would give you a surge back (which you could then immediately "spend" to restore lost "energy" or fatigue or whatever it is. And surely we would need a good mechanical name to replace what used to be hit points. But the essential pacing and plot protection widgets would still be present.