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Old 02-25-2021, 06:29 PM   #34
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Hit Points...to be, or not to be?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyneras View Post
Hit points, are as always, an abstraction. What they represent is different from game system to game system. What kills people is damage to the brain. Outside direct tissue damage, that means depriving it of oxygen. One of the best ways to do that is deprive it of blood. A great way to deprive the brain of blood is to turn insides into outsides. So GURPS abstracts this, makes tissue damage and blood loss interchangeable, close enough for an RPG, even if there are plenty of edge cases where things get weird. I can think of lots of ways to improve this, but they aren't worth the bookkeeping until I can offload that to an AI.
Before the twentieth century, if your heart stopped, that was pretty much it. It wasn't going to restart, it would soon be unable to restart, and that would be it for your brain.
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