Hit Points and how to lose them

After our last session, we questioned how 'Hit points' are represented in D&D.

Are the characters, NPCs and monsters just variously sized fleshy meat-bags of HPs?

The Player's handbook defines HPs as: 'The ability to take punishment, luck and the skill to reduce a lethal blow to a less serious one '. 

In game mechanic terms, this means that you're perfectly fine and fully functional until your HPs fall to '0', at which time you're 'Disabled', and at '-1 to -9' when you're 'Unconscious' or '-10' at which point, you're dead.

Interestingly though, there are two provisos to this that add a little nuance.

'Massive damage' is D&Ds way of making falling from a great height or falling into boiling larva more dangerous. If you take more than 50 points of damage in a single instance, you must make a Fortitude save: DC:15 or be killed regardless of how many HPs you'd have left. That'd be dangerous enough to stop me jumping from clifftops regardless of a character having 100+ HPs.

'Helpless' refers to being unable to protect yourself from having your throat slit with a 'Coup de Grace'.

'Coup de Grace' means the attacker, with a 'Full round action' is able to automatically hit and score a 'Critical Hit'. Even if the 'Helpless' victim survives this damage, they must make a Fortitude save: DC: 10 + the damage dealt or die!

'Disabled' means that you can only take one action. If that action is an attack, you lose another HP and become 'Unconscious'.

(The 'range' of just 1 seems a little silly to me but I suppose that's what the 'Die Hard' feat is for.)

'Unconscious' means that you are at -1 to -9 HPs and you lose an additional HP per round until you either 'Stabilise' or die.

You get a 10% chance of naturally 'Stabilising' per round.

A 'Healing' skill check of DC:15 allows another character or NPC to 'Stabilise' an 'Unconscious' character.

Another PC or NPC casting a healing spell or force feeding a 'Cure' potion will also bring the character up to 'Conscious' again with full autonomy or at the very least 'Stabilise' them.

Once a character falls to '-10' HPs, they're dead with their only recourse a 'Raise Dead' spell or equivalent.

This leads to some urgency in tending to the dying.

There is no mention of whether these rules apply to monsters and NPCs though.

The Monster manual does state that monsters heal at a rate of 1 point per Hit Dice per day.

This at least means that they can heal but not whether than can be 'Disabled' or 'Dying'. i.e. Drop below 1HP.

I suppose the question becomes: If your retainer Rifkin gets reduced to '0' HPs or lower, would you expect him to be instantly dead or not?

We could complicate the question further by making a distinction between 'NPCs' and 'Retainers' but that just seems petty.

Ultimately, as a just and kind God DM, I feel everyone should have the same chances at life but generally not necessarily the same opportunity to exploit them. i.e. No-one there to care or with the magic or skill to make a difference.

...

That said, unless you absolutely, one hundred percent know your enemy's dead, they may come back to get you!

;P