As an AD&D player I have to agree with the OP.

At 1 HP you're good to go and at 0 HP you're dead.  The idea of HP as abstract representation of stamina, luck and rolling with the punches is a belief system that you have to buy into.

Quote from: jibbajibba;673514Psionics are different but they should heal differently in my opinion. Very few peopel woudl say the psionic rules are a well thought out subsystem.....
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Just because you think they should be handled differently, or if they happen to be a poorly thought out system is irrelevant because that wasn't the argument.  The argument was that there was no other way to lose hit points or gain them back outside of healing physical damage.

And that's simply not true.  Sure, the vast majority of the time it's true because the vast majority of time PCs are in physical combat.  And sure, the vast majority of players think that's true because of the above reason as well.  However, it's a black and white example of it not always being the case.  And if you have even just one example of it not being the case, then you can't say something is always one way.

QuoteWelding
IQ/A
Defaults: Machinist -2, Metallurgy -4
 
This is the modern skill of welding using localized heat from a flame or Electric Current to join 2 pieces of metal. For forge welding See Smith B221.
 
Success results in a weld that is visibly noticeable, by structurally identical to the base material. In the union of 2 dissimilar metals, use the lowest DR and HP.
 
Failure results in a union that has DR of 5% less per margin of failure on the roll for both DR and HP (Round Down). In the case of dissimilar metals again, use the lower DR and HP.
 
It takes 1 minute to create a 1 foot , 1/4" deep weld.
 
Example:
 
The Sinister Red Lincoln chains our hero, The Mighty Blue Miller to a wall by welding his 1/4" chains to steel plates in the wall. Lincolns Welding skill is a 11 and he rolls an 16 for a margin of failure of 5. This means that the DR of the weld holding him is only 75% the DR of steel (about DR:5 and HP 11 for the 1/4" steel bars that make up the chain) for a final DR:3 and HP:7. If he can manage 10 points of damage, He'll be free from the wall, but not the chains!

Quote from: Orpheo;673604As an AD&D player I have to agree with the OP.

At 1 HP you're good to go and at 0 HP you're dead.  The idea of HP as abstract representation of stamina, luck and rolling with the punches is a belief system that you have to buy into.

*cough cough*

Quote from: AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, page 82HIT POINTS

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 [hit points] reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage - as indicated by constitution bonuses - and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar 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. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness).

In other words: hit points themselves are an abstraction of all these things including physical ability to withstand damage, skill in combat and life-or-death situations, sixth sense warning the individual of unforeseen events (i.e. rolling with the blows, anticipating hits, near dodges etc.), sheer luck, and fantastic elements which are part of the make up of the game world. Constitution is part of the equation to represent this specific part of progression of physical training and fitness, but it is not the whole of the equation.

Also...

Quote from: AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, page 82Zero Hit Points

When any creature is brought to 0 hit points (optionally as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until -10 is reached and the creature dies.

It goes on, but the point is, BTB you don't die at 0 hit points. You're unconscious, bleeding, convulsing or have stopped breathing, etc (the paragraph actually enumerates several possibilities, the point being, you could be unconscious for a number of different reasons, up to interpretation), and if you reach -10 without receiving first aid (which could be a number of things, up to interpretation) in the meantime, you die.

Quote from: Orpheo;673604As an AD&D player I have to agree with the OP.

At 1 HP you're good to go and at 0 HP you're dead.  The idea of HP as abstract representation of stamina, luck and rolling with the punches is a belief system that you have to buy into.

I deeply dislike dead at 0 (I also think HP has nothing to do with luck, as that is already accounted for by the dice). While there are many ways to die quickly on a battlefield, a great many will only disable you, maybe leading to death a few days later. There has to be a buffer between fighting and dead. Removing that aspect not only hurts believability, it also removes a great number of interesting outcomes from combat.

If someone is in negative HP and you really want them dead, spend the action to coup-de-grace. The game is lethal enough as it is without adding in a rule whose sole purpose is to emulate one fight from one film -- there are many other films with interesting fight scenes and outcomes to explore.

Quote from: spaceLem;673847I deeply dislike dead at 0 (I also think HP has nothing to do with luck, as that is already accounted for by the dice).

Wrong meaning of the word "luck", dQQd.

Folks, Kiero is right this time.  What he's pointed out is the difference between what a thing is said to be and what it actually is; it does not matter how many definitions you cite and quote because those are not what actually is.  What actually is consists of the observed results of the thing in action, and that is the relevant evidence that Kiero cites to support his argument- and he draws the correct conclusions accordingly.  "What you see is what you get." is a better way to summarize this principle.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;673872Folks, Kiero is right this time.  What he's pointed out is the difference between what a thing is said to be and what it actually is; it does not matter how many definitions you cite and quote because those are not what actually is.  What actually is consists of the observed results of the thing in action, and that is the relevant evidence that Kiero cites to support his argument- and he draws the correct conclusions accordingly.  "What you see is what you get." is a better way to summarize this principle.

Uh, no. It's not just the definitions, it's the rules that he discounts because they fail to prove his point. There's plenty of examples of hit points that can't possibly be physical damage. He's just cherry-picking examples and ignoring or redefining anything that doesn't fit his theory.

Quote from: Kiero;673461Fair 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.

Fair enough. But you aren't going to get anywhere discussing what hit points represent if you roll 4E and previous editions into one big lump. Like a lot of 4E mechanics, they use the same name but they do something significantly different.

It would be like trying to discuss what a "save" means while lumping 4E and pre-4E together.

Quote from: Orpheo;673604At 1 HP you're good to go and at 0 HP you're dead.  

That's a bottomless pit, though.

You start by saying: "Well, the system is abstract and doesn't model the debilitating effects from wounds, so it's unacceptable / unrealistic / dissociated."

So you add some wound penalties. Say, -1 penalty for every 1/4 of your total hit points are depleted.

And then you say: "Well, jeez, this system is so abstract it's not even modeling the fact that wounds are suffered to different parts of the body. A cut on the arm shouldn't affect my ability to run! So it's clearly unacceptable / unrealistic / dissociated."

So you add hit locations.

And then you say: "Well, jeez, this system is so abstract it's not even modeling the potential for wounds to deteriorate or for extreme actions to make the wounds worse, so it's unacceptable / unrealistic / dissociated."

So you add rules for that.

And then you say: "Well, jeez, this system is so abstract it's not modeling the distinctions between different types of wounds. Cuts should be different from bruises and both of those should be different from broken bones, so this is clearly unacceptable / unrealistic / dissociated."

The real root of the problem here is not the mechanic. It's that you've failed to understand the concept of abstraction.

The Alexandrian has the right of it.

At some point you have to abstract things. Any system at the lowest level of its abstraction is absurd. What you hope to get is that when looked at from higher levels, things come out reasonable.

I remember years ago playing a wargame of the Allied invasion of German-occupied Europe. The smallest unit, apart from a few specialist ones, was the "division", which in reality is 8-24,000 men. During combat, a division could be eliminated or forced back - that was all. In reality, divisions are rarely eliminated entirely, they get some casualties and become ineffective, if they can withdraw and get their shit together they'll come back strong as ever.

Looked at the lowest level of its abstraction, an entire division disappearing from the battlefield instantly is absurd. But since they game had 100+ divisions a side, the overall result of the campaign was much what we got or could have got in reality, the Germans defeated by April 1945, or the Allies knocked off the beaches in June 1944, etc.

So while the lowest level of abstraction was nonsense, it actually worked to make a big picture that made sense. You choose a level of abstraction you're comfortable with.

In Dave Arneson's original fantasy campaign, the first combats were "A meets B, both roll, higher roll wins, either A is killed and B is fine, or vice versa." When people were playing with 20+ miniatures each, they were happy with that level of abstraction. When they had just one, they found this unsatisfying. Arneson pulled Ironclad down from the bookshelf, a game where heavily armoured ships fire heavy shells at each-other and basically batter each-other into destruction... thus Armour Class and Hit Points.

The players were happier with this level of abstraction, since instead of a single dice roll there were several, and they could imagine the back-and-forth of a lengthy combat. The end result was just the same - someone died, someone lived and walked away - but it felt different.

Somewhere along the spectrum Justin describes you find the level of abstraction you're comfortable with. Nowhere on that spectrum is more or less "realistic". It just feels different.

Many of us confuse detail with realism, just as if I say someone's height is 1.78543m you are more likely to believe me than if I say it's "about 2 metres." Accuracy (whether the measure is correct) is one thing, precision (how many decimal points the measure is to) is another. Many games go for precision in striving for accuracy; thus GURPS welding rules. But you can be accurate without being precise, and vice versa.

The different levels of abstraction are different levels of precision. None of them are terribly accurate. You know, fireballs and stuff. Hit points are not physical damage, nor luck, nor anything else. They're an abstraction, as meaningless as the individual division in the board game. But looked at from a distance, they work fine. Experienced warriors should last longer in combat than inexperienced ones. There are lots of ways of modelling that, hit points increasing with level are just one of them.

Hit points are simply the answer to the following question:

How hard is it to kill this motherfucker?

How a player or DM wants to rationalize why one PC or monster is harder to kill than another is their lookout. Ditto for explaining how healing works, what healing is, what exactly is being healed, and so on.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;673454But 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.

Wow. So, in this thread we find that Justin has not read, or does not remember, 1e D&D rules regarding hit points.  Nor has he read the thread he's posting to, where people went to quite some lengths to post the relevant and quite lengthy text which completely and totally refutes what Justin thinks the rules were.

I know you're about to respond with some bullshit snark Justin, so I'll just say this before you do - read the fucking thread first dude, and then if you want to make the claim you just made, at least you will be equipped to actually know what it is you're trying to refute.  Because 1e was super-clear in saying you're quite wrong.  Hit Points in 1e absolutely did not represent a physical wound most of the time, and Gygax didn't hedge that explanation or leave any wiggle room to think otherwise.

Quote from: Mistwell;673955Wow. So, in this thread we find that Justin has not read, or does not remember, 1e D&D rules regarding hit points.

Well, I know that Justin Alexander just doesn't get 1E, for sure, but I agree: it's pretty obvious at this point that folks are just not reading others' posts.

So... *shrug* Moving on.

Quote from: Mistwell;673955Wow. So, in this thread we find that Justin has not read, or does not remember, 1e D&D rules regarding hit points.  Nor has he read the thread he's posting to, where people went to quite some lengths to post the relevant and quite lengthy text which completely and totally refutes what Justin thinks the rules were.

I know you're about to respond with some bullshit snark Justin, so I'll just say this before you do - read the fucking thread first dude, and then if you want to make the claim you just made, at least you will be equipped to actually know what it is you're trying to refute.  Because 1e was super-clear in saying you're quite wrong.  Hit Points in 1e absolutely did not represent a physical wound most of the time, and Gygax didn't hedge that explanation or leave any wiggle room to think otherwise.

What the blurb say about hit points in AD&D does not match how Hit points actually work in AD&D that is the point.
If I hit you with a poison dagger you need to save v posion, if its a posion where you take damage regardless of the save then you take damage as the wound is a physical wound the whole of the HP paradigm works that way in AD&D.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;673611Just because you think they should be handled differently, or if they happen to be a poorly thought out system is irrelevant because that wasn't the argument.  The argument was that there was no other way to lose hit points or gain them back outside of healing physical damage.

And that's simply not true.  Sure, the vast majority of the time it's true because the vast majority of time PCs are in physical combat.  And sure, the vast majority of players think that's true because of the above reason as well.  However, it's a black and white example of it not always being the case.  And if you have even just one example of it not being the case, then you can't say something is always one way.

How do you regain HP lost through a psychic attack? Healign isps facto they are physical wounds and really ...psionics .... possibly the worst though out subsystem in the game that is your go to example?