Hit Points (PSR Supplement)
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In this game, the damage characters and creatures take in an encounter is very easily recovered. You restore half or more of your hit points just by taking a break. Hit Dice, rather than hit points, are the greater measure of how many fights the party can push through. By default hit points represent stamina more than actual bodily injury, but your narrator might spin creatures in this world as having rapid regenerative abilities. |
Hit points (hp) portray how much damage you can sustain before succumbing to injuries or defeat. Creatures with more hit points can sustain more damage and are more difficult to defeat. Those with fewer hit points are more fragile.
Your maximum hit points are detailed during character creation, and increase with your character level. The maximum hit points for any NPC is included in its stat block.
A creature's current hit points (usually just called hit points) can by any number from the creature's hit point maximum down to 0. This number can change frequently as a creature takes damage or receives healing.
Damage
When an attack, harmful spell, or other effect damages a creature, the damage is represented with a numerical value and a damage type. Often there is a damage roll associated with this, such as 1d6 poison damage. In such a case you roll the listed damage dice, and the result is the amount lost by the hit points.
When a creature takes damage, like from an attack or a harmful spell, that damage number is subtracted from its hit points. In this example, taking 3 poison damage would usually mean losing 3 hit points. Damage resistance and other effects will sometimes increase or decrease the amount of hit points lost. The loss of hit points has no direct effect on a creature's abilities until the creature's hit points drop to 0, as detailed below.
Breaks, camping, potions, and other effects can restore hit points. When any creature restores or regains hit points, the hp regained are added to its current hp, up to but not exceeding its maximum hit points.
0 Hit Points
Instead of "subtracting" damage from your hit points, whenever you take damage you can add it to a sum of all the damage you've taken. When your damage sum equals your hit points, you suffer the effects of "at 0 hit points."
When you finish downtime or camping, your damage sum goes back to 0. Any effect that restores your hit points instead reduces your damage sum by an equal amount. |
When you drop to 0 hit points, you lose a Hit Die, and you fall Unconscious until you regain at least 1 hit point.
While you remain at 0 hit points, you lose another Hit Die each time you take damage. If you are ever forced to lose a Hit Die when you have none remaining, you are defeated.
When an NPC drops to 0 hit points, they lose the will to fight. What this means is up to the creature, the circumstances, and the narrator—whether knocked Unconscious, killed, or convinced to surrender.
If you are the one to reduce a creature to 0 hit points, you can choose to not kill it.