Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerI take them literally, especially in all d20 RPGs that don't explicity do away with Touch Attacks (and none do), so your Hit Points are the literal measure of how much damage your character can take before dying.  Nothing else makes sense.

Amen brother.

I expect hit points to measure...well..hit points.

At this stage of the game, to try to figure out all of the things they may or may not absract is kind of...well..nigh impossible.

If you want something less abstract, or more directly abstracted, I'd try something else. Hit points are merely a resource, nothing more.

Quote from: Pakahttp://montecook.livejournal.com/115075.html

Tony,

The above link is to Monte Cook's blog where he has been pondering the same question about hit points.

Judd

P.S.  How dare you think critically about hit points, you fucking swine!  Just roll the dice and have fun.  Fucking hell.

Or you could all just Go Play!

Thanks for the link Paka, I'll have to check it out...when work slows down today..

Quote from: darI always thought it would be neat to have a system where 'damage' was taken to your attributes, like Traveller. A system where you could have 'social' combat where it isn't a trade of blows and tactics but of words and phrases and damage would happen to your int and char and maybe con (or will? stamina? fatigue?). Suffering from penalties would be built in as your stats dropped and recovery from a public tongue lashing would be built in, just like normal damage to your purely physical stats.

Would be nice for when getting beaten in a combat is an embarrassing as well as painful affair.

That way your hit points would directly reflect your abilities, they would be the same.

I don't know if it's the same thing - but in the D&D 3.5 Living Greyhawk mods I just played in on Saturday, we had guys taking Constitution and Wisdom damage.  Fucks with your stats like crazy.  But it certainly makes everyone at the table sit up and take notice.  The stunned looks were quite amusing.

Hit Points is the number that when you run out of them you're out of the game.  I have no problem with it being that abstract, just like xp.  I use the Arduin critical hit chart for the occasional realistic PC injury.

Quote from: jrientsI use the Arduin critical hit chart for the occasional realistic PC injury.

You're a bad-ass mofo then, Jeff. Hey, if you don't mind my asking, when do you invoke it? Every natural 20 is just too lethal for my tastes. In 3e I toyed with the idea of using it on double natural 20's only, for the crit and confirm, which was fairer - though I think it only mattered once since the crits often killed foes anyway in our games.

Quote from: CalithenaYou're a bad-ass mofo then, Jeff. Hey, if you don't mind my asking, when do you invoke it? Every natural 20 is just too lethal for my tastes. In 3e I toyed with the idea of using it on double natural 20's only, for the crit and confirm, which was fairer - though I think it only mattered once since the crits often killed foes anyway in our games.

A natural 20 to-hit followed by a natural 20 to confirm.  Similarly, I use Hargave's fumble chart for a 1 followed by a 1.  And most importantly: I don't let the players see the charts.  All they know firsthand knowledge like the one time the ranger impaled himself with his ranseur.

Quote from: RPGPunditHit points mean the number of goddamn points you have before you die.

That's what they've always "meant", that's all they need to "mean".

RPGPundit

Back when I started playing in the early 1980s, back when we were a bunch of fucking munchkins like most kids, back then yeah?  Even back then we tried to picture what hit points meant.

If an orc hit you we didn't just dryly say "hey, you take 4 points" but "the orc slashes at you cutting into your side" or whatever.

I mean, not every time, particularly in DnD where describing every hit could really bog down the action, but fairly often.  Because it's natural to think of what they represent in game.

Of course, in doing that we were supported by the official written rules of the fucking game which talk about what hit points represent (including fortitude actually, Tony has a point on that).

So, to cut this post short, if you are remotely interested in imagining what is happening in game as opposed to just noting down calculations of damage and DpS or whatever then you will generally give some thought to what hit points mean in game.  Almost everyone does it, the alternative is a total disjunct between what is happening at the table and what we imagine to be happening in the game and few of us want that.

Hell, even when I wargame we tend to talk about units falling back in disarray or getting decimated, we tend not to just say "ah, your spearmen move back 6 inches, ok, your roll".

I reckon you do likewise, I reckon from time to time when you describe a PC getting hit you describe the scene and don't just say "hey, cross off 6 hit points".

Quote from: jrientsHit Points is the number that when you run out of them you're out of the game.  I have no problem with it being that abstract, just like xp.  I use the Arduin critical hit chart for the occasional realistic PC injury.

You never describe the combats at all?  I appreciate if you're wading through orcs in an epic scene a description of each blow would be incredibly boring and make the whole thing crawl, but you never describe the injuries in game world terms?

I mean fair enough, but I don't think I've encountered that before to be honest.

Oh, back on DnD, I mispoke earlier, I do tend to think of it in part as just sheer grit, like John Wayne you know?  High level characters just suck it up because they're the Duke and that's what they do, true grit and all that.

It changes everything when you track the characters HP and they have to rely on wound description. It's a lot of bookkeeping, so I haven't done it often, but for such a tiny alteration, it impacts play enormously.

Quote from: stu2000It changes everything when you track the characters HP and they have to rely on wound description. It's a lot of bookkeeping, so I haven't done it often, but for such a tiny alteration, it impacts play enormously.

In UA you're supposed to do that, the GM keeps track of hit points and the PCs just get descriptions.

I suspect most groups don't bother, but played as written that's how it works.

Quote from: darI always thought it would be neat to have a system where 'damage' was taken to your attributes, like Traveller. A system where you could have 'social' combat where it isn't a trade of blows and tactics but of words and phrases and damage would happen to your int and char and maybe con (or will? stamina? fatigue?). Suffering from penalties would be built in as your stats dropped and recovery from a public tongue lashing would be built in, just like normal damage to your purely physical stats.

Have a look at Risus and/or Heroquest.

Quote from: TonyLBCould you do a Survivor-type game where your hit-points represented your reputation and standing in your social group?  A game where hitting zero HPs meant you were voted off the island?

Why not have a separate gauge called reputation?

What I see with a lot of these "let's have hit points represent something else" ideas is that they wind up saying that physical combat damages things other than your body. Which is rather nonsensical unless you develop a clever method of dealing with it--which I believe you'll find in Risus and/or HQ. Maybe TSoY. Either that or I'm making it up whole cloth. To wit: you don't want to take that damage in the form of actual wounds on your body? Okay, you can take those points off your [X], if you can explain how your character can interpose [X] to prevent actual damage. E.g., sure you can lose 10 points of Reputation instead of 10 HP, but you'll probably have to run away screaming, or at least look pretty inelegant in front of a crowd.

Quote from: CalithenaYou're a bad-ass mofo then, Jeff. Hey, if you don't mind my asking, when do you invoke it? Every natural 20 is just too lethal for my tastes. In 3e I toyed with the idea of using it on double natural 20's only, for the crit and confirm, which was fairer - though I think it only mattered once since the crits often killed foes anyway in our games.

Back when I came up with a crit system for AD&D, the way I proposed to confirm a crit was by rolling on the Assassination Table--thus taking into account the relative levels of attacker/target.

I've always thought of hit points as a characters ability to avoid the fatal blow.  So you may have gotten hit by a knife but it didn't go into your heart.

Quote from: GunslingerI've always thought of hit points as a characters ability to avoid the fatal blow.  So you may have gotten hit by a knife but it didn't go into your heart.

We do something similar.  Despite what seems to be the majority here, hit points as merely hit points do not make any sense (I am talking strictly D&D).  If you are hit with a fireball for 40 damage at 1st level, you are toast.  If you are hit with the same fireball at 20th level, it hardly dents you.  Why?  You're still a mortal.  

The way we've resolved it (and I don't think this is terribly unique or anything) is to say that only when you've reached 10hp or lower do you actually start to take damage.  Anything else is described as the PC actually dodging the attack, or not taking damage from it, but doing so in a shitty manner so that they're thrown off balance, winded, etc.  

This doesn't actually change any mechanics at all, just in the roleplaying sense that the combat plays out.  If you're above 10 when it's all over, you didn't actually get hit.  It works, it's simple, and yes, it's more realistic.

Quote from: BalbinusYou never describe the combats at all?  I appreciate if you're wading through orcs in an epic scene a description of each blow would be incredibly boring and make the whole thing crawl, but you never describe the injuries in game world terms?

No, I do all that stuff where the DM says "25 points?  Snicker-snack!  His left head totally flies off his shoulders and goes rolling down the stairs, cursing your name as it bounces along."  I just think trying to pin down hit points to mean anything specific and concrete for the PCs is an exercise in futility.

Quote from: jrientsNo, I do all that stuff where the DM says "25 points?  Snicker-snack!  His left head totally flies off his shoulders and goes rolling down the stairs, cursing your name as it bounces along."  I just think trying to pin down hit points to mean anything specific and concrete for the PCs is an exercise in futility.

I can see that, I do describe for PCs but far less specifically, more "you take a blow so powerful you're momentarily rocked backwards" and less "you feel your collarbone crunch as his mace shatters it and several ribs" which would then either require the player to RP having a shattered collarbone or just make no fucking sense at all.

NPCs get the full snicker snack, unless I feel it's slowing things down too much.