Quote from: Piestrio;673438I've been playing and running D&D for almost 20 years and its just never been an issue.

It feels like an "Internet problem".

There are plenty of systems out there that don't use escalating hit points.  Saying it's an "Internet problem" isn't all that accurate.

I'm glad you found a way to make it work for you and yours

Quote from: Kiero;673273You might argue a small exception to this with 4th edition, where hit points possibly represent fatigue rather than health, since with a 10 minute rest you can restore them all via Healing Surges, and you get all your Surges back with a eight hour's rest.

I'm just going to link here for my definitive discussion of this topic: Explaining Hit Points

But 4E really does present a completely different paradigm from previous editions. And it's not a "small exception". A lost hit point in previous editions always represents a physical wound (although the severity of a 1 hp wound varies depending on the character who suffered it). A lost hit point in 4E might represent a physical wound, but it could also represent fatigue or flagging morale or a number of other things.

And what makes 4E particularly pernicious in this regard is that you're not allowed to know what type of wound was inflicted until it's been healed. Which makes it literally impossible to describe the game world in a coherent fashion.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;673454I'm just going to link here for my definitive discussion of this topic: Explaining Hit Points

But 4E really does present a completely different paradigm from previous editions. And it's not a "small exception". A lost hit point in previous editions always represents a physical wound (although the severity of a 1 hp wound varies depending on the character who suffered it). A lost hit point in 4E might represent a physical wound, but it could also represent fatigue or flagging morale or a number of other things.

And what makes 4E particularly pernicious in this regard is that you're not allowed to know what type of wound was inflicted until it's been healed. Which makes it literally impossible to describe the game world in a coherent fashion.

Fair point and an interesting essay, though I was trying to avoid turning it into a "look at how much more coherent and consistent 4E is in this regard" sideline away from the main argument.

Because I think we all know how rapidly the thread could disappear down that rabbit hole.

Quote from: Piestrio;673433As much as I think of HP as abstract I've still always described damage as physical.

I haven't always. It completely depends on the situation, the particular opponents involved, and so on. And even when it is about actual physical damage, it's all about however we see the situation at hand in our mind's eye, not just me, but the players' also. The descriptions will vary accordingly.

When I play I love to describe my actions as "I take a few swings at the Ogre to try to distract him and go for the jugular..." *rolls d20* or *after opponent knight's attack fails* "I interpose my shield and try to sustain the onslaught of his flail (after the DM actually described the knight attacking in such a fashion, of course), then make a large arc with it to create some distance between him and me and strike tip first with my sword in the movement..." *rolls d20*

Which then the DM can respond to seeing the results of my rolls and describing say, in the first case, on a successful hit and high damage on a fresh ogre "your blow would have decapitated any lesser being, and probably the ogre too, if your blade had not met its jaw bone squarely which, amazingly, caused your blade to ricochet off it and slash a huge bleeding cut on the side of its head, making the ogre even more pissed at you right now..." or in the second case, same thing, on a successful hit and high damage on a low HP knight "you stretch as far as you can and impale the knight squarely through his stomach. Blood gushes forth through his mail, and then his plate seems to fill with a wet 'thud' with guts and gore as he expires before your eyes..."

That's the magic of abstract HPs to me. You can riff off the actual same hit - damage mechanics and describe the results in completely different ways depending on the circumstance. Not to mention, the various applications this could have on home brew spells and items and whatnot.

I find myself siding with Kiero and Piestrio.

the fact that there is loads of discussion and description of HPs as luck and fatigue and skill etc doesn't matter if the opnly mechanical way you can get them back is healing.

I can write pages of stuff in a rule book about how loads of stuff but its just fluff unless the mechanics support it.

Its not hard to understand. If HP can only be regained through healing they have to be injury. It might not tie in with the fluff written about HP but meh.

So Piestrio has the right of it. Think of wounds as % of your HP. So a 10 HP hit that kills a 1st level theif becomes a deep cut that hurts a 4th level thief or a minor cut to a 10th level thief.
The lack of a death spiral is a quirk and you could introduce one if you felt like it at say 25%, 50% 75%, 90% but with HPs at low level being so low survivability would drop very fast.

Now for my games I moved HPs to model much closer to 4e about 20 years ago because I didn't want playability of the game to hinge on magical healing because magical healing is practically non existant in the source material especially as combat medic insta heal.
So to play the games I wanted to play but to keep the core D&D engine we loved to use I make HPs actually represent fatigue, luck, stanima, skill and added a wound mechanic underneath it, complete with death spiral and what not.
Makes games much more lethal as a dagger at the throat can actually kill a 10th level figther without having to invent a new ruling on the fly etc etc. But also means a party can get through a fight with scratches and bruises and no major injury and rest up and then be off again at moreorless full competance without having to glug healing potions or get cured or what not.

Now I don't think they will change HP for D&D and the majority of folk are comfortable with it and its inconsistencies but I don't think that those people should try to pretend it's something that its not. So lets not pretend HPs are well thought out consistent and immersive, lets just admit that they are a very playable abstract system that allows the level mechanic to reward players by increasing survivability of their PCs and allow them to take on increasingly tough opponents.

Quote from: jibbajibba;673493I find myself siding with Kiero and Piestrio.

the fact that there is loads of discussion and description of HPs as luck and fatigue and skill etc doesn't matter if the opnly mechanical way you can get them back is healing.

I can write pages of stuff in a rule book about how loads of stuff but its just fluff unless the mechanics support it.

Its not hard to understand. If HP can only be regained through healing they have to be injury. It might not tie in with the fluff written about HP but meh.
.

I think there's a few things people keep forgetting.  For one, resting isn't always healing.  If I drive myself to the point of exhaustion, it may a few days or even a week or longer to get back into full strength.

Secondly, AD&D also had psionics, and that is not always physical damage.  Life drain in 2e for example (actually in general as well).  It's draining the life force from a target, not necessarily physical damage.  Lend health is another example.  Same with Psionic Blast and Psychic Crush.  These are all things that affect hit points but are not physical in nature.

Thirdly, the 1e DMG does in fact say you get your Con bonus after a certain period of time, and then after that, you're automatically healed up to full.  So Joe Blow who had 250 hit points and was down to 1 will heal up to full after a few weeks.  That's a hell of a lot faster than a normal person's healing rate after suffering major wounds/fatigue/spirit/etc.

And of course all of that is beside the fact that the 1e DMG is very clear about what hit points are, and explicitly says that a 8 damage sword thrust that kills a level 1 fighter will only result as a nick (with the same 8 points) on a fighter with much more hit points.

So even though the majority of hp loss is through physical wounds, it's not the only way to lose them or get them back.  Just isn't.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;673501I think there's a few things people keep forgetting.  For one, resting isn't always healing.  If I drive myself to the point of exhaustion, it may a few days or even a week or longer to get back into full strength.

Secondly, AD&D also had psionics, and that is not always physical damage.  Life drain in 2e for example (actually in general as well).  It's draining the life force from a target, not necessarily physical damage.  Lend health is another example.  Same with Psionic Blast and Psychic Crush.  These are all things that affect hit points but are not physical in nature.

Thirdly, the 1e DMG does in fact say you get your Con bonus after a certain period of time, and then after that, you're automatically healed up to full.  So Joe Blow who had 250 hit points and was down to 1 will heal up to full after a few weeks.  That's a hell of a lot faster than a normal person's healing rate after suffering major wounds/fatigue/spirit/etc.

And of course all of that is beside the fact that the 1e DMG is very clear about what hit points are, and explicitly says that a 8 damage sword thrust that kills a level 1 fighter will only result as a nick (with the same 8 points) on a fighter with much more hit points.

So even though the majority of hp loss is through physical wounds, it's not the only way to lose them or get them back.  Just isn't.

Step back a sec....

Drive your self to exhaustion then you will take physical damage and you need to heal. Physical damge doesn't have to be a cut or a bruise it can be dehydration, Hyperthermia, frostbite, starvation loads of things cause physical damage.

Psionics are different but they should heal differently in my opinion. Very few peopel woudl say the psionic rules are a well thought out subsystem.....

Healign HP in AD&D with 'and on day 31 all the rest of your hit points instantly recover' is again not a great rule to cite.

The fact that a guy with 1 hp can be fine then get stabbed and be at deaths door and then be fine tomorrow isn't going to get fixed in any iteration fo D&D HP paradigm....

I just don't know whay you are saying that healing isn't the only way to regain HPs because it plainly is.
Take some examples....
I am in a room it fills with gas, I take 10 HP damage. How do I recover this damage?
I get hit by an orc I take 5 damage how do I get back that damage?
On a wilderness treck I don't have enough rations and I take 5 points of damage over a week from starvation. How can I get that back?
I pick up an antagonistic Intelligent sword and take its ego in damage. How do I get that back?



You are dead right when you say a 8 hp cut is jut a scratch to a 10th level guy , that was exactly what I said thing of damage as % rather than raw numbers.

You simply can not reconcile HPs as decribed in TSR D&D with HPs as they actually work. its not possible. So the best you can do is hand wave it and just get on with the game or come up with new mechanics that let you play the game you like.

Quotethe fact that there is loads of discussion and description of HPs as luck and fatigue and skill etc doesn't matter if the opnly mechanical way you can get them back is healing.

The rules of D&D are generally inconsistent.  Gygax said a lot of things, not all of them made much sense.

Ultimately I feel that D&D is just a game, and hit points are perfectly designed to model hit points. However all that abstraction can spoil immersion somewhat, so here is my perspective on the issue for when you need a better idea of what's going on (all the following is IMO etc. etc.)

I picture HP loss as mostly damage and fatigue, as you lose them when you get hit. The amount of actual damage you take is relative to your total HP*. Fatigue factors in because getting hit is tiring, even if there is no visible evidence, and I suspect the reason higher level characters can go further is because they tire less easily, but they're still better at taking damage too (hey, why not? It's no less easy to buy than anything the wizard is up to at this point). Also exposure and dehydration etc.

To me, 0 HP and fewer do not reflect death, but penalties and death spirals are too much effort, so you're just down (maybe the blood loss has overcome the adrenaline, or something has broken). You can do simple things (if you pass a fortitude save), but you're not in a fit state to protect yourself from enemies, so you're subject to coup-de-grace attacks.

A few things aren't well modelled by HP loss, such as falling, and lava. I feel falls should be handled by saving throws for incapacitation and death rather than HP loss (and there's no save against lava).

One thing that I think HP definitely do not represent is luck. Luck is already very well modelled in damage and to-hit rolls. If you're lucky, you didn't get hit, or they rolled a 1 for damage. More HP doesn't change that. Also luck isn't a recharge thing where you can go and sleep, luck is when you're lucky. You can't bank it for another day.

--
* As a corollary, you should also recover HP at a rate of level per day, or say 1/4 per day, rather than the 1HP per day (which could leave you not at peak for months), while negative HP are recovered more slowly, say the same number as before, but per week. I don't like the 1/day rule as in TSR D&D -- that makes no sense, as a fighter who apparently wasn't injured can take a month's rest and still not be at peak (although I'm sure I remember a rule somewhere that said after 4 weeks you recover all remaining HP).

Quote from: jibbajibba;673493Now I don't think they will change HP for D&D and the majority of folk are comfortable with it and its inconsistencies but I don't think that those people should try to pretend it's something that its not

I don't pretend it's anything other than an abstraction. If I want a realistic game, well there go the magic missiles, fireballs and longswords+1. It's just an abstraction for a bit of fun, like chess or monopoly. Nobody wants realism, though. "Oh my god why can't my cleric have a sword? Real-world priests had swords!"
"Okay, you can be a real-world cleric with a sword, and a real-world cleric with no spells."
"Oh no, I want realism when it favours me, the rest of the time I want a fantasy game."

If Kiero insisted that high hit points were unrealistic, I'd offer an easy solution: he's not allowed to roll more hit points for his characters after 1st level. Just his characters, though. Everyone else can roll.

If someone really wants a simulation of reality, I recommend GURPS. Someone even made welding rules. Now there's an exciting premise for a campaign.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;673567I don't pretend it's anything other than an abstraction. If I want a realistic game, well there go the magic missiles, fireballs and longswords+1. It's just an abstraction for a bit of fun, like chess or monopoly. Nobody wants realism, though. "Oh my god why can't my cleric have a sword? Real-world priests had swords!"
"Okay, you can be a real-world cleric with a sword, and a real-world cleric with no spells."
"Oh no, I want realism when it favours me, the rest of the time I want a fantasy game."

If Kiero insisted that high hit points were unrealistic, I'd offer an easy solution: he's not allowed to roll more hit points for his characters after 1st level. Just his characters, though. Everyone else can roll.

If someone really wants a simulation of reality, I recommend GURPS. Someone even made welding rules. Now there's an exciting premise for a campaign.

Plenty of people do want more realism , its all about degree, but the thrust of your point is spot on.

My contention is merely that saying HPs do something that according the rules as opposed to the fluff they clearly don't do is a bit daft. Accept them as what they are or don't and change them. Saying they are X when all the data clearly shows they are Y and calling others to task for suggesting they are Y is clearly a bit silly.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;673567I don't pretend it's anything other than an abstraction. If I want a realistic game, well there go the magic missiles, fireballs and longswords+1. It's just an abstraction for a bit of fun, like chess or monopoly. Nobody wants realism, though. "Oh my god why can't my cleric have a sword? Real-world priests had swords!"
"Okay, you can be a real-world cleric with a sword, and a real-world cleric with no spells."
"Oh no, I want realism when it favours me, the rest of the time I want a fantasy game."

If Kiero insisted that high hit points were unrealistic, I'd offer an easy solution: he's not allowed to roll more hit points for his characters after 1st level. Just his characters, though. Everyone else can roll.

If someone really wants a simulation of reality, I recommend GURPS. Someone even made welding rules. Now there's an exciting premise for a campaign.

Your stupid analogies aside, it doesn't surprise me that you still don't get it, and think this is all some sort of attempt to get an advantage.

There's a really easy fix to this: make recovery level-linked. Then we really are into the realm of hit point inflation reflecting something more than "being tougher" and fixing the rather glaring omission.

And in my game, no one rolls for hit points. They get max at 1st level and half HD every level thereafter up to 9th.

Otherwise, fuck GURPS, I can manage an appropriate level of "realism" in D&D just fine without touching that shit.

Quote from: Kiero;673569Your stupid analogies aside, it doesn't surprise me that you still don't get it, and think this is all some sort of attempt to get an advantage.

There's a really easy fix to this: make recovery level-linked. Then we really are into the realm of hit point inflation reflecting something more than "being tougher" and fixing the rather glaring omission.

And in my game, no one rolls for hit points. They get max at 1st level and half HD every level thereafter up to 9th.

Otherwise, fuck GURPS, I can manage an appropriate level of "realism" in D&D just fine without touching that shit.

Recover was linked to level by 3e where you regain level HP per day rather than HP. That makes the model work better but the more realistic soution is to rate all heals as a %.

So if we suppose all HPs are physical wounds then lets say we heal (5 + con bonus)% of HPs per day. If you want to be vague then you take the max hit point so a guy with 10 HPs heals at .5 HP a day or one every 2 days and a guy with 100 HPs heals 5 per day. Now that is going to be a bit fiddly so add and a mimimum of 1HP though that does mean Wizards haal faster than fighters.

You might say  (5 + con bonus)% of lost HPs per day so a guy down 20 HP heals 1 HP per day.

Or you might track each wound independently and have them all heal at (5 + con bonus)% so a 5 HP wound would heal at a rate of 1 point every 4 days. But the 10 HP wound you took would heal at the same rate so 1 HP every 2 days. Might get really fiddly

Now if we assumed that HPs are the ablative stuff and wounds underly them then the HPs heal at a 4e type rate and wounds heal 1 per week and give you a death spiral. Thsi si by the way how I have played D&D for 20 years.

My current heartbreaker is a little different with very low HP (a 4th level fighter in the game has 14 HP) and a wound death spiral with 7 wounds.

For D&D now I would give all PCs 1d6 as their 0 level HPs or make it a round 4 + con bonus. Then keep all Level acquited HP separate. So long as you draw from the Level stuff its skill and stamina and luck and energy and it recovers fast. If you have to dip into the 0 level stuff its wounds. Heal that slowly, give penalties and maybe roll specific injuries.

Means 1st level guys last longer and you have a number you can use for all those times when a hit will cause a real wound, hostages, hanging , beheading etc.....

Or just leave it as it is and put up with the inherent inconsistencies which si also fine if that is how you roll

Abstract HP model = No reason to apply more than minimal real world logic.

Realistic HP = Reason to apply real world logic.



I might prefer 'realistic' HP, but I am fine with abstract hp.

Well, to be very cynical about it, hit points are physical condition + plot immunity.

D&D has to go through considerable circumlocutions to handle Smaug getting killed by an arrow, because in the game a Smaug would have more plot immunity built in than an arrow can deal with. Though an arrow can kill a large animal. Sometimes. These examples have been hashed to death many times over of course.

You'd think somebody would have come up with an uncontroversially & universally better way of handling what hit points handle by now, but I guess it's a difficult thing to abstract because physical condition can vary widely and plot immunity is a thing that RPGs want to keep at a good arm's length and under plausible deniability unless they decide that the game is really about predetermined plots, storygame elements, etc. Hit points are simple. Just don't look at them very hard.

I tend to imagine PC hit points as partially... not so much luck, as fate, whose hand the spells of a priest can stay a little bit longer, hence the reason cure wounds spells help, though of course actual wounds figure in as well and it's a big ol' mess if you look at it closely. You don't want to tempt fate too much, so a high-level character that comes back from a real beating would want to rest longer than his wounds would suggest. Yep, kinda stupid, but less work. Fate, after all, is plot immunity made into an independent quality...