I am curious as to how everyone visualizes hitpoints in their games. Do you see every blow that damages hitpoints as drawing blood? Or do you see it as the character taking scrapes, knocks and getting drained, such that when the final HP fall off, that's the telling blow that's landed? Or do you do it in stages, combining the two?
Let me know what you see hitpoints as actually being!
I see them as knocks and scrapes, where only the last HP dropping off is a serious wound. Everything else can be handwaved away by having a good night's sleep, after all. This also gives credit to the idea that health potions are more for reinvigorating you, and healing small cuts and scrapes, rather than missing limbs.
I tend to use whatever suits the particular encounter. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but different encounters with different enemies in different situations call capture the imagination in different ways.
That said, I normally see damage as doing something physical, like bruising or scraping at a minimum. It feels wrong, most of the time, to say that Damage caused by a Hit from a Weapon is just tiring you out a bit. It takes a bit of handwaving when an arrow damages you for 75% of your HP (at low levels), so you visualise it having gone through your leg, but then wake up in the morning fully healed... But, then again, that's the case whenever a character looses a significant amount of HP. If I ever think about it too deeply, my brain rebels, so I normally cover it off with either "This is a magical world, the magic helps people to heal more quickly" or, especially at higher levels, "They are virtually super heroes, a wound which would leave a normal person in bed for weeks is nothing to our party!"
I see temporary hit points as not being a genuine injury when lost - e.g. an abjuration wizard's thp work very well as a force field, imho. I see actual hit points as always being blood spilt, seeing as how they're based on constitution and, for non-PCs, physical size. However, the injury should scale with relative damage done - losing 75% of your hit points should be described as a bigger, nastier blow than losing 1%.
The mechanics of hit points are silly, but so are many other mechanics - for example, armor as AC has never made any genuine sense. If something misses you but hits your armor, much of the time it should still work. In past editions this was represented with your "touch AC", but we haven't got that in 5E. And it's utterly bizarre that anything switching to save delivery inherently ignores all worn armor, which is how you get hunting traps that will just hurt a lycanthrope in plate, without needing any silver. Hit points coming back to full after one long rest despite allegedly representing how injured you are isn't any sillier than that.
Every point of HP lost is a wound. Minor losses are minor wounds, major losses are less-minor wounds. There's no good way to rigorously explain the abstraction that is Hit Points - the "you're completely and utterly untouched by the world until your last hit point disappears, at which point you receive a single overwhelming Ultra Deathblow and are in immediate danger of permanent death forever" thing is just as impractical and unrealistic as the "Every blow that lands carves into your body in ways that should be debilitating, and yet you don't suffer any loss of performance and a night's sleep lets you Wolverine back to perfect health" thing.
But the rest of the game is written under the assumption that lost HP means blood. Creatures like sahuagin get 'Blood Frenzy' bonuses against foes without their full HP - if loss of HP doesn't mean you're bleeding, why would shark people smell blood? Some monsters still have abilities that work on bloodied enemies, or abilities that only work when they lose HP - like the hydra losing and then regrowing heads when it takes a certain amount of damage. If no HP except the last HP indicates anything has happened, how do you cut off a hydra's heads?
The game works better if lost HP equals spilled blood than if lost HP is simply an erosion of divine provenance and inexplicable 'battle fatigue'. The game works best if you just don't think about what HP means and let it be the random, completely nonsensical but useful-for-gaming abstraction it is.
I tend to go in stages mostly with cuts or bruises caused by the damage.Though sometimes this would change depending on the damage type (psychic damage leaves one insane and in pane but with no visible wounds,force damage leaves blunt tramua, fire and cold leave burns)
sometimes this changes with the character gust is litterally a cloud so they cant take a whole lot of psychical damage.Instead they simply decide they want a nap when they drop to 0 and otherwise just get let intrested in fighting at low hp.
I see every hit point lost as a hit, rather than necessarily drawing blood. A goblin with a sword beats your AC: the sword crunches into the mail over your shoulder, take 5hp damage. A goblin with a bow beats your AC: you grab the arrow from the air, but you mis-timed and the point slices into your palm. Take 3hp damage.
Scales for bigger damage. An ogre with a club beats your AC, wizard. 12hp damage. You only have 11hp? The club smacks you in the chest and flings your limp body across the room (note, no mention of death by me).
Now I'm having fun thinking of how I'd narrate massive damage when the characters are high level.
I just go full-on Mortal Kombat logic. You could get a big slam to the chest from a massive hammer and get three cracked ribs, but it doesn't affect your movement or skills and all you need is a good night's sleep and you're fine the next day.
I mean it seems the intent is that HP loss is damage to your mind or body.
Piercing damage is something sharp piercing into your body.
Slashing damage is something cutting your body.
Bludgeoning damage is blunt force damage to the body.
Fire is burning flesh, cold is ice-burn/frostbite, acid is melting part of you, and so on.
This isn't battle fatigue - it's wounds and damage to the body. The only exception is Psychic damage, which harms the mind - but this might be envisioned as illusory wounds or more physical like brain seizures/bleeds.
HP isn't about a specific amount of blood spill, rather a representation of how much damage and pain you can take before your body just gives in - system shock from pain and damage. But yes, also blood loss. However, one can argue until the last hit they're not super severe - they're not rupturing organs or such or causing massive internal bleeding. They're shallow wounds - as you long rest you patch up, sleep and recover. But as adventurers you have faster healing. The resting options are deliberately designed as unrealistic under the premise of "you're not normal - you're a hero/villain/etc and you're special". This is so the game isn't slowed down - a near-fatal wound would normally take weeks to months for even the strongest to heal from and might never heal fully -- we're rather fragile. Do you want to RP months of doing nothing but sitting around resting after every difficult fight? No? That's why you recover so quick.
So unrealistic as it may seem, HP and damage types are very much designed to represent wounds, cuts, bruises, bone cracks, and more and the last blows that drop you to 0 might be more severe - for flavour.
HP isn't battle fatigue from all the dodging and parrying and whatnot. It's how much damage and blood loss you can take before your body succumbs, goes into system shock and starts dying.
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Every point of HP lost is a wound. Minor losses are minor wounds, major losses are less-minor wounds. There's no good way to rigorously explain the abstraction that is Hit Points - the "you're completely and utterly untouched by the world until your last hit point disappears, at which point you receive a single overwhelming Ultra Deathblow and are in immediate danger of permanent death forever" thing is just as impractical and unrealistic as the "Every blow that lands carves into your body in ways that should be debilitating, and yet you don't suffer any loss of performance and a night's sleep lets you Wolverine back to perfect health" thing.
But the rest of the game is written under the assumption that lost HP means blood. Creatures like sahuagin get 'Blood Frenzy' bonuses against foes without their full HP - if loss of HP doesn't mean you're bleeding, why would shark people smell blood? Some monsters still have abilities that work on bloodied enemies, or abilities that only work when they lose HP - like the hydra losing and then regrowing heads when it takes a certain amount of damage. If no HP except the last HP indicates anything has happened, how do you cut off a hydra's heads?
The game works better if lost HP equals spilled blood than if lost HP is simply an erosion of divine provenance and inexplicable 'battle fatigue'. The game works best if you just don't think about what HP means and let it be the random, completely nonsensical but useful-for-gaming abstraction it is.
I basically agree with all of this. And that is how I run it. A small fraction of hp relative to your pool of hp is a small wound, a scratch, a graze. A lot of hp is a heavier wound. And so on.
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Every hit is a hit. Having lots of hit dice means a stronger connection to the Positive Energy Plane (or Negative Energy Plane in the case of undead), allowing the creature to survive injuries that would have killed them several times over if they were just relying on pure biology.
I view it as wearing the opponent down. Sometimes that's just a staggering knock back, superficial scrapes or otherwise getting the upper hand on the foe. Once the HP gets to 0, that would be where a grievous wound would be. Otherwise, healing with 8 hours of rest doesn't make sense.
Besides, with things like Psychic damage being a thing, those don't have physical wounds at times, and wouldn't make sense for the "every HP is blood lost".
You can still bleed without having a critical gaping wound. And simple bandages would cover those small scrapes that would cause the "blood in the water" effects and many would be healed over with a nights rest
No, every HP lost cannot be a wound. Otherwise there would be no way for a high level character to still be functional after taking so many wounds as to leave him with single digit hit points. And if a high damage wound was really a heavy wound, the paradigm would not hold.
Moreover, HP don't mean the same things for different characters, some are more stamina based, others are just massively built, some have HP based more on luck or divine favor.
And the same with the damage inflicted, which varies so much depending on the type of damage and the creature inflicting it.
So the only rule for me is that there is no rule. Depending on the situation and the character, I describe it differently, with different "resources" being affected (stamina, body, luck, etc.), with only two things in mind, first that it cannot continue too much like this otherwise the character will fall, and nothing is debilitating, until the last blow that takes character down.
It can be whatever the table wants it to be. Wounds are just as applicable as Stamina as is "Luck" or some other mechanism.
There is no wrong answer here so do not pretend there is one.
HP stands for Health Points, so it's obvious that if you run low on HP, then you become unhealthy —
if you were attacked with weapons, your body starts to contain an unhealthy amount of iron and silver or perhaps the blade was rusty and it left you infected with some nasty bacteria
if you were hit by spells, your skin condition starts to be a less healthy, or maybe you even lose some hair (thunder damage huh).
People recover HP when they take baths during long rests, tend to their infected wounds and drink apple juice to get some vitamins back in their systems.
The less HP, the more coughy.
ah yes the giant blade wound is unhealthy but because, it gave you to much iron and not because its a giant blade wound
not sure if this is a very good interpation but it is a funny one.
HP stands for Health Points, so it's obvious that if you run low on HP, then you become unhealthy —
if you were attacked with weapons, your body starts to contain an unhealthy amount of iron and silver or perhaps the blade was rusty and it left you infected with some nasty bacteria
if you were hit by spells, your skin condition starts to be a less healthy, or maybe you even lose some hair (thunder damage huh).
People recover HP when they take baths during long rests, tend to their infected wounds and drink apple juice to get some vitamins back in their systems.
The less HP, the more coughy.
Actually, HP stands for "Hit Points". There's a big difference. It's basically is an abstract concept for how many times you can be "hit" by an attack or other damaging effect. The PHB even defines HP as this:
"Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more difficult to kill. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile."
So, it isn't just your "health" (i.e. Constitution), but it's also your "will to live and luck". A creature that is "hit" by a weapon attack doesn't even necessarily need to be physically hit by the weapon, it just gets so dangerously close to hitting their physical body that they have to "expend" Hit Points to not die.
No, every HP lost cannot be a wound. Otherwise there would be no way for a high level character to still be functional after taking so many wounds as to leave him with single digit hit points. And if a high damage wound was really a heavy wound, the paradigm would not hold.
Moreover, HP don't mean the same things for different characters, some are more stamina based, others are just massively built, some have HP based more on luck or divine favor.
And the same with the damage inflicted, which varies so much depending on the type of damage and the creature inflicting it.
So the only rule for me is that there is no rule. Depending on the situation and the character, I describe it differently, with different "resources" being affected (stamina, body, luck, etc.), with only two things in mind, first that it cannot continue too much like this otherwise the character will fall, and nothing is debilitating, until the last blow that takes character down.
It can be whatever the table wants it to be. Wounds are just as applicable as Stamina as is "Luck" or some other mechanism.
There is no wrong answer here so do not pretend there is one.
I think you really missed the point of my post, I'm only saying that there can't be a universal answer for all types of damage and all characters. Your totally unjustified opinion is that there is no wrong answer, my opinion is that saying that there can be only one explanation is wrong. You might not like it, but I am entitled to my opinion, especially when it is justified.
I have already explained why open wounds explaining every hit point loss does not work, but I'll be more specific, how do you explain psychic damage mandatorily dealing an open wound ? Vicious mockery surely leaves a gaping wound. :p
Hence my advice not to be absolute about a specific explanation fitting everything, but being more open minded considering the staggering variety of damage types but also character types and the reasons that they might have about resisting damage. You have something in particular against being open-minded about this ? Do you absolutely need to have a single explanation ? Why ?
I'm saying whatever works for the table... You say no wounds can't work.
HP loss is some kind of physical injury, but they're mostly superficial up until the one that brings you to 0.
A creature with 100 HP takes 30 damage. Superficial, or at least not life-threatening. It takes another 25 damage. Still not life-threatening. Later on, when the creature is down to 5 HP, it takes 5. Deep serious injury, despite being only 5 points when the earlier 30 were barely a scratch.
The severity of injury from HP loss varies based on how close to 0 you are. And even then, it's not clear if you're fatally injured or just in shock. If you succeed 3 death saves, turns out you were just in shock or some equivalent. Fail 3 death saves? C'est la vie.
HP gain is only actual healing if it's magical. Rest-based "healing" is just the creature adjusting to being hurt so that its (probably not life-threatening) injuries are no longer a hindrance in combat. The actual healing takes days or weeks or a dose of magic.
HP stands for Health Points, so it's obvious that if you run low on HP, then you become unhealthy —
if you were attacked with weapons, your body starts to contain an unhealthy amount of iron and silver or perhaps the blade was rusty and it left you infected with some nasty bacteria
if you were hit by spells, your skin condition starts to be a less healthy, or maybe you even lose some hair (thunder damage huh).
People recover HP when they take baths during long rests, tend to their infected wounds and drink apple juice to get some vitamins back in their systems.
The less HP, the more coughy.
Actually, HP stands for "Hit Points". There's a big difference. It basically is an abstract concept for how many times you can be "hit" by an attack or other damaging effect. The PHB even defines HP as this:
"Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck. Creatures with more hit points are more difficult to kill. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile."
So, it isn't just your "health" (i.e. Constitution), but it's also your "will to live and luck". A creature that is "hit" by a weapon attack doesn't even necessarily need to be physically hit by the weapon, it just gets so dangerously close to hitting their physical body that they have to "expend" Hit Points to not die.
Someone told me that this came from naval war games. The number of hit points a ship has represented the number of times it could be hit by canon shot before it sank.
Every hit causes some kind of damage. The bit about more experienced PC having more hp is akin to a professional boxer being able to take more punches (sometimes many MANY more) than your average Joe on the street.
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Every hit causes some kind of damage. The bit about more experienced PC having more hp is akin to a professional boxer being able to take more punches (sometimes many MANY more) than your average Joe on the street.
I was reading through planning on using the professional fighter analogy myself. Boxers and other fighters are conditioned, and further experienced in getting hit and rolling with the punch and keep fighting. The hits they take are the sort that would often knock an untrained fighter to the floor. At the same time, fighting gets tiring when you're blocking and ducking hits. It's an easy illustration of how "the fight gets taken out of someone" via actual physical trauma and a degree of exhaustion (not exhaustion mechanic, at least in D&D).
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Someone told me that this came from naval war games. The number of hit points a ship has represented the number of times it could be hit by canon shot before it sank.
It came from the miniatures game "Chainmail." It was a measure of unit strength.
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I am curious as to how everyone visualizes hitpoints in their games. Do you see every blow that damages hitpoints as drawing blood? Or do you see it as the character taking scrapes, knocks and getting drained, such that when the final HP fall off, that's the telling blow that's landed? Or do you do it in stages, combining the two?
Let me know what you see hitpoints as actually being!
I see them as knocks and scrapes, where only the last HP dropping off is a serious wound. Everything else can be handwaved away by having a good night's sleep, after all. This also gives credit to the idea that health potions are more for reinvigorating you, and healing small cuts and scrapes, rather than missing limbs.
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I tend to use whatever suits the particular encounter. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but different encounters with different enemies in different situations call capture the imagination in different ways.
That said, I normally see damage as doing something physical, like bruising or scraping at a minimum. It feels wrong, most of the time, to say that Damage caused by a Hit from a Weapon is just tiring you out a bit. It takes a bit of handwaving when an arrow damages you for 75% of your HP (at low levels), so you visualise it having gone through your leg, but then wake up in the morning fully healed... But, then again, that's the case whenever a character looses a significant amount of HP. If I ever think about it too deeply, my brain rebels, so I normally cover it off with either "This is a magical world, the magic helps people to heal more quickly" or, especially at higher levels, "They are virtually super heroes, a wound which would leave a normal person in bed for weeks is nothing to our party!"
I see temporary hit points as not being a genuine injury when lost - e.g. an abjuration wizard's thp work very well as a force field, imho. I see actual hit points as always being blood spilt, seeing as how they're based on constitution and, for non-PCs, physical size. However, the injury should scale with relative damage done - losing 75% of your hit points should be described as a bigger, nastier blow than losing 1%.
The mechanics of hit points are silly, but so are many other mechanics - for example, armor as AC has never made any genuine sense. If something misses you but hits your armor, much of the time it should still work. In past editions this was represented with your "touch AC", but we haven't got that in 5E. And it's utterly bizarre that anything switching to save delivery inherently ignores all worn armor, which is how you get hunting traps that will just hurt a lycanthrope in plate, without needing any silver. Hit points coming back to full after one long rest despite allegedly representing how injured you are isn't any sillier than that.
Every point of HP lost is a wound. Minor losses are minor wounds, major losses are less-minor wounds. There's no good way to rigorously explain the abstraction that is Hit Points - the "you're completely and utterly untouched by the world until your last hit point disappears, at which point you receive a single overwhelming Ultra Deathblow and are in immediate danger of permanent death forever" thing is just as impractical and unrealistic as the "Every blow that lands carves into your body in ways that should be debilitating, and yet you don't suffer any loss of performance and a night's sleep lets you Wolverine back to perfect health" thing.
But the rest of the game is written under the assumption that lost HP means blood. Creatures like sahuagin get 'Blood Frenzy' bonuses against foes without their full HP - if loss of HP doesn't mean you're bleeding, why would shark people smell blood? Some monsters still have abilities that work on bloodied enemies, or abilities that only work when they lose HP - like the hydra losing and then regrowing heads when it takes a certain amount of damage. If no HP except the last HP indicates anything has happened, how do you cut off a hydra's heads?
The game works better if lost HP equals spilled blood than if lost HP is simply an erosion of divine provenance and inexplicable 'battle fatigue'. The game works best if you just don't think about what HP means and let it be the random, completely nonsensical but useful-for-gaming abstraction it is.
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I tend to go in stages mostly with cuts or bruises caused by the damage.Though sometimes this would change depending on the damage type (psychic damage leaves one insane and in pane but with no visible wounds,force damage leaves blunt tramua, fire and cold leave burns)
sometimes this changes with the character gust is litterally a cloud so they cant take a whole lot of psychical damage.Instead they simply decide they want a nap when they drop to 0 and otherwise just get let intrested in fighting at low hp.
I see every hit point lost as a hit, rather than necessarily drawing blood. A goblin with a sword beats your AC: the sword crunches into the mail over your shoulder, take 5hp damage. A goblin with a bow beats your AC: you grab the arrow from the air, but you mis-timed and the point slices into your palm. Take 3hp damage.
Scales for bigger damage. An ogre with a club beats your AC, wizard. 12hp damage. You only have 11hp? The club smacks you in the chest and flings your limp body across the room (note, no mention of death by me).
Now I'm having fun thinking of how I'd narrate massive damage when the characters are high level.
I just go full-on Mortal Kombat logic. You could get a big slam to the chest from a massive hammer and get three cracked ribs, but it doesn't affect your movement or skills and all you need is a good night's sleep and you're fine the next day.
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I mean it seems the intent is that HP loss is damage to your mind or body.
Piercing damage is something sharp piercing into your body.
Slashing damage is something cutting your body.
Bludgeoning damage is blunt force damage to the body.
Fire is burning flesh, cold is ice-burn/frostbite, acid is melting part of you, and so on.
This isn't battle fatigue - it's wounds and damage to the body. The only exception is Psychic damage, which harms the mind - but this might be envisioned as illusory wounds or more physical like brain seizures/bleeds.
HP isn't about a specific amount of blood spill, rather a representation of how much damage and pain you can take before your body just gives in - system shock from pain and damage. But yes, also blood loss. However, one can argue until the last hit they're not super severe - they're not rupturing organs or such or causing massive internal bleeding. They're shallow wounds - as you long rest you patch up, sleep and recover. But as adventurers you have faster healing. The resting options are deliberately designed as unrealistic under the premise of "you're not normal - you're a hero/villain/etc and you're special". This is so the game isn't slowed down - a near-fatal wound would normally take weeks to months for even the strongest to heal from and might never heal fully -- we're rather fragile. Do you want to RP months of doing nothing but sitting around resting after every difficult fight? No? That's why you recover so quick.
So unrealistic as it may seem, HP and damage types are very much designed to represent wounds, cuts, bruises, bone cracks, and more and the last blows that drop you to 0 might be more severe - for flavour.
HP isn't battle fatigue from all the dodging and parrying and whatnot. It's how much damage and blood loss you can take before your body succumbs, goes into system shock and starts dying.
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I basically agree with all of this. And that is how I run it. A small fraction of hp relative to your pool of hp is a small wound, a scratch, a graze. A lot of hp is a heavier wound. And so on.
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Every hit is a hit. Having lots of hit dice means a stronger connection to the Positive Energy Plane (or Negative Energy Plane in the case of undead), allowing the creature to survive injuries that would have killed them several times over if they were just relying on pure biology.
I view it as wearing the opponent down. Sometimes that's just a staggering knock back, superficial scrapes or otherwise getting the upper hand on the foe. Once the HP gets to 0, that would be where a grievous wound would be. Otherwise, healing with 8 hours of rest doesn't make sense.
Besides, with things like Psychic damage being a thing, those don't have physical wounds at times, and wouldn't make sense for the "every HP is blood lost".
You can still bleed without having a critical gaping wound. And simple bandages would cover those small scrapes that would cause the "blood in the water" effects and many would be healed over with a nights rest
It can be whatever the table wants it to be. Wounds are just as applicable as Stamina as is "Luck" or some other mechanism.
There is no wrong answer here so do not pretend there is one.
ah yes the giant blade wound is unhealthy but because, it gave you to much iron and not because its a giant blade wound
not sure if this is a very good interpation but it is a funny one.
Actually, HP stands for "Hit Points". There's a big difference. It's basically is an abstract concept for how many times you can be "hit" by an attack or other damaging effect. The PHB even defines HP as this:
So, it isn't just your "health" (i.e. Constitution), but it's also your "will to live and luck". A creature that is "hit" by a weapon attack doesn't even necessarily need to be physically hit by the weapon, it just gets so dangerously close to hitting their physical body that they have to "expend" Hit Points to not die.
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I'm saying whatever works for the table... You say no wounds can't work.
Who is the closed minded person here?
HP loss is some kind of physical injury, but they're mostly superficial up until the one that brings you to 0.
A creature with 100 HP takes 30 damage. Superficial, or at least not life-threatening. It takes another 25 damage. Still not life-threatening. Later on, when the creature is down to 5 HP, it takes 5. Deep serious injury, despite being only 5 points when the earlier 30 were barely a scratch.
The severity of injury from HP loss varies based on how close to 0 you are. And even then, it's not clear if you're fatally injured or just in shock. If you succeed 3 death saves, turns out you were just in shock or some equivalent. Fail 3 death saves? C'est la vie.
HP gain is only actual healing if it's magical. Rest-based "healing" is just the creature adjusting to being hurt so that its (probably not life-threatening) injuries are no longer a hindrance in combat. The actual healing takes days or weeks or a dose of magic.
Someone told me that this came from naval war games. The number of hit points a ship has represented the number of times it could be hit by canon shot before it sank.
It's from wounded pride /rimshot
Every hit causes some kind of damage. The bit about more experienced PC having more hp is akin to a professional boxer being able to take more punches (sometimes many MANY more) than your average Joe on the street.
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I was reading through planning on using the professional fighter analogy myself. Boxers and other fighters are conditioned, and further experienced in getting hit and rolling with the punch and keep fighting. The hits they take are the sort that would often knock an untrained fighter to the floor. At the same time, fighting gets tiring when you're blocking and ducking hits. It's an easy illustration of how "the fight gets taken out of someone" via actual physical trauma and a degree of exhaustion (not exhaustion mechanic, at least in D&D).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It came from the miniatures game "Chainmail." It was a measure of unit strength.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.