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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 8039613" data-attributes="member: 53980">No, that's a false equivalence.Hit points are rolled once (on level up), and are then locked in. Your prior rolls continue to impact your HP total, typically until that character is no more.Damage rolls normally do not impact each other, and are usually rolled quite frequently.If I have a string of bad HP rolls, my character ends up underpowered compared to the average. This continues to impact that character so long as it is played. If I have a string of bad damage rolls, I just underperformed in terms of damage for a single encounter or session. There's no reason to assume that just because my damage rolls were low this session, that they won't be better next session.It sounds like you want HP to be a force field equivalent. Maybe because their flesh and bones are tougher than that of an ordinary human. Again, as I've said,  I'd be fine with a character jumping off a cliff under those conditions. I just don't use that definition of HP.They do require narrative justification. They need something to fall off of (unless you mean trip and fall, which isn't really the same thing as falling off a cliff).A number of folks in this thread have proposed more realistic damage models for falling. What's more reasonable?That gravity functions completely differently on all D&D worlds but that this fact has never been explained in any of the many books that have been released for over five editions (it can only be inferred from the falling rules)?Or that gravity is intended to function pretty close to how it does on our earth and that the rules are a simplified gamist abstraction for handling that?IMO, the clear logical choice is the latter.Sure, the dumb barbarian-philosopher has studied the works of his world's equivalent of Isaac Newton. What if my D&D world's Newton hasn't been born yet?The player is highly unlikely to engage in that disruptive behavior if it is black boxed.Say that I created my own fantasy heartbreaker. In this hypothetical game, the player does not know how damage works. The DM tracks it for them and simply informs the player of how their character is feeling. The player also doesn't know how the falling rules work, as most of the rules are also not player facing. If a character falls, the DM adjudicates it and informs the player of the result. (In fact, in the early days of D&D, this is how the game was sometimes played.)The player is highly unlikely to try to metagame nonsense under that circumstance, because it's a lot less fun when your character dies as a result. It's only when you are certain of the outcome (because you're metagaming) that it becomes likely.As I said, some modicum of metagaming is perfectly acceptable and normal. I don't think that willingly walking your character off a cliff falls within those bounds.Though, again, if you want to cast hit points as some kind off oddly functioning super toughness, then it isn't metagaming. However, it is metagaming if you use my definition of HP (primarily skill and luck).I would ask because I don't want to assume.</blockquote>

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