Hit Points & Chivalric Romance
So one of the bits of D&Discourse I find popping up perennially is the âhit points are unrealisticâ thing. Or, at the least, that they shouldnât represent actual wounds, but instead more of a fatigue/morale abstraction. Combat actually consists of each participant taking repeated sword blows to their body, while they shrug it off & keep fighting, only to then recover with simple rest or a healing potion? Nonsense. Ridiculous.
But if you read old chivalric romance â Chretien, Malory, the undiagnosed author who wrote Perlesvaus â thatâs absolutely how knights carry on. Regularly you get descriptions of combat that involve Sir Protagonist and Sir Encounter dâRandom fighting ankle-deep in their own blood for like an entire afternoon. Then they go rest in a hermitage until theyâre better or â more often than youâd expect â are healed on the spot with Unspecified Ointment. Which is still ridiculous, but itâs ridiculous with a literary pedigree now.
The ointment is usually depicted as rarer than your D&D-style ten-for-a-platinum healing potion, but itâs there. The healing through rest isnât as handwave-y: itâs usually weeks, not overnight, and the text generally does imply that the hermit or whoever is treating their wounds, not just letting them crash in a spare bed. (Though the fact that itâs often a hermit also gives credence to the âclerical healingâ thing.) And there are instances of an injured knight later succumbing to his wounds despite the rest, so you know. Itâs not quite as abstracted as D&D healing, but the bones are very familiar.
Which leads me to my proposal for a fantasy TTRPG mechanic: hit points are real, but only if youâre a knight. Along with the title & the fief & the obligation of fealty, you also get a new box on your character sheet that makes combat work differently for you now.
