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Many D&D elements, including HP, sprung from the hobby’s wargaming roots. In those days, units usually had a defensive score and an offensive score. The outcomes were binary: units either lived or died. But when these concepts morphed into the individual tactical combat that defined Original D&D (OD&D), there was a need for a way to track the progress towards defeat, thus giving birth to Armor Class (AC) and Hit Points (HP).
In OD&D, AC denoted how challenging you were to hit, and HP showed how close you were to defeat. The game simply states, “Your hit points determine how hard your character is to kill.” And that’s it. That’s the HP origin story. They’re an arbitrary, abstract measurement of how difficult you are to kill and how far along the game is in achieving that.
Later D&D editions got increasingly philosophical about HP. Advanced D&D acknowledged physical punishment, but clarified that “a significant portion of hit points, especially at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors.” It even said it would be “ridiculous” to assume characters could endure such physical punishment, further emphasizing that HP are not intended to be taken literally.
2nd Edition D&D kept the abstract theme, defining damage as an abstract concept that allows characters to be heroic. It didn’t dwell on the semantics of HP. 3rd Edition, on the other hand, leaned into the mechanics and didn’t provide a narrative explanation for HP and damage at all. 4th Edition tried to have the best of both worlds, setting a base number of hit points representing “real” damage, while anything over was the old dance of skill, luck, and magic.
By the time 5th edition D&D came around, we’re back in the abstract realm, with the game stating, “Hit Points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.”
https://www.optionalrule.com/2023/06/02/what-are-hit-points-in-dnd/
RPGのHPって何を表しているの？生身でガシガシ攻撃受けたら即死だろ問題 リアルさを保ちたいなら武器・防具の耐久値が減って、ゼロになって攻撃を受けたら死ぬというモデルでいいん...
A Historical Perspective Many D&D elements, including HP, sprung from the hobby’s wargaming roots. In those days, units usually had a defensive score and an offensive score. The outcomes were binary: units either lived or died. But when these...
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