From: boelter3945@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Hit Points and increasing levels
Date: 10 Oct 92 18:00:43 -0500
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

In article <16184@mindlink.bc.ca>, Jason_Croutch@mindlink.bc.ca (Jason
   Croutch) writes:
>
> [..explanation about hp and what they represent..]
>
>    I dunno, I still have problems with the explaination. For instance, what
> about attacks for which there is no real defence... like back-stabs, or
> magical attacks.
>    With a back-stab attack, the character is caught off-guard, and has no
> opportunity to defend him/herself. How, then, does this relate to the HP?

   How about, the character being backstabbed is caught so off guard that
he/she is 'scared half to death'? (thus the origin of that phrase? :)

> Likewise, a magic missile hit will do the same damage no matter how the
> character dodges... so does the HP increase also cover some sort of magic
> resistance.

   Why not?  If the magic missiles somehow drains the hp of your life, with
experience (and being battered enough by those missiles), you can learn what
the best way is to 'toughen' your frame of mind and body to resist them
better.

>    Similarly, poison does a set amount of damage on a person, regardless of
> skill. Are we to believe that a person with a greater fighting skill also
> must have a drastically improved immune system ?

   That's how I've ruled it.  As you adventure and gain experience, your body
becomes used to those odd potions and fluid and magic pools and poisons,
therefore they have less of an effect (relative effect anyway).

>    Don't get me wrong, I
> don't have a better solution for now, but HPs still don't make much sense in
> realistic terms. It seems to me that the ability to defend against damage
> should be expressed in a reduction in the damage itself, not in the ability
> to absorb it.

   In a way it is, in relative terms anyway, just kinda opposite of the way
you think.  The absolute damage is the same, a dagger is a dagger.  But the
relative damage it does is different, as the more experienced person knows
how to twist, turn, dodge, parry, duck, pray, 'luck', whatever out of the
way, while the unexperienced person zigs when he/she should have zagged...

   This is my best explanation for how Hp work.  The system isn't perfect,
but then again, what one is?

   All in my humble opinion...          John "Nightwind" Boelter

--
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* John Boelter        a.k.a. Nightwind            boelter3945@iscsvax.uni.edu *
* Organizational Manager and contact person for everything and then some.     *
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* The individual who said we only use 10%  * The first 90% of a task takes    *
* of our brain's mental capacity, was      * 90% of the time, and the last    *
* probably 90% incorrect.                  * 10% takes the other 90%.         *
*            -Unknown comic on A&E-        *   -99 rule of Project Schedules- *
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Organization: Junior, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA