Why Not Just Call Them Stamina Points?

[WayneLigon]

So, why not call Hit Points, Stamina Points (or some other similar name like Fatigue Points)? Why not call Bloodied, Tired? Why use the Sacred Cow name of hit points?

I think that solution or one very similar to it would go a long way to easing the metagame confusion on this point.

 

[WayneLigon]

What you see is what you get, and the majority of gamers--tabletop or electronic--understand them as such, treat them as such, and believe them to be such.

They can believe such a thing with all their heart and soul; it doesn't prevent them from being wrong and Gary being correct.

 

[KarinsDad]

I could find the actual quotes yet again, but suffice it to say that this notion that hit points are actual damage has been thoroughly debunked since at least First Edition.

Oh, you mean debunking like:

Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.

If you ever sustain a single attack deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points.

When your attack succeeds, you deal damage. The type of weapon used determines the amount of damage you deal.

Damage reduces a target’s current hit points.

With a full night’s rest (8 hours of sleep or more), you recover 1 hit point per character level. Any significant interruption during your rest prevents you from healing that night.

where hit point damage is explicitly specified in 3E as a combination of damage and the ability to turn damage into lesser damage.

It is not totally abstract as you keep claiming, but a combination of actual and abstract.

At least according to the 3E rules. Over and over again, it specifies hit points as damage. Not just luck. Not just skill. A combination of an ability to turn greater blows into lesser blows and actual physical damage.

A combination of both actual and abstract. Not just one or the other. If you claim it is totally abstract, then you are ignoring the first quote I posted here.

Cure spells heal damage. They do not restore luck or favor. At least according to the rules.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Also known as the Dude Factor.

"Nasty things happening to the character protection points" might be a bit too long, right?

Maybe 5E will be able to go away from the hit point term. Or a 4E supplement (Unearthed Arcana for 4E?) will introduce an alternate system.

Maybe games on a general basis have reached a point where ablative hit points will eventually be removed by generic "cool/drama/action/dude factor/possibility" points. The combat system says: "If you hit, roll damage to determine the number of wounds you take. For every wound, you take a -1 injury penalty to all rolls. In reaction to a succesful attack, you can spend your "nastiness protection points"/"cool points" to reduce the wounds recieved by one for each point spent. After a short rest, you regain n nastiness protection points. After an extended rest, you regain all protection points.

On the other hand, why go through the trouble of a detailed injury system if you'll always want to spend points to fully negate the injuries?

 

[JohnSnow]

Oh, you mean debunking like:

Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.

{other quotes snipped}

where hit point damage is explicitly specified in 3E as a combination of damage and the ability to turn damage into lesser damage.

It is not totally abstract as you keep claiming, but a combination of actual and abstract.

At least according to the 3E rules. Over and over again, it specifies hit points as damage. Not just luck. Not just skill. A combination of an ability to turn greater blows into lesser blows and actual physical damage.

A combination of both actual and abstract. Not just one or the other. If you claim it is totally abstract, then you are ignoring the first quote I posted here.

Emphasis mine.

Fine. Since you don't want to go back and look in 1e, I'll deal with the 3e quotes. As a matter of fact, let's deal primarily with that first quote of yours - the one I bolded.

First off, the quote isn't actually "turning actual damage into lesser damage." That's your paraphrase based on your understanding. The actual two things mentioned in the quote are:

A) "the ability to take physical punishment and keep going" and:
B) "turning a serious blow into a less serious one."

What, exactly, does this quote mean in an "actual damage" sense? To be blunt, it means jack. Yes, clearly it implies there is a certain amount of "taking physical punishment" involved. But does it actually say "damage?" Nope. What about damage implies the ability to "keep going?" Sorry, that's strength of will, or resilience, or something.

"Turning a serious blow into a less serious one" is even more nebulous. It hardly seems related to toughness so much as it is to luck or combat prowess.

Yes, there's some "actual damage" involved. On the other hand, if I get a bruise from the sword that my mail prevented from spilling my guts on the ground, I've sustained "actual damage." Similarly, if an arrow grazes my arm and inflicts a minor cut, that's "actual damage" (and by the way, enough to administer poison). But are either of those things, by themselves, life-threatening? Hardly.

I'll give my personal example again. I have been hit in the face with a sword. Despite circumstances that literally should have given me a concussion and serious injury, I managed to not get hit hard, and ended up with nothing more than a black eye and a minor nick. Oh yeah, it also knocked me to the ground and rattled me pretty good. Did I sustain "actual damage?" Sure, I suppose, but not much. I was fine 10 minutes later. Did I somehow turn a serious blow into a minor one? Well, if you don't think so, go stand in front of a swinging sword. Let me know how it goes.

That's me. Not Aragorn, or Indiana Jones, or John McClane, just nonheroic, non-fantasy world ME.

I have no problem regarding hit points as the systematization of what, for me, was the result of nothing so much as total blind luck, combined with the small amount of combat skill I possess.

 

[Wolfspider]

Sidewinder, the d20 western game, uses the term "grit points," and I think this is a brilliant change. It perfectly captures the feel of the wild west and the ability for heroes to suck it up and keep fighting.

I'm tempted to adopt this terminology in my D&D games.

 

[am181d]

It is not totally abstract as you keep claiming, but a combination of actual and abstract.

This is not a particularly strong position. "This is not a potato stew as you insist, but a potato and carrot stew!" Potatoes have always been part of the stew. I can't see what's gained by quibbling over portions.

 

[mlund]

Moongoose did a d20 Lone Wolf adventure book years ago. They swapped every entry in the SRD for "Hit Points" with the term "Endurance Points" taken from the old Lone Wolf adventure books. It worked perfectly - better than Hit Points - and it fit their brand.

- Marty Lund

 

[Dausuul]

They can believe such a thing with all their heart and soul; it doesn't prevent them from being wrong and Gary being correct.

"Correct?" Correct how? Correct in that his definition of "hit points" was totally at odds with everything else in the game?

Players read Gygax's definition. Then they played the game and noticed that everything that took away your hit points was something that wounded you, everything that gave back hit points was something that healed you, and every single mechanic that interacted with hit points in any way was predicated on the idea that hit points equals physical toughness.

And then they realized that Gygax's definition was merely a half-assed attempt to obfuscate the issue, because his mechanics implied high-level characters could survive being repeatedly stabbed in the chest, and he didn't like that.

4E is actually, for the first time, making the mechanics match a different definition of hit points. Exactly what that definition is remains a bit fuzzy, though I hope the Player's Handbook will offer at least a general idea.

But before 4E... nope. I won't call Gygax's definition "incorrect," because you can't really do that with a definition, but I will call it "utterly inconsistent with everything else."

 

[KarinsDad]

I have no problem regarding hit points as the systematization of what, for me, was the result of nothing so much as total blind luck, combined with the small amount of combat skill I possess.

Except that every rule in the game system indicates that lethal damage = hit points. Healing = hit point recovery. The word damage is used over and over again.

The words luck and skill with regard to this are not in any of the rules. Are you making this up?

Yes, there's some "actual damage" involved. On the other hand, if I get a bruise from the sword that my mail prevented from spilling my guts on the ground, I've sustained "actual damage." Similarly, if an arrow grazes my arm and inflicts a minor cut, that's "actual damage" (and by the way, enough to administer poison). But are either of those things, by themselves, life-threatening? Hardly.

It's life threatening if it is a significant portion of the PC's hit points or if the PC has already taken a lot of damage.

How does the poison enter the PC's system if his chain mail turned the damage into a mere bruise? Well, because the PC took real damage. He took a real wound that allows the poison to enter the his system. The size and severity of that wound is relative to how many hit points he has and how much damage was done.

The only reason for the "turning a serious blow into a lesser one" aspect is due to the fact that low level PCs have few hit points and high level PCs have a lot of hit points and that caused some people agita.

But, hit points for years have represented damage in DND. Always has. Even with EGG's quote in the 1E DMG.

If a giant's stone can crush a wall, it can crush a PC. The fact that it did not might mean that the high level PC took a glancing blow, but he still took damage.

Find a rules quote that indicate that hit point do not equate mostly to damage. That it mostly means luck and skill. The best you will find is the nebulous "the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one" which are there to rationalize the difference between low level few hit points and high level many hit points.