When hit points don’t exist
Anyone who thinks about hit points for too long realises they don’t make sense.
Someone with 2% of their HP left should be struggling to stand, let alone fight. Mechanically, though, they’re just as fast, deadly and capable as when fully rested.
How can taking a five-minute break fully restore your health, including mending broken bones?
Logically, even a dagger is a deadly weapon. Mechanically, there are very few creatures it can kill in one blow.
Then there’s the problem of what it means to increase your HP. Sure, a more experienced swordsman might be harder to kill in a duel, but they’re not going to be harder to kill by dropping a rock on them.
The standard answer is that hit points are a flawed abstraction of health, made simple to keep the maths easy, so shut up and play.
I take a different angle.
Below is the guidance I give to all players in any of my games:
***
Consider the following:
A 1st-level human fighter might have 12 HP.
A dagger, in the right hands, might do 1d4+2 damage – a max of 6.
So…
The fighter is napping in a chair. A corrupt member of the guard wants to silence them, so they sneak up on them, not making a sound… and plunges the dagger into the fighter’s exposed throat.
The fighter is not going to say, “ow, that took a third of my hit points!”, then stand up and attack the guard.
No, that fighter is dead.
How could an attack that deals no more than six damage kill a creature with HP of 12?
Because hit points only come into play during combat.
If you have your weapon drawn and you’re alert to danger, a dagger deals 1d4+DEX damage. If you’re out of combat – for example: asleep, zoned out or held with a blade to your throat - then a dagger can be lethal.
Hit points only come into play in combat. They aren’t your health, your lifeforce or how much blood you have in your body.
They are a measure of your ability to keep fighting.
This makes it a combination of all these, plus a few others:
Physical vigour (how fatigued you aren’t)
Mental focus (how distracted you aren’t)
Your stance, grip and light-footedness
Morale, will and determination
Luck
In a fight against a town guard, if she hits you with her spear, it doesn’t literally penetrate your skin. Maybe you block the attack with your shield but the blow weakens your grip on it. Or maybe you strain your calf as you dodge, making you a little less able to continue the attack.
What does this mean?
Not much, really. Combat will still flow the same way.
But consider:
You can avoid combat if you’re sneaky enough, insta-killing humanoids while they’re relaxed and not alert.
Enemies can do the same to you. Don’t worry, I’ll be fair (for a certain definition of fair).
Restoring hit points isn’t the same as healing injuries. A short rest restores your hit points because it lets you catch your breath, eat a meal and patch up your cuts and grazes. It doesn’t let you heal a broken bone.
If an ally collapses in battle because they lack the willingness to fight, a quick spell or potion will reinvigorate them. If they collapse because their intestines are spilling out on the dirt, they’re gone.
***
None of that advice is all that original. In fact, the 5e PHB says something similar.
Not that anyone follows that part…
Still, it’s a useful reminder to both GMs and players. Use common sense here - an alert foe who’s armed and ready to dodge will, on average, take less damage from your attacks than someone who’s mid-yawn.
Want another way to add depth, realism and sophistication to your games?
Well, how strange are the NPCs?
Are your fae, eldritch horrors and gods too relatable?
Too petty?
Too human?
Non-human creatures should have non-human concerns. Those concerns should still make sense, but they shouldn’t be the same as ours.
It’s easy to talk about thinking like a non-human but, as one, it’s harder to manage.
Unless you read Call of the Gods, that is…