Why rename HP & Saves?

[Rex Blunder]

Ah, yes. The lost blogs of Gary Gygax. That proves that hit points have been totally abstract since Chainmail.

The only handwaving going on is the constant attempts to ret-con the definition of 'hit points'.

What's being ret-conned? Hit points were always about luck and skill turning wounds into nicks and scratches.

It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physcial ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses - and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in life-or-death situations, the "sixth sense" which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection.
...
Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. [...] Each hit done upon him does only a small amount of actual phyisical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's excepptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment.

 

[mmadsen]

It is my humble opinion that the greatest strength of D&D has always been its predeliction to place the ideal of a fun gaming experience over the concept of modeling anything at all.

Right, but that doesn't mean that the game is better for being less sensible; it just means that being playable is more important than making sense. Ideally we'd find a new system that worked just as well for gaming but also kinda, sorta modeled "reality".

 

[Fifth Element]

No time to read the thread due to flood waters in the yard, but briefly:

1. You're right, there's nothing wrong with the term "hit points". It's the term "hit" that causes the problems, since it does necessarily mean an actual hit (in the general sense).

2. "Saving throw" is kind of weird, if only because we don't call other rolls "attack throws" or "damage throws".

 

[mmadsen]

As far as I can tell, it's basically identical to the current system, only yours [Zaruthustran's] counts upward, the HP system downward.

Right, which is why I'm surprised anyone's excited about it. Is it better to say "I've taken 50 hit points of damage" than "I have 25 hit points left"? What issue is this solving?

 

[kinem]

Storywise, being "poisoned" requires you to have been at least "nicked," so you were at least "nicked."

But does that have to be the case for things that don't require it? When a non-poisoned sword batters you in the head, does it have to have drawn blood?

Obviously yes, because now if you have 2 guys attacking you with identical swords - except that one is poisoned and one is not, it would be the height of ridiculousness if Guy #1 (the poison user) always nicks and draws blood with his sword while Guy #2 does not!

I am well aware of "the idea" and always have been; I just think it's a stupid idea.

If you want to model fatigue and such, something like Star Wars' old VP/WP system would have been a way to go. Or make most attacks deal half nonlethal damage, and make that more easily gotten rid of. Something like that.

If you want the warlord to heal, make him have arcane power.

 

[Rex Blunder]

I am well aware of "the idea" and always have been; I just think it's a stupid idea.

Agreed.

If you want to model fatigue and such, something like Star Wars' old VP/WP system would have been a way to go. Or make most attacks deal half nonlethal damage, and make that more easily gotten rid of. Soimething like that.

But you don't want to model fatigue. You want to use hit points, because they are an easy and fun game mechanic. You invoke fatigue to try to fool people into thinking hit points are halfway sensible.

If the idea was to model reality, we would have a much different system. It might involve wp/vp, or tracking nonlethal damage, or a spiral of death, or hit locations, with charts to roll on for blinding and losing a hand. Other game systems have done so. But hit points, and silly as they are, make for fast, fun game play, so I like 'em.

 

[mmadsen]

First off, I didn't say "dodging." I said "avoiding taking serious injury from..."

You were discussing fatigue, and I stand by the notion that fighting someone with great skill and mobility is at least as fatiguing as fighting someone slow and lumbering but big and strong -- but damage primarily is a function of size and strength.

The recovery of hit points has always been the thing that was "out of sync" with the rest of the system. Fix that, and the system works just fine, and jives much better with Gary's explanation of hit points waaaayyy back in the first edition AD&D Dungeon Masters' Guide (page 82).

I wouldn't say it works "just fine" with shorter recovery, but it works much better.

I beg to differ. From what we know, in Fourth Edition, AC scales just fine. It escalates at precisely the same rate that attack bonus does.

I was not discussing how well D&D increments hit points and AC over levels; I was discussing the nature of ablative hit points vs. a bonus on a d20 roll to avoid getting hit. The jump from, say, eight hit dice to nine, means you can survive in combat one-eighth longer (12.5%). The jump from getting hit on a 19 or 20 to just on a 20 means you can survive twice as long (100% longer). AC bonuses show increasing returns -- at least until you hit the "always hit on a 20" stage.

However, you're mistaken. AC doesn't model your ability to avoid serious injury, it models your ability to avoid being injured at all.

That's a semantic quibble. Avoiding injury completely is simply doing all the things that allow you to avoid injury partially, but doing them better. The only major difference is when physical toughness comes into play. Anything that improves AC should improve hit points and vice versa -- except that that is hard to implement, because hit points last, and being flat-footed (or whatever) is temporary.

If hit points weren't abstract, you'd have to build a fatigue tracker (and trackers for all kinds of combat impairment) into the D&D combat system.

There are many, many different ways to implement a combat system, some of them more abstract than D&D's, some of them less.

You could easily build a system with no trackers at all.

Characters would become more likely to take serious injury as they got more tired (or saw spots, or whatever). On the other hand, such a system wouldn't need to have hit points escalate, because, let's face it, even the most experience fighter dies if you put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. Bodily resistance to injury doesn't increase. And while a system like this can be made to work fine for humanoid vs. humanoid fights (see Riddle of Steel), it totally sucks for fighting monsters.

The abstract nature of hit points lets you make combats vs. monsters more interesting than "miss, miss, miss, miss, you die...", and still works just fine for humanoid vs. humanoid contests if you let it.

I don't think it's the abstract nature of hit points that lets you make combats versus monsters more interesting than "miss, miss, miss, miss, you die."

 

[mmadsen]

You want to use hit points, because they are an easy and fun game mechanic. You invoke fatigue to try to fool people into thinking hit points are halfway sensible.

Exactly. Ideally we'd find a new system that worked just as well for gaming but also kinda, sorta modeled "reality".

If the idea was to model reality, we would have a much different system. It might involve wp/vp, or tracking nonlethal damage, or a spiral of death, or hit locations, with charts to roll on for blinding and losing a hand. Other game systems have done so. But hit points, and silly as they are, make for fast, fun game play, so I like 'em.

I don't think we need to keep drawing this false dichotomy between easy-and-fun and difficult-and-realistic. A system can be just as simple as hit points without the rampant silliness of "hits" not being hits, "damage" not being damage, "healing" not being healing, etc.

 

[Rex Blunder]

I don't think we need to keep drawing this false dichotomy between easy-and-fun and difficult-and-realistic.

OK, maybe not a dichotomy, but at least a strong correlation

It's harder than it seems to make up a system that's a) as simple as AC/HP, b) that's a much better model of reality and c) makes for as much fun around the gaming table, especially over a long campaign with a lot of fighting in it. Such a system may exist - my RPG experience is not encyclopaedic.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Ah, yes. The lost blogs of Gary Gygax.

Well, I must say that characterization of my web page makes me smile.