Why Not Just Call Them Stamina Points?

[Majoru Oakheart]

As I mentioned in the other thread about this. It is an abstraction that is a COMBINATION of damage, stamina, luck, and the like. Are you hurt when you are at 1 hp? Maybe...probably even. Are you so hurt you can barely stand and you have to limp everywhere you go? Nope.

Is someone at full hipoints hurt? Maybe. But they have a lot of willpower and can deflect or dodge most blows against them.

Nothing? Other than the fact that one is a hair width from death? Other than the fact that a single attack will usually kill someone at 1 HP whereas it typically won't at significantly higher levels?

A wizard who has 2 hitpoints because he's 1st level and has a con of 6 is a hair from death continuously without being hurt at all. But that's because he isn't fast enough to get out of the way of anything and a single scratch kills him.

The thing is that everyone is a hair away from death all the time. If someone cuts my throat, I'm dead. I get stabbed in the heart, I'm dead. I'm stabbed almost anywhere I'm likely to die without real medical attention. I get hit in the head hard enough I'm dead. And these things are ALL when I'm at full health with no damage at all.

The difference between being at 1 hitpoint and 200 hitpoints is mostly a difference in morale and luck. At 200 hitpoints, you know that you can easily block a blow or dodge out of the way with no problems at all. You know that the next attack against you will miss for sure, you are in the zone.

Then, as you are ducking and weaving and leaping and blocking blows with your weapon or your shield, you slowly get worn down. You can't quite block as fast as you could at the beginning. You get your weapon up, but only just barely in time. Someone might hit you, but your armor stops most of it.

Then, the unthinkable happens. Someone hits you with a solid blow. You might have a cut in your side that is bleeding(but not badly as it's shallow). You might have a large bruise on your arm as you got hit with that club pretty hard, luckily you managed to deflect it from crushing your chest.

You start to think "Maybe these creatures are too hard for me to defeat. Maybe I can't win!" The enemy gets in another cut. You aren't permanently hurt. The wound will likely close overnight but it's hard to ignore the pain. It distracts you. Your vision even blurs from time to time due to the pain. You know that if the enemy attacks with that club again, this time you won't be able to deflect it to your arm, he's going to crush your ribcage and kill you.

However, having a couple of small cuts, low morale, and being tired is a fair stretch from "I am a hair's bredth from death".

HP only work when they mean ALL of their definitions at once. They also only work when you don't define them on a round by round basis. Did that last attack actually cut you or did it luckily miss at the last second? Does it matter? The game effect is that you lose 10 hitpoints.

 

[Doug McCrae]

PCs at one hit point tend to run away like little girls. If there were nothing wrong with them, why would they do that?

Because the players are metagaming.

 

[Ian O'Rourke]

I don't overly have a problem with it all. I just watch the Lord of the Rings films and notice that at least three characters get thrown around and bashed by the cave trolls club (and thrown back into walls).

They get back up. They seem fit enough afterwards to run away from the Balrog.

It's a bit like that.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Because the players are metagaming.

In the modelled fantasy world, the character probably feels to tired to count on dodging yet another blow, or feels like having run out of luck...

 

[Dausuul]

For the most part I'm fairly neutral in this argument, but I actually laughed reading "Your position is not supportable and flawed"

What YOU just posted, KarinsDad is an incredibly flawed argument.

It's not the being at ONE that kills these characters, it's the being negative that results from the situations you described.

The poster's original point stands. There's NOTHING wrong with you while you are at one HP.

Fitz

And what is that situation? Let's focus on the amulet of health. That's a magic amulet that does something for you. What does it do precisely? I shan't speculate. But whatever it's doing, that thing is all that's keeping you alive; if you take it off, you drop dead.

If you are dependent on a magic amulet to keep you from dying, there is obviously something wrong with you. Healthy people can survive without a magic thingy to keep them on their feet.

 

[KarinsDad]

This is what I love about arguments like this.. People never actually examine the other person's arguments.

Sit back. Take the other persons position. Work through it. Put aside your preconceptions.
Which one, for all editions, makes more sense? Which edition stands out like a sore thumb?

If you really think HP can have any serious reflection upon injury to a PC, if you do as I've suggested, then I'd be very interested in hearing the structured argument as to why.

This is what I love about arguments like this. People never actually examine the other person's arguments.

My argument is not that hit points are meat points. It's that they are a combination of meat points and an abstraction of meat points as per what is writtten in 3E:

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.

Not one thing. Two things. As per what is written.

The "totally abstract" argument takes into account the second of these and mostly ignores or allows one specific interpreation of the first (i.e. try to make it totally about will power or some such and not damage at all). Why?

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.

The abstract argument falls apart for this rule. If, like in 4E, hit points are more of a stamina or defensive or luck or skill, how does this rule work with that interpretation?

It only works if hit points actually represent damage to a significant degree. Not 100%. But both as a way to turn serious damage into lesser damage, and also as actual damage.

My argument is that if a PC is 75% damaged, then he is not "tired and exhausted", he's hurt. It might be a lot of little injuries, but he's hurt.

Taking 75% of a PC's damage in round one with a single attack does not suddenly make him tired and exhausted. It makes him seriously damaged. And, the vast majority of players play that PC at that point as if he were seriously damaged, not as if he were tired and exhausted or "nearly out of luck".

Just because the system does not have rules in it for having penalities for being wounded does not mean that a PC is not wounded. A PC wounded 75% of his hit points is damaged the same if he is 20th level or 1st level. In either case, he's about to kick the bucket and a single attack (at his appropriate level) might kill him. Yes, hit points are an abstraction of damage. They represent damage as a percentage, not one for one. But, unlike in 4E where it is closer to representing stamina, in 3E it represents damage. In 4E, one wakes up fresh the next morning with zero damage, regardless of how "wounded" he was. That totally changes the model of hit points from 3E to 4E from an abstract representation of damage to an abstract representation of fatigue (or will or some such).


The entire 3E game system, from combat to spells, discusses lethal damage and wounds with regard to hit points. It never discusses luck, or skill, or defense with regard to hit points outside of the single phrase that it allows a character to turn a serious blow into a less serious one (and note: the phrase "less serious" does not mean "not serious", a wound can be less serious and still be serious).

John's argument is a philosophical one which does not match what is written in the system, nor as how many players have historically viewed the system. He and others are basing that philosophy off of half of the definition of hit points, not the entire definition. He is using the half that is used to explain why high level PCs have many times more hit points than low level PCs and ignoring the other half.

If a new player starts in your game system, you do not state that hit points do not really represent damage to the player. You might confuse the heck out of some new players that way. Instead, you tell him that when he takes damage, he subtracts it from his hit points.

And, that's the bottom line. Arm chair philosophers can try to find ways to indicate that hit points do not represent damage, but the game system has many instances of words like lethal, damage, hits, wounds, etc. with respect to hit points or their recovery.


The change for 4E is that hit points are not necessarily damage at all unless a PC dies. Even going unconscious, it can be considered to not be damage.

But historically, hit points have always been about damage. Always. Even as an abstraction, they have been an abstraction of damage, not stamina (or will or luck or skill or some such).

 

[KarinsDad]

Because the players are metagaming.

I call the Total BS card on this one. It's not metagaming when at one hit point to choose actions that lead to survival. It's "Crap! I'm seriously wounded and cannot take another blow like that last one" in character decision making.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I seem to remember that somewhere in the 1st edition books it talks about hit points being an abstract amalgamation of stamina, divine providence, luck, and heroism. But my books are in a box right now so I can't go and check... It might have even been in the DMG. I was constantly discovering new tidbits in that thing.

 

[Mallus]

Just because the system does not have rules in it for having penalities for being wounded does not mean that a PC is not wounded.

No, it means that the system favors functionality over realism. A lot. And has since day one...

But historically, hit points have always been about damage.

Damage that in no way modeled real world damage effects. Damage, that in fact, ceased meaning 'damage' in the conventional sense, to the point where it only represented/measured a loss of a character's luck, or mojo, or dude-factor...

 

[KarinsDad]

Damage that in no way modeled real world damage effects. Damage, that in fact, ceased meaning 'damage' in the conventional sense, to the point where it only represented/measured a loss of a character's luck, or mojo, or dude-factor...

I'm sure you will find "character's luck, or mojo, or dude-factor" written all over the place in the rules.