What does HP represent to you?

[jonthefox]

In games we use statistics as abstractions, both to promote an enjoyable gameplay experience and to represent all the complexities that cannot reasonably or practically depicted in a video game.

In RPGs we use HP to represent how much a character can get hit before dying...have you ever thought about what exactly this represents?  At first I thought it was how wounded a character is (are you bleeding? are you bruised? are you injured in some other way?), but this model fails when you consider how common it is to be struck by a whirling ball of fire and still be able to fight.

We still give HP to zombies/skeletons/the undead, as well as spirits and ethereal creatures, who may not be capable of physical injuries.  Then I thought, HP is kind of like your endurance - how much you go can go on fighting before you succumb.   Again, this model is problematic because the undead would never get "tired."  

How do you conceive of HP in your RPGs? 

 

[erikmidnatt]

it can be hit points or health points or whatever. As a game it needs to be digestible. Games aren't real life so most complexities have to be thrown out to make a game that is understandable.

So undead having health, or wraiths having hitpoints is much simplier than trying to come up with solutions for those scenarios.

I think most players know when X has 0 HP, it is no longer fighting in the battle. Some games 0 HP you are dead, some you are unconscious. 

In the case of zombies, some games healing them actually reduces their life. And doing dark spells might heal them. I think most players can understand what is Health/Hit points for one actor/enemy may not be the same thing for another.

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Well, literally it means Hit Points. 
There are plenty of games that take creative approaches to HP, especially associated to your example of the undead. In many games, healing would damage them. There are also many games where HP is used as a resource for skills, such as for a character who may use their own life-force (blood, what have you) to fight. So, in most representations HP would represent some form of life, stamina, ect to me. And there are many ways to use the stat differently as well. However, there is a point where I sort of have to let imagination take over. Sometimes being too literal doesn't work out super well.

 

[Token]

HP is a measurement of a character's ability to avoid being killed outright. Exactly what it represents depends on the character, the story, and what is happening in a given scene.

But for most JRPGs HP can be interpreted as raw physical endurance. These are basically anime characters we're talking about, so we accept it when a 16 year old high schooler takes a mallet to the head and doesn't die.

 

[Jay_NOLA]

Way back in Dragon magazine Gary Gygax, one of the creator of D&D,  said that hit points represented not just the amount of physical punishment a person could take, luck, ability to handle fatigue, experience in combat at avoiding blows, and other things.  This was stated way before the 1st editions of the now classic 3 core  1st edition AD&D books were out.  I think the Advanced Players Handbook had just been finished or the manuscript was when the article came out.

In a latter edition of AD&D this was clearly stated in the rule books.

The same article also went on to say that an attack roll in D&D was meant to represent in most cases multiple attacks against an opponent and the result reflecting if one actually hit,  As the combatants were engaged in moves, counter moves, attacks, blocks, etc. the entire round of combat and the roll simulated the end result of damage after all this from an attacker.

A much latter issue of Polyheadron magazine said the same thing and used an example that as I recall ran like this.

A 40 hit point character getting the same amount of damage is not getting as severely cut as a low level low ht point character.  The higher level character is trained and skilled enough to avoid the killer blows a inexperienced fighter suffer.  So the sword 8 point damage blow is a scratch to the experienced fighter as he or she used luck and skill to avoid it being a serious injury, while the inexperienced fighter could avoid the the damage as well as a experienced fighter and is physically injured worse.

So if you want to use what it was in the oldest RPG that served as the inspiration and had many things lifted from it when video game RPGs, that is what hit points was meant to represent in it and in other games.

 

[hiromu656]

Pillars of Eternity uses Health in an interesting way. When you're in combat, enemies damage both your "Endurance" and your "Health", but once your Endurance reaches zero (it's a much smaller number than your health would be) your character is knocked out. If you still have Health, and the rest of your party finishes the battle, you will stand back up, and regenerate your Endurance, but your Health will be much lower from the battle (you must rest to regain Health). And obviously, once your Health reaches 0 you die, and will not get up even if your party finishes the battle. 

I like the direction they took with HP and honestly prefer it to many other RPGs. We can't forget that these are video games after all, so they don't have to be totally based in reality, but this is a clever way to make your RPG stats and numbers sort of believable. When I think of HP I simply think of when my character is going to die, and that's how I generally go about using HP in my own games. However I always like seeing simple concepts done in interesting ways.

 

[byronclaude]

@hiromu656 :   

 I have never played Pillars of Eternity but I must admit...  that puts a very cool spin on the idea of H.P.
I have alwayz viewed H.P. very narrowly (HP=life). 

I have heard other ideas...  but other than the one forementioned, none of them have ever appealed to me.

I will admit though, hehe, my imagination has led me to thinking:  just HOW are my characters injured or IN WHAT WAY are they injured?  Like how much H.P. does a broken arm represent?  What about a severed foot?

(My brain is starting to imagine what a game would be like if you could instead base it on actual physical status in such a way.  The system would be fairly simple... but graphically...  that would be tedious and morbid.  hehehe)

 

[Matseb2611]

I kind of like how the original Deus Ex handled HP. It had HP for each individual body part, and enemies could shoot you in any of those body parts. If the head or the torso (your vital parts) reached 0 HP, you died. If legs, you'd simply end up being constantly crouched and moving slower until you healed at least one leg. And if at least one of your arms is at 0 HP, then your accuracy with guns gets real bad.

However, I understand in party-based RPGs that system would be too complex. I just see HP as amount of juice the character has to keep standing. At 0 HP, I just assume they get knocked out. Considering how in most RPGs we can revive them, I am not a fan of assuming that 0 HP is death, because death should be something much more permanent, unless of course assuming the whole party is at 0 HP, which you can think of as the whole party is K.Oed and injured and nobody found them, so they died.

Some games tend to give similar value to other stats as well, like if you run out of MP, you could die, depending on what it represents in the game of course.

 

[Wavelength]

In most RPGs (though usually not in P&P games where 0HP can literally mean character death) I usually think of 0HP as complete (albeit temporary) incapacitation and therefore I think of Hit Points as a scale from "fresh" to "hurt" to "wounded" to "incapacitated".  I sometimes imagine "injuries" on the characters, but in a completely acceptable break from reality, the games usually don't hamper your ability to fight when you're sitting there with 6/250 health and the injuries you take in combat don't "stick" on the character as scars/missing parts after you're healed.  RPG combat usually has elements of power fantasy anyhow, so I have no problem with this.  Not actually injuring the character is fine because it fits the aesthetic.

 

[Milennin]

For player characters I see HP as endurance. When it reaches zero, the character gets knocked out and needs to be revived or rest at a safe spot to be able to fight again.

For most monsters I see HP as a life bar. When it reaches zero, the monster dies. Of course, there may be exceptions, like monsters that get another form when their HP reaches zero, or bosses still having a cutscene after getting beat.

 

[Sated]

HP is just an arbitrary mechanic that allows the developer to set a game over condition during combat. If you think about what HP represents in too much depth then you end up stumbling into hypothetical arguments like, "Why didn't Cloud just use a Phoenix Down after Sephiroth killed Aeris?", so I prefer not to do it.

I do like it when games to interesting things with HP-like stats. A good example would be The Reconstruction, in which you have three separate "HP" values that both power your skills and determine a game over condition, but ultimately they're still just a way for the developer to let the player know how well they're doing in combat.

 

[ArcaneEli]

I don't think of HP like that. I think of it like stamina mostly.

they don't get hit by fireballs, they dodge them and that costs HP, but in RPG style it's like they get hit

 

[jonthefox]

I don't think of HP like that. I think of it like stamina mostly.

they don't get hit by fireballs, they dodge them and that costs HP, but in RPG style it's like they get hit

See this is where there is a disconnect for me.  If that's the case, how come "strength" is the main stat used in calculating physical damage?  The way D&D does it makes it seem like the stronger you are, the more force you're inflicting on the enemy and therefore injuring it more.  If HP was supposed to represent a kind of stamina where you can dodge/deflect/absorb before being seriously injured, I feel like you should be rolling dexterity for damage and perhaps strength for critical hits, not the other way around.

 

[SinのAria]

I think of HP sort of both as a normal thing and a different thing.

For me, HP is sort of your willpower. Not your will, but your mind's ability to stay awake and able to fight. This could be until you die or it could just be until you just can't fight anymore (perhaps you faint, perhaps you just don't have the strength to lift a muscle).

Now, in the main set of games I have been working on (currently getting ready to rewrite it for MV), HP is quite literally your health. However, in my game, you can be revived as long as certain conditions are met.

One character gets revived by an entity who controls death and thus as long as the entity is with them, they won't actually die (though they are dead after their first death, they are suspended in that moment just before).

One character has their entire existence reset when they die (they die, but they are then reset so that the death never happened).

One character has a copy of themselves made and transfer themselves to their copy.

One character knows the guardian to the afterlife and the guardian simply rejects their cause of death each time.

Essentially, they do die, but they have ways to continue on. Game overs in my games are usually more of a bad ending than a party wipe.

The way I see res items is this: You aren't fully dead (usually), but simply in a near-death or unconscious state. I think PKMN specifically used unconscious.

For example, in my Fate series, one of my characters did encounter someone as they were dying and tried to heal them and were unable because the person had already died.

In my Silveria Effect, one character didn't know how to heal someone and that someone died as a result. Then when they did learn it, they found out that the 'revive' spell simply rewound time a little and healed their fatal/major injuries, so it could only be used within a certain amount of time if they actually died.

TL;DR:

To me, HP is your ability to keep fighting. While 0 HP might be unconscious and most res items can make you conscious, they don't actually revive the dead.

 

[NichG]

It doesn't mean anything, but it does certain things. In general, when we have a conflict in a game, we always want that conflict to conclude in a reasonable amount of time. An infinite fight where neither side wins or loses is really bad from a gameplay point of view. So, we need something which pushes conflicts on to an inevitable end, where the thing in question is which side is victorious when that end occurs. However, an explicit timer feels very artificial and loss because of time-out can feel really cheap to the player.

So instead, you can use an HP mechanic for the enemies. If every character can deal some damage, and enemies can't heal indefinitely, then every battle will eventually conclude in the player's favor assuming the player can keep their characters alive. In turn, the player characters have to be at risk, so that it is possible for the enemy to win even if they are fighting on a timer (their HP track). So now the player characters also have HP, but it works very differently from enemy HP. In JRPGs, enemies tend to have a lot more HP, but usually cannot recover it outside of gimmick fights; player characters have very little HP, but can recover it easily (possibly with MP or consumables as a secondary timer track to prevent an infinite battle).

So what enemy HP (and party MP) really represent is the inevitability of conclusion. Because of these factors, no fight is infinite and there are no stalemates. If I were to ascribe an in-universe interpretation of a force like that, it might take the form of something like 'fate'.

 

[SinのAria]

Just as a note:

I have had an 'infinite' fight before.

I had an ability that made me heal a lot each turn. I also had abilities that made me take very little damage. Combine that with permanent autobattle as a status against an enemy that was a doppleganger...

Both characters took like 1~20 damage per turn. Both healed like 500 per turn. Autobattle. 9 hours later... I reset the game.

Yeah.. HP is definitely an important mechanic.

 

[M.I.A.]

I once worked on a project wherein HP was total energy you could have.

All skills, Attacks, and taking Damage depleted HP. In addition, HP was passively depleted (like poison) during battle and on map. So it was important to balance when to attack, when to defend, when to run, when to heal, when to "sleep", and when to press on.

I ended up scrapping the project due to balancing difficulties, but I'd always liked the idea of "total endurance" HP.

 

[Wavelength]

I once worked on a project wherein HP was total energy you could have.

All skills, Attacks, and taking Damage depleted HP. In addition, HP was passively depleted (like poison) during battle and on map. So it was important to balance when to attack, when to defend, when to run, when to heal, when to "sleep", and when to press on.

I ended up scrapping the project due to balancing difficulties, but I'd always liked the idea of "total endurance" HP.

Not too surprising - a system with only one major resource (HP) is going to be extremely difficult to balance well because the "tipping points" are so obvious.  Is this skill worth using?  You can answer that very easily by determining whether it will save you damage equal to or greater than its HP cost.  If the cost were MP instead, you'd be working with a pair of resources where you might save one by expending the other, which creates more interesting, easier-to-balance gameplay.

I do think that the idea of HP as "endurance" makes a lot of sense, thinking about it from a realism standpoint, but I don't think it easily lends itself to good gameplay.

 

[SinのAria]

I agree that gameplay-wise, HP as endurance doesn't make for good gameplay without an absurd amount of work balancing everything. I have a few skills that use HP to do damage, but those are rather rare.