D&D General D&D as a Game- On the Origin of Hit Points and Start of the Meat Debate

[Snarf Zagyg]

Instead of creating a lengthy new post, I am going to post this addendum to my prior post.

The interesting thing, IMO, about the history of hit points in D&D is that it speaks to the original bifurcation of the idea. As originally conceived by Arneson, hit points were a measure of "meat." Sure, PCs would get a little extra meat to make them more able to survive, but the amount of hit points you had was fixed at first level, never to increase. Instead, you had an opportunity to reduce incoming damage, either through "damage saving throws" (that would increase in level) or with "armor saving throws" (that would increase with different armor). Still, the name hit points, constituting the number of "hits" your character could take, make perfect sense in terms of the game. This type of system still exists in certain other RPGs, where you have an attribute that roughly matches your, um, meat (WFRPG comes to mind).

Notably, this changed with Gygax. He intuitively understood the appeal of the play loop that kept people coming back for more - you got better as you increased in level. One of the things he changed was that he had hit points increase in level. This had a number of positive effects in terms of the game- it streamlined the combats (no need for constant saves). It made combat something that was more "fun" in terms of being able to plan for it (less swingy, more tactical). And it kept the reward loop more interesting for levelling. In terms of a game mechanic, it was brilliant. Arguably, it's one of the reasons that D&D was so successful compared to other games, and that mechanic has been copied extensively in other RPGs and in videogames.

And yet ... it always seemed that Gygax was vaguely uncomfortable with it as well. I think this can be partly chalked up the the falling out with Arneson. As retold in various sources (especially through Jon Peterson), Arneson would complain that Gygax didn't adhere to his vision- including hit points and hit location (provided in Blackmoor supplement).

Which is why you would have Gygax simultaneously talk about the abstract nature of combat and hit points on the one hand (which can be read a rebuttal to what Arneson was saying), while at the same time constantly using reference to the meat aspects of hit points on the other (such as recovery times, and curing spells, etc.) while also providing all sorts of additional complicated rules for combat that were often unused (weapon v. ac, grappling, parrying, hits v. helmets, the whole initiative system, etc.).

The reason that the divide exists today is because the divide was baked into the game from the beginning.

 

[Mannahnin]

I would argue the crux of the meat debate comes from falling damage. I think most people can go with the notion that the attack from a dragon was "avoided barely with a nasty nick" rather than "hit the fighter clean in the head and they shrugged it off". Even things like fireball, you can argue that its not a solid mass of fire, but a swirling mass of fire that "singed your eyebrows" rather than they "incinerated you".

Its a level of disbelief I think most people can get behind, especially in 4e/5e where healing is so fast. The idea of recovering "meat points" that quickly is really hard to swallow, but the notion of recovering "luck or stamina"...sure.

Falling damage is harder. The idea that a fighter can jump from a 100 foot cliff, land on a hard surface and "be totally fine", really strains the notion. That's the biggest area I see people balking.

As folks have talked about, the use of hit points here is as plot armor, simulating the luck protagonists have in surviving high falls. Some editions of D&D have, of course, attempted to compromise on this, for example with the Massive Damage rule in 2E (IIRC, Save vs Death or die anytime you take 50pts or more at once).

Of course, some other games take other approaches. I've talked recently about how The Nightmares Underneath is basically a extensive D&D variant which uses Disposition as its Hit Points replacement, but it only applies to combat, when you're defending yourself. Damage when you're not defending yourself and not from combat goes directly to Health (its Constitution replacement), and can cause serious injuries and and/ unconsciousness immediately.

Dan "Delta" Collins did some interesting exploration of falling damage on his blog and on falls in real life, noting that there's a bimodal distribution to survival of real-life falls which basically comes down to a question of "did you hit your head or not?" And that one could potentially simulate this in D&D with... (drum roll) ...a saving throw.

Falling Revisted

Math, history, and design of old-school D&D.

deltasdnd.blogspot.com

Very true. But this is often due to just random luck. Any mid level PC with a reasonable con score can fall 50 feet once per day and be totally fine. There may be one or two people on earth who can do this, if at all, without trickery/artifice.

If the game had a mechanism where each fall had a very small chance of resulting in no damage but probably killed people most of the time, your argument would be more valid but...

once, but reliably, every day for a month?

This is, IMO, falling into the trap of treating D&D as a physics simulator rather than a fantasy fiction simulator. The rules are not intended to represent real-world physics. The player who deliberately walks their character off the roof of a building or a cliff every day for yuks is missing the point and sabotaging the illusion. They are a heckler at a magic show.

Trying to read the rules in this way is an approach Gary had already run into and was addressing directly in 1979 in those quotes Snarf put in the OP. If the situations arise in the game that the same character somehow has two mortally perilous falls on consecutive days through sheer chance or ill fortune, but survives thanks to the hit point mechanic, that's representing the same kind of heroic luck and extraordinary circumstances of the occasional real person who survives being struck by lightning multiple times.

At my table if a player were saying "I'll jump off this 100 foot cliff to get down there faster- I have more than enough HP to guarantee survival!" I might answer that in one of two ways, depending on the tone of the game, the context and the established fiction.

One might be "Well, we've already defined that it's a jagged rocky surface down there, and there are no branches or awnings or anything else to use to slow your fall. IF you jump, I'm going to rule that it's going to be an automatic death", or "...that it's going to be a saving throw to determine if you're dead or merely unconscious and dying." Of course I'd advise the player of that before the jump as it should be obvious to the character.

On the other hand in a different context it might be "Well, we haven't discussed the terrain here in much detail yet, and the adventure doesn't define it, so sure; we'll assume there is a bit of a slope you can SLIDE down, or that you're jumping into those trees there, and they're some really thick evergreen trees and you can use their boughs to break your fall. We'll roll damage as normal and you'll land prone as per the rules."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Of course, this also started the continuing "meat" debates that we see to this day, but that's a small price to pay for an innovation that has carried on throughout TTRPGs and videogames, isn't it?

Most certainly. Though I wish more impact had been had from his reasoning: so many today treat the game of D&D as a disgusting hanger-on, a grimly-endured impediment to the real value (whatever they believe the real value to be; it varies, a lot.) Which leads to all sorts of problems when the hallowed traditions are things that were built, knowingly and intentionally, for their game value even when it departed from realism.

Now, Gygax of course also noted that when possible, the highest levels of realism were still worth seeking. But to sacrifice the gameplay on the altar of realism was very much the antithesis of his design choices, and yet those very choices get grandfathered into an approach that claims to be about all realism all the time, gameplay is at best a quaternary concern if it's even a thought at all.

 

[Iosue]

The reason that the divide exists today is because the divide was baked into the game from the beginning.

This is why, in the 4e thread where a hit points debate unsurprisingly broke out, I said that HP didn't simulate anything. They're not meat, they're not luck, skill, or vigor. They're just hit points. You lose them by various means, you gain them by various means.

I came to this conclusion because narrating the loss of HP just became exhausting. The PC scores a critical hit! They do huge damage! But the monster still has plenty of HP left, and so the fight is going to continue. After running out of descriptive variations on "You score a palpable hit, but the enemy is still standing," I just stopped. It didn't really change anything. I just started describing the general state of the monster: still strong, getting weaker, weakened, and dead. Heck, since we moved to AboveVTT, with its handy HP auras, I don't even have to do that: the players themselves can see which opponents (or PCs!) are going strong (green aura), which are getting weaker (yellow aura), and which are weakened (red aura). The word "damage" has no meaning in the fiction created by play. It just means, "loss of HP." Likewise, "healing" just means "restoration of lost HP."

I maintain that HP essentially serve a similar function as the background music of an action scene. The background music tells you if the good guys are winning or the bad guys are winning, before there is a definite resolution.

 

[Voadam]

I really appreciate the gameplay aspect of hp. No death spiral, quick resolution for combat rounds, easy evaluation of where you are at as the combat goes on. I find it makes D&D combat more fun for me than alternatives.

Well done Gygax.

 

[Clint_L]

I maintain that HP essentially serve a similar function as the background music of an action scene. The background music tells you if the good guys are winning or the bad guys are winning, before there is a definite resolution.

That analogy would never have occurred to me, and I love it.

 

[Iosue]

Incidentally, I've been enjoying the fantasy anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End recently, and one of the funny things it does is act as if the warriors, at least, are D&D fighters with loads of hit points as meat. Stark, the fighter character, takes all kinds of hits (including a battle-axe to the side) that cause him to bleed but don't otherwise slow him down at all. His master Eisen, a dwarf fighter, was known to tank multiple poison arrow shots with no effect, as well as getting down from great heights by just throwing himself over the edge and tanking the fall damage. The cleric of Eisen's party finds this perfectly appalling.

 

[Pedantic]

Incidentally, I've been enjoying the fantasy anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End recently, and one of the funny things it does is act as if the warriors, at least, are D&D fighters with loads of hit points as meat. Stark, the fighter character, takes all kinds of hits (including a battle-axe to the side) that cause him to bleed but don't otherwise slow him down at all. His master Eisen, a dwarf fighter, was known to tank multiple poison arrow shots with no effect, as well as getting down from great heights by just throwing himself over the edge and tanking the fall damage. The cleric of Eisen's party finds this perfectly appalling.

I feel like I've said this a few times, but that straight up doesn't strike me as an absurdity, because of the longterm D&D exposure. I moved pretty quickly to "fighters just get stabbed hundreds of times before they die." I think that's sufficiently common in D&D derived media, particularly video games that's it's borderline normative. I only see tension around hit points in discussions of D&D itself, which is bizarre because it feels like it's established the norm elsewhere.

 

[GobHag]

That's exactly why I've completely believed in Meat Points, every single media that uses HP treats them as such because it makes total sense. No need for trying to justify why they don't bleed to death from a sword slash, they just have more flesh and blood than the wizard.

What Gygax and every one who is trying to see HP as 'luck and will' is that it's barely reflected by the mechanics, so many things points HP as Meat Points

 

[Voadam]

I really appreciate the gameplay aspect of hp. No death spiral, quick resolution for combat rounds, easy evaluation of where you are at as the combat goes on. I find it makes D&D combat more fun for me than alternatives.

Well done Gygax.

I should probably qualify that as mid to high level hp, once you have enough to expect to survive a couple of blows so you can comfortably enter a combat as a hero and expect to be Conan and his two thief buddies raiding the temple of Set in the original Conan movie.

Low level D&D hp is more like Saving Private Ryan, or the story of one of a bunch of Star Trek security red shirts, or a teen going with friends to Crystal Lake. Sure you are Vin Diesel with a cool weapon and enemies to take out, but at any point it can be Bam! Sniper shot, game over for you part way through the movie.

So this ties back into Gygax innovating increasing hp as advancement.