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Thread: Hit points

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    ElfRangerGuy

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    Default Hit points

    I've been thinking:

    How unrealistic are HP, I've always explained it to myself as HP being a persons weariness in combat. So If and ogre swings an axe and it hits you...you dead so I've just always thought of an ogre hitting a barbarian as him dodging its attack, but that takes energy, and thus the waning of hitpoints is the exhaustion of the warrior, so when his HPs gets to -10, that ogre actually hit him with the axe. Doees this make any sense at all?

    For example lets take a popular fantasy novel set in a popular campaign setting. The first Drizzt novel set in forgotten realms. At the start of the book a high level drow wizard is shot in the back with a crossbow and killed...by a 10 year old.

    Looking at this in game terms, its a 1-3 level adept/wizard one shotting a 10+ wizard with 1d10. If that happened in game, the wizard would say "ow" turn around and blow the crap out of the kid.

    So I guess what I'm saying is, how do you explain the obviously unrealistic abstract system that is hit-points?

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    Default Re: Hit points

    I usually describe it as minor hits, the sort that wouldn't do much damage, but when they start adding up, you start slowing down, bleeding more, the wounds get worse, and so on.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Delcor View Post
    How unrealistic are HP, I've always explained it to myself as HP being a persons weariness in combat. So If and ogre swings an axe and it hits you...you dead so I've just always thought of an ogre hitting a barbarian as him dodging its attack, but that takes energy, and thus the waning of hitpoints is the exhaustion of the warrior, so when his HPs gets to -10, that ogre actually hit him with the axe. Doees this make any sense at all?
    This runs into problems when interaction with Cure spells are considered. And stuff like falling damage.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    Plot armor. Only the first level HP are "real" hit points, that are actual wounds taken- the rest are just the Plot knocking otherwise killing blows away from the character.

    Cure spells do a combination of repairing actual damage and mending the Plot's defenses back together.
    Last edited by The-Mage-King; 2011-09-06 at 11:35 PM.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by The-Mage-King View Post
    Plot armor. Only the first level HP are "real" hit points, that are actual wounds taken- the rest are just the Plot knocking otherwise killing blows away from the character.

    Cure spells do a combination of repairing actual damage and mending the Plot's defenses back together.
    I enjoy this interpretation.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Delcor View Post
    For example lets take a popular fantasy novel set in a popular campaign setting. The first Drizzt novel set in forgotten realms. At the start of the book a high level drow wizard is shot in the back with a crossbow and killed...by a 10 year old.

    Looking at this in game terms, its a 1-3 level adept/wizard one shotting a 10+ wizard with 1d10. If that happened in game, the wizard would say "ow" turn around and blow the crap out of the kid.
    Well let's use this as an example. If we are looking at a level 3 Wizard, that is 3d4 hit dice and lets say for a sake of argument, that he rolled 1's for the second two starting with a base HP of 6. Let's be generous and say they have a 12 in constitution, so the minimum HP they would get is 9. So in that case it is 100% possible for a 1d10 to kill a wizard 10% of the time in that situation.

    Now it's been a few years sense I've last read the Drizz't books, but I don't know which book or scene you are talking about. Also we can throw into question, was the Wizard already damaged at one point, could the 10 year old have gotten some kind of extra damage dice such as sneak attack or skirmish damage.

    As for your weariness in combat, don't forget that each round of combat is just 6 seconds, it's not that long and most combat is over between 5-10 rounds. So fighting for a minute while isn't easy, wouldn't be too hard for an experienced fighter. You should also remember that we are basically level 1 commoners with 10's in every ability score and 1d4 hit dice. So if we look at it as a view point of a regular human, we would be out of a fight very quickly when something has a +4 strength modifier.

    In the end, don't look at Hit points as if it was their endurance, it is better to look at them as how many cuts you can take before fainting from pain over the energy you need to do something.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by NNescio View Post
    This runs into problems when interaction with Cure spells are considered. And stuff like falling damage.
    You have a point, which is why I may switch my view over to Allerans idea.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cofniben View Post
    Well let's use this as an example. If we are looking at a level 3 Wizard, that is 3d4 hit dice and lets say for a sake of argument, that he rolled 1's for the second two starting with a base HP of 6. Let's be generous and say they have a 12 in constitution, so the minimum HP they would get is 9. So in that case it is 100% possible for a 1d10 to kill a wizard 10% of the time in that situation.

    Now it's been a few years sense I've last read the Drizz't books, but I don't know which book or scene you are talking about. Also we can throw into question, was the Wizard already damaged at one point, could the 10 year old have gotten some kind of extra damage dice such as sneak attack or skirmish damage.

    As for your weariness in combat, don't forget that each round of combat is just 6 seconds, it's not that long and most combat is over between 5-10 rounds. So fighting for a minute while isn't easy, wouldn't be too hard for an experienced fighter. You should also remember that we are basically level 1 commoners with 10's in every ability score and 1d4 hit dice. So if we look at it as a view point of a regular human, we would be out of a fight very quickly when something has a +4 strength modifier.

    In the end, don't look at Hit points as if it was their endurance, it is better to look at them as how many cuts you can take before fainting from pain over the energy you need to do something.
    I think you misread my comment.
    It was the level 10+ wizard who was being one-shotted, meaning 10d4 hp (uninjured) minimum with a con of 12 being above 10.

    Its at the start of Homeland, the Faceless One was hired to kill Alton DeVir, but just before he does, the Faceless One's apprentice Masoj Hunett assassinates him via crossbow.
    Last edited by Delcor; 2011-09-06 at 11:52 PM.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    The Alexandrian said it best, and this is rough paraphrase.

    1 hp =/= 1 hp

    Your mind just got blown. First couple hits? A dodge, a close call, maybe a minor scratch. Next couple (for the exact same damage, remember), are more serious hits. Someone gets a serious cut, or an otherwise solid, direct but not immediately lethal hit. Last hit, when they have 1 hp? No, they don't die from a scratch. That 1 damage hit that was a close call when they were full is now ramming a yard of steel through them.

    That's just my interpretation, take it how you will. That was also a rough paraphrase of a blog post by the Alexandrian, look him up.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    The way I think of it is that the world of D&D, along with it's gods, magic and monsters, works in fundamentally different ways. Hit points are one of these different things - people don't live and die as they do in our world. Instead, every person has a certain amount of 'life force' which sustains them. Taking damage depletes this life force, but it's not like losing blood would be for us - in our world, everyone has around 6 quarts of blood, but in this world people have varying amounts of life force. Some people gain more as they experience new things, while others always had large reserves of it which let them live long enough to see things like high levels.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by The-Mage-King View Post
    Plot armor. Only the first level HP are "real" hit points, that are actual wounds taken- the rest are just the Plot knocking otherwise killing blows away from the character.

    Cure spells do a combination of repairing actual damage and mending the Plot's defenses back together.
    Pretty much. Especially when you take into consideration that natural healing regenerates 1 HP per level per 8 hours of rest. Without magical healing, a level 10 wizard can come back from the brink of death to full health in 3-4 days. Even faster on full bed rest and/or regular Heal checks.

    It's one of those things that I think most people just hand-wave, much like daily food rations and cheap spell components.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Delcor View Post
    You have a point, which is why I may switch my view over to Allerans idea.



    I think you misread my comment.
    It was the level 10+ wizard who was being one-shotted, meaning 10d4 hp (uninjured) minimum with a con of 12 being above 10.

    Its at the start of Homeland, the Faceless One was hired to kill Alton DeVir, but just before he does, the Faceless One's apprentice Masoj Hunett assassinates him via crossbow.
    Oh I see, I made a slight mistake in understanding what you said.

    Alright, I went back and reread the scene you are talking about and here is what I have to say about it, the Dart from the crossbolt was poisoned, and being a wizard, they have poor fortitude saves, so most likely it was the poison that killed him instead of the damage from the weapon. Now it could have been ether just normal Drow poison knocking him unconscious so then he could coup de grace him on the following turn because it is stated that he reloaded the crossbolt, or it could have been something like the Black Lotus poison that does 3d6 Con damage, and I think dropping con to 0 kills a living creature. Granted there could be many reasons for it, but I think the Drow poison following with a coup de grace is the most reasonable.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Well then lets take another scene from The Crystal Shard:

    First page, (I think) a wimpy sucks-at-everything wizard kills his master with a dagger strike. I realize he was old, but he is still high level.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    D&D book and the D&D game itself might not match up. The story comes before the mechanics in those I believe.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    I would look to things like action movies for an example of hit points in practice.
    The low level mooks, they have barely any hit points at all. Most of the time, if they're not dead in one shot, they're down and out of the fight.
    The hero takes blow after blow. A bullet to the stomach, a sword to the shoulder... But although he might be limping, and clearly in pain (i.e. roleplaying the injuries), his physical capabilities, his ability to fight back, is barely impacted, if at all. He just keeps on going, through injury after injury, no matter how serious they are.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Fluff is not the same as crunch. The books are fluff, they don't really play along with the same rules as the game. You never see any mention of spell levels or spells per day in the books. That's one of the reasons OotS is so funny - it's using the crunch rules for the setting rather than the fluff.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    I'm fine with HP being physical endurance, given its a setting/system where everything you do breaks the laws of physics in some way, I accept "Fighters CAN take dozens of shots".

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Delcor View Post
    So I guess what I'm saying is, how do you explain the obviously unrealistic abstract system that is hit-points?
    I don't, nor do I see the need to.

    If you can accept all the other reality/logic/physic bends in d and d, a health meter shouldn't even register as an oddity.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    Exactly how you survive is left to the narrative -- the only hard and fast rules are:

    • You were hit (we know this because secondary effects like poisons take effect).
    • You weren't killed or incapacitated as a result, but you could have been -- if it can remove hit points at all, it's able to remove your last hit point. We assume it didn't kill you, because that's considered "more fun" than rolling a d20 and having your character die unless you roll 14 or higher.
    • Nothing that does hit point damage is considered to be a 'certain death' scenario (see the whole "a dagger in the eye is a dagger in the eye" thing).


    The issue here is that there's more than one element at work -- we know what isn't involved (attacks actually missing, for example), but what is involved is less clear.

    For future reference, depictions of D&D in fiction typically don't follow the actual rules of D&D. There's a nice webcomic in the sidebar that explains why.
    Last edited by lesser_minion; 2011-09-07 at 11:23 AM.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Palladium tried to address this, by having HP (actual bodily harm) and SDC (the 'plot armour', if you will). HP was a fixed value per level (based on Con), SDC was the variable (based on Class).
    Some attacks (most notably assassin-style sneak attacks) bypassed the SDC, and were therefore far more deadly.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Delcor View Post
    I've been thinking:

    How unrealistic are HP, I've always explained it to myself as HP being a persons weariness in combat. So If and ogre swings an axe and it hits you...you dead so I've just always thought of an ogre hitting a barbarian as him dodging its attack, but that takes energy, and thus the waning of hitpoints is the exhaustion of the warrior, so when his HPs gets to -10, that ogre actually hit him with the axe. Doees this make any sense at all?
    So, leaping off a cliff makes me tired, eh?

    Likewise, being lit on fire?

    Also, what do those "fatigued" and "exhausted" conditions stand for now?

    I'm gonna have to go with no, this doesn't make sense.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    When was the last time your PC took a bath? Hit points are just a gradual accumulation of a rock-hard layer of blood, grime, mucus and other unsavory fluids that adventurers wade through on a daily basis. This is why fire is so hilariously non-lethal - this stuff doesn't burn very well at all.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Delcor View Post
    Well then lets take another scene from The Crystal Shard:

    First page, (I think) a wimpy sucks-at-everything wizard kills his master with a dagger strike. I realize he was old, but he is still high level.
    Even at high level the crits matter, especially if you only get 1 hp/level.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Flickerdart View Post
    When was the last time your PC took a bath? Hit points are just a gradual accumulation of a rock-hard layer of blood, grime, mucus and other unsavory fluids that adventurers wade through on a daily basis. This is why fire is so hilariously non-lethal - this stuff doesn't burn very well at all.
    If a GM ever uses this explanation, I will nod along most sincerely, while memorizing prestidigitation.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tyndmyr View Post
    If a GM ever uses this explanation, I will nod along most sincerely, while memorizing prestidigitation.
    Prestidigitation can't duplicate the effects of other spells - so damage would be beyond it.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Flickerdart View Post
    Prestidigitation can't duplicate the effects of other spells - so damage would be beyond it.
    Prestidigitation -can- clean or soil objects though.

    Also holy crap, am I the only one who remembers to have their PC bathe on occasion? And I'm in the World's largest dungeon, I have to summon water and use a rag for a sponge-bath.

    Soap is cheap and available by the pound, what's your excuse?
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    Default Re: Hit points

    Probably a little late to mention this, but I'm personally surprised a certain possibility hasn't been brought up...

    Referring back to the deal with a level 1-3 wizard killing a level 10+ (having never read the story, I'm going by just that), it would be entirely feasible to kill in one shot, even in full-game hp terms. How? Besides the use of poison, would it not be feasible that the low-level had cast, say, -true strike-, followed by a lethal called shot? Think about it...

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by Crasical View Post
    Prestidigitation -can- clean or soil objects though.

    Also holy crap, am I the only one who remembers to have their PC bathe on occasion? And I'm in the World's largest dungeon, I have to summon water and use a rag for a sponge-bath.

    Soap is cheap and available by the pound, what's your excuse?
    Exactly. In short, if damage is dirt, then it can remove damage. Or add it. Hilarious abuses ensue as every battle devolves into a mud-fight.


    Also, there's a rule for killing people in their sleep. It's called Coup De Grace. Auto hit, auto crit, save vs death.
    Last edited by Tyndmyr; 2011-09-07 at 12:14 PM.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Quote Originally Posted by TheJudicator View Post
    Besides the use of poison, would it not be feasible that the low-level had cast, say, -true strike-, followed by a lethal called shot?
    No, because there are no rules for called shots. The best he could do is CdG, which requires an immobile target.
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    Default Re: Hit points

    I see hit points as the ability and the experience to reduce damage while in combat. It's why 8 damage from a sword done to a commoner with 4 hp slashes him twice, while the same amount of damage ( 8 ) done to a fighter with 100 hp just results as a scratch.

    Same 8 point of damage, 2 different points of view (depending on the target who was hit)
    Last edited by World; 2011-09-07 at 12:48 PM.

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    Default Re: Hit points

    Hit points can't really model what happens in books. The books tell a story - they don't follow game rules.

    However, that 1st level character killing a level 10+ with a single crossbow bolt is possible, if you use the Vitality/Wounds system. Critical hits ignore vitality points and go straight to wounds. So that high level wizard (with say the normal 10 constitution), would have 10 wound points. At 0 wound points, you have to make a fortitude save or fall unconscious and begin dying. So, a 1d10 crossbow bolt can take out a wizard - if you use the Vitality/Wounds rules from Unearthed Arcana.

    Edit: I also forgot - any time you take wound damage, you need to make a fortitude save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. If you consider stunning to make the target helpless, you can coup de grace him.
    Last edited by Jeraa; 2011-09-07 at 01:05 PM.

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