Exploring HP variations in D&D

I’m quite aware of the many, um, dynamic arguments about the concept of Hit Points in the various Dungeons and Dragons games. Are they physical injury (the answer seems to be ‘mostly not’)? Are they a good way to represent injury (jury out, but very, very heated)? Are they realistic (clearly not, nor are they supposed to be).

For DnD-type games, how do they work at the base? 

For the record, why do I even ask? Just to level set things, including myself. It never hurts to start from a common point of reference.

Swords and Wizardry

 Hit Points are described simply as “the amount of damage one can handle before becoming incapacitated.” 

Also: “When a character (or creature) is hit, the amount of damage is deducted from hit points. When total hit points reach 0, the character is unconscious, and if hit points are brought down to –1 or lower, the character dies.”

An interesting note, and relevant to the rest of this post, is a box-text immediately after the above quote (p. 43 of S&W Complete):

A good potential house rule is attributed to Gary Gygax’sgaming table, a rumor that might or might not be true. Itallows a character to remain alive (although bleeding to deathat the rate of 1 hp/round if no assistance is rendered) until thecharacter reaches negative hit points equal to the character’slevel. In other words, a fifth-level character actually dies onlyupon reaching -5 hit points.

Comments; Well, you’re really at the razor’s edge in S&W. You’re hale and robust until you hit exactly 0 HP, and then you drop unconscious. Any negative points and, rules-as-written, you’re dead.

Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition

This latest version of the D&D rules is more verbose about what HP are, as well as what losing them means. Quoting from the Player’s v0.2 rules:

“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.”

It’s pretty hard to outright kill a character, though:

Dropping to 0 Hit PointsWhen you drop to 0 hit points, you either die outright or fall unconscious, as explained in the following sections.

Instant DeathMassive damage can kill you instantly. When damage reduces you to 0 hit points and there is damage remaining, you die if the remaining damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum.

For example, a cleric with a maximum of 12 hit points currently has 6 hit points. If she takes 18 damage from an attack, she is reduced to 0 hit points, but 12 damage remains. Because the remaining damage equals her hit point maximum, the cleric dies. 

Falling UnconsciousIf damage reduces you to 0 hit points and fails to kill you, you fall unconscious (see appendix A). This unconsciousness ends if you regain any hit points.

Comments: This basically means that if you’re hale and robust, you will fall unconscious at 0 HP, but must take damage that would bring you “fully negative” in a single blow to kill you instantly. However, the next section, “Death Saving Throws,” shows that if you have 0 HP, you will be making a Saving Throw each turn, and if you fail three of them, you die. On the average, then, unless you get a massive blow delivered, you will last about six turns before you die or stabilize.

In D&D5, then, HP are quite explicitly more than just physical injury, and include mental durability and toughness as well as luck. S&W leaves this implicit, if it’s meant at all.

Pathfinder Core Rulebook


It wouldn’t do to talk about HP without dealing with the other 800-lb. gorilla of the RPG industry, Paizo’s Pathfinder Core Rulebook.

In Pathfinder, HP “measure how hard you are to kill. No matter how many hit points you lose, your character isn’t hindered in any way until your hit points drop to 0 or lower.”

They go and define what they are, too: “the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.”

If you hit exactly 0 HP, you’re disabled. When you go into negative HP territory (0 or lower), you’re disabled, unconcsious, and dying. Unconscious and Dying are both ‘conditions’ in Pathfinder, technical terms of art.

If you hit negative HP equal to your CON, you’re dead.

Comments: Still a bit of the razor’s edge, with the disabled thing starting at exactly 0 HP, but you have a buffer zone of HP equal to your CON where you’re KO’d, and then you’re dead. But KO’d isn’t really a way to stay – you’re dying and lose 1 HP per round until you actually die or are stabilized.

All D&D Variants


You gain HP every level, with a bonus for having high CON. So by the time you reach (say) 10th level, if you have (say) a 14 CON, you’ll have (as a bog-standard fighter) 75 HP in Pathfinder (on the average), 52.5 HP in S&W, and 75 HP in DnD5. 

At that level, you risk death or automatically die by taking 52.5 HP in S&W, or 75 HP in D&D5 (150 HP for ‘instant death!’), or 89 HP in Pathfinder.

GURPS


What? GURPS isn’t DnD. 

No. No it is not. But it’s an interesting counterpoint. You only get more HP if you buy them, and your HP start equal to your ST. More powerful fighters avoid death by putting on armor (equivalent, sort of, to increasing AC), and having better Active Defenses (parry, block, dodge). But two characters of disparate skill and equal ST are equally easy to kill if they just stand there and don’t defend.

Edge Cases and Explicit Karma

So, with all that, what’s the point? I wonder if it would be useful or fun to hack at these concepts a bit, borrow from the best of all the systems, and come up with something that enhances the game.

The characterization of HP loss as sometimes due to injury, sometimes mental grit, sometimes luck bothers some people – I got the feeling during +Jonathan Henry‘s Giant Dragon Gamer Chat on Saturday night that +Gerardo Tasistro despised that vagueness with the fiery passion of 1,000 suns.