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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8270323" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Well that's the thing; the eternal debate over hit points and to what extent they are "meat points", comprising physical toughness and decremented by injury, or "stamina/skill points", and represent skill, luck and endurance, the ability to only sustain a scratch and a little fatigue from, e.g., an 11 HP hit which would have skewered and killed a 1st level character or 0 level human.I appreciate your reference to the other, less-discussed component which Gary talked about as well- supernatural blessings from deities and alignment forces.  But even those can be conceptualized and described either as actual supernatural toughness OR as supernatural luck and wound avoidance.I think a lot of this debate boils down to what Peterson identified in his recent The Elusive Shift as a fundamental divide in the D&D player base going back to the 70s.  Folks with a background in wargaming, interested in simulating real world physics and history to at least some extent, and folks coming from the Fantasy & Science Fiction fandom community, more interested in simulating novels and adventure stories.Even some of Gary's primary influences, like Conan and John Carter, are superheroic figures capable of recovering quickly from one deadly battle and immediately running off to the next.  I remember when I was a kid in the 80s and into the 90s, seeing this conflict between the slow natural healing rules and the desire to emulate the pace of a John Carter novel or an action movie.  Of course we could get around the natural healing rules with healing magic, but that often seems like a bit of a kludge to bridge two different genres/worldviews.Personally I normally lean toward the "wound avoidance" explanation for hit points, because it aligns better with the lack of penalties for injury in D&D prior to being dropped to 0.I really do appreciate some qualities of the slow natural healing rules from older editions, though.  I especially appreciate how they enforce a slower pacing of advancement and campaign time.  There can be a tendency especially in later editions for an adventurer's entire 1st to 20th level adventuring career to occur over mere weeks or months of game time, which can strain credulity unless you really work on explaining this meteoric ascent in power. On the other hand, I remember the frustration engendered in the slower-healing days by wanting the PCs to be able to, for example, immediately chase off to the site of the villain's next plot (like John Carter) after a challenging and draining battle with his minions or another villain.  Often the details of the fiction would mean the characters would most logically want or need to rush off immediately to the next scene or locale, but their low HP and/or few remaining spells would make that seem like a foolish or suicidal decision to the players, and smart/conservative play would dictate resting and recuperating first.  It's always a demoralizing situation when smart play and good roleplaying seem to be in conflict.  :/</blockquote>

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