I've been mulling over the nature of hit points lately. One thing that keeps cropping up is the issue of their "incoherence." That is, hit points are seen as both an abstract model, but also a "realistic" model (and I put those quotes around realistic for a reason, don't go there!). On the one hand hit points are supposed to represent a broad range of factors, including physical health, luck, skill, divine grace, etc. However when hit points have to be recovered naturally the recovery is at a rate that better represents bodily damage.
The incoherence began right from the start with Old D&D, however I'll skip over it because the game was still in an "accretion" state where game elements and assumptions were still forming. The references to hit points and there recovery are very brief and still assume some afterglow to miniature wargaming which is rife with deliberate abstraction. I'll also skip over Holmes Basic D&D because the language is terse to get a succinct rules package assembled.
It's when we get to Advanced D&D where Gygax has license and page count to go into a great deal of depth on what hit points represent and how they are recovered. It's here where the contradiction comes into high relief. He even tries to address it pretty head on in the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide, but the explanation doesn't seem to quite fit.
AD&D DMG, p.82 wrote:
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 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).
Already there is a problem here. Gygax pushes hard right at the beginning that hit points do not merely equate physical damage, and that as you gain levels the inflation of hit points means even less the capacity to absorb damage. Most of the hit points lean towards a sixth sense, luck, magic and divine protection. However, in that last sentence the sixth sense and luck are collapsed into a corporeal notion of "fitness." He's trying to make a distinction between physique and fitness, but both analogies are tied to the body and not the more abstract notions of luck, fate, divine providence, or even just plain skill to avoid being hit.
Quote:
Harkening back to the example of Rasputin, it would be safe to assume that he could withstand physical damage sufficient to have killed any four normal men, i.e. more than 14 hit points. Therefore, let us assume that a character with an 18 constitution will eventually be able to withstand no less than 15 hit points of actual physical damage before being slain, and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character. The balance of accrued hit points are those which fall into the non-physical areas already detailed. Furthermore, these actual physical hit points would be spread across a large number of levels, starting from a base score of from an average of 3 to 4, going up to 6 to 8 at 2nd level, 9 to 1 1 at 3rd, 12 to 14 at 4th, 15 to 17 at 5th, 18 to 20 at 6th, and 21 to 23 at 7th level. Note that the above assumes the character is a fighter with an average of 3 hit points per die going to physical ability to withstand punishment and only 1 point of constitution bonus being likewise assigned. Beyond the basic physical damage sustained, hits scored upon a character do not actually do such an amount of physical damage.
Above Gygax goes into more depth of how hit points can be broken down conceptually with a character. There are the hit points you gain from the class, and there is also the hit points gained from Constitution. There is some assumption that character's simply become tougher over time through the level inflation of hit points. Adventurers become inured to the hostile life and gain a kind of pain tolerance or willpower that can hopefully see them through tough situations. And so if you were to slice hit points into different categories, the corporeal hit points that represent health, pain tolerance, willpower, etc. versus the incorporeal hit points that represent luck, magic, divine grace and the avoidance of damage through skill, what happens is that the minority of them are every the corporeal hit points.
Quote:
Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5% hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm - the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter's exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.
Just as the first paragraph, this above paragraph seems fine until that last sentence. Once again we're given an explanation of how hit points function that seems to be at odds with itself. Gygax once again divides hit points into two broad categories, the physical hit points and the metaphysical hit points.
If one wanted a sense of verisimilitude in their game, then it makes sense that the physical hit points one has need a good deal of rest and recuperation if you were to lose them. If someone in real life gets stabbed by a sword it could take weeks, months, years or even permanent damage that can never be recovered. So in that regard long rest periods do make sense.
The incoherence comes from the metaphysical type of hit points needing the same amount of rest to be recovered. Why is luck, skill, divine favor or magic tied to the biological healing process? Why does a god only dribble out divine favor? Why is luck tied to tissue recover rates?
Today, unlike in the 1970s, one could make an argument that skill and general performance are impacted by things such as PTSD, so there is some overlap between wounds healing and a more ephemeral mental recovery, but the metaphysical is also pushed hard in the hit point explanation and it doesn't fit well together.
I've gotten ahead of myself a bit because we haven't looked at how hit point recovery happens in 1st edition. This is where the incoherence really hits hard because recovery rates are rather brutal, and the metaphysical elements are marginalized in specific ways.
For natural healing, true rest (no combat, spell casting, etc.) can be performed. A character gains 1 hit point per day in the first week. In the subsequent weeks they gain 1 hit point per day, plus their Constitution bonus per week. If a character rests continuously for 4 weeks they gain all of their hit points back regardless of the amount to be gained.
You can of course use magic to accelerate all of this. Spells, points, and other magic items will give you hit points at a much more accelerated rate. All of these magical effects are specifically defined as healing wounds.
However, that magic or divine grace is not as helpful you if you have gone to 0 hit points or less unless it is very powerful. The character is automatically in a coma for a bit even if they gain positive hit points, and more devastatingly, they simply can not function and must rest for a week, even if they were brought to maximum hit points. The only thing they can do is stumble out of the dungeon and find a bed to collapse into.
I'm walking through all of this because I just have to ask, why were hit points envisioned this way? Why stress the metaphysical when it came to absorbing damage, but when it came to recovery it was slanted towards the physical?
The alternative is seen today in a variety of mediums. Most video games today with a health bar, which is just hit points presented in a different manner, generally have some kind of auto regeneration effect.
Take your typical shooter today and how the health bar works is that if you take too much damage in a short period of time then you could die, but if you are able to duck, hide or generally pull yourself out of the line of fire you'll get your health back and can then rejoin the battle. This approach isn't realistic. If you get shot in real life you're pretty much shut down due to pain, bleeding and shock. However conceptually it emulates the metaphysical a bit more. In a sense you're not truly getting hit, instead you're getting grazed, or need to duck and your nerves are being overwhelmed, to the point where you finally do take an incapacitating hit.
Likewise, with 4th edition of D&D there is finally an introduction of a more explicit metaphysical statement of hit points through healing surges and second winds. Characters have the capacity to regain some of their hit points in a variety of ways, including just taking a breather for a moment to collect themselves. Anyone who plays a sport or has been in highly physical situations knows full well that your capacity to output energy has a limit, but that if you manage the pace of that expenditure it can be sustained over a long period of time. So 4th edition is trying to address the kind of ebb and flow of a person's performance in stressful situations through hit points.
So having some of those alternatives out there now, why weren't these ideas being used or considered back in the 1970s? Why wasn't there a second wind or say after five minutes of rest you'd regain half of your hit points, or any other metric where at least a portion of the metaphysical hit points could quickly come back to a character?
I think Gygax was trying to teach by example here, but his text is being taken quite literally. Fundamentally, hit points allow higher level characters to endure and survive more dangerous situations. Beyond this, we acknowledge that hit points clearly cannot represent a purely physical capacity to withstand damage in a character. Likewise, we can imagine that a character gains in small measure this capacity with life experience and training. So, like all elements of our game, the trick is to devise a story that suits the situation. A character whose training has inured him to pain may have more physical hit points. A character who grows ever more lithe, nimble and aware may have the same physical points, but a greater 'sixth sense'.
I venture that had Gygax discussed ogres and dragons the assertion would have been that those hit points do indeed represent capacity to live through physical harm.
The bottom line is that hit points represent an abstract ability to maintain a character's life in greater adversity. The precise manner and meaning of that ability should be interpreted by player and GM in each situation to tell the most cool story possible. Attempts to further define, explain or rationalize hit points are doomed, and risk causing those who attempt it to make a sanity check for 'looking behind the curtain'.
As to the end part of the posting. Healing in general has only increased in the game. I think that this is a reflection of game play experiences. It isn't as much fun to stop after a battle because you are wounded as it is to 'recharge' and press on. In this view healing is really a measure of time, signifying the rate at which challenges may be faced.
I'll note that the 'problem' of characters who rise multiple levels in a matter of days did not exist when you had to get to second level so your cleric could get one spell a day to heal 1d6+1 hit points to one character. Adventures were expected to be a foray of a few hours into a dangerous situation, followed by withdrawal and a week spent in relative safety recovering. As the assumption of the nature of adventure has evolved, so has the healing options to keep pace.
There was never much of a problem with the concept of hit points. Rather, the concept was that the other core element of survival was not treated with the diligence and respect it deserved - saving throws.
When you were poisoned, you made a saving throw. If you failed, you died. Did you have many hit points? Didn't matter. Of course, other kinds of poison also existed that perhaps did some damage instead. But a higher level character's experience and metaphysical weight were reflected in their increased ability to make a saving throw. But in general, the game failed to make use of saving throws to frequently reflect catastrophic results. Fall into lava? Doused in acid? Struck by a magical death ray? Saving throws.
It is only with the advent of Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and Armor Class that we see a more cohesive vision of saving throws and hit points implemented. One that includes an appeal to realism... but still there are hit points.
Hit points have always been a general concept. What Gary is saying is that after the first dozen points or so, it is skill, training, and luck that keeps a character alive longer. When you lose those last few hit points, that's physical damage. This is why it takes so long to recover those when grievously hurt.
But you are right. It should have been easier to recover the "skill, training, and luck" hit points through simple rest. Some systems did this by splitting physical hit points and skill hit points, noting that certain attacks like poison only attacked physical hit points. In general, though, D&D is a simple abstract game and too literal a reading is unhelpful.
In a game filled with dragons and magic, is it really troubling if any particular mechanic isn't "realistic"?
Although it seems odd that natural healing didn't restore a percentage of hitpoints, rather than a flat number, I think the game idea is that the characters need to use up their magical healing in spells, potions and items. This helps keep the magical economy in check, and could be rationalised as magic working to channel the power of the gods into their favourite heroes. Heroes who stay in bed are less beloved of the gods. That's probably also over thinking it, though...
I hate hit points. But tabletops RPGs have a distinct disadvantage from computer games in that *bookeeping* is all manual. What if you had to keep track of your skills and ability to hit when you were taking damage? Just calculating your modifiers to hit when you're at full health is tricky enough! I *think* a Palladium (?) RPG had a special rule of "massive damage" and other rules to address hit points, but D&D never did. D&D 4e at least compromises with a "Bloodied" status.
D&D descended from the miniatures combat game, Chainmail, and, iirc, most units in miniatures combat games at the time had only one hit point. So, with such games, hit points worked just fine.
The only game I know with "hit points" where skills were adjusted with damage is HeroClix. Even so, while more realistic than hit points, the net effect was that as soon as a character took damage, it became even less able to defend or attack. Not exactly heroic, and basically, whoever hit first would win a one-on-one combat.
I think Gygax was trying to teach by example here, but his text is being taken quite literally. Fundamentally, hit points allow higher level characters to endure and survive more dangerous situations. Beyond this, we acknowledge that hit points clearly cannot represent a purely physical capacity to withstand damage in a character. Likewise, we can imagine that a character gains in small measure this capacity with life experience and training. So, like all elements of our game, the trick is to devise a story that suits the situation. A character whose training has inured him to pain may have more physical hit points. A character who grows ever more lithe, nimble and aware may have the same physical points, but a greater 'sixth sense'.
I venture that had Gygax discussed ogres and dragons the assertion would have been that those hit points do indeed represent capacity to live through physical harm.
[q="PghArch"]The bottom line is that hit points represent an abstract ability to maintain a character's life in greater adversity. The precise manner and meaning of that ability should be interpreted by player and GM in each situation to tell the most cool story possible. Attempts to further define, explain or rationalize hit points are doomed, and risk causing those who attempt it to make a sanity check for 'looking behind the curtain'.
You know me. Not only did I rip down the curtain, I smashed down the wall in the little room to reveal the abyss which, after a quick glance, I then toss myself into!
The incoherence that I'm talking above isn't about the abstract quality of hit points. That's totally fine. The issue I'm exploring is why Gygax, who goes to such great pains to explain hit points and highlighting their abstract quality, then immediately in the next section on recovery, collapses hit point recovery down to a subsystem that far more closely simulates normal physical recovery. It would have been far more coherent for the recovery process to highlight the abstract quality, and avoid tying hit points completely to wound recovery.
It's like he has in one hand a big narrativist Lego Duplo block, and in the other hand he has a simulationist Lego Technic block. The two pieces can't snap together, so he just glues them together. There seems to be some degree of cognizance as he does this, because of the level narrative level of detail he gives in the one hand, and also the elaborate simulationist crunch with the other hand.
So I guess all that I'm sayin', to the man who's no longer around to answer is...
The only game I know with "hit points" where skills were adjusted with damage is HeroClix. Even so, while more realistic than hit points, the net effect was that as soon as a character took damage, it became even less able to defend or attack. Not exactly heroic, and basically, whoever hit first would win a one-on-one combat.
HeroClix doesn't universally work that way. Many characters actually become *more* effective as they take damage, before falling away again.
Consider a recent printing of the Hulk:
Click 1: AC 16, Atk 9, Dmg 3 Click 2: AC 17, Atk 9, Dmg 4 Click 3: AC 17, Atk 10, Dmg 4 Click 4: AC 18, Atk 10, Dmg 5 Click 5: AC 19, Atk 11, Dmg 5 Click 6: AC 18, Atk 10, Dmg 4 Click 7: AC 17, Atk 10, Dmg 3 Click 8: AC 17, Atk 10, Dmg 3 Click 9: AC 16, Atk 9, Dmg 3 Click 10: KO
It's a fascinating way of doing it; even for characters who generally lose stats, they may gain compensatory powers.
The incoherence that I'm talking above isn't about the abstract quality of hit points. That's totally fine. The issue I'm exploring is why Gygax, who goes to such great pains to explain hit points and highlighting their abstract quality, then immediately in the next section on recovery, collapses hit point recovery down to a subsystem that far more closely simulates normal physical recovery. It would have been far more coherent for the recovery process to highlight the abstract quality, and avoid tying hit points completely to wound recovery.
That incoherence is all the way through AD&D. Part of it is a number of rules that were never or very rarely used - natural healing being one of them. How often do you actually need that rule in a D&D game?
The answer is: very rarely! Most healing is done by the cleric. However, having a natural healing rule makes us feel better about the verisimilitude of the game, even if it's largely irrelevant.
