D&D and Hit Points - It’s Not What You Think

OK, there has been a bit of a surge recently in discussion of hit points in D&D. As expected (by me at least!) there has been a lot of loose talk and sweeping claims being made. So I thought I would do some loose talk and make some sweeping claims of my own.

Hit points in D&D are not “strictly physical”, Gygax makes that clear as far back as 1e where he explicitly says that hit points are not just physical, otherwise a 10th level fighter would be built like an ox. Hit points thus are an abstraction. They represent a bunch of different things:

Dodging a blow
Taking a blow but one that doesn’t damage you significantly
Rolling with a blow
Luck
Favor of the gods

There may be other possibilities too. However, Gygax didn’t break down what exactly HP were, so there is no guideline to explain WHAT happens when you take HP damage. So for example, what percentage of your HP are “luck”, what percentage are “favor of the gods”, that sort of thing.

And it gets more interesting if you look at saving throws. Saving throws in 1e AD&D are tied to class membership, so if you are a magic user for example, your saves versus magic are comparatively better as it is assumed you are using your ability to manipulate magic to redirect or control the magic directed at you. Clerics get excellent saves across the board as they are assumed to be to some degree protected by the gods, etc.

Now, many people criticize Gygax (and by extension later editions that adopted his abstracted, non-specific approach to HP) for his decision to treat HP this way. And I understand why this is the case, it can be confusing.

But I think people are fundamentally misunderstanding what HP represent in the game, they get stuck in the abstraction and whether or not it mirrors anything in the real world. That is a mistake in this case, as hit points aren’t really representative of physical toughness, luck, or anything else.

They are narrative armor.

D&D is a story game, I know, I know, what the hell.

But really, it is. It is a story game because ONLY CLASSED PCs and monsters get more than 1-6 hp. And only classed PCs and monsters are important to the story. The reason a 10th level PC has a bucket of HP is that a 10th level PC is important to the story, they have plot armor so they will stick around for a while. D&D emulates pulp literature, and in pulp literature Conan doesn’t die in the first story he appears in. Neither does the Grey Mouser, or John Carter, or any other pulp or literary hero. The story is about those who survive, not those who die in the first five minutes. So the game has to have some mechanical way to emulate that.

Hit points are one such tool, saving throws are another.

This is why D&D is such a bad fit with player facing “luck” mechanics that allow them to fudge results, and DM’s who constantly fudge the game in their favor. It’s a bad fit because it ALREADY HAS PLOT ARMOR BAKED INTO THE GAME.

If you want to get a better sense of this, try the following experiment. The next time the group goes out on an adventure give each PC 1-6 HP on their sheet. Then record elsewhere their regular HP total minus these 1-6 HP. Then, each time something in the game would have killed them at 1-6 HP, take that damage off of the secret total, but don’t tell them you are doing this. Say instead “the arrow misses you”, or “you just manage to hang on to the branch and break your fall”, or “fortunately the fireball blowback stops a few feet in front of you”, that sort of thing.

Then, when the pool of secret HP are gone, describe the next hit or damage as physical, and let them know if they die based on the amount.

Mechanically, you have changed nothing, but from the player’s perspective, their hit points are now strictly physical.

This is how HP work in D&D. They are narrative gaming tools just like tools in games that allow PCs to change results, but they do so PASSIVELY, not ACTIVELY.

So people who complain that D&D HP are “nonsensical” or “unrealistic” or “confusing” are really resisting the idea that D&D characters are like characters in fantasy novels, they are the central characters in a story, and as such last longer than your average 0-level peasant or shopkeeper.

Gygax liked the idea of passive narrative tools, alignment, encounter reactions, morale, hit points, saving throws, all of these are designed to make the game more like the stories it was intended to emulate, but they don’t give players active control over the mechanics, instead they kick in when appropriate.

I think this was done to maintain the illusion of an independent game world, for various reasons this illusion can be helpful to maintain immersion, and to create a challenging game where the players have a sense of achievement.

It’s fine of course to want a different kind of system for this, there is nothing sacrosanct about the way Gygax and earlier creators handled hit points. But it isn’t “nonsensical” or “broken” or “absurd”, it’s a clever game design element to capture one aspect of the literature that the game was meant to emulate.