Quote from: talysman;674085And alcohol. Don't forget alcohol.

And when a high-level druid turns into a bird, reptile or mammal.

Quote from: Elfdart;674221And when a high-level druid turns into a bird, reptile or mammal.

In newer editions, you don't need to be high level.  Heck, in Next, you can do it at level 1.

Quote from: Kiero;673273This is something consistent across every edition, that regardless of empty throwaway text claiming they represent a broad spectrum of stuff, the reality is they are physical condition and nothing else. Not luck, not skill, not desire to fight on, nor anything else.

Maybe in your game they are but in mine, they work just fine as luck, skill, willpower, etc.

Quote from: The_Rooster;674245

Quote from: Kiero;673273This is something consistent across every edition, that regardless of empty throwaway text claiming they represent a broad spectrum of stuff, the reality is they are physical condition and nothing else. Not luck, not skill, not desire to fight on, nor anything else.

Maybe in your game they are but in mine, they work just fine as luck, skill, willpower, etc.

That's another thing: Kiero heavily house-rules ACKS to make the hit points more representative of physical damage. So why does he discount common house rules, like heal all hit point loss after a night's sleep, hps restored by a good meal, drink, or listening to music, etc.?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;674057I hate to break this to you, but not every instance of losing hit points is the result of taking a hit, which is a key requirement in all of your examples.  Heck, even in your edit, you do realize that there are ways to get poisoned other than a needle, right?




Did either of you fellas bother to read my post a couple pages back?  You know, the one with examples of how hit point loss and recovery are done without any sort of physical wound?

Life Drain: no physical wound
Transfer Life: no physical healing or wound; it's simply life energy
Aid/Tenser's Transformation, etc spell: temp max hit points, which you gain even if you are at full hit points from the start.  Do you expect me to believe you get "extra" healed?
Natural rest: after X amount of time, everyone is brought to max, regardless what that is
Level Drain: the hit points lost due to level drain are those that were acquired by the other part of what hit points are: experience and luck.  You don't always suffer a wound on level drain hit point loss, nor are you healed of a wound on a restoration spell

Those are just examples off the top of my head.  So yeah, while the vast majority of hit point loss and gain is tied to physical wounds and therefore that's what people think of it as, it's not always the case, so please stop saying it is.  You are objectively wrong on this.

Dude......
Tensers transformation represents getting bigger stronger etc so you can take more damage. You are not regaining lost hit points you are getting new ones. If you were being logical enlarge would give you more Hit points cos you got bigger, doesn't but it woudl be a logical extension. (alcohol is a bit liek that too with its temporary ability to take more damage)
Spells that drain HPs ... those HPs can only be recovered by healing, it doesn't matter how damage is dealt  if it can only be recovered through healing it is physical damage.
Natural rest ...WTF...this is healing ... you can change the word healing to Rest so that the sentence natural healing will restore 1 HP per day reads different but it's just a semantic change.

Level Drain is interesting you definitely loose HPs but you might as well say gaining a level doesn't heal you... its outside the damage paradigm itself and instead is part of the level paradigm. HPs are one of the intersection points.

The fact is that HPS are described as one thing but treated in play as another.

Take V&V. V&V uses hit points but it also has Power. Hit points are physical damage Power is your skill luck, stamina and endurance. As you get hit you roll some of that damage off your power, your power is also used to run the engine for your super abilities. Now Power heals fast, well its not physical damage its luck, skill endurance etc... Hit points are physical they heal slowly.
Now V&V is one of the first games that took what HitPoints claimed to be and made them actually work like they said they did but to do it they had to separate them. D&D didn't do that and until 4e treated Hit points like physical damage with a set healing rate.  In 4e you can regain HP in non healing ways so for the first time they actually treat them as not being physical damage only.
Also think about this if Hit points are skill and luck and all that how come you only get HP bonuses from Constitution. surely a quick guy can turn a blade and dex should help or a smart guy can know when to move? Power in V&V by the ways uses all these things.

Quote from: jibbajibba;674289Dude......
Tensers transformation represents getting bigger stronger etc so you can take more damage.

Bigger or stronger has never correlated to more hit points in D&D.  No, hit points are based on level+occupation+constitution.  Zero correlation with size.

QuoteYou are not regaining lost hit points you are getting new ones. If you were being logical enlarge would give you more Hit points cos you got bigger, doesn't but it woudl be a logical extension. (alcohol is a bit liek that too with its temporary ability to take more damage)

Your hit points increase with Tensor's Transformation because the spell turns you into a fighter-type.  That's the intent of the spell.  It has nothing to do with getting more hit points by getting bigger, it has to do with fighters having more hit points based on things identified in the rules.  You know, like calling out that hit points include experience and luck, especially at higher levels.  So as a magically transformed fighter, you are able to take advantage of the reason why fighters have more hit points (having the experience in battle to avoid the worst of the blows, the fortitude to continue to fight longer, etc)

You also didn't address Aid spell, or similar spells.  They don't change your size.  That fact that enlarge doesn't increase hit points should show you that you're wrong on this.

QuoteSpells that drain HPs ... those HPs can only be recovered by healing, it doesn't matter how damage is dealt  if it can only be recovered through healing it is physical damage.

Wrong.  Seriously, please go back and read my prior posts and it would save you a lot of time.  Transfer health is a) not a spell, and b) allows a target to recover HP outside of physical healing.  It's a transfer of life energy.

QuoteNatural rest ...WTF...this is healing ... you can change the word healing to Rest so that the sentence natural healing will restore 1 HP per day reads different but it's just a semantic change.

Natural rest from being overly tired or exhausted isn't really healing, unless you're really stretching.  Seeing as how everyone goes back to max HP at the end of a certain time frame automatically, regardless if they were down 15 hp or 150 hp tells you that the recovery is for more things than just wounds.

QuoteLevel Drain is interesting you definitely loose HPs but you might as well say gaining a level doesn't heal you... its outside the damage paradigm itself and instead is part of the level paradigm. HPs are one of the intersection points.

The argument was that the loss of hit points was always tied to a physical wound.  Even if you throw everything else out, level drain right there proves that wrong.  Levels are representative of experience.  That proves that hit points are exactly what they are defined as: significantly representing experience and luck at higher levels, and not just physical damage threshold.

QuoteThe fact is that HPS are described as one thing but treated in play as another.
.

So what if a lot of people view hit points as only physical damage.  That doesn't make that assumption accurate or correct.  I've just given you several examples of how this is objectively untrue.  I can only assume you are being deliberately obtuse to have seen these examples more than once already, yet continue to argue.

Quote from: valency;674000I've long since given away my 1st ed. stuff, but I think the money quote says something like "each wound represents some kind of glancing blow, scratch, or bruise".

Yup. Exactly. (Although it can be inferred that wounds that make up a substantial portion of your maximum hit points would represent more severe physical wounds.)

Quote from: Sacrosanct;674057I hate to break this to you, but not every instance of losing hit points is the result of taking a hit, which is a key requirement in all of your examples.

Well, sticking to the immediate topic of discussion: Do you have a quote from the AD&D core rulebooks stating that these other sources of hit point loss don't include a physical wound?

Quote from: Elfdart;674221And when a high-level druid turns into a bird, reptile or mammal.

On that note, I seem to recall polymorph self restored some hp when you returned to your normal form.

I think overall HP are abstract and vague, including a number of different elements. I wouldn't look to other parts of the system to find logical consistency because I don't think the designers were striving for that. But I have a hard time not seeing physical damage as a component of each HP. Might be my own hang up or just how the system trained me to view them but when they tried to de-emphasize the physical in 4E and allowed non magic fast healing of HP I found incredibly jarring.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;674370I think overall HP are abstract and vague, including a number of different elements. I wouldn't look to other parts of the system to find logical consistency because I don't think the designers were striving for that. But I have a hard time not seeing physical damage as a component of each HP. Might be my own hang up or just how the system trained me to view them but when they tried to de-emphasize the physical in 4E and allowed non magic fast healing of HP I found incredibly jarring.

I hate non magical fast healing.

I think 4E trapped themselves with a concept of 'Normal play involves back to back combat encounters'

Quote from: Justin Alexander;674332Well, sticking to the immediate topic of discussion: Do you have a quote from the AD&D core rulebooks stating that these other sources of hit point loss don't include a physical wound?

Do you really need a specific quote that says hp loss from level drain, transfer life (which is literally transference of life energy), energy drain (hell, it's right there in the name of the spell), and ingested or contact poison doesn't have to come from a physical wound?

Come on now.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;674332Well, sticking to the immediate topic of discussion: Do you have a quote from the AD&D core rulebooks stating that these other sources of hit point loss don't include a physical wound?

From a logic standpoint it may be safe to say that ingested poison can cause physical damage of a sort.

Energy drain OTOH, is purely magical effect by which the only hp loss comes from losing life-energy levels which are intangible resources as far as the inhabitants of the campaign are concerned. The hp lost during the process cannot be healed by magical spell or natural rest.

Only by restoring the part of the victim's soul (including magical protections, luck, etc.) can this type of "wound" be healed.

This is anything BUT physical damage.

I rather like the Star Wars Vitality/Wounds system.

HP/Vitality - abstract ability to withstand/avoid lethal damage.

Wounds - Physical. When these are gone: He's dead, Jim.

It allows you to have mechanics that can pose realistic threats to even powerful PC/NPCS - in D&D a knife to someone's throat is 1d4 + Str bonus in damage. WTF does that mean to a Fighter with 120+ HP?

But make that Fighter have 120 Vitality and his Con Score in Wounds - and have rules that say having a person in such a situation is an auto-crit where Crit damage goes directly to Wounds and bypasses Vitality altogether...

Yeah that Fighter is gonna think a bit more realistically.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;674426Do you really need a specific quote that says hp loss from level drain, transfer life (which is literally transference of life energy), energy drain (hell, it's right there in the name of the spell), and ingested or contact poison doesn't have to come from a physical wound?

Well, since we're specifically discussing the claim that Gygax explicitly wrote something: Yes, you would need to show that Gygax explicitly wrote it in order to prove that Gygax explicitly wrote it.

More generally, I'm not really clear on why you don't think most of those things would involve a physical debilitation/wound/damage. The damage you suffer from ingesting a poison, for example, doesn't reflect that you were so lucky that you failed to eat any of the poison.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;674442Energy drain OTOH, is purely magical effect by which the only hp loss comes from losing life-energy levels which are intangible resources as far as the inhabitants of the campaign are concerned. The hp lost during the process cannot be healed by magical spell or natural rest.

Sure. I'll buy that: Energy drain causes you to lose a level, which also causes you to lose the "inflation" of hit points that you received to represent the improved luck/skill/whatever that came with that level. Thus, the hit points you lose to energy drain are really a "deflation" of your total and may not actually represent physical injury.

But the hit point loss from energy drain isn't damage. (Similarly the restoration of hit points from a restoration spell isn't referred to as healing.) So I remain comfortable with my thesis statement. Energy drain does not demonstrate that hit points function any differently than I've said they do.

Quote from: tenbones;674481I rather like the Star Wars Vitality/Wounds system.

Personally, I hate it. It fundamentally breaks the abstraction of the hit point system and turns it into a dissociated mechanic. It also creates a lot of painful inconsistencies in the rules. ("Hmm... I seem to have been poisoned by the arrow which missed me completely.")

Quote from: Justin Alexander;674564Well, since we're specifically discussing the claim that Gygax explicitly wrote something: Yes, you would need to show that Gygax explicitly wrote it in order to prove that Gygax explicitly wrote it.

No, we're discussing the claim that HP loss and recovery is always tied to a physical condition.  You were the one who tried to pull quotes to support that position without being smart enough to realize that every quote you had relied on the PC being hit first as a precondition.

And now you want me to provide a quote out of the book that says that spells like energy drain and psionic life transfer aren't physical attacks?  Sorry dude, I don't need to do that because a) I wasn't the one relying on the quotes to prove my point in the first place, and b) I know what the words "energy" and "drain" mean, and they aren't tied to any physical wound.

QuoteSure. I'll buy that: Energy drain causes you to lose a level, which also causes you to lose the "inflation" of hit points that you received to represent the improved luck/skill/whatever that came with that level. Thus, the hit points you lose to energy drain are really a "deflation" of your total and may not actually represent physical injury.

But the hit point loss from energy drain isn't damage. (Similarly the restoration of hit points from a restoration spell isn't referred to as healing.) So I remain comfortable with my thesis statement. Energy drain does not demonstrate that hit points function any differently than I've said they do.

Energy drain isn't just level loss.  There are versions of spells where they are draining hp from a target and absorbing it yourself.  That doesn't mean physical wound was made.  It means you're draining the energy (hence the name) from the target and adding the energy to yourself.  There are also spells that are instant Save or Die, and if you make your save, you still lose hit point.  Finger of Death is an example.  There's no physical wound there the caster is inflicting.  It's draining the life energy out of a target.


Sorry, but it is simply not true that hp loss and recover is always tied to a physical wound.  At this point, I am convinced you're being deliberately obtuse, because this has been explained at least three times now with clear cut examples.

*Edit*  Another interesting observation.  The description of the Heal spell:

QuoteHeal (Necromantic) Reversible
Level: 6     Components: V, S    Range: Touch     Casting Time: 1 round    Duration: Permanent     Saving Throw: None    Area of Effect: Creature touched
Explanation/Description: The very potent Heal spell enables the cleric to wipe away disease and injury in the creature who receives the benefits of the spell. It will completely cure any and all diseases and/or blindness of the recipient and heal all hit points of damage suffered due to wounds or injury, save 1 to 4 (d4). It dispels a Feeblemind spell. Naturally, the effects can be negated by later wounds, injuries, and diseases. The reverse, Harm, infects the victim with a disease and causes loss of all hit points, as damage, save 1 to 4 (d4), if a successful touch is inflicted. For creatures not affected by the Heal (or Harm) spell, see Cure Light Wounds.

if all hit point loss was due to wounds or injury, that seems like a redundant statement.  However, it was explicitly called out as only healing hit points lost due to wounds or injury, implying (or reinforcing) that not all hit point loss is due to wounds or injury.

And of course, we haven't even talked about illusionary damage, which don't do any physical wounds at all, but hit point loss is still real if the target fails saving throws.