Hit point
From Free net encyclopedia
Hit points, also known as health points, damage points, life points and countless other synonyms, are points used to determine a character's health and show how much damage attacks deal in computer and video games, role-playing games (both table-top and computerized), and wargames. These terms are usually shortened to two letter acronyms such as HP and DP.
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Although many video games use a life bar to display a character's health and how close the player is to failure (death, being knocked out, etc), many wargames, role-playing games, and combat-oriented video games instead use numbers to show more accurately the amount of damage an object or player in the game can take before becoming ineffective.
In some games, hit points are determined by the type and strength of the attack, and when an attack succeeds hit points are deducted from the target's remaining supply. In most games using this system, when a character reaches zero hit points, the character dies, becomes unconscious, or is destroyed. One limitation of hit points is that in reality people generally lose combat effectiveness as they are hurt. However, conveying that realistically has proven very difficult for the gaming industry, (especially with "living" characters; robots or vehicles, which also have Hit Points, can register damage as systems going offline). Also, the use of hitpoints instead of more realistic, yet violent gauges of "health", may help a game get a lower ESRB rating, as showing blood often raises the ESRB score.
HP may also be displayed with icons rather than numbers. For instance, Super Mario Bros. 2 uses small red icons (in 16-bit versions of the game, they're changed to hearts) in the top left corner to designate how many hit points the player has remaining. The Legend of Zelda series are other good examples of this method. In such games, often some weak attacks against the player will take only a fraction of a heart (usually one-quarter or one-half) and stronger attacks may take many whole hearts at once.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game and D&D-derived games, player characters' hit points are determined by character level, and monsters' hit points are determined by a mechanism similar to character levels called "Hit Dice".
Other games, such as Deus Ex, show an image of a human body, which is all green to begin with. As the player takes damage, the respective region of the body turns yellow, orange, red, and eventually disappears altogether. For the head and torso, this is fatal.
Some games give bonuses or enhancements to players if they have or attain a specific amount of HP. Final Fantasy VII's secret "All Lucky 7's" feature causes a character that has 7,777 HP to start attacking enemies automatically, dealing 7,777 points of damage with each hit. However, if the player wins the battle, that character will then have only 1 HP.