Is the Hit Point meter an IC or OOC device?

[DeepFriedMoose]

A DM of mine for a TableTop game introduced me to the concept of "HP as Morale", and I've run with it ever since. I also read a lot of books on the philosophy of combat and fighting in general. The best one I've read "Facing Violence", by Rory Miller had some of the best ideas on the topic. (Paraphrasing:) "Fights rarely, if ever, end in death, or even incapacitation (unconsciousness). When a fight breaks out, it's truly a contest of wills, of seeing who will give up first. Sometimes this happens after a single punch ('Woah! I give up!'), and sometimes it's a knock-down, drag-out affair where neither party wants to concede."

Basically, a fight is a physical contest of wills. Yes, injuries are a big part of that, but when you break it down, having one's shoulder dislocated, or being blinded by a cut over your eye -- it all works to break down your willingness to continue fighting. It's never a logical, rational thought process -- "Well, I've taken approximately 70% of the damage I can withstand, so I should stop now. And that's how I see HP. It's your willingness to keep recieving and delivering punishment, and while that is related to injury, it is independent of it. From a game perspective, once your HP reaches Zero, your character is simply done -- they've given up, even if it is involuntary.

And this plays true IRL, too. Someone gets in over their head, and loses a fight, they can nurse a grudge and feel like they "shouldn't have" lost. They can feel like there was something external to blame, and blame that ("he only won because he got the drop on me"). In the end, the results are still the same: a person loses a fight because they ran out of reasons to keep fighting.

The reverse can also hold true -- there are countless war stories where someone charged a hill, and was riddled with bullets, but didn't stop until they had completed their objective. They ran across a battlefield carrying a wounded friend, or charged up a hill to lob a grenade into a machine-gun nest, etc. The list of examples is endless. Again, the result is the same: They "won" because they didn't lose their morale. They might have even died as a result of their wounds, but even mortally wounded, they kept going because, in their mind, they weren't done yet.

Back when I played actively, I'd usually just shoot the player in question a tell. "Is your guy visibly injured?" If yes, react appropriately. If no, ignore the fact that they haven't hit the R key yet.

A little bit of courtesy and communication goes a long way in establishing a collaboratively storyline, even with some "random character" you haven't met before. Could be your character's next best friend, after all! Especially if they do say they're injured and you patch 'em up or toss a potion their way!

This is what I try to do, also, while keeping in-game, such as: "You look a mess! What happened?", or "You look fatigued..." which puts the level of visible injury squarely in their court.

[Laughingman]

Can we see the status of someones health? I was under the impression that it required spells to do so but the other day I saw someone run up and heal a stranger at random. When my character was surprised by this I was told rather blatantly that it was obvious. Is there an official DM ruling on it? If not can there be?

[Sun Wukong]

Right click on someone and you can see their HP bar.

But the thing about injuries is that until you go below 0, the loss of HP does not really do much in D&D.

[Glowfire]

This is a recent discussion on it that answers your question:
Subject: Is the Hit Point meter an IC or OOC device?

But short answer is that many players consider it metagaming to look at the HP bar and treat someone as wounded without asking first.

[Tsidkenu]

Merged.

[Laughingman]

So the spells are pointless?

[Nimenaar]

In my opinion health status unlike name the character ,should be rather visible straight away and RP'ed accordingly and I guess this should be finnaly resolved by either players voting or by DM's voting ,whatever but resolved and put in somewhere in Server rules or PVP Rules and Guidelines topics.

[zhazz]

Hit Points are an OOC attempt at quantifying a character's ability, resolve, stamina, morale, and mental state as a number we as humans can easily relate to. A number that informs us, as the players of that character, how far our character is from the breaking point. Each of the above can be considered a meter from 0 to 100, where 100 is perfect condition, and 0 is flatlining. If either of them drop to 0, your character is unable to fight back.

Hit Pints is then a representation of those meters, where each mix of up to 4 classes determine how much each meter moves when faced with hardships. A wizard might run out of stamina before a fighter, but is less prone to losing their mental faculties. And so on for each class.

Similar to what DeepFriedMoose said really.

[Hoihe]

Hit Points are an OOC attempt at quantifying a character's ability, resolve, stamina, morale, and mental state as a number we as humans can easily relate to. A number that informs us, as the players of that character, how far our character is from the breaking point. Each of the above can be considered a meter from 0 to 100, where 100 is perfect condition, and 0 is flatlining. If either of them drop to 0, your character is unable to fight back.

Hit Pints is then a representation of those meters, where each mix of up to 4 classes determine how much each meter moves when faced with hardships. A wizard might run out of stamina before a fighter, but is less prone to losing their mental faculties. And so on for each class.

Similar to what DeepFriedMoose said really.

And it's usually a good idea to let the player with low hit points RP how that looks like rather than forcing it on them.

[DangerMouse2]

What about Combat Awareness?

https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title ... _Awareness

It states:

When activating your combat focus, you learn the current hit point total of all nearby enemies (30 feet).

[zhazz]

Combat Awareness is based on Wisdom, which is an indicator of insight and ability to read the disposition of others.

Similarly to how Sense Motive allows a character to determine if someone is lying, by reading their body language, so does Combat Awareness allow a character to determine how much energy or will someone else has left to fight.

With Hit Points being a representation of that will and energy, Combat Awareness grants insight into an opponent's will and energy to fight, summarized as a single number we as players can easily understand, namely Hit Points.

[Ariella]

https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Status just to throw in what's already present IG.

[Steve]

Let’s just put it in perspective that the OP was made in 2017!

So don’t hold your breath...and if you were holding it, LET GO NOW!!!