1. HP is a measure of how much damage you can take before you're knocked out

Depend on the system.

In most sane systems, HP represents your physical health in a very direct way, with combat penalties as you lose HPs and a sane amount of them with regard to weapon damage and everything. After all, it is difficult to explain how your otherwise unmagical human fighter can have 200 HPs naked when a full dagger in the stomach does 4 damages.

In an insane and archaic system like D&D, it represents a poorly defined combination of overall abstract luck, fate, physical fitness (but not too much), which is autism-speak for "we know it's incoherent and makes no sense but we can't be arsed to change it".

Yes you should, if you made the thread. Being clear about your intent is a pretty fucking basic part of communication.

But abstract HP makes perfect sense. Well, mostly. I'll admit there are points where the designers fucked up, but that's a specific flaw in its implementation rather than a criticism of abstract HP. 4e, from my experience, has the most consistent acknowledgement of abstract HP, avoiding some of the odd contradictory rules that marred the other editions, necessitating explanations like pic related.

Every system in existence has some manner of HP that's used to track how hurt you you are. Also, the issue with D&D's HP bloat wasn't even an issue until 3rd edition came out, and it's because the amount of HP that people were expected to have far exceeded the amount of HP that weapons were expected to deal by default.

It'd be the same thing if you gave every shadowrun character six boxes per line or made it so that you couldn't deal lethal damage until you dealt enough bashing damage to fill up every box in nWoD.

It's pretty clear what the subject was about, it's not my fault you're an arrogant autist who shifts blame to other people for their shortcomings.

I like it as Option 1, mostly because I'm a mark for heroes taking an obscene amount of damage, but still carrying on.

While the language changed a bit, this seems very consistent. "HP measures how hard you are to kill". In later editions the clarify these definition isn't limited to physical damage, but even in early editions they don't seem to stated in a way beyond reasonable doubt that it is limited to physical damage.

>4. Damage is an abstract measure of how dangerous an attack is. 10 damage kills a peasant because he just sort of stands there and takes it. 10 damage doesn't kill a fighter with some levels -- he's used to facing up against such simple attacks and knows how to mitigate them.
If you're confused, it's because you're reading the situation from the wrong direction.

1.

Powerful people can take a spear to the gut and move along like it's nothing and that's fine.

No, abstract HP usually makes no sense.

Fall damage, for instance. Fall damage shouldn't do a flat HP damage, because there is no way for a non magical character to bounce back from a fall. When your character has 100 HPs and you fall for 60, every normal human would be dead - but yours, somehow, can use their 'luck' and 'sixth sense' to not be plastered on the floor, even if, say, there is no ledge or anything of the sort to possibly help. It is ridiculous and not a little funny when your players start jumping from airships like orbital drop marines because they just can.

The question of healing is also a problem. When you heal those abstracts HPs, what do you heal? 'Luck'? 'Sixth sense'? Obviously not the scratches, really, because then what is the difference between healing a commoner that is seriously scratched (lost 4 of his 8 HPs) and a level ten that is seriously scratched (lost 40 of 80 HPs)? Shouldn't all the healing spells heal for a percentage of maximum HPs instead of a flat number?

There are many issues with the abstract HP concept. It doesn't make sense in play, and often the DM is at serious loss about what they could represent. More often than not, they simply don't care, and wing it.

Action movie heroes suffer impossible falls all the time. They survive, but they're often winded or bruised by it. That's why it makes sense. Stop overthinking it.

>Damage becomes less relevant because "he's just that tough lol!"
Why not just admit it's plot armor?

Minor wounds, stamina, minor divine protection, maybe some blessings of good fortune all wrapped up? You know, the things religious ceremonies IRL often claimed to bestow on people? It all makes sense from a thematic basis. Stop trying to assess it from a simulationist one.

>HP is a measure of divine favor
>When shit like Blessing already exists.

If you or I walked into a boxing ring against a pro, we'd be flat on our ass in zero seconds. But another pro can actually take some of those punches. How does he do it?
>"He's got unrealistic plot armor lol!"
Nah, only an imbecile would think that.

And?

Gygax answered a letter in the old days indicating he too thought of HP as more than just meat points. He described a fighter's high HP representing something him being able to duck into a cleft in the rock to avoid a dragon's breath, rather than just endure the burning.

Yep, you don't care, and simply wing it. Which is the only sensible way when one is confronted with a system completely incoherent and useless. Winging it.

This is a purely D&D issue, by the way. Most sane systems implement at least penalties as you get more and more damaged, which ties with the fact that HPs are really the health of your character.

Even absurdly abstracted battle systems (like Exalted 3e, with its cinematic 'initiative' that actually represents scratches and luck during a combat) keep HPs as, you know, health. Not as a combination of health, luck, badassness, overall fighting spirit, and whatnot.

Mike Tyson in his heyday beat the fuck outta people with more experience than him just because of how much of a goddamned monster he was in the ring.

So tell me something, how exactly was Mike able to beat people with years of boxing experience on him if HP is supposed to represent training and one's ability to avoid the hit?

No? It's perfectly consistent, just in a way you don't like to acknowledge. Just dismissing that it works on a different basis as 'winging it' is highly intellectually dishonest.

Plus, death spirals are straight up bad for some games. Take Tenra Bansho Zero, for example, which has an abstract HP equivalent alongside wounds, but taking a wound gives you a combat bonus, not penalty, as befitting the high flying anime aesthetic of the game.

You're just asserting your preference for how a damage system works as the way it should work, and assessing everything by that standard rather than considering it in its own context.

much better CON and STR bonus,

If HP is supposed to represent X, but X is already represented by a separate mechanic that works nothing like how HP does, can you not see where shit can kinda get confusing?

I mean, if you're spouting your own personal head canon than by all means, I'm not going to fault you on that, and I'll go on record by stating that abstract HP isn't really that big of a deal, but if you're going to come up with abstract HP, at least have the goddamn decency of making sure that the crunch matches the fluff.

It's all kinda pointless anyways, people already associate HP with how much damage you can take thanks to video games, card games, board games, etc. treating them as such, so it mostly boils down to personal opinion.

>I don't know what I'm talking about, the post

God, this would be the most pathetic and idiotic post in the world, but this entire conversation is filled with people who have no idea what the fuck they're talking about, so I guess some of your stupidity can be excused.

Some of it, but not all of it. You are so fucking dumb you should probably stop and never post again.

You're making my point for me dude. Mike had more levels, more hp, higher damage than his opponents. His opponents had more levels, more hp, and higher damage than amateur boxers. Scaling levels, hp, etc. establishes a distinct hierarchy where some people are just flat out -better- than others at fighting, and this is an excellent real world example.

This is why is relevant

People make assumptions based on videogames rather than actually reading the book. HP is a broad abstraction that can involve a lot of different things, and the whole point of it is to avoid the kind of complexity and confusion people get when they try and pick it apart and say it is exactly x or y.

Human limitations. Real life isn't a game where everyone has the same max level, max stats, and gain xp at the same rate. Mike was genetically blessed with an excellent bone structure and kinesthetic intelligence couples with an aggressive, competitive personality. He was able to hit level cap faster and with higher stats than his competitors.

>D&D discussion
>real life analogy

Then it breaks down even further because even if his STR and CON scores were greater, that still shouldn't make up for the fact that the people he fought had way more experience than him at being boxers.

It's the reason why I can't go up to a Troll as a Level 1 character and one-shot it, 20 STR and CON can only take you so far when you're 1v1'ing something with way more levels than you in a straight up fight.

Also, Tyson would be a STR/DEX build if anything.
How exactly does Mike Tyson have more levels as a rookie compared to experienced boxers who have been fighting people for years?
So Real Life is basically GURPS?

Nigga, D&D is the prime example of games that treat HP like a video game does.

Granted, death spirals and all that shit have their place but don't cite bullshit from the book and then ignore the dozens of examples where the designers outright ignore their own definition of what HP is supposed to be.

Fuck, 4e and 5e at least tried to make it more than just damage but for every ability like Second Wind, there's bullshit like Cure Wounds, Healing Word, Life Cleric, etc. that clearly references HP lost as being physical wounds that somehow doesn't affect you until you lose your last shred of HP.

ReadD&D has always had abstract HP. It's just that the designers occasionally fuck up and forget, and some of the legacy terminology is bad and undermines the basic definition. The system still makes more sense if you take the basic definition to be true, and treat the bad terminology as things like in universe misunderstandings or the like.

>How exactly does Mike Tyson have more levels as a rookie compared to experienced boxers who have been fighting people for years?
He obviously grinded out some quests before hopping on the GMs Prizefighter plot railroad.

>It's just that the designers occasionally fuck up and forget
Occasionally? We're decades into D&D's legacy and they still do this shit. If anything, the times where they get it "right" end up being wrong because of how often they misrepresent it as being something that it isn't.

It's like this, if history was rewritten so that the color "black" became "red" and vice-versa, you would be the one who was incorrect even if you accurately called "black" "red" because people associate those colors with different shades and hues than what you're used to.

I love Numenera's system as they have HP as both your health and stamina for using abilities. basically, just like in real life, you fatigue yourself mentally and physically the more you expend, making you more vulnerable to getting killed the more damage you take. i feel this does wonderful things to keep a game interesting.

And yet they keep returning to the definition and trying to make it work.

I honestly think 4e did the best job of selling the idea of abstract HP, for all the people who bitch about warlord healing and the like.

>I love Numenera's system

I'm kinda doubting you've actually read it. the setting's on the weird end, and i can't stand cyphers (one use uselessness), but the base game? real good stuff going on there.
youtu.be/rJnNGBFP_9s

>And yet they keep returning to the definition and trying to make it work.
They may return to the definition but HP will always be fucked so long as D&D is forced to saddle itself to its sacred cows. It's a shame really, because if HP actually worked, by default, the way that they explain it as being, it'd probably be one of the more interesting HP mechanics.

Like imagine if you could sacrifice X HP to give yourself advantage with the justification being that you're spending your own luck to force fate into doing you a solid. Or if there were a mechanical effect that could happen to save you from 0HP depending on which deity you worshiped (while also giving people a reason to bother worshiping gods when they aren't Clerics or Paladins).

Instead it's just "HP=Damage you can take before dying" and healing boils down to "get X HP back."

I'm actually working on a game at the moment where that's part of what we're trying to do with that premise, take HP as an abstraction and actually make it work, explore the design space opened up by the concept and such.

>somehow doesn't affect you until you lose your last shred of HP.
in real life, people do some crazy shit because of adrenaline.

And there are already effects in the game that simulate adrenaline by allowing you to stay conscious with 1HP if you pass a CON save.

>HP can mean, among other things, will to live
>Cure spells universally recover hp
>Cure spells increase your will to live
Can cure spells combat depression?

If D&D actually treated HP as they described, yes. Unfortunately, depression would probably be relegated to something like lesser restoration.

>Stamina ST: is a measure of your physical stamina and will to keep on fighting.
>HP is how much damage you can take before you go into shock and die
>Attacks that get passed your dodge and armor do damage to your HP, can can cause you to take a wound.
>if you run out of stamina you count as being helpless

HP means the amount of printers a character has.
Without printers he is worthless.

At low levels bad bumps and scraps until you get hit with the attack that kills you. At high levels you go full battle anime and have the characters get beat to shit but keep standing regardless.

Because you presented them mutually exclusive options.

remove diease maybe?

The OSR, or at least part of it, has already done this. In the GLOG (which is otherwise a dumpster fire, but whatever) HP is an abstract representation of how many hits you can avoid. When you're out, you start taking Lethal Damage, which means you roll on a table to find out what fun injury you're going to get, up to and including instant death. Things that shouldn't do HP damage don't, either through Inevitable Damage (which bypasses HP and makes you roll on the dismemberment table) for things like long falls, or through stat damage for things like poisons.

A variation on 1 where attacks do less harm to characters with higher HP. A blow with a mace that does 20 damage to a first-level character might shatter his ribcage and cause instant death, against a level 20 character it'll just cause some bruising at most. It's not realistic but fuck it, D&D was never meant to be.

In just saying I like option 3. Lower your health lower your ac. The pain starts making it hard to concentrate

Location based, and kept in check.

Bump

>1. Stamina
>2. Existence cessation
>3. Death spiral
You realize that depending on the tone you want for your game, you should use different mechanics?

"Death spiral" is best used for for brutal, high-lethality campaigns to convey the feeling of hopelessness, while "existence cessation" is great for dungeon romps and the gamist feel.
"Stamina" is only usable if there are two separate tracks for damage, something along the lines of Stamina/Health, where Stamina is easily recoverable, while Health requires investment to replenish.

You also forgot my favorite mechanic, which is "anti-death spiral" - HP is a measure of your health and losing HP makes you deal more damage, which in turn makes the enemy deal more damage, which in turn makes you deal more damage etc.
This turns the combat into a game of rocket chicken, where everyone is being reckless as fuck, while still trying not to die - perfect for simulating wuxia, cheesy action movies etc.

>You also forgot my favorite mechanic, which is "anti-death spiral" - HP is a measure of your health and losing HP makes you deal more damage, which in turn makes the enemy deal more damage, which in turn makes you deal more damage etc.
What games do this?

Tenra Bansho Zero does it

The characters lose HP when they take damage.

Man fucking 3e dropping the ball hard as always.

>Every other edition
>HP is a lot of things! It isn't just the meat on your body it's things like resolve or luck or how good you are at staying in a fight!

>3e
>HP is a number that goes down and kills you if it gets too low. These classes have low HP. These classes have High. You add your constitution modifier to them.

It's like the game is assuming you to make the smart decision and just telling you very dryly what the mechanical effect is.

I don't remember the titles exactly, but games that simulate cheesy Seagal-esque movies (like The Expendables and early Schwarznegger movies) are fond of this.

There are many ways to treat HP, to be honest. The more gamist systems usually implement the "Second Wind" mechanic - yknow, if you drop to negative HP, you have X turns to kill an enemy, and if you do, you get healed to exactly 1 HP.

That's pretty fucking rad.

One of the things I hate about most games is how it rewards people for camping on the other side of the map taking potshots until someone dies because death spirals reward passive play. I also hate D&D shit where both sides just trade blows until someone dies.

I want to have battles where both sides rush in, blood flies everywhere, people on both sides are gritting their teeth, refusing to give up an inch, and sides have to consider the reward vs. the risk of each turn that they stay in melee.

Yet people claim that 4e is tabletop MMO edition, go figure.

Healing magic also soothes the bruises and your weakened resolve- it gives you energy and refreshes your nerves.

Hey man. Sorry we can't dedicate 5 sentences to explaining what HP is.

We instead gotta tell you that no you can't cast featerfall on a weapon being swung at you to make it not hit you as hard.

CAUSE THAT'S SOMETHING ANY SANE GM WOULDN'T JUST SHUT DOWN

i am fine with all 3, it doesnt really matter to me

i sure as heck dont want to play with DF subsystem damage using only pen and paper

On the one hand, I can kinda see why they wouldn't let featherfall be used like that. On the other hand, it's a reaction so it would technically go off before the opponent rolls for their attack roll and you're spending a 1st level slot.

I dunno, in 5e I'd say that you could do it at least if they passed a perception test to see the attack coming.

Whichever option makes sense to be related to Constitution.

It also wouldn't have an effect.

The weapon being swung isn't really using gravity as its driving force. It's using muscle-power.

Well that depends on whether you belief that it simply slows down your descent or kills all momentum while letting gravity safely lower you to the ground.

It stops you from taking falling damage. This is accomplished by "it's magic, that's what it does, cannot be applied for any other use"

Again, does it do it because it slows your descent or does it doing by killing all momentum? I doubt the book will clarify one way or another but I could see either ruling working depending on the DM.

Neither, it does so because that's what it does. Do not apply physics or logic. Fireball cannot ignite a room full of explosive vapors, Lightning Bolt does not cause blindness or heart attacks, Wish must always operate at maximum levels of Monkey's Paw.

Why?

Vancian magic isn't flexible and isn't supposed to be flexible.
You can invent your own spell that will stop weapons' momentum based on the idea of Featherfall, but it won't be Featherfall by that point, but an entirely different spell, because Vancian spells have fixed effects that are applicable in fixed ways.

Because RAW, nothing more, nothing less. And yes, Wish has an exact list of "safe uses" but anything else gets twisted.

It doesn't change the nature of the spell though. It would still cost a Level 1 Spell Slot, it would still cost a reaction, and it would still require you to target the weapon once it's within a certain distance.

It's like saying that fireball would no longer be called fireball because, instead of releasing fire as it normally does, it simply superheats the water within a certain radius if it was cast underwater.
The thing is, why exactly wouldn't fireball ignite a room of explosive vapors when it already has an effect that sets fire to all flammable objects within range of its effect?

Why exactly does Wish have to be a monkey's paw by default? If the person using it isn't doing it for stupid shit like immortality or "I wish the BBEG was dead" I don't really see why you'd want to purposefully fuck it up. Besides, Wish in 5e has inherent risks that go beyond you getting fucked over by the wish, including a percentage chance of not being able to use Wish again.

Because magic is broken enough in D&D without bending over backwards to make it even better

You say that as if I'm not giving martials the same benefit of a doubt in how flexible they can do their actions too.

Plus, if you're going to arbitrarily rule on something to keep things fair, at least make sure that the ruling itself makes sense, otherwise people are just going to feel resentful at you for not letting them do cool things because of RAW.

If they ignite a room of methane with a fireball, shit should explode. If the DM believes that featherfall kills all momentum, it could technically be used to make a thrown weapon fall to the ground. If the Wizard uses Wish to get a few extra pounds of rations or a bobsled or some other mundane thing, just let them have it in the interests of saying "hey, thanks for not trying to abuse this spell and shit."

> Why does spell X doesn't do thing Y?
Why the same code with only one line changed does completely different things?
Vancian spells are basically that - programs, programs that execute the universal effects that we call "magic".
Two programs, no matter how similar they are, just don't do the same things as long as the code of said programs differs even a little bit.
Spells do exactly what they are said to do - nothing more and nothing less. So if an indirect effect isn't explicitly stated, then the spell isn't aimed to do that.

Except that's false equivalency, as what a martial can reasonably achieve via improvisation is a lot more restricted than what a spellcaster can. It's why I never buy the whole 'Martials aren't underpowered, you just need to improvise!' thing, since spellcasters are inherently better equipped to do so.

If you are a player, HP should be always argued to be as abstract as possible. That way, you can say "hey, hasn't that Leprechaun given me some health by giving me the Luck of the Irish?"

Wish can create items under a certain value, so yes, you can easily Wish for mundane stuff. Martials have to operate within real physics though, therefore they can certainly use the workings of the world around them to do coll stuff. Heck, the wizard can too, just not through spells, each of which is an exact and discrete effect.

>Martials have to operate within real physics though

I really want this idea to just completely die in the context of high, or even medium fantasy games. Realistic fighters belong in low fantasy. In anything else you should be able to full mythic logic and achieve the impossible through sheer physical aptitude, strength of arms and perfected skill.

Not necessarily, it's just that 3.PF gave people a pretty warped view of the martial/caster divide thanks to how underpowered martials are, even when they're the apex of their race, and HP bloat making straight damage less than effective unless you can consistently deal big damage.

With that being said, it's still a game, and my prerogative is to make sure everyone has fun. If the Barbarian wants to huck a boulder at some mage who has his back turned, I'll let him do so. If the mage wants to stop the boulder with featherfall with their reaction, that's fine too. If the Barbarian wants to use his movement to jump on the boulder and spend his remaining attack to grapple the mage while he's in melee, I'll allow that too.

Because I think that too many people focus too much on balance, RAW, and problem players that they lose sight on the fact that it's supposed to be a recreational activity done with friends who should know the type of game they want to play.

Agreed, but as long as the game itself is built around mundane martials and casters that somehow aren't required to be half-deities themselves...

Martials can chuck a torch into a room with a gas leak and it blows up, wizards casting fireball into such a room get nothing beyond the usual fireball effect. If a fighter sets up some sort of lightning rod arrow on a long cable to channel electricity into a metal structure or watery area, it works, but the mage can't just cast Lightning Bolt into the same thing and expect it to spread outwards to multiple targets.

>Fireball explicitly states that you set fire to all flammable objects hit by the attack.
>Somehow, this wouldn't cause a gas explosion even though the gas can be set on fire.
What did he mean by this?

Simple, the gas cloud isn't an object, it's an environmental danger with no AC, HP or structure.

Abstract HP is the ONLY way to make HP make sense, unless you want to have a bunch of separate "HPs" for anything kind of harm which, when compounded, can kill you / disable you - and even that's a slippery slope.

Eh, I'm more of the mind to just go full high fantasy ridiculous. It helps justify improvisation with spellcasting if martials are capable of just up and doing one of the twelve labours when they need to.

HP as meat points is best.

Yet it's still flammable and isn't being worn or carried by anyone. Tell me something, what would happen if someone used create bonfire to light a torch before throwing it into the room?

Since the spell specifies igniting objects, and the torch is an object, you can do that.