Greetings.

In another thread on D&D 4the Edition, there was a question about Hit Points. I figured I'd provide what little research I could (given the demands of daily life) without cluttering up that thread. So, without further ado...The Hit Point Parade.

QuoteDungeons & Dragons (c. 1978 - the Blue Box with the Dragon atop a pile of gold), Page 7:
There are two more important die roles to be made for each character.

First generate a random number for "hit points." To generate the numbers roll the special dice in this game – 8-sided, 6-sided, 4-sided. This represents the amount of damage the character can take.

[snip specifics about which classes get which hit dice types]

In combat, if a character receives a blow, a dice roll will be made to determine the number of damage points inflicted. These are subtracted from the character's "hit points." If his hit score falls to zero he is dead. Hit points can be restored, if the character is alive, by a clerical healing spell, a healing potion or some other magical item. Otherwise he must continue on in his wounded state until the game is over and he returns to the surface. Each day of rest and recuperation back "home" will regenerate 1 to 3 hit points for the next adventure.

QuoteAdvanced Dungeons & Dragons, Players Handbook; Page 34:
CHARACTER HIT POINTS

Each character has a varying number of hit points, just as monsters do. These hit point represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and or magical factors. A typical man-at-arms can take about 5 hit points of damage before being killed. Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to fill four large warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic fighter can take that much punishment. The same holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes. Thus, the majority of it points are a symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces.

[snip specifics implementation rules]

Rest also restores hit points, for it gives the body the chance to heal itself and regain the stamina or force which adds the skill, luck, and magical hit points.

Your character's class will determine which sort of die youo will roll to determine hit points. In some campaigns the referee will keep this total secret, informing the players only that they feel "strong", "fatigued" or "very weak", thus indicating waning hit points.

QuoteAdvanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, Players Handbook; Page 103
To allow characters to be heroic (and for ease of play), damage is handled abstractly in the AD&D game. All characters and monsters have a number of hit points. The more hit points a creature has, the harder it is to defeat.

Damage is subtracted from a character's (or creature's) hit points. Should one of the player characters hit an ogre in the side of the head for 8 points of damage, those 8 points are subtracted from the ogre's total hit points. The damage isn't applied to the head, or divided among different areas of the body.

Hit point loss is cumulative until a character dies or has a chance to heal his wounds.

QuoteDungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, Core Rulebook I v.3.5; page 145:
What hit points Represent: hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power. When a paladin survives a fireball, you will be hard pressed to convince bystanders that she doesn't have the favor of some higher power.

[snip Damaging helpless defenders]

Effects of hit Point Damage: Damage gives you scars, bangs up your armor, and gets blood on your tunic, but it doesn't slow you down until your current hit points reach 0 or lower.
   At 0 hit points, your disabled.
At from -1 to -9 hit points, you're dying.
At -10 hit points, you're dead.

Well... maybe it isn't so debatable at all.  Nice work.

Things are looking better by the minute for the justification of self-recovery methods for PCs (i.e. "second wind").  I do hope that makes it into the game.

For a bit of information on what this might look like in 4e, here's a decent article about it in context of Star Wars: Saga Edition.

Thanks for the research.

Seanchai

For reference in other games...

QuoteGURPS Fourth Edition, Characters; Page 16:
Hit points represent your body's ability to sustain injury. By default, you have HP equal to your ST [strength]. For instance, ST 10 gives you 10HP.

[snip mechanics]

You can temporarily lose HP to physical attacks (such as swords), energy attacks, disease, poison, hazards, and anything else that can injure or kill. You can also "burn" HP to power certain supernatural abilities. If you lose enough HP, you will eventually fall unconscious; if you lose too many HP, you will die.

Also note for reference in GURPS you do not get more Hit Points as you level. So there's no discussion of the abstract nature of HP.

Huh.  That's got me thinking, what games, other than D&D and its direct derivatives/descendants use the exact term "Hit Points"?  Which of those games explicitly define "Hit Points" in GURPS's terms and which in D&D's?

Scanning my collection, not one single game outside of the D&D family (in which I include d20-based games) and my (limited) GURPS stuff uses the term.  My collection is full of games mentioning "Life Points" or "Damage Capacity" or "Wounds", etc... Every single one, outside of the D&D family, uses a replacement for Hit Points that clearly correlates the value to actual, physical damage.

Who out there has shelves filled to overflowing with Fantasy Heartbreakers?  There must be something out there that uses the D&D definition...

edit: [I love the edit feature]

Thinking about it even more, I have shelves full of CRPGs that do use D&D style Hit Points, especially console games.  Weird.  In the computationally slow realm of pen and paper, we can't get far enough away from abstract Hit Points.  In the realm of lighting fast math, we reject just about anything else.  Bizarre...

Quote from: architect.zeroWell... maybe it isn't so debatable at all.  Nice work.

Things are looking better by the minute for the justification of self-recovery methods for PCs (i.e. "second wind").  I do hope that makes it into the game.

Indeed. The refreshment of an abstract quantity that is at least partially composed of grit and resolve is completely justified in this case.

I also like that the design team are decoupling swift hit point recovery from healing magic. It lends more credibility to the archetypal lone-fighter-on-a-quest story.

This got me thinking about RuneQuest, wherein Hit Points were determined based on the Constitution score and modified by a character's Size and Power scores.  Of particular note, they were a direct function of CON, SIZ, and POW, and never changed with experience -- they were mechanistically the amount of damage your total body could take.  Here's how my two copies describe HPs:

Quote from: RuneQuest 2nd EditionThis is not so much an ability as an attribute. Hit Points are the measure of how much damage one can take before dying.

That's about it, other than explaining the rationale for Power and Size affecting the base stat of Constitution.

Quote from: RuneQuest 3rd EditionHit points measure how much damage your adventurer can take before unconsciousness or death. 'Hit points' can refer either to the total hit points of the adventurer or the hit points per body location.

Again, keeping it quite simple -- the loss of hit points is, literally, a direct measure of the loss of life, a direct assault on the physical being.  In RQ, the more subtle qualities of luck, skill, and even divine favor are all covered under specific skills and abilities that are built into the game.  Frankly, it was less abstract than in D&D.

By the way, in all the years that I played 1st ed. AD&D, my mates and I never once read that passage from p.34 of the Player's Handbook.  How embarrassing.

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaBy the way, in all the years that I played 1st ed. AD&D, my mates and I never once read that passage from p.34 of the Player's Handbook.  How embarrassing.

It's the conceptual Bermuda Triangle of gaming. Either people read it then instantly forget, or they never find it at all.

Cue thirty+ years of needless debate...

Quote from: architect.zeroHuh.  That's got me thinking, what games, other than D&D and its direct derivatives/descendants use the exact term "Hit Points"?  Which of those games explicitly define "Hit Points" in GURPS's terms and which in D&D's?

Pendragon (4th ed.):

QuoteHealth in Pendragon is measured primarily through the Total Hit Points statistic (SIZ+CON). This number represents the character's ability to absorb injury. Death is imminent if a character has zero or negative hit points. A character with only half his hit points left is half dead.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaBy the way, in all the years that I played 1st ed. AD&D, my mates and I never once read that passage from p.34 of the Player's Handbook.  How embarrassing.

Looks like you and I are more alike than probably either of us will ever care to admit

I can't say we never read it.  I can say, as one can see from my comment that prompted this thread in the "place your bets" thread, I completely forgot it ever existed.

I'm taking this as an opportunity - I started re-reading the Players Handbook last night - every fucking word of it.

I wonder if part of this comes from using the books as reference manuals. Instead of reading every word, you skim and take what you need. I know some books lend themselves to being read differently - as books (people, including me, often think of the 1st edition DMG this way). Hmmm....maybe another thread...

I think a big part of the problem is that they're called HIT points... but they make the most sense when thought of as NOT BEING HIT points.

Of course all the term contribute to players thinking their characters are battleships sustaining hits from canon fire:  hit points, damage, armour class, etc

That's where 'hit points' came from... but I don't think that's what they model in the game.

If someone fires a heavy crossbow at you from 15 feet away, what does losing even up to half your hit points represent?  You've got a bolt through your leg, or sticking out of your shoulder?  Not really, because you're running around just as fine as you were before being "hit".  It makes more sense to think of it as your loss of stamina as you throw yourself out of the way, and pressing your luck (which sooner or later will run out).  You're not actually hit.

I don't think the concept of "hit points" when applied to a single character works all that well with things like touch attacks, dodging and armour class either.

I tend to think of them in Hong terms.

QuoteYou will note that a dagger has only an eentsy little blade. The thing is that as characters advance in levels (sometimes termed "developing", or "maturing"; this is a process a bit like fruit ripening) they develop a protective force field around them. This force field is sometimes called the "dude factor". The dude factor is very thin for 1st level characters, in particular 1st level commoners, who are not dudes at all. 1st level PCs are by definition dudes, so they have more of a dude factor. As your level increases, so does your dudeness, and hence the thickness and strength of your protective dude field. A dagger, having only an eentsy blade, can only penetrate a certain thickness of dude field. A longsword has a bigger blade, and so can penetrate many more inches of dudeness (only dudes can wield a longsword, which is why it's a martial weapon, whereas any schmuck can wield a dagger, which is a simple weapon). Finally, a greatsword is the ultimate dude weapon, and has unsurpassed ability to penetrate dude fields. Even the most mojo dudes find it hard to control a greatsword, which is why it needs two hands to use.

Quote from: James McMurrayI tend to think of them in Hong terms.

Hillarious and appropriate.  As a friend of mine observed while watching Attack of the Clones, "Y'see Jango Fett just ran out of Cool Points.  He was like, Oh gonna dodge that lightsabre and shoot that jedi!  Awacha, not gonna get hurt getting run over by that giant Lucas-cow!  Howa, I'm out of the way of that gunshot!  Oh come on Mace, I can take you!  Wait, no, out of cool points."

Quote from: James J SkachI wonder if part of this comes from using the books as reference manuals. Instead of reading every word, you skim and take what you need.

You mean how we used to take weapons like glaive-guisarmes and pikes into dungeons because they ranked in with really boss to-hit mods?  That went along sweetly until someone finally read the details of the weapon charts and pointed out that they were something like 10 to 18 feet long. :rolleyes:

!i!

Quote from: StuartI don't think the concept of "hit points" when applied to a single character works all that well with things like touch attacks, dodging and armour class either.

Or the great debate we had as teens: How many Hit Points do you have when you sleep?

!i!