Why Not Just Call Them Stamina Points?

[GoodKingJayIII]

If they are not ever actual damage due to getting hit, why use words like Hit and Bloodied?

Hit Points still only have an effect when a character is hit; the name makes as much sense to me now as it did before.

I do see your point about Bloodied however. It does confuse the concept somewhat in that, even at half your total HP, it's still easy to recover from the damage.

 

[FadedC]

The term hit points are beyond a sacred cow.....they are practicaly an industry standard that D&D was the pioneer for. Changing the name is completely unnecesary.....they do what the names says.....determine how many hits you can take.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's not a major change. Hit points from 1-3e were already mostly non-physical instead representing luck, skill and the favor of the Big Spirit.

So there's no need to change the name. Now if they had changed hit points to being all physical then they'd have to change them to 'wound points' or something. But you know what the 4e critics would be saying then don't you? That's right.

Not D&D! Not D&D!! Not D&D!!!

 

[ThirdWizard]

Deviating from the lexicon can be bad. Everybody knows what HP is. SP? It generally means "Skill Points" as far as I know in the lexicon of gamers. And, when I say gamers here, I'm not just referencing tabletop RPG players. Every kid who has played Final Fantasy knows what HP is, or Mass Effect or a myriad of other video games. Who the heck knows what "boxes" are? D&D is king, but even the king can't go and tell the citizens to call a dog a cat and not expect people to think he's gone totally mad.

 

[Campbell]

Why replace a clinical sounding term with another detached term ? Why wouldn't you use a more visceral word like 'guts', 'vigor' or 'resolve' and drop the whole 'points' thing ? Nothing takes the punch out of a word like adding 'points' to the end. Of course, I prefer World of Warcraft's use of 'health', 'rage' and 'mana' over hp,rp, and mp.

 

[Exen Trik]

Might as well call them "Cool Points"

Why can you take more damage at high levels? Because being higher level means you're cooler.

How did that fighter survive the fall off that cliff? He's just that cool!

Why are wizards so weak? Because wizards aren't as cool, but magic is cool so it's all cool.

 

[Dausuul]

To me, at least, an actual hit is required to remove hit points. This is something that is very heavily reinforced by terminology and concepts throughout the game. If you attack me with a sword, and the result is to remove some hit points, that's called a "hit," not a "near miss." If there's poison on the sword, I risk being affected if and only if I lose hit points. It's both horribly counterintuitive and not well supported by the rules to have hit points lost to blows that don't actually connect.

That said, a hit does not have to mean significant damage. I figure that until you reach Bloodied, you're taking just scratches and bruises. The wound that takes you into Bloodied is a flesh wound or a superficial cut. When you go below zero, you just took a really serious injury, potentially mortal. If you get dropped below the "instant death threshold" (negative one-half hit points), you were decapitated, stabbed through the heart, et cetera.

So, "hit points" is actually not a bad term. They're points that let you survive being hit. I can dig that. I'd probably have picked "vitality," myself, but "hit points" has a long and storied tradition and it's really not worth the grief that would ensue from changing it.

To me, the real problem is with "healing surge." It's grossly misleading, because it implies that all characters have the power to actually heal themselves mid-combat. Which I'm pretty sure is not the intent at all. It should have been called "heroic surge" or "vital surge" or something; it's your stamina and will to fight that are being renewed, not your battered flesh.

I think the name "healing surge" is probably responsible for half the arguments about 4E hit points.

 

[Mallus]

If they are not ever actual damage due to getting hit, why use words like Hit and Bloodied?

Tradition?

I'll start worrying about what D&D damage actually models when mid-level+ characters start dying from falling off cliffs (or even breaking bones).

Which is to say, no time soon.

 

[JohnSnow]

It's pretty obvious if one carefully reads what is in the 1E through 3E rules that hit points in those games were a combination of actual damage (e.g. the Massive Damage rule) and the ability to deflect serious damage into minor damage.

Unless, you know, one actually read the First Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, where Gary discussed the notion of "hit points as actual damage" (on, I believe, page 82) using phrases like:

"...completely unreasonable to assume a human being could survive a dozen sword blows"
"Hit point represent a combination of toughness, grit, resolve, divine favor, luck and stamina..."
"the physical and metaphysical peak of 100 hit points"

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.

The only amazing thing is that it took this long for someone to decide that you ought to be able to recover fully with a day's rest, rather than a week, thus eliminating the absolute necessity of magical healing. In the "real world," serious injuries take months to heal, so clearly hit points have never been that. Claiming otherwise is disingenuous. It took longer under 1st-Edition, but there's hardly an appreciable difference between Third Edition's 3 days, and Fourth's one night, except that Fourth simultaneously does away with the tyranny of magical healing.

Besides, realistically in Third, if the adventure was over, your cleric just burned his daily spell selection making everybody instantly better. Which is SO much more realistic. (Again...where's that "rolleyes" smilie?)...

Hit points are a nice, playable game abstraction for what happens when someone scores a "hit." They're what determines whether that "hit" is serious. They could have called them luck points, heroic luck, vigor, grit or something else, but Hit Points is what Gary decided to call them, so hit points they remain.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

SP? It generally means "Skill Points" as far as I know in the lexicon of gamers.

Or "silver pieces". That was my first thought. And I agree - does "hit" necessarily mean that you take physical damage? If you "hit" the lich, but it doesn't do any damage, isn't this the same thing? If the fighter blocks a blow with a sword or shield, isn't that still being "hit"? It just doesn't actually hurt him, besides a few bruises and muscle fatigue.