Back in the day, when I wasn't playing Dungeons & Dragons and wasn't likely to, hit points were one of the things that I commonly heard (and believed myself) to be a problem with the game. The d20 iteration of the game has brought me back, and brought me back to the point where I'm using d20 for everything and don't anticipate changing any time soon. To do this, I've had to make my peace with hit points, among a few other things.
Well, that's not technically true. d20 and the OGC has introduced a variety of alternate methods, including the Wound Points/Vitality Points system, first shown in Star Wars, and the Damage Save first shown in Mutants & Masterminds and then further shown in Blue Rose and True 20. Both options occur in Unearthed Arcana and the new, expanded SRD, so they are "official" as alternates. In addition, the little d20 gem "Grim N Gritty Hit Points" by Ken Hood uses hit points, but the method for determining how many a character has is very different than in D&D.
Where does that leave us? Well the recent discussion, which I participated in just a bit, had the multipronged approach of internet discussions everywhere, but there were two themes that I took from the discussion.
1) Hit points are problematic because at higher levels, a guard--heck, a whole platoon of soldiers--with arrows trained on the characters still can't hope to stop them before they kill them all. This, naturally, stretches the credibility of the system for some players, who don't like the idea that characters are apparently bouncing swords, arrows, fireballs, etc. off their skulls without too much ill effect. The game itself tried (halfheartedly, in my opinion) to address this issue by defining hit points as something else--the ability of a character to avoid damage, turn a critical hit into a lesser one, etc. This is a problem for a lot of people because it requires that we now assume that a "hit" isn't necessarily a hit, and that damage dealt isn't exactly damage dealt. Semantically, anyway. Bleagh.
For my money, there are a few possible solutions--#1 don't play at higher levels (this is nice for a lot of reasons--it's not just hit points that breaks down at higher levels, the game itself becomes pretty difficult to manage in all kinds of ways) or #2 use some mechanism that keeps hit points from getting to high--"Grim N Gritty Hit Points" does this for example, or 3) switch to WP/VP. Vitality points work like hit points, but Wound Points are essentially equal to your Constitution score. If you take a critical hit, you take Would Point damage instead of Vitality Point damage. This represents the possibility that even Joe Blow peon guard-duty chap can take you down if he gets lucky, while still maintaining the flavor of hit points.
Again, for my money, Option #1 is what I tend to focus on. It's a bit of a workaround rather than a real solution, but since there are other things besides just hit points that I don't like about levels higher than about 10 or so, it ends up being a bit of a moot point for me. But if it does, a flatter, or capped, or flattening hit point curve would be nice. I've seen the idea that starting after 10th level, you don't get a new hit dice when you level up, just the other level benefits (maybe a Con bonus addition to your hit points) which means that they never get above about 12th level or so worth of hit points no matter what happens.
In any case, the discussion at ENWorld ended up drifting into the Wound Points/Vitality Points discussion, which is my point #2.
2) Lots of people have complained about Wound points being too gritty, which at first amazed me, since it's the least gritty way of dealing with "the problem of hit points" of any of the common ways I know of. I've since realized that for the most part, the people who complain about this are not the ones who complain about "the problem of hit points"--for the most part, they see that problem as perhaps academic, but not really an issue ranging up to seeing escalating hit points as a good thing and not a problem at all. Many of them also referenced a storytelling preference for not having their character go out like a chump in what could be merely a throwaway encounter with a few goblins.
This is where my tastes break from them. To me, gaming is not just about creating a story, it's about simulating events that lead to a story. If a character dies like a chump--well, that happens sometimes. It's not necessarily a bad thing. And a game where that risk wasn't always there would be pretty boring to me. The discussion went on to talk about it being boring having a character either dead or seriously incapacitated for a significant portion of the session, but I believe that if there's no risk of that happening, that's even more boring. By a long shot.
In any case, I've experimented a bit with ways to address some of these issues that I have with d20, and there are plenty of ways of addressing the problem of greater PC fragility, even in games where the recovery of hit points via magic isn't something you can count on. Because of that, I have no problem either capping hit points or using alternate schemes to derive hit points where the total isn't nearly as high. But, for all that, I've pretty much just made my peace with the concept of hit points anyway. Combined with the fact that I also don't like really high level play for other reasons besides "the hit point problem", hit points are a moot point to me anyway.
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