There are people on this board right now who think hit points represent the number of hits you can take

>level 20 wizard survives getting dunked in lava with plot points
Good point user

>Level 20 Wizard
>not having hundreds if not thousands of tiny magical wards of protection and control to contain and control his god-like powers

Yeah totally pure meat points...

What page were those on again?

The same page that says Hit Points are not Meat Points. Those are the "plot" portion of your hp you fucking autistic fuckwit.

lol

>>there are people on this board right now who think hit points represent the number of hits you can take

>playing shit games that don't divide HP into Health and Stamina, the former of which represents actual wounds that you have to heal, while the latter represents "plot armor" that instantly replenishes after the encounter
It's your own fault for playing shit games.

40k systems would want to have a word with you.

>1913
Here, ftfy

ty

This, tbqh.

That's why distinction of Vitality and Wounds exists

ITT: Reasonable people and those who still don't think that HP=plot armor/meat points.

Every fucking time.
Now imagine this level 20 character, full HP.
I stab him with a poisoned knife. He rolls 1 on the save, and thus has venom in his blood.
This means that I did not "remove plot points", but I indeed wounded him. The effect is before our eyes.

High level characters are like Guts in berserk. They have an almost supernatural resistance, they are closer to divinity/elements/fey/ancestors/dependfromthesetting, but the blows land and hurt for real.

A level 20 character has enough plot armor to survive poisons that would easily fell lesser men just because they're that important to the story.

If the poison in an insta-kill poison then obviously that character's death was necessary for the plot to occur, like how Kamina died in the first part of Gurren Lagann or how Obi-Wan needed to die in episode 4.

I mean, it's funny how you reference Guts when Guts is notorious for surviving blows that would kill most people even BEFORE he gained the Berserker armor.

hai yai forces

>playing a system where HP loss doesn't always represent physical injury

>this BS again

yeah, we know, "plot armour points" rather than "meatpoints" that's what bad systems claim HP to be.

But as with any claim, it is not worth shit. Game mechanics doesn't support this claim except in certain range of controlled circumstances that is a small fraction of the game. Literally whenever you get past "two guys are trying to hit each other in melee" it starts to fall apart. Ranged weapon "hits", environmental damage, hitpoints and many magical effects suddenly go against the grain of this theoretical claim, making it worthless bullshit that lazy designers include as a disclaimer in effort to avoid actually answering the questions.

And that's just theoretical part. When you try to apply it to actual game it gets much fucking worse. Trying to translate this bad attempt at abstraction abstract mechanics are good, actually better than explicit ones but they need to be easy and intuitive to translate into narrative on spot, which HP aren't by any means

That previous part makes me think that people defending HP bloat by argument of it being "not raw meatpoints hurr" are either theorycrafters that don't actually play anything, or play H&S/DC games where narration and RP actually not really matter - which is ok if they enjoy that, but why the hell are trying to shill the mechanics that only work for that playstyle to people who actually play RPGs more narratively and find it unsuitable? Why they do have to defend their precious HPs in aspects they don't actually don't know anything about, or give a shit?

But the blow were absorbed by his extraordinarily trained body. His all about his training (levels) not about plot armour.
Training is both absorbing the blow and moving in a way to make it less lethal. You don't need plot armour to explain that.
But if you explain with plot armour HPs, you can't explain an envenomed blade.

>doesn't die from the poison
Guess you didn't really poison him.

Suddenly, playing with Vitality is makes me happy.
Thanks, DM.

>implying hit points are luck points when on-hit effects and damage types are a thing
D&D characters are heroic figures that can shrug off damage that would kill a real human even at low levels, playing something that actually attempts to model real life if that rustles you.

>every poison/medicine either kills you or does nothing
tell me you are pretending to be retarded.

I was going to ask about this exact kind of mechanic. What systems do use it? Any recommendations?

>But if you explain with plot armour HPs, you can't explain an envenomed blade.
Did the poison kill you?
>If yes, your body couldn't safely process the poison through your body.
>If no, your body manages to safely process the poison through your body.

Plot armor just means that you can explain away non-killing blows as "they're just that X to handle Y" and move shit along to the important bits.

If you're stopping to think about how illogical this is, it usually means that your campaign/system is so boring that people actually take the time to question why a dude who has five levels in Fighter is capable of surviving a ballista bolt to the chest with no penalties.

Then again, since only the last point of HP matters and everything else is just bloat, I guess it's one of those self-fulfilling prophecies.

Poison sucks in D&D dude, there's a reason why nobody fucking uses it. If you want poison to do more besides either killing the target or doing nothing, play a better system.

'When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.'

The point went completely over you head.
The point is not the effect of the poison per se. It could even just be an alchemical substance that changes your skin colour or whatever.

The point is that if you explain the loss of HP with loss of "plot points", you create a disconnect immediately perceived by the players when a situation like the one described arises (that is, a full HP character is poisoned by the first stab, whatever it means).

Instead, the body resistance and resilience and the ability to move in a way that minimises te impact but does not completely avoids the blow, typical of an high level PC, explains the high HP amount without creating a disconnect.

So explain what hit points represents in this situation.

I am naked in bed
I am sleeping next to my wife
I have 50 hit points
She stabs me with a knife right in the chest

What happens?

You writhe around gasping and bleeding for several hours until you die of blood loss

You take 1d4-2 damage and roll initiative

Depends. How much damage does she do with the knife? Is it just 1d4+STR? Did she confirm a critical hit? Does she have sneak attack? Did she line up a coup de grace?

>Instead, the body resistance and resilience and the ability to move in a way that minimises te impact but does not completely avoids the blow, typical of an high level PC, explains the high HP amount without creating a disconnect.
That's exactly what I did here though So not only did you dump INT, you dumped WIS as well for a) not noticing that I just said the same point and b) actually believing that nobody would notice that.

If you have 50 hit points, you are one with enough reflexes and stamina to transcend all the humans you know. You probably wake up thanks to the instinct that helped you to dodge orc blows and avoid to be invested by dragon flames all these years.

And still, you have to save vs the damage, that is an automatic critic, so you have a chance to succumb.

If it's you YOU, well a basement dweller has 1-4 HP, you you can imagine how it ends. And normal humans, too can survive nasty shit. Even an iron tube in the skull. Is just a low chance.

>If you have enough HP to survive the blow, you're tough enough to ignore the stab wound.
>If you don't have enough HP, your wife stabs you in the heart and you die instantly.

My dear friend, it was more for the other poster.
Also, you have to have the humility to understand that when others don't get what you say, it could be that is because you have not been clear enough.

>Also, you have to have the humility to understand that when others don't get what you say, it could be that is because you have not been clear enough.
see Did the poison kill you?
>If yes, your body couldn't safely process the poison through your body.
>If no, your body manages to safely process the poison through your body.

If you can't understand this then you're not smart enough to continue engaging in this conversation. Also, humility only applies when my reputation is on the line, not when I'm engaging with morons on the internet for giggles.

Well, you're sleeping, so you count as "helpless." Your wife can coup de grâce with a full round action.

Auto crit with max damage, so 2d4 (8) + 2 (lol -4 str) for a total of 10. DC 15 base Fort save vs. instant death, +10 from damage taken for a total DC25 check. Assuming you have 50hp and are a melee-class build, you've probably got good Fort save and are around level 5-6. +5 base, with +2/3 from Con, and I'll toss in an miscellaneous +1 just for fun. That gives you +9 vs. DC25.

Your wife most likely kills you instantaneously, or at least fast enough for you to garble out some dying words. If she's unlucky, you're still alive, but with a rather nasty chest wound. 10hp loss from your 50 total doesn't seem like much, but if I were your DM you bet you're not getting off easy.

You don't get to have hundreds of hitpoints in the 40k RPGs, though. Even Space Marines don't get more than a handful.

You completely missed the point on the poison (the important thing was the knife wound) example but whatever man. If you want to continue to feel superior, whatever.

>Also, my behaviour depends on if I can get out scot-free from it
wew lad you must be a wonderful person IRL

Listen mate, either the attack was enough to kill you or it wasn't, the how and why doesn't matter because you're only in danger if you're down to 0 HP. Doesn't matter if it's a knife wound or poison or however you're striking an opponent and you're missing the trees for the forest.
I'm certainly a wonderful person when I'm with people whose company I enjoy, not some random faggots being retarded on the internet.

Poisons in pathfinder deal repeating damage. In 4th edition you have the bloodied condition, in many system bleeding after the blow.
And again, is not the point. You are moving the goalpost. The point was that HP are not plot points. Everything else you added was not relevant for the discussion.

>10hp loss from your 50 total doesn't seem like much, but if I were your DM you bet you're not getting off easy.
So now we've arrived at the requisite "just use houserules" defense in our daily D&Defense force debate.

A dude with 50hp wouldn't even be bloodied from 10 HP faggot, so at best, his wife just gave him the equivalent of a stubbed toe or a paper cut because she wasn't smart enough to account for his higher than average fortitude.

>I'm certainly a wonderful person
sure you are buddy. sure you are.

Well why would I be friendly to you when a) I don't know you and b) you're acting like faggot?

It's not like you're giving me compelling reasons to believe that you're worth engaging in an actual conversation with.

It was a D&D variant that took over d20 Star Wars for a while, before Saga Edition came along and became proto-4e.

You derailed this discussion with a completely useless point and yet you call me a faggot.

>there are people on this board right now
>cryingus.jpg

This is true. It's just that some attacks count as multiple hits.

>The point was that HP are not plot points.
Yes they are, simply because you get so many so soon that you can easily survive blows that would kill random peasants.

Why can the Fighter survive a ballista bolt (3d8) to the chest? Because his mamma ain't raise no bitch!

Is it unrealistic? Hell yeah it is, but at the same time if the game doesn't scale the damage properly and adds mechanics that weaken its own explanation as far as what HP is "supposed" to represent, then that's a fault with the system not properly conveying what a lethal blow is supposed to look like.

So rather than invent a bunch of shit that'll fall apart under slight scruntiny, it's easier just to say "plot armor" and leave at that since most players expect their characters to be badasses anyways.

Depends on who the PC is.

Yeah, because you're getting triggered over a random user calling a spade a spade and turning this discussion into how I shouldn't hurt your precious fee-fees.

If you don't want to derail the thread, stop replying.

Plot armor is a % reduction in damage, not an overshield. 4e is heresy.

Just fucking use GURPS or Traveller or Riddle of Steel or /sos/

At 50 HP? I'd probably say if you survived the Coup attempt it would be because you woke up at the last instant and guided the knife into your shoulder.

At 100+ HP however I would say the knife crumples laughably like an accordion leaving a small bruise.

People who want realism in d&d should probably try playing something other than d&d.

>Why can the Fighter survive a ballista bolt (3d8) to the chest?
"to the chest" in which extent? Blocked by armor+shield, just the tip entered (unfortunate sentence to write here I guess)? Or the bolt hit the side without getting stuck, and its relatively superficial? Or maybe this is a 20th level fighter, is almost a demi-god so in this case even a full hit is not enough.

The arguments don't fall apart. The description of the GM may vary and that's about it. The "plot points" falls apart in the moment a certain effect is applied to the blow, see the poison above.

There really should be a better system. Here's one:

HP -Health points. Entirely determined by constitution score (or equivalent) and level (not class). Represents physical well being in real, objective sense. If you get stabbed, poisoned, punched, et cetera, it takes out HP. Without magical aid, it takes a VERY long time to regain HP, and HP has diminishing returns in growth as you level - even a really buff fighter guy can't get THAT much stronger than a skinny wizard weakling so that he can be shot with forty arrows and live while the nerd gets hit with a pebble and dies. Therefore you cut the CON bonus in half every 5 character levels (rounding up). Any and all HP loss without death is a "wound" and in a hardcore game there should be ability point loss thresholds at HP loss percentages.

2nd System

FP - Fate Points. Literalized plot armor. Every time an attack glances, misses, or somehow is stopped without direct focus given to the attempt to prevent it by the player, it drains their "fate". As a person who's on an adventure, the PCs are at least somewhat protected by fate, which is why they have fate points in the first place. FP can be recovered far more easily than HP and will likely see more growth based on level and potentially any key stat dependent on class.

In terms of gameplay mechanics, the FP and HP relationship is like the shields and meathealth in Halo 1. FP is drained first before HP and recovers much more quickly, but guards against HP loss. If you lose all your FP, then you start losing HP. But FP can be recovered much more quickly (and it makes more sense for a cleric to restore FP instantly through say divine intervention than HP in this context) and is separate from HP in most regards (but may be linked to other systems).

There ya go, problems solved forever.

>"to the chest" in which extent?
Again, missing the trees for the forest.
>The "plot points" falls apart in the moment a certain effect is applied to the blow, see the poison above.
You keep saying this but I don't see how it falls apart. Also, I thought that the whole poison angle wasn't relevant to this discussion so why bring it up?

So you have a tiny prick from that knife. Doesn't even hurt and will probably heal by tomorrow. Still enough to get the poison into your system.

>well a basement dweller has 1-4 HP,
please, Robots on Veeky Forums don't even class up enough for a d4.

d2 at best.

You are using as a refusal the same very points I used against you. Bu the discussion raised from MY post about the poison. You are devoid of logic.
You keep running in circles.
Have fun, I am done with you.

The point is that HP is a combination of meat points, and ways of avoiding critical damage [such as skill, luck, etc].

The proportion of which to which depends on your PC, and how much HP you actually have. At low levels its basically all meat, and you die easily. At higher HP values like levels 4-6 its partially skill and fighting ability, but you ARE legitimately more durable then the average person.

And at much higher values [HP 70, 80, 90+] you really ARE so durable and inhuman that a ballista hitting you square in the chest is just going to knock you down and piss you off.

>I have a point
>but it's not relevant
>except when it is, specifically when I'm using it against you.
K familia, maybe you should take a nap before you try to use big boy logic next time.

Or, you die at level 1 as a way to subvert audience expectations that you're a protagonist, by level 5, you've stuck around long enough to actually become integral to the overall narrative, while at level 10, you're decidedly the main character of this campaign so most blows aren't going to be enough to defeat you anymore unless you're hit with something that's meant to be 100% fatal.

That's retarded and seems like a ridiculous effort to ignore the fact that higher level martial characters are explicitly inhuman.

No amount of luck is going to save you from a Fireball when you're right in its radius, or from being attacked by a giant, or falling from orbit.

Even if you did make up ridiculous contrivances to why that is the case, that's still a pants-on-head retarded idea.

it's the number of hits an elf stored in a vault in France would be able to take to its face, i thought it was common knowledge

That's why the rules make no distinction and everything boils down to hitting each other until one's hp is 0.

Just because the book says it doesn't mean it means anything.

>ridiculous contrivances
the GM describing a blow is "ridiculous contrivances"

It doesn't require any effort at all, I basically just say something to the effect of "he stabs you in the torso, but luckily you're tough enough to ignore the wound."

It honestly takes more effort to justify it than it does just to handwave it and if me and my group want wounds that actually matter beyond the last one lost, we'll just play something like ShadowRun where losing health actually means something beyond having a smaller safety net.

No, but the idea that a level 10 Fighter is a normal human being with more plot armor then Batman is retarded in the context of the setting.

These beings are superhuman. There is nothing stopping you, if your setting or PC wants it, from adding "divine protection" to the list of things HP is composed of, but you can't make that ENTIRELY what HP is without seriously undermining the concepts behind the game.

Unless of course you do a World-As-Myth style game, where this narrative force is an acknowledged in-setting phenomenon, and "Heroes" who can control the narrative are a recognized thing.

>No, but the idea that a level 10 Fighter is a normal human being with more plot armor then Batman is retarded in the context of the setting.
It's amazing how you can both dismiss and affirm the same point within the same sentence like that.
>Unless of course you do a World-As-Myth style game, where this narrative force is an acknowledged in-setting phenomenon, and "Heroes" who can control the narrative are a recognized thing.
In almost every story known to man, the narrative is always being controlled by the actions of the protagonists, for better or for worse. I mean, you think that the empire was going to destroy itself without Luke and the gang making their rolls and helping the rebels?

Acknowledging plot armor is just the simplest method to explain how HP works. You're basically just adding shit that doesn't need to be added, that will just lead to confusion the second someone starts asking questions.

>ITT reasons to only play WFRPG and 40kRPGs

oh, absolutely

>Acknowledging plot armor is just the simplest method to explain how HP works.
It kills immersion for many, more than "is super trained". And many love the GM (or sometimes the players) describing the hit and what's happening in general.

Just because you acknowledge HP as plot armor doesn't mean that you can't describe why someone was able to survive the blow, it just makes it easier to handwave why PC's can do silly shit like walking on lava, falling off cliffs, and getting cut by a long sword without even breaking so much as a pinky toe.

...

just stop trying to pretend they aren't meat points
i don't even see how this is a problem
is it just a bunch of GMs trying to defend their right to instantly kill their players by having something hit them while they're asleep?
"your character is now dead because i decided that, congrats, make a new character"

Do you describe each and every attack? I've taken to only doing that occasionally - like when a combatant goes down, or it's a crit, or something like that. And half the time, I let the player describe. "Alright, you land a really impressive hit on the ogre - what happened?"

This made me chuckle

HP is more than just health or "plot armor".

It's a simplified representation of the complex interaction of the three aspects of taking damage - injury resistance, injury tolerance, and injury mitigation.

youtube.com/watch?v=Fp3SuwaLQwE
youtube.com/watch?v=kH5M_f8N97M
youtube.com/watch?v=BQcXxatJfbw

There's even a real-life pseudo-equivalent to hit points...
youtube.com/watch?v=dH_CNcSv5TM

>It's a simplified representation of the complex interaction of the three aspects of taking damage - injury resistance, injury tolerance, and injury mitigation.
Yet within the context of D&D, HP boils down to plot armor.

No, it is exactly what I said it was.

Just because you don't wanna think about it doesn't make it wrong.

>No, it is exactly what I said it was.
Not really.

Injury resistance implies that something like DR would exist to help lower the amount of damage that's being applied to your character.

Injury tolerance implies that there's a difference between being at full health and being at 1 within the context of the game beyond having a smaller safety net against an enemy's next attack.

Injury mitigation implies that you could make something like an opposed defense roll in order to either dodge an incoming attack (which wouldn't make sense because AC exists) or utilize your skill to turn a fatal blow into just an injury.

Of course, none of these aspects are taken into account within the context of the game because the only rule that matters is "if you're at 0 HP, you're unconscious and if you reach -10, you die."

Trying to add more detail will make you look as foolish as the guy questioning why Superman can fly.

It depends how long the combat drags, and how spectacular is the effect, the PCs involved, and the involvement of the players.
Yes, i often allow the players to describe, but some of them is a fan of how I describe.
It varies. The detailed varies from "slash" to a detailed description of which internal organs hit which floor. More the former of course.

People in the thread and the videos did show is not, but you keep being a retard.

If you're so sure that you're right than reference something from the actual rulebook, not some theory-crafting nonsense that tries to make HP be more than it actually is.

>what is the burden of proof

I've already explained why your "evidence" is irrelevant, now it's your turn to prove how your "evidence" actually is relevant to this discussion.

Is not just mine, a lot of people contributed.
You are pathetic. You are claiming a baseless statement about "plot points" when other people gave examples of systems with lot point, and gave example of physical HP.
But yet, the OTHERS are required to demonstrate that your bullshit statement is not true.
kys

So basically you know that your nonsense is theory-crafting and you can't actually reference anything from the actual CRB.

Gotcha.

you are too dense, I give up