Okay, so I’ve been wondering about hit point systems and the like for a while now, mostly because I’m currently working on a project that has hit points and damage, and I’m just thinking about their place in a game’s design.
Like, hit points are a staple, right? They just permeate video games and TTRPGs.
In video games, hit points generally represent a player’s margin for making errors, both tactical and dextrous. Like in Mega Man games, they very directly just gave you a certain amount of hits you could take before you die, making the game a little more lenient, instead of just killing you on the first brush. This was more relevant in action-based games, and often games without action elements don’t have any sort of hit point mechanic.
So that just begs the question: in more open ended games, i.e TTRPGs, what is the function of hit points, and what are the advantages of the different types of wound/condition systems?
In this, we have to talk about the progenitor, D&D. Hit Points (HP) literally derives from D&D, so it obviously is a staple in the hobby. Basically, hit points were created with a similar logic to how it will be later used in other games: To prevent a player from dying from the first hit they take (more or less). So in some ways, hit points became a way to stop you losing your character to the luck of the draw (kill or be killed) at first brush.
This was just once removed, though, since in reality, D&D-like games still have the possibility of just having multiple opponents or otherwise extremely unlucky rolls, and because death happened at 0, you could easily have a situation where you contribute nothing and just die in the first round of combat.
Of course, this highlights the combat utility of hit points, making them kind of ineffective as a tool for anything else. Wonder why dungeons have traps? Because they are the only sort of feature that interacts with Hit Points. Even back in the day the designers understood that mechanical backing is important. You can’t really use hit points effectively for anything but things that cause physical harm, so they created a sort of convoluted reason why places expected to be inhabited by people would be filled with ways to get yourself mangled.
Hit Points are the most simple way to create a buffer to death. You have a number, things in the world can decrease that number, and when the number goes to 0, you die. However, you can see the legacy of wargames in this thinking. There is this assumption of death in the gameplay. Why death? You don’t need to make rules for dying in the game!
So, other kinds of wound and stress systems have popped up since, some closer to HP and some further away from HP. The interesting thing to me about wound and stress systems is the distance they have from combat. Wounds and Stress can often accumulate from things outside from combat, and they often affect gameplay outside of combat, as well.
So, in a way, I could see Wound and Stress systems as a sort of evolution of the Hit Point, because they are more able to affect more than just combat gameplay decisions.
However, games in the D&D line of thinking still use traditional HP. Though, with their additional ‘dying’ mechanics (death saves in 5e, dying condition in Pathfinder 2e, Fate rolls in SotDL), you can see that the designers recognize that Hit Points are an inadequate way to prevent death, instead creating a sort of additional step to actually dying, often with some timed component. So why keep HP?
HP does have a number of advantages in combat games, because it allows you to more honestly gauge the strength of attacks by the amount of damage they deal. It also is easy to resolve, because wounds and stress usually require you to come up with a narrative logic or reason to the damage, HP is just a calculation (though sometimes calculations can take time etc etc). Growing your HP also allows players to feel heroic, because they can shrug off stronger and stronger blows because of it. HP also ensures that most players can do something in an action scene before they get injured or debilitated.
However, HP does a lot of harm to these games as well. Encounters need to be balanced to the players HP levels, because otherwise you basically automatically win or automatically lose. Enemies that cannot meaningfully damage your hit points pose no threat, and enemies that can ‘one-shot’ you are just impossible to beat, generally. Additionally, HP needs to be recovered between fights, usually making things like Medicine and Healing magic extremely potent. This, however, often makes mundane injuries a joke. Wounded leg? Just slap it with a Healing touch and you’re good. This makes any sort of hybrid-esque injury systems often kind of meaningless, because easy recovery of HP means easy recovery of other kinds of injury.
And if HP is difficult to recover, the game grinds to a halt whenever someone is low on HP. Players will rarely push onward when heavily injured, especially if they’re not on a time crunch. And if there’s time crunch, slow healing mechanics can feel punishing and really unfun for players, requiring even more care in designing encounters that are winnable or avoidable.
Of course, a big reason why HP is still in many games is simple legacy. Hit Points are part of the legacy of D&D, and thus a part of the legacy of TTRPG sphere as a whole. I just think Hit Points create more trouble than they’re worth in most games.
He says, while writing a game with Hit Points.
There are obviously other, more nuanced ways to handle damage and fatigue in games. What do you use and why, and do you have any examples of games that just hit different because of their way of handling these mechanics?