So I've recently seen presented (again, I'm fairly sure it's not new) the idea of using hit-points, or some hit-point-esque mechanism to represent emotional resolve. The numbers measure not merely when you die (though if you run out then you presumably do die) but when your character runs out of the will to keep fighting.
It struck me, immediately, that many people would never, ever want such a system. Me, I could take it or leave it ... it seems like a good model for, say, a Raiders of the Lost Ark type of game where the hero still takes damage like a normal guy, but can keep going far beyond the normal limits of human endurance. But I expect that some people would object in the strongest terms to being told "Your guy has had it ... he doesn't have the will to keep fighting." They'd rather just die and be done with it. That's cool too!
It just got me thinking: In many systems we've got this resource (STUN, hit-points, power-points, whatever) that tells you how long your guy can keep duking it out. What are the kind of things that it can be measuring? Obviously, it could be physical resources, and it could be resolve ... are there other things it could reasonably be?
Could 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?
What else could be done?
The best rationalisation I've heard of hit points is as a pacing mechanic. As such they represent many different things-- the ability to parry or dodge a blow that would otherwise cripple, sheer physical grit, spiritual energy one has drawn from the world (via experience), divine protection, the minor magics that shield a wizard from harm, and of course emotional resolve.
I think the trick to visualising hp's is that they can be all of the above, and often change meaning from hit to hit. It makes a lot more sense than trying to pigeonhole them as one particular thing only to run headlong into a rule that contradicts the assumption.
I think they should be used to measure girth, it's more important than length.
Just have them be less abstract, rather than more abstract, if you want to be more comfortable with them. That is, have HP be a real resource stat rather than implied one. You'd need some kind of simplistic wound system on top of this, but you could allow characters to literally spend--let's call it Endurance--to to ignore one of these types of wounds. Having done so, they can narrate how they avoided getting hurt. With a system like this, Hitpoints can represent all of the things people really seem to want them to represent, but there is no disconnect between the mechanic and what happens in play.
The wound "track" could be almost binary: Fine/Hurt/Incap, let's say; spend x hitpoints and narrate (or have the gm narrate) to ignore a wound level, otherwise you take it. Another benefit of this kind of thing is that you can frontload it by allowing characters to "give it their all" by spending endurance before a contested action, do a "take 20" kind of thing, etc.
Two things:
1) Hit points should measure how manycombat "hits" you can take/absorb before you either die or go unconscious.
2) Shouldn't this be in the design or theory section?
- Ed C.
When i first started d&d as a lad of 11, when i saw the term 'hit points' and not coming from a war gaming background, i actually thought that this meant how many points on someone that you could hit. Thinking about it since then, it could be a replacement for armour class. The higher your hit points, the worse you are at defending yourself and the more 'points to hit' your opponent has.
How much injury you can take before becoming incapacitated and eventually dying.
DnD's failure to do that has always been one of my key issues with the system, for all that I fully recognise it is a feature not a bug.
Emotional resolve? So magicians who bend reality to their will are kind of irresolute yeah?
It's like some guys back on the Forge some years ago decided they reflected how important to the narrative you were, which seemed to suggest fighters were really important to the narrative and wizards not so much.
In DnD it's best not to think about them too much, that way lies unhappiness, in other games they should simply be a measure of physical injury.
Quote from: BalbinusEmotional resolve? So magicians who bend reality to their will are kind of irresolute yeah?
Well ... if everyone wanted to play in that R.E. Howard sort of "Warriors are masters of Hyperborean WILL" style, I could totally see it. That'd be sorta cool.
It's sure not an interpretation I'd put on a known system without clearing it with my peeps, but for either a new system or a group-supported house-rule on an old one ... yeah, I think that could totally work.
And then, like, "Backstab" is just "Damn, when you take a knife in the back it REALLY demoralizes you" and "Cure Light Wounds" is "GOD SAYS IT'S JUST A FLESH WOUND! SUCK IT UP!" and stuff like that.
It
could be cool, in a very different way from how the biomechanical interpretation is cool. I think they could well be two different flavors of entertaining.
Quote from: TonyLBWell ... if everyone wanted to play in that R.E. Howard sort of "Warriors are masters of Hyperborean WILL" style, I could totally see it. That'd be sorta cool.
It's sure not an interpretation I'd put on a known system without clearing it with my peeps, but for either a new system or a group-supported house-rule on an old one ... yeah, I think that could totally work.
And then, like, "Backstab" is just "Damn, when you take a knife in the back it REALLY demoralizes you" and "Cure Light Wounds" is "GOD SAYS IT'S JUST A FLESH WOUND! SUCK IT UP!" and stuff like that.
It could be cool, in a very different way from how the biomechanical interpretation is cool. I think they could well be two different flavors of entertaining.
I can see it could be cool, but I'd want that as part of a system that put personal character generally more in the forefront, not as a bolted on interpretation.
Put another way, I think it's a good idea, but it's a good idea that needs for me implementation in its own right and not as an add on. As a new system I'm there dice in hand, for an old system I'm still there dice in hand because I'm basically easy but I'm slightly grumbling under my breath in a passive-aggressive British sort of way, you know?
YMMV and all that.
Quote from: BalbinusI can see it could be cool, but I'd want that as part of a system that put personal character generally more in the forefront, not as a bolted on interpretation.
That's a very interesting, and well-explained distinction. Thanks!
I 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.
Hit Points = How much fight ya got in ya, despite, you know, whatever.
That's all they mean to me, and that's a lot.
Emotional hit points are an interesting idea, but unless I was playing the Bronte Sisters RPG, I wouldn't enjoy a game where I could die of ennui.
I like very abstract hit points, like T&T, where you whittle down your Con till you're dead, or very detailed injury systems that pretty much sidestep hit points, like Millenium's End. I'm hard to figure out. Don't try to "get" me, baby.
Hit 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
It´s why they call them "Hitpoints".
Fitting, ain´t it?
http://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.
I always accepted them for what they were orginally meant...how much damage you could take before dying. I don't mind wound levels, stun points, and other resource stats if someone wants a bit more realism. HP was never meant to be a literal measurement of the intangible (INHO).
Explanation shamelessly stolen from ENWorld's Hong Ooi (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=14101):
QuoteCertainly.
You 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.
Hope this helps!
And so on.
The standard way I always dealt with it was to have the character accumulate minor cuts, bruises, injuries, limps, etc. as damage increased, proportional to level. The aesthetics of constant small wounds and sucking yourself back up to something near full effectiveness has a cinematic (and modest real life) basis and works fine with the hit point system if you want to rationalize it.
You don't do limbs chopping off and gushers of blood and disfiguring scars under normal circumstances not because they're not realistic, but because they're not fun.
This is such a non-issue. The only thing that's an issue about it for some people is that once you accumulate some you can't be killed in one shot by an arrow or sword, and that bugs some people in some cases. Again, you might consider this a feature of the game, but if you really want that 'risk of death' to be always there in every fight, that's what critical hit systems were originally invented for, and by now there are like 10,000 of these out there.
Quote from: CalithenaThe standard way I always dealt with it was to have the character accumulate minor cuts, bruises, injuries, limps, etc. as damage increased, proportional to level. The aesthetics of constant small wounds and sucking yourself back up to something near full effectiveness has a cinematic (and modest real life) basis and works fine with the hit point system if you want to rationalize it.
You don't do limbs chopping off and gushers of blood and disfiguring scars under normal circumstances not because they're not realistic, but because they're not fun.
This is such a non-issue. The only thing that's an issue about it for some people is that once you accumulate some you can't be killed in one shot by an arrow or sword, and that bugs some people in some cases. Again, you might consider this a feature of the game, but if you really want that 'risk of death' to be always there in every fight, that's what critical hit systems were originally invented for, and by now there are like 10,000 of these out there.
I am not interested in starting some kind of war, or what not, but damage track systems address some of these concerns. Even so, a damage track is just another abstraction, which comes with its own set of problems and issues. Some people find book keeping to be an ordeal, others feel damage tracks have too much leathality, ect...
That said, if you do find yourself tired of hit points giving a track system a try might be a good idea. At first I thought they were lame and unworkable, now it is my preferred system.
But if you're happy with hit points, keep using them. They can be a lot of fun.
Hi Aos,
Damage track systems are pretty cool by me. I don't see them as a lot different from hit point systems: where they seem to do better is in (a) describing 'how bad you are wounded' and (b) handling critical damage in certain situations.
I guess in practice the one problem I've had with most damage track systems is that there tend to be negative modifiers to your acting as you get more damage, introducing the famed 'death spiral'. I tend to find this Not Fun. PCs who are already suffering have an extra hassle to deal with, while beaten-down monsters might as well be put out to pasture right away instead of flailing for the last couple rounds before they finally get killed.
I often use fractions of hit points as a 'damage track' for purposes of describing to players how they feel (less than 1/4 is not a big deal, 1/4 to 1/2 you're breathing hard and in some pain, 1/2 to 3/4 you're maybe limping a little and have some bandaged cuts, 3/4 to 1 you're beat to hell and knocking on death's door, e.g.).
Quote from: CalithenaI often use fractions of hit points as a 'damage track' for purposes of describing to players how they feel (less than 1/4 is not a big deal, 1/4 to 1/2 you're breathing hard and in some pain, 1/2 to 3/4 you're maybe limping a little and have some bandaged cuts, 3/4 to 1 you're beat to hell and knocking on death's door, e.g.).
Praedor does something similar by handling HP (or "Blood") as a track, although losing more than a quarter of the points also incurs some penalties and losing more than three quarters leaves a character effectively defenseless. The HPs are divided into four categories ("Scratch", "Wound", "Injury", "Shock"), and by default a character's Stamina attribute determines how many points he receives for each of them: all in all, someone with Stamina 3 would have 4x7 HP, and someone with Stamina 20 4x15 HP. Certain advantages or disadvantages can change those figures, as well.
Absolutely every "damage" system is some kind of abstraction, so the whole argument is bullshit. You're trying to claim that a "damage track" or an "injury circle" or an "unwellness rhombus" or even a 200000 page critical table is "more realistic" than hit points, and that's all just bullshit. They're all just different kinds of abstractions.
RPGPundit
Isn't there a system where weapons inflict wounds? The character doesn't get some set limit of wounds but the severity of the would caused would determine the detrimental affects... penalties, unconsciousness, crippling, and death.
What game was that. Was it just a fancy way to track hit points, or was it something else.
Abstractions they all may be, yet some offer play experiences that are more vivid and visceral than others.
I wouldn't remove WFRP's crit. tables for all the tea in China, nor would I attempt to tack on the same system to D&D. Each has it's place according to the design goals of system and setting.
The real question for me is which do I find more satisying at the table? WFRP without a doubt. Why? Because the system graphically represents serious injury in such a way that is both entertaining and plausible. It may not be 'realistic,' but it's a hell of a lot more fun than simple bean counting.
Quote from: RPGPunditYou're trying to claim that a "damage track" or an "injury circle" or an "unwellness rhombus" or even a 200000 page critical table is "more realistic" than hit points, and that's all just bullshit.
That's not even vaguely what anyone has said.
Sounds like some people find value in a hit-point system
and find value (presumably different value) in a damage-track system. Sounds like a good, good thing to me. I can't help but admire that kind of open-mindedness.
Can someone give me more of a sense of what a damage-track system is, in this context? Is it like the wound-tracks in CP2020, where you get various detriments at various levels of "wounded"?
Quote from: darIsn't there a system where weapons inflict wounds? The character doesn't get some set limit of wounds but the severity of the would caused would determine the detrimental affects... penalties, unconsciousness, crippling, and death.
What game was that. Was it just a fancy way to track hit points, or was it something else.
HarnMaster.
It's definitely different from hit points, and is quite flavorful (you can die from sepsis as a result of a wound quite easily). I've only read the rules (never had a group who wanted to play it), but the damage system seems to act as a sort of death spiral, with each significant wound adding to your universal penalty (a negative modifier to all skill/magic/etc. checks).
I 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.
A review (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9298.phtml) of the HarnMaster combat system. It reads fairly complex, and interesting.
Quote from: RPGPunditAbsolutely every "damage" system is some kind of abstraction, so the whole argument is bullshit. You're trying to claim that a "damage track" or an "injury circle" or an "unwellness rhombus" or even a 200000 page critical table is "more realistic" than hit points, and that's all just bullshit. They're all just different kinds of abstractions.
RPGPundit
No body is arguing at all- what the fuck are you on about? you should at least have the self control not to thread crap on your own forum.
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! :D
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.
Quote from: BalbinusI 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.
I am most on your camp here, but sometimes I assign such injuries to the PCs, mostly based on an rough estimate of the damage caused. So, if half the HPs of the PC go in a single blow, he will probably suffer some kind of injurie that will give him a slight penalty on some tasks. I usually eyeball that, and my players are quite happy with that.
But I also think that jrients has it right: hit points are an abstraction, and treating them as any other thing is futile. If you want accurate modelling of injuries, there are other systems that are not based on a pool of HPs (I'm thinking of Blue Planet here, which has a very interesting damage system).
Quote from: MetrivusWe 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.
I like this - are hp restored at the end of a combat then if you haven't been hit? Do you roll on a critical table when you go under 10 on a roll of 20 or something?
Quote from: ImperatorI am most on your camp here, but sometimes I assign such injuries to the PCs, mostly based on an rough estimate of the damage caused. So, if half the HPs of the PC go in a single blow, he will probably suffer some kind of injurie that will give him a slight penalty on some tasks. I usually eyeball that, and my players are quite happy with that.
But I also think that jrients has it right: hit points are an abstraction, and treating them as any other thing is futile. If you want accurate modelling of injuries, there are other systems that are not based on a pool of HPs (I'm thinking of Blue Planet here, which has a very interesting damage system).
I do that too, like you say if it seems appropriate. Pundit would likely approve, I'm a big believer that no rule system can replace the value that an arbitrary ruling made by a good GM can provide.