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Message: <blockquote data-quote="malkav666" data-source="post: 5827785" data-attributes="member: 70565">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</blockquote>

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