When people talk about the lack of realism associated with hit points, you’ll usually get a response along the lines of how HP aren’t “meat points.” It’s not a measure of your ability to take sheer physical trauma. HP is an abstraction of multiple factors, including fatigue, will to live, ability to minimize damage, etc.

However, there are some problems with this, at least when it comes to the more recent editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It ultimately turns into a weak justification for outdated – or at least misapplied – game design.

Be warned, a rant is coming.

Hit Points As Defined

According to the D&D 5E Player’s Handbook on page 196, hit points are meant to represent the following:

“Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.”

In addition, there’s a little callout box on page 197 describing how to narrate damage:

Now, in and of itself, this isn’t really an issue. This is a totally sensible way to treat hit points. Under this definition, they more or less represent how long your character can keep fighting. Matt Collville calls them a measure of a character’s heroism (like “hero points,” I guess). Into the Odd even renames HP as “hit protection” to further emphasize this function in the game.

In a vacuum, this is fine. However, HP don’t operate in a void. The issue with HP in name-brand D&D is the fact that the rest of the game’s design, terminology, etc. all communicate that hit points are “meat points,” regardless of how designers try to justify HP bloat with tacked-on descriptions.

Hit Points As They Function

To see how HP actually functions in-game, let’s look at some other mechanics.

What are attack rolls? They are attempts to “hit” the target. If it beats the AC of an opponent, the attack HITS. It’s interesting to note that this is more or less the actual verbiage used in the Player Handbook on page 194, not long before the section on hit points.

Armor Class is a measurement of a character’s ability to avoid damage, either through dodging, parrying, or wearing armor. If the AC is overcome, it feels perfectly natural to believe that the attack has bypassed the armor, crashed through the parries, and foiled all attempts at dodging. Believing that the person would not experience real physical harm after all this seems at least somewhat narratively dissonant.

And what happens when you hit? You roll damage. That’s the word that’s used. DAMAGE. Different weapons do different amounts of damage, which feels natural because a giant sword is going to do more to the human body than a little cudgel ever will.

Damage is then subtracted from the target’s hit points because their defenses (which, again, include dodging, parrying, and armor) have been bypassed and they have taken a HIT. That damage is not otherwise reduced in any way by armor.

As much as every brand-name D&D designer since Gary Gygax himself would like to SAY otherwise, the entire system SHOWS characters being HIT with WEAPONS and getting HURT, which tells every player who has ever played a game with hit points in it that HIT POINTS ARE MEAT POINTS!

Matching Function to Description

As much as hit points are described one way or another, they ultimately function within the context of 5E’s design as a measure of how many wounds someone can take before keeling over. If you want HP to truly mean something else, you need to overhaul the game’s design.

Part of the issue is in the order of operations. You do the d20 attack roll against the target’s AC before factors such as stamina and will to live are accounted for. This makes little sense if HP is itself a defense against being hit squarely.

Hit Protection

Into the Odd (as well as Cairn) fixes this issue somewhat by removing attack rolls and making Hit Protection a measure of how much damage you can avoid before it starts getting subtracted from your stats. Attackers don’t roll to hit. They just roll damage. If your HP hits zero, you start taking real wounds. Of course, damage is still reduced by armor, even if it’s going against your HP, but that could still be considered a component of “hit protection” on an abstract level.

Armor as HP

A really simple way to reinforce this “hit protection” concept would be to simply make armor add HP. It’s consistent with HP as hit protection while also having the benefit of eliminating additional math steps during fast-paced combat encounters.

Change HP’s Function

You could take it the other way too, of course. Instead of overhauling the game’s design in order to match the description you came up with to justify one stat being absurdly high, just change the one stat and its description. Make HP low. Make each wound hurt. Let death happen at 0. Keep the fear of shining steel and sharp claws alive in your group.

Just Don’t Use Them

Or don’t even use HP at all. All damage that gets past the AC target number is subtracted from your Strength, Constitution, or Dexterity. Maybe you’ll have to increase weapon damage to add realism, but it still seems preferable to saying, “Well actually, that’s not what we MEAN by HP” over and over.

Why This Is Important

It’s really not.

It’s a game, y’all. More than that, it’s words in a book, and you are under no obligation whatsoever to abide by those words as written when playing your game at your table.

If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.

That said, if you truly want your game to communicate something, you’d best design it to do so rather than use a flimsy description as a bandaid when the system doesn’t convey what you wanted it to.

The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by the kind of mental turmoil that conjures these ideas at 2:00 in the morning. Share this post, comment on it, print it out and frame it, or hurl it into the sea to never be seen again. You do you. All proceeds go toward designing game materials (like this!) that at least attempt to have some internal consistency. Really.