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.
which chainmail is based off less fantasy inclined (much less so to point of exact irl statistics) war games that often had warships
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.
which chainmail is based off less fantasy inclined (much less so to point of exact irl statistics) war games that often had warships
I'm fairly certain that warships were not part of the inspiration for chainmail.
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This discussion is going well, lots of information to read through and ways to look at it.
I think the best statement (that matches my method of viewing anything that doesn't kill the creature as scrapes and scratches at most) is "You have to spend some hitpoints to not die". That just makes so much sense - the skeleton drives a sword at your gut. You need to spend 5 HP to not die. If you have more than 5, then yay, you twist away from the blade and get a scratch from it. If you don't have more than 5, then you catch the blade to the stomach, and start making death saves.
This would even translate to higher levels - whilst you have lots of hitpoints, that perfectly timed swing from the ogre can be dodged, or caught badly on your shield, knocking you back or winding you. Not a fatal injury, but not the result you wanted in the fight. A Piercing weapon can be twisted around and catch your flank, putting a cut there which isn't fatal but is draining. Only when you have no more HP to "spend" on not dying does a telling blow connect.
As for psychic damage being a physical wound - your brain is a physical entity. Your consciousness - whether you view it as a soul or an organic program in a synaptic computer - is held within the brain in a physical sense. Psychic damage will have to have a physical effect, because without a physical effect, there's no effect. Regarding creatures who go blood-crazy and characters taking psychic damage - I make psychic damage cause minor nosebleeds, so that satisfies that!
Lastly, remember there's no right answer here. Don't try to correct other people's ways of visualizing an abstract concept! You might as well tell them they listen to music wrong! ;)
As the health bar above the character's head. I might narrate something more when a hit happens but it varies on my mood in the moment ("He cuts your arm!" or "You barely dodge outta the way and feel a bit more winded."). On the other hand, I'm just as likely to go: "You take 4 points of damage." and move on.
Oh, sure, from a vicious mockery that did 1 hp of damage ? Tell me, honestly, is this how you would describe it in YOUR game ? Or are you arguing out of general principles ?
"How, after losing gallons of blood, you are still fighting at full efficiency at 1 hp out of 100"
It's a game you don't have to explain if your group likes it.
This thread is about visualising the effect. Sure, you can homebrew it so that it's only physical if this is what your group likes.
Again no wrong way to do this. You can do it anyway you want
You can always do whatever you want in you own game and it's not wrong, I'm just pointing out that some things are harder to explain than others, and that the RAW clearly point out that physical damage is only one of the four ways to explain hit points loss. My personal preference, in line with this, is therefore to use more of what the game provides than a single explanation.
Then we agree....
It can be done any way you want and no way is wrong. You can explain any way you want and it's correct.
Also yes I think a nose bleed is a fine way to describe 1 hp of psychic damage.
Oh, sure, from a vicious mockery that did 1 hp of damage ? Tell me, honestly, is this how you would describe it in YOUR game ? Or are you arguing out of general principles ?
"How, after losing gallons of blood, you are still fighting at full efficiency at 1 hp out of 100"
It's a game you don't have to explain if your group likes it.
This thread is about visualising the effect. Sure, you can homebrew it so that it's only physical if this is what your group likes.
Again no wrong way to do this. You can do it anyway you want
You can always do whatever you want in you own game and it's not wrong, I'm just pointing out that some things are harder to explain than others, and that the RAW clearly point out that physical damage is only one of the four ways to explain hit points loss. My personal preference, in line with this, is therefore to use more of what the game provides than a single explanation.
I guess it also depends on what you classify as a "wound". A bruise on your arm is a wound, probably only one from 1hp of damage. Whilst it doesn't make logical sense for those few abilities which send things into a blood frenzy, it's not realistic for 1hp damage from either someone punching you or vicious mockery to actually draw blood. For these cases, it would simply be a painful hit, or a bad headache. Possibly a burst blood vessel in the eye (not a big one, just a slightly red eye) from any psychic damage.
I can definitely see how it makes little sense to describe everything as a "wound" (IE, blood) if a creature is taking 1hp damage at a time. Bruising makes a little more sense, but then that ain't 1hp of piercing damage, is it?
Oh, sure, from a vicious mockery that did 1 hp of damage ? Tell me, honestly, is this how you would describe it in YOUR game ? Or are you arguing out of general principles ?
"How, after losing gallons of blood, you are still fighting at full efficiency at 1 hp out of 100"
It's a game you don't have to explain if your group likes it.
This thread is about visualising the effect. Sure, you can homebrew it so that it's only physical if this is what your group likes.
Again no wrong way to do this. You can do it anyway you want
You can always do whatever you want in you own game and it's not wrong, I'm just pointing out that some things are harder to explain than others, and that the RAW clearly point out that physical damage is only one of the four ways to explain hit points loss. My personal preference, in line with this, is therefore to use more of what the game provides than a single explanation.
I guess it also depends on what you classify as a "wound". A bruise on your arm is a wound, probably only one from 1hp of damage. Whilst it doesn't make logical sense for those few abilities which send things into a blood frenzy, it's not realistic for 1hp damage from either someone punching you or vicious mockery to actually draw blood. For these cases, it would simply be a painful hit, or a bad headache. Possibly a burst blood vessel in the eye (not a big one, just a slightly red eye) from any psychic damage.
I can definitely see how it makes little sense to describe everything as a "wound" (IE, blood) if a creature is taking 1hp damage at a time. Bruising makes a little more sense, but then that ain't 1hp of piercing damage, is it?
That would be fine...or you just don't describe it in detail for 1 hp... you just take the damage and move on. Either/any of these ways is fine.
Whenever discussion HP, I always come back to bows and arrows. IRL, if you are shot at and hit, then you're either out of the fight or very soon to be. You've been pierced by an arrow and that is now *in* you and your gushing blood and in excruciating pain.
IRL, the result of shooting someone with a bow is pretty binary: hit or miss. You hit; extreme damage, you miss; no damage at all.
However, in DND, you 'hit' with bows all the time without instantly downing your target, or fully burying an arrow shaft in their flesh. So what's going on? Is a hit a literal drop of blood? I know a lot of DM's will say "the arrow just grazes the target" when a target is hit for negligible damage, because they know that people typically do not end fights looking like you do in Oblivion-- with a dozen arrows sticking out of your character like a ridiculous pin-cussion. But I find the "just grazes you" thing a cop-out, since I find being grazed by a projectile more improbable than being hit or missed, and if something so improbable just keeps happening, that begins to sound ridiculous.
So then, what is a "hit" with a bow?
At the beginning of the Let's Kill a PC video (https://youtu.be/xZdS8lP-Sdo), Matt Coville goes into what I consider a pretty good explanation of what HP represents, and specifically what resonates with me in this case is saying, when an attack hits, "this would have killed you, but at the last minute you..." to describe the stamina/willpower/heartiness cost of staying in the fight. Like "this arrow would have severely wounded you, if you hadn't sacrificed line of sight on the enemy to raise your shield over your neck where it would've landed" or "this arrow would have killed you if you hadn't dived to the ground and rolled back into your feet as it passed overhead, opening you up to further attack". Both of those, the momentarily losing sight of the enemy or sacrificing position to duck out of the way, would represent a hit point loss as a result of a "hit" with an arrow by the enemy. Both "hit" examples cost a certain amount of resources to stay in the fight. Because HP isn't just one resource, HP is a half a dozen different factors working together to represent a character's capacity for heroism, and I wouldn't consider it directly analogous to just physical health and well-being.
Physical health is definitely one if the factors, and I wouldn't completely rule out "hits" being real direct hits as you're resource pool dwindles, so maybe when you have a third of your health left, that next arrow does lodge in your chest, and you're left fighting desperately with it sticking out of you like Boromir, but I think it would look just plain comical if all arrow "hits" counted as actual arrow hits.
*Edit*
I find this view on HP especially workable if you consider that combat in D&D doesn't necessarily represent real combat, it models combat. Turns, stats, actions, bonus actions, mechanics; these are not things that exist in an actual fight. These are things that approximate a fight so we can say that these characters with these abilities would win in a fight against these characters with these abilities and such, but I think it can be detrimental to take the language of combat mechanics, such as "HP", too literally.
Whenever discussion HP, I always come back to bows and arrows. IRL, if you are shot at and hit, then you're either out of the or very soon to be. You've been pierced by an arrow and that is now *in* you and your gushing blood and in excruciating pain.
IRL, the result of shooting someone with a bow is pretty binary: hit or miss. You hit; extreme damage, you miss; no damage at all.
However, in DND, you 'hit' with bows all the time without instantly downing your target, or fully burying an arrow shaft in their flesh. So what's going on? Is a hit a literal drop of blood? I know a lot of DM's will say "the arrow just grazes the target" when a target is hit for negligible damage, because they know that people typically do not end fights looking like you do in Oblivion-- with a dozen arrows sticking out of your character like a ridiculous pin-cussion. But I find the "just grazes you" thing a cop-out, since I find being grazed by a projectile more improbable than being hit or missed, and if something so improbable just keeps happening, that begins to sound ridiculous.
So then, what is a "hit" with a bow?
At the beginning of the Let's Kill a PC video (https://youtu.be/xZdS8lP-Sdo), Matt Coville goes into what I consider a pretty good explanation of what HP represents, and specifically what resonates with me in this case is saying, when an attack hits, "this would have killed you, but at the last minute you..." to describe the stamina/willpower/heartiness cost of staying in the fight. Like "this arrow would have severely wounded you, if you hadn't sacrificed line of sight on the enemy to raise your shield over your neck where it would've landed" or "this arrow would have killed you if you hadn't dived to the ground and rolled back into your feet as it passed overhead, opening you up to further attack". Both of those, the momentarily losing sight of the enemy or sacrificing position to duck out of the way, would represent a hit point loss as a result of a "hit" with an arrow by the enemy. Both "hit" examples cost a certain amount of resources to stay in the fight. Because HP isn't just one resource, HP is a half a dozen different factors working together to represent a character's capacity for heroism, and I wouldn't consider it directly analogous to just physical health and well-being.
Physical health is definitely one if the factors, and I wouldn't completely rule out "hits" being real direct hits as you're resource pool dwindles, so maybe when you have a third of your health left, that next arrow does lodge in your chest, and you're left fighting desperately with it sticking out of you like Boromir, but I think it would look just plain comical if all arrow "hits" counted as actual arrow hits.
This is a good way to do it if you want. I like Coville's thoughts on it and he tends to run more "grounded" games with things like this taking more seriously.
A PC Describing pulling arrows out of themselves over and over again and everyone laughing about it Ace Ventura style is completely fine too. Either way is acceptable and depends on the table/style of the DM.
I find this view on HP especially workable if you consider that combat in D&D doesn't necessarily represent real combat, it models combat. Turns, stats, actions, bonus actions, mechanics; these are not things that exist in an actual fight. These are things that approximate a fight so we can say that these characters with these abilities would win in a fight against these characters with these abilities and such, but I think it can be detrimental to take the language of combat mechanics, such as "HP", too literally.
I feel like this can always bear repeating. The game rules are for the players. They don't represent how, like, physics works within the fictional game world. Creatures don't have AC, or levels, or proficiency bonuses, or whatever. That's all for us, so we can play it as a game.
If you find yourself wondering how a given game mechanic would "really work" within the game world, it might be a good idea to step back and remind yourself that the rules are just a user interface.
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.
EGG: 1st Edition DMG page 82
So instead of that blow running you through, you manage to turn and the blade slides over your ribs, leaving a gash. What would be a killing blow to a 1st level character just reduces your 'HP', your ability to continue in the fight, if you are of a higher level. In 4th Edition, 'bloodied' was a status that came into effect when you were down to 50% HP and this could trigger all sorts of effects, both from characters and foes. This is a more wargamery take on HP. Both versions work and you can mix / match as much as you wish, it's your game - keep 'Maximum Game Fun' in mind at all times.
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.
EGG: 1st Edition DMG page 82
So instead of that blow running you through, you manage to turn and the blade slides over your ribs, leaving a gash. What would be a killing blow to a 1st level character just reduces your 'HP', your ability to continue in the fight, if you are of a higher level. In 4th Edition, 'bloodied' was a status that came into effect when you were down to 50% HP and this could trigger all sorts of effects, both from characters and foes. This is a more wargamery take on HP. Both versions work and you can mix / match as much as you wish, it's your game - keep 'Maximum Game Fun' in mind at all times.
To me hitpoints are stamina and fighting skill. Once you've depleted your stamina, then you may reach 0 hitpoints, and that's when you take actual damage in the form of wounds, enough to make you unable to fight (incapacitated, death saving throws). Death saving throws represent how dangerous the wound, that you got, is. If you accumulate 3 fails, then it was a wound bad enough to kill you, if you make 3 saves, then the wound wasn't bad enough to kill you.
I'm sorry, but It is not at all what it is saying. It is actually fairly descriptive in saying that its NOT ONLY PHYSICAL as it says, specifically: "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."
Again, you are free to do whatever you want and ignore what does not please you for your games, but it does not change the fact that all versions of the game tell you that Hit Points are not purely physical and that losing HP does not correspond solely to wounds, it's also losing part of these protections that turn more or less completely potentially fatal wounds into potentially nothing at all visible. It leaves it extremely open as what it can be, just as 5e does, and that is good for flexibility, but the RAW, whatever the version of the game, it never is "whatever you want", it is described and even often listed (although the list depends on the edition, take your pick from combat skill, luck, divine favor or protection, mental fatigue, stamina, etc.).
Actually, the above is not even the original description of HP, it came in Men and Magic, where the rules say: "Dice for Accumulative Hits (Hit Dice): This indicates the number of dice which are rolled in order to determine how many hit points a character can take." Notice that hit points are not what a character possesses, it is the number of "points of hit" that he can take, where what a "hit" is is never defined. After that, it is unfortunately a bit circular, in the sense that any attack does not deal physical damage, but damage points which again can be interpreted whatever way you like, because they are only numbers that are substracted from a character's hit point.
So yes, you can interpret this in many ways, but even Gygax warns you that it is preposterous to think that it is the capacity to just take more wounds, whereas 5e explicitly tells you what HP represent and physical damage (which is not necessarily even a wound) is actually only a small part of it.
Any way you choose to do it is correct. That is the bottom line. There is no "correct" way of doing this and to say so is "your fun is bad" DnD which is not what the game is about anymore.
What Gygax was talking about in AD&D comes down to gaining more hp, and a single blow meaning something different to a 1st level character than a 10th level character.
At level 1: Your magic-user probably had around 3-4 hp, depending on CON and your luck rolling that first hit die (unless you house-ruled that the 1st die was always max, as is now the RAW, and as my group played). Let's call it a 4 on 1d4 and +0 CON. So you have 4 h.p. A single dagger thrust against your 10 AC had about a 1 in 8 shot of killing you (level 1 type foes had about a 50-50 chance to hit, and 25% of the time you took all 4 of your hp). So an individual dagger thrust that lands home will do serious damage to that level 1 magic-user, and will either maim or outright kill him.
The same dagger, however, would not kill a 10th level magic-user. That character has had 9 more 1d4 die rolls, averaging around 20 more h.p., and is now sitting pretty with something like 24 hp total. Now even if that dagger "hits home" and does max damage (4), it won't come close to killing him from full health. Thus, a 4 hp damage thrust against a 10th level mage is equivalent to a scratch, and a 4 hp damage thrust against a 1st level one is fatal.
This is why Gygax talks about how as you level, you get better at defending yourself. It's unreasonable to think that a magic-user, absent the casting of spells in the moment like shield, would suddenly, in his or her physical nature, in the physical body, be able to endure more dagger thrusts. Rather, we imagine that a 4 hp dagger thrust only scratched the 10th level mage's arm, because he has seen a lot of dagger attacks before and knows how to dodge, whereas a 4 hp dagger thrust was plunged into the breast of the level 1 mage, who was not ready for it, and it killed him dead.
The point to all this is that, when describing blows in battle, what should matter is the relative amount of hp done compared to total hp, not the raw amount of damage. A 10 hp thrust to a level 1 character is often fatal. To a level 10 character it represents 10% of the way toward death. Therefore, it's not that "10 hp is a heavy wound" -- it's that "50% of your hp is a damaging wound." And that amount will change as the character levels up and thus, gets better at avoiding damage.
Thus, when in combat, if a character in my party took 3 or 4 hp of damage out of 10, they suffered, by narrative, a pretty serious wound -- though usually something on the arm, leg, shoulder, etc, not a strike to the gut or somewhere that would be likely to be fatal. Now at 7th level, if they suffer 3 or 4 hp out of 50, I would describe it as hitting the armor and causing a bruise, but not actually penetrating.
I think this is the spirit of Gygax's advice. What matters is the relative amount of damage done to the total hp, not the raw # rolled on the dice.
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I always visualize it like Die Hard: the hero takes superficial injuries as their HP goes down, but nothing that's actually debilitating before they hit 0.
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"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I see hit points as a combination of stamina and health. So "hits" aren't always necessarily physical damage but actions that sapped stamina and health, which explains why hit points go up with experience as it represents the character's improved ability to handle the attacks and why a night's rest heals wounds. In general I only look at the original set of hit points as the true 'physical damage'.
There are nearly as many problems with describing attacks as near misses as there are with describing people brushing off Mortal Kombat-style wounds.
Personally, I won't use near misses if I can help it. Most attacks that are near miss and take HP can easily be described as flesh wounds and scratches and that is way better.
At least you don't run into problems with stuff like healing, poisons, other additional elemental damage on hit, resistances and vulnerabilities that way.
which chainmail is based off less fantasy inclined (much less so to point of exact irl statistics) war games that often had warships
I'm fairly certain that warships were not part of the inspiration for chainmail.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
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"real life is a super high CR."
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
This discussion is going well, lots of information to read through and ways to look at it.
I think the best statement (that matches my method of viewing anything that doesn't kill the creature as scrapes and scratches at most) is "You have to spend some hitpoints to not die". That just makes so much sense - the skeleton drives a sword at your gut. You need to spend 5 HP to not die. If you have more than 5, then yay, you twist away from the blade and get a scratch from it. If you don't have more than 5, then you catch the blade to the stomach, and start making death saves.
This would even translate to higher levels - whilst you have lots of hitpoints, that perfectly timed swing from the ogre can be dodged, or caught badly on your shield, knocking you back or winding you. Not a fatal injury, but not the result you wanted in the fight. A Piercing weapon can be twisted around and catch your flank, putting a cut there which isn't fatal but is draining. Only when you have no more HP to "spend" on not dying does a telling blow connect.
As for psychic damage being a physical wound - your brain is a physical entity. Your consciousness - whether you view it as a soul or an organic program in a synaptic computer - is held within the brain in a physical sense. Psychic damage will have to have a physical effect, because without a physical effect, there's no effect. Regarding creatures who go blood-crazy and characters taking psychic damage - I make psychic damage cause minor nosebleeds, so that satisfies that!
Lastly, remember there's no right answer here. Don't try to correct other people's ways of visualizing an abstract concept! You might as well tell them they listen to music wrong! ;)
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"every HP lost cannot be a wound"
Yet they explained how they can do exactly that...
Again there is no right/wrong way to do this and it's up to the table to decide how they want to do it.
You can go full Mortal Kombat style with you losing gallons of blood from a knife wound but be fine.... That's not wrong at all.
Psychic: you bleed out your nose
Cold: your skin is Frost bitten and bleeding
Fire: your skin is split open by fire like an overcooked hot dog.
"How, after losing gallons of blood, you are still fighting at full efficiency at 1 hp out of 100"
It's a game you don't have to explain if your group likes it.
Again no wrong way to do this. You can do it anyway you want
As the health bar above the character's head. I might narrate something more when a hit happens but it varies on my mood in the moment ("He cuts your arm!" or "You barely dodge outta the way and feel a bit more winded."). On the other hand, I'm just as likely to go: "You take 4 points of damage." and move on.
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Then we agree....
It can be done any way you want and no way is wrong. You can explain any way you want and it's correct.
Also yes I think a nose bleed is a fine way to describe 1 hp of psychic damage.
I guess it also depends on what you classify as a "wound". A bruise on your arm is a wound, probably only one from 1hp of damage. Whilst it doesn't make logical sense for those few abilities which send things into a blood frenzy, it's not realistic for 1hp damage from either someone punching you or vicious mockery to actually draw blood. For these cases, it would simply be a painful hit, or a bad headache. Possibly a burst blood vessel in the eye (not a big one, just a slightly red eye) from any psychic damage.
I can definitely see how it makes little sense to describe everything as a "wound" (IE, blood) if a creature is taking 1hp damage at a time. Bruising makes a little more sense, but then that ain't 1hp of piercing damage, is it?
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That would be fine...or you just don't describe it in detail for 1 hp... you just take the damage and move on. Either/any of these ways is fine.
Whenever discussion HP, I always come back to bows and arrows. IRL, if you are shot at and hit, then you're either out of the fight or very soon to be. You've been pierced by an arrow and that is now *in* you and your gushing blood and in excruciating pain.
IRL, the result of shooting someone with a bow is pretty binary: hit or miss. You hit; extreme damage, you miss; no damage at all.
However, in DND, you 'hit' with bows all the time without instantly downing your target, or fully burying an arrow shaft in their flesh. So what's going on? Is a hit a literal drop of blood? I know a lot of DM's will say "the arrow just grazes the target" when a target is hit for negligible damage, because they know that people typically do not end fights looking like you do in Oblivion-- with a dozen arrows sticking out of your character like a ridiculous pin-cussion. But I find the "just grazes you" thing a cop-out, since I find being grazed by a projectile more improbable than being hit or missed, and if something so improbable just keeps happening, that begins to sound ridiculous.
So then, what is a "hit" with a bow?
At the beginning of the Let's Kill a PC video (https://youtu.be/xZdS8lP-Sdo), Matt Coville goes into what I consider a pretty good explanation of what HP represents, and specifically what resonates with me in this case is saying, when an attack hits, "this would have killed you, but at the last minute you..." to describe the stamina/willpower/heartiness cost of staying in the fight. Like "this arrow would have severely wounded you, if you hadn't sacrificed line of sight on the enemy to raise your shield over your neck where it would've landed" or "this arrow would have killed you if you hadn't dived to the ground and rolled back into your feet as it passed overhead, opening you up to further attack". Both of those, the momentarily losing sight of the enemy or sacrificing position to duck out of the way, would represent a hit point loss as a result of a "hit" with an arrow by the enemy. Both "hit" examples cost a certain amount of resources to stay in the fight. Because HP isn't just one resource, HP is a half a dozen different factors working together to represent a character's capacity for heroism, and I wouldn't consider it directly analogous to just physical health and well-being.
Physical health is definitely one if the factors, and I wouldn't completely rule out "hits" being real direct hits as you're resource pool dwindles, so maybe when you have a third of your health left, that next arrow does lodge in your chest, and you're left fighting desperately with it sticking out of you like Boromir, but I think it would look just plain comical if all arrow "hits" counted as actual arrow hits.
*Edit*
I find this view on HP especially workable if you consider that combat in D&D doesn't necessarily represent real combat, it models combat. Turns, stats, actions, bonus actions, mechanics; these are not things that exist in an actual fight. These are things that approximate a fight so we can say that these characters with these abilities would win in a fight against these characters with these abilities and such, but I think it can be detrimental to take the language of combat mechanics, such as "HP", too literally.
This is a good way to do it if you want. I like Coville's thoughts on it and he tends to run more "grounded" games with things like this taking more seriously.
A PC Describing pulling arrows out of themselves over and over again and everyone laughing about it Ace Ventura style is completely fine too. Either way is acceptable and depends on the table/style of the DM.
I feel like this can always bear repeating. The game rules are for the players. They don't represent how, like, physics works within the fictional game world. Creatures don't have AC, or levels, or proficiency bonuses, or whatever. That's all for us, so we can play it as a game.
If you find yourself wondering how a given game mechanic would "really work" within the game world, it might be a good idea to step back and remind yourself that the rules are just a user interface.
The original idea of HP:
So instead of that blow running you through, you manage to turn and the blade slides over your ribs, leaving a gash. What would be a killing blow to a 1st level character just reduces your 'HP', your ability to continue in the fight, if you are of a higher level. In 4th Edition, 'bloodied' was a status that came into effect when you were down to 50% HP and this could trigger all sorts of effects, both from characters and foes. This is a more wargamery take on HP. Both versions work and you can mix / match as much as you wish, it's your game - keep 'Maximum Game Fun' in mind at all times.
Exactly...do what you want and forget the rest!
To me hitpoints are stamina and fighting skill. Once you've depleted your stamina, then you may reach 0 hitpoints, and that's when you take actual damage in the form of wounds, enough to make you unable to fight (incapacitated, death saving throws). Death saving throws represent how dangerous the wound, that you got, is. If you accumulate 3 fails, then it was a wound bad enough to kill you, if you make 3 saves, then the wound wasn't bad enough to kill you.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
Any way you choose to do it is correct. That is the bottom line. There is no "correct" way of doing this and to say so is "your fun is bad" DnD which is not what the game is about anymore.
What Gygax was talking about in AD&D comes down to gaining more hp, and a single blow meaning something different to a 1st level character than a 10th level character.
At level 1: Your magic-user probably had around 3-4 hp, depending on CON and your luck rolling that first hit die (unless you house-ruled that the 1st die was always max, as is now the RAW, and as my group played). Let's call it a 4 on 1d4 and +0 CON. So you have 4 h.p. A single dagger thrust against your 10 AC had about a 1 in 8 shot of killing you (level 1 type foes had about a 50-50 chance to hit, and 25% of the time you took all 4 of your hp). So an individual dagger thrust that lands home will do serious damage to that level 1 magic-user, and will either maim or outright kill him.
The same dagger, however, would not kill a 10th level magic-user. That character has had 9 more 1d4 die rolls, averaging around 20 more h.p., and is now sitting pretty with something like 24 hp total. Now even if that dagger "hits home" and does max damage (4), it won't come close to killing him from full health. Thus, a 4 hp damage thrust against a 10th level mage is equivalent to a scratch, and a 4 hp damage thrust against a 1st level one is fatal.
This is why Gygax talks about how as you level, you get better at defending yourself. It's unreasonable to think that a magic-user, absent the casting of spells in the moment like shield, would suddenly, in his or her physical nature, in the physical body, be able to endure more dagger thrusts. Rather, we imagine that a 4 hp dagger thrust only scratched the 10th level mage's arm, because he has seen a lot of dagger attacks before and knows how to dodge, whereas a 4 hp dagger thrust was plunged into the breast of the level 1 mage, who was not ready for it, and it killed him dead.
The point to all this is that, when describing blows in battle, what should matter is the relative amount of hp done compared to total hp, not the raw amount of damage. A 10 hp thrust to a level 1 character is often fatal. To a level 10 character it represents 10% of the way toward death. Therefore, it's not that "10 hp is a heavy wound" -- it's that "50% of your hp is a damaging wound." And that amount will change as the character levels up and thus, gets better at avoiding damage.
Thus, when in combat, if a character in my party took 3 or 4 hp of damage out of 10, they suffered, by narrative, a pretty serious wound -- though usually something on the arm, leg, shoulder, etc, not a strike to the gut or somewhere that would be likely to be fatal. Now at 7th level, if they suffer 3 or 4 hp out of 50, I would describe it as hitting the armor and causing a bruise, but not actually penetrating.
I think this is the spirit of Gygax's advice. What matters is the relative amount of damage done to the total hp, not the raw # rolled on the dice.
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.
I always visualize it like Die Hard: the hero takes superficial injuries as their HP goes down, but nothing that's actually debilitating before they hit 0.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I see hit points as a combination of stamina and health. So "hits" aren't always necessarily physical damage but actions that sapped stamina and health, which explains why hit points go up with experience as it represents the character's improved ability to handle the attacks and why a night's rest heals wounds. In general I only look at the original set of hit points as the true 'physical damage'.
There are nearly as many problems with describing attacks as near misses as there are with describing people brushing off Mortal Kombat-style wounds.
Personally, I won't use near misses if I can help it. Most attacks that are near miss and take HP can easily be described as flesh wounds and scratches and that is way better.
At least you don't run into problems with stuff like healing, poisons, other additional elemental damage on hit, resistances and vulnerabilities that way.