Hitpoints don't represent anything, actually
Daniel Norton of Bandit's Keep beat me to my last post with this video , and I didn't even realise! And sure enough he's beaten me to the punch again - although in fact I managed to see the video first this time. This post can partly be read as a response ot his video. It's what you might call a long read, so grab yourself a cup of tea. The topic of hitpoints in D&D is one of those things that seems perpetually to be puzzling. Everyone has a different take on what it is that hitpoints represent: Are they bodily toughness, exhaustion and fatigue, combat awareness, luck, some combination of the above ("hit protection"), or something different entirely? But the setup for this whole debate hides an assumption, and one that we need not make. Let me propose something radical: Hitpoints don't represent anything, actually. That is, there is no quality that your character posesses - be it something as abstract as luck or as concrete as what you might call co...