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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4101498" data-attributes="member: 32164">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.</blockquote>

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