So how do you explain HP in-universe? Pic unrelated.
>>44882502
HP represents the number of dead spiders in your body.
The spider god Constitutoo watches over the bodies of his daughters and will steal them away if anyone attacks them, even if they are in your body.
His magic has the side affect of protecting you from most damage, making you able to shrug off sword blows that would kill a spiderless man.
The more Constitution you have, the more your body is riddled with dead spiders.
He considers all spiders his daughters.
It's a weird sex thing.
In any DnD-based game, HP is an abstraction. It's a combination of physical fortitude, magical defences, fatigue, the ability to turn a mighty blow into a lesser one, dodging, and just plain old luck.
This was explicitly discussed in the ADnD 1e DMG, and has never needed further discussion.
When you watch, say, a lightsaber duel in Star Wars, both characters are losing HP throughout the fight as they block and parry. When Luke loses his hand, that's the moment he has been reduced to 0hp and is out of the fight.
>>44882637
stealing this
>>44882502
Is it weird that my first thought was "yeah if I were that spider and trying to eat an oreo of that scale I would probably get sick of it pretty fast"
>>44882939
Yeah that's what D&D says about hit points on paper, we know. That doesn't work in practice though because critical hits and bleeding are both also a thing that don't make sense unless every loss of HP is actually a physical hit instead of an abstract "more tired" hit.
>not playing a system where HP loss is always physical damage and being more skilled just makes it harder to get hit
>>44883034
No, Oreo can get sickening really fast
>>44883042
Critical hit = you had an attack that required more effort to dodge than usual. Perhaps it only barely missed your head, throwing you off balance.
Bleeding = bleeding, no problem there. It's distracting you, it's making you slip, it hurts.
>>44882939
Add in the 4e idea that bloodied is when you begin to take physical damage to your person and you've got what I use.
>>44882502
Yeah, some years ago they changed the formula. Tasted like less chocolate. Oreos used to be so yummy ;_;
>>44882502
Did you know that anything less than 60 insect pieces per 100 grams of chocolate is deemed safe and legal?
And that this number was established because insect parts are actually REALLY common in chocolate?
You've probably eaten hundreds of spiders in total if you consume chocolate on a healthy-but-regular basis.
Anyone who's important enough to have a name is blatantly superhuman and can take Rasputinian amounts of damage before going down even if they look like a little old lady.
>>44883584
But it is dead spider pieces, and it is a healthy snack filled with protein.
Hit points are a standardized measure of how many times you can be hit before going down.
1 HP = 1 Hit.
Now, consider that some things hit harder than others, like a dagger strike. A dagger roughly between 1 and 4 standardized "hits", so it's got 1d4.
Think about HP like this. There's some "hit" unit. You can take so many punches in the face before going unconscious and if someone hits you enough times once you're one, you die.
These punches are equivalent to half as many knife stabs. Bleeding reduces the number of future hits you can take. Etc.
>>44882502
I don't, it's an abstract mechanic that supports the narrative, rather than the other way around.
There's no actual way to tell how dead you are on a percentile scale in-universe. Unless it's cyberpunk/sci-fi and that is specifically a setting element, I guess?
>>44883729
Yeah, I don't mind it at all because it by and large doesn't affect the taste/texture of my food, but some people get super freaked out by it.
Finding a full spider in my cookie would be disgusting though. I've eaten spiders before, on a bet. They're bitter and they get stuck in your teeth. That said, the image right there is likely a hoax.
>>44883729
The older you get, the more chocolate you eat. The more chocolate you eat, the more spiders you eat.
Coincidentally, the older you get, the stronger you get.
Ergo, the more spider pieces you eat, the stronger you get, just as >>44882637 was saying.
>>44883912
>the older you get, the stronger you get.
Up to a point. Maybe the human body has some sort of inbuilt spider threshold which can't be passed without first triggering diminishing returns, and then becoming actively detrimental, and scientists have mistaken this for old age?
Like, perhaps there's a very specific spider:human ratio which creates the ubermensch?
Whatever amount of hit points you have represents a combination of endurance, pain threshold, and natural hardiness. All damage you take that does not reduce you to 0 hit points are just minor bruises, cuts, scrapes, and burns that could have been nasty but you managed to reduce the damage with a combination of luck, skill, and experience. Getting reduced to 0 hit points represents the critical blow that you couldn't find a way to reduce the severity of.
>>44882502
everywhere on your body, centered at n locations hit and within radii r, r', r'' ...r_n such that
4/3 πr^3 +4/3 πr'^3 + 4/3 πr''^3+...4/3 πr_n^3 - volume of space within radii that isn't your body= volume of body * damage taken / (total hp + 10)
is turned into dead spiders. -10 HP is when all that is left of you is dead spiders.
>>44883584
Spiders aren't insects.
>>44883584
Well if I have and haven't gotten sick or unhealthy from it then that's fine.Need that protein.
>>44886079
They also only have two blowholes, big deal
>>44886144
People eat bugs all over the world, theyre only gross if you look at them
Hell, people eat mussels, look at this shit.
>>44882502
You don't
>>44887901
Bearded clams tho
>>44887953
I hope that's just a sex joke.
>>44887901
I'd eat that.
I'd eat the hell out of it.
>>44882502
Well, in-setting, because they feywild and its story-driven physics are so palpable in setting, narative plot-shield is a real thing. In theory, one telling blow from any weapon or spell SHOULD take any individual out, like minions, but "heroes" (in the greek sense) who are chosen by fate/the-narrative-essence have that special "something else" that keeps them going, and turns telling blows into near misses, manly flesh-wounds, and lucky last-minute dodges. There is actually a town who's palpable oppressive "realness" cause nobody to regain any surges while there until you are just as mundane and unexceptional as everyone else; it is used as a prison colony for exceptional villains.
>>44882502
I explain by how much pain you're experiencing and how much physical trauma you're in.
>>44882502
I play GURPS, so HPs represent your body’s ability to sustain injury. That's all.
>Pic very much related to this thread
>>44892826
Fran is still a cherry
>>44892900
>Fran is still a cherry
...How can you tell?
WHY can you tell?
>>44882502
I don't.
>PC takes damage
>Still has most of his hit points
>"It was just a scratch. You shrug it off."
>PC takes damage
>Is reduced to like half health.
>"You took a serious blow and have a minor injury."
>PC takes damage
>Is reduced to 0 hit points
>"The attack mortally wounded you."
What's the problem here?
>>44882502
Like everything else. By applying real(ish in-game) world happenstance in relation to what's going on.
Stats account for more than the character can sometime. Like luck being incorperated into the very environment.
>>44893086
For example a stupid high health character that min maxed his way there falls off a 30 story building and between his nat 20 save and huge ass health he walks away.
Well, he didn't hit at terminal velocity because stuff got in his way the whole way down. Painters scaffolding he smashed through, Cloth awnings, almost had a grip on the building a few times and slipped off.
Stats are not only about the player all the time imo. But how the area is there and reacting to them as well.
>>44882502
>So how do you explain
On fantasy games that arent hard fantasy, you dont need to
>>44892949
Look at her cross-section.
>>44883053
This.
I use GURPS, so I dont gotta explain shit.
Simulationism, ho!
>>44893043
I think the problem is the distinction between one large blow and several small blows. Imagine a PC has ten HP, and a slight cut deals 1 HP of damage, should ten of those hits be equivalent to a beheading? Or should 5 of those hits be equivalent to a heavy strike from a sword or axe, or damage from a spell?
You can make sense of it, but it is still a little odd. I prefer the idea that, at least when the character is more or less an ordinary human, HP represents ability to avoid damage, or take only minor damage, and getting to zero represents taking a lethal blow.
>>44883042
Stop playing 3e and up.
>>44882502
It's awesome points. If you're a scrub you aren't very awesome so a simple attack can easily take you down. If you're more awesome and especially a tough awesome ain't no handful of ugly ass monsters gonna take you down, let alone falling off a horse. If you're really awesome you can walk away from a terminal velocity unaided crash landing because you're too awesome to die that way.
>>44883584
Pieces seems like a poor unit of measurment
>>44894982
i don't see a hymen
>>44887901
but these are delicious anon
It's like you're not even french or something
>>44882502
>Hit Points
>Hit points represent the character’s capacity to be up and functioning. Characters only lose hit points when physically harmed. Losing hit points not only represents the character being wounded, but also all the negative effects, both physical and mental, on the character’s capacity to stay up and able. Blood loss, burnt flesh, broken bones, ripped muscles, as well as pain, loss of focus and resolve, and will to fight are negative effects the loss of hit points represent. The more hit points the character has, the more punishment he can take before being put down.
>...When the character rests, mend his wounds, recovers his breath and regains some of his focus, he recovers some Hit Points. Healing Hit Points this way doesn't mean his injuries magically disappeared. They are still present but not impairing the character anymore.
>>44882502
in my setting HP are a person's stamina and resistance to small hits, the only real wound is the one that actually drops you, i have a system that is going to give you different mali depending on how grievous the wound was, for example if you drop at -10 and survive once you get up you have a serious wound that will give you some debuffs, but at -2 it's a light wound and it almost doesn't affect you, of course this is only if you fail the endurance check
>>44888868
That's twice as gross as a stick of barbecued grasshoppers. At least it's recognizable as something more than a sea loogie.
>>44883258
>Potion of heal lesser wounds
I can understand HP representing something mental. I have felt myself losing HP when I play Touhou.
It's kind of amusing that Reimu dies when *I* run out of HP.
>>44901880
i read this as
>in my setting HP are a person's stamina and resistance to small tits
and was about to be really upset that your system discriminates against my people on such a fundamental level
>>44902098
what?
>>44902145
>>44902320
oh
you said tits
not hits
right
i read it wrong
>>44882502
The bond that your body has with your spirit. Physical and magical attacks weaken that bond, and eventually, your spirit breaks away.
>>44894982
Fuck off nerd, you've never gotten any if you still believe that shit.
>>44884474
Well obviously, if there's TOO MUCH spider, then Constitutoo starts taking away major parts of your body because it's just that much spider, leaving you weak and decrepit. Woe be to the person who is 90% spider by mass when some fly runs into him or something. Poof, gone.
