History CriticalExistenceFailure / TabletopGames

*** Due to this, a common set of HouseRules is to have characters die after being dealt a truly massive amount of damage. (3.5 does have "[[ChunkySalsaRule Death by massive damage]]" rules -- any hit that deals over 50 damage needs a fort save)

* Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'', where damage is dealt not to HitPoints, but to your ''physical stats''; thus, the more damage you take, the less you're capable of doing. Once two stats reach zero, you collapse unconscious; when the third one joins them, [[StatDeath you're dead]].

** In [[TabletopGame/AdvancedDungeonsAndDragonsFirstEdition 1st edition]], this is inconsistently applied. Most sourcebooks state that a character at zero hit points is dead, but the ''Dungeon Master's Guide'' suggests that a dying character can be raised to 0HP with medical care and be back in the fight after weeks of rest.

* Averted in games based on the UsefulNotes/FATE system, like ''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'' and ''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury''. Characters can absorb a limited amount of Stress per scene without consequence, representing their physical, mental, and/or social resilience. Beyond that, damage turns into Consequences of increasing severity (anything from "Winded" to "Severed Leg"), which don't go away without treatment, have lasting effects (life-long ones, at worst), and can be exploited by opponents to further hamper them.

** This is used straight with battle armor infantry in the tabletop game, with the justification that the last point of armor represents the trooper inside, and, at that point, even the weakest weapons in the game are powerful enough to invoke the ChunkySalsaRule on a squishy human body.

** ''TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated'' plays it straight to emphasize the rampaging engine of destruction a Promethean can easily become. They take ''no'' penalties from damage, and unlike other supernatural creatures, do ''not'' risk falling unconscious when all their Health Levels are filled with damage, fighting to the very death. And if they ''do'' die, they can come back.

* ''TabletopGame/TheWitcherGameOfImagination'' averts it in a really painful way. The less [[HitPoints Vitality]] a character has, the more penalties are added, as a way to [[RealityIsUnrealistic emulate effects of real injuries]]. Authors gave players a choice if they want to use this aversion as a rule, as it leads to HarderThanHard territory.

* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'': This is used straight with battle armor infantry in the tabletop game, with the justification that the last point of armor represents the trooper inside, and, at that point, even the weakest weapons in the game are powerful enough to invoke the ChunkySalsaRule on a squishy human body.
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' has no wound penalties, thus ensuring that any character with at least one hit point remaining (and several without that) is capable of any kind of action and exertion. This is {{Handwaved}} in some editions by the claim that hit points don't actually represent health, but the "ability to avoid injury" (despite the fact that they are recovered through bandages and magical curing spells). This, of course, inspired on RPG.net {{Fauxtivational Poster}}s of bloodied and beaten (but still standing) characters with a caption of "I've still got one HP left!" (Or of Creator/MontyPython's Black Knight, captioned "Anything over 0 means I'm good to go, baby!")
** In 3rd Edition you aren't dead until you reach -10 hp. At 0 hp you are disabled, and will lose HP with any action except movement that doesn't heal you. At -1 to -9, you are dying, meaning you fall unconscious and begin bleeding out at a rate of 1 hp per turn (unless you have an ability like Die Hard) unless healed or you reach -10 hp. You recover completely if you are taken out of negative hp via magical or mundane healing -- if you aren't dying but you are still in negative hp, you remain unconscious; any healing stabilizes you.

*** This originated in the Dungeon Master's Guide in 1st Edition. CPR or bandaging wounds would bring a dying character back to 0 HP, and the character would need to rest for many weeks after to be able to fight again.
*** Oddly enough, all other tomes in the 1st Edition stated that at 0 HP the character was dead.

** The 4th edition finally bites the bullet and takes the handwave to its logical conclusion; healing spells and bandages still recover hit points, but so do stirring speeches, special fighting moves, and even just taking a moment to catch your breath.
*** In 4th edition, you are unconscious and bleeding out at -1 HP or below, you are critically injured; you need to roll a save every turn to not die. If you are healed at all, your HP is set to 0 before healing, the same if you are stabilized. If you fail 3 saves, you are dead, and have to be resurrected. Now where did I put my 5,000GP in diamonds...?
*** When a PC goes down in 4e, [[SchrodingersGun no-one knows]] if he is critically injured or NotQuiteDead. If his death saves run out, he was bleeding out the whole time. If he gets healing or rolls a nat 20, then the injury was OnlyAFleshWound.
** Though TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} follows basically the same default rules for death and dying as in D&D 3.5 (except that instead of always being dead if reduced to -10 HP you are dead when your negative HP is equal or greater than your Constitution score which means that for most [=PCs=] it takes slightly longer to die than in D&D 3e/3.5e), it also features an optional ruleset for averting this trope, in which characters take scaling penalties depending on how damaged they are.
* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' is notable for completely averting this trope by including shock penalties for every landed attack, specific rules for dismemberment and allowing characters to survive down to -5xHP as long as they make HT rolls at -1, -2, -3 and -4xHP. In fact the rules note that it is only as -10xHP that there is nothing left of the character.
** In addition, it's possible to perform called shots (by taking penalties to the roll) so that you can shoot (or stab) someone in the vitals (for extra damage), in a limb (where a given amount of damage will cripple that limb), or in the groin (because crushing attacks inflict double the amount of shock on male characters). Note that the above-mentioned dismemberment rules are basically an extension of crippling rules--usually for use with really sharp blades.
* ''TabletopGame/TheWitcherGameOfImagination'' averts it in a really painful way. The less [[HitPoints Vitality]] a character has, the more penalties are added, as a way to [[RealityIsUnrealistic emulate effects of real injuries]]. Authors gave players a choice if they want to use this aversion as a rule, as it leads to HarderThanHard territory.
* Averted in some [=d20=]-based {{Tabletop RPG}}s, most notably ''TabletopGame/StarWarsD20'' (the Revised Core Rulebook edition), as well as ''TabletopGame/{{Spycraft}}'' and its derivee, the ''Series/StargateSG1'' RPG. Hit points are split into vitality points, which represent the type of damage a character can shrug off relatively easily, and wound points, which represent serious injury. After running out of vitality points, the character is fatigued, suffers ability penalties and cannot run, but is still alive, and further attacks will damage wound points. (Vitality points increase with level; wound points do not.) Only after running out of wound points does a CriticalExistenceFailure occur. Some types of damage, like fall damage, affect wound points directly and ignore vitality points, as do critical hits. So if you roll well, it's entirely possible for a first-level character to one-shot Darth Vader.
** The ''Saga Edition'' of the [=d20=]-based ''Franchise/StarWars'' RPG would use hit points (for characters, vehicles, structures and objects alike), but both a damage threshold and a condition track. (Do damage equal to or greater than the damage threshold, the recipient moves down one step on the condition track, with a corresponding penalty to certain rolls: -1, -2, -5, -10, and then unconscious or unwilling-to-fight/resist.) Your character becomes unconscious if the damage is below its damage threshold, and killed or destroyed if the damage is equal to or greater than its damage threshold. An explanation in one of the preview articles was essentially that every blow failed to be serious or connect... except the one that dropped you to zero hit points.
* ''Very'' averted in ''TabletopGame/UnknownArmies''--instead of players keeping track of hitpoints, they are tallied by the GM, who then describes the players' injuries back to them. Each injury must deal at least one hit point naturally, regardless of first aid, and heavy damage leaves permanent skill penalties.
* Completely averted in ''TabletopGame/ArsMagica'' 5th edition. There, every wound a character sustains imposes penalties on rolls, by an amount determined by the severity of the wound. Since you roll for everything, including defense, each wound makes it more likely that the next attack will kill/KO you, and it gets harder and harder to hit your opponent. After a fight, even the lightest injuries have a chance of becoming worse through infection or exertion unless medically/magically treated, and heavy wounds require months of recovery time.
* Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'', where the more damage your character takes, the higher both the penalties to what he/she can do and the chances to end up unconscious and -especially- die are, being the latter something that given how it's designed that game is quite easy.
* Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{Inquisitor}}''--unless armour totally stops damage to a body part there are repercussions, both immediate and long-lasting. For example, a minimum-damage wound to the head will still cause minor stunning, whereas a heavy shot to the groin will knock them prone, stun them, make them bleed heavily, slow them down and possibly send them into system shock. The only chance of not having a negative effect is taking a weak hit to a limb (you can shrug off the first few points of arm or leg damage), but anything more than a graze will cause bad things to happen. And that's before you factor in blacking out from accumulated pain, or simply having them go [[FreakOut Totally Batshit Crazy]] due to post-traumatic stress. And due to having their scrotum turned into steak tartare.
** This system originated with Inquisitor's ancestor, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, in which, yes, you can get hit with a spear in the groin and be taken out of action for weeks despite having wounds left.
** Not like Inquisitor is realistic in any other factor; the only way to die is via headshot or massive damage, and it generally takes dozens of shots to inflict massive damage. Heck, you can shoot a Space Marine in the head with an anti-tank gun and he'll only have a 1/70 chance of dying.
** Still, played straight(at least partially) in its successor, ''TabletopGame/DarkHeresy'' (and its sibling ''TabletopGame/RogueTrader'') - you can take good amount of damage without any ill effects(apart from having problems with healing it back), but as soon as you've lost the last wound, each wounding hit makes yet more nasty things with you. And of course, there's no difference if you're hit in the head, or leg, while you still have more than zero wounds - apart from difference in armour on those locations(see usual Warhammer "no helmet" problem).
* TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}} averts this, adding increasing wound penalties to all actions after the character is down to about half health. However, this is played straight if a character purchases the "Pain Editor" bioware, which allows them to ignore wound penalties in exchange for not knowing how close they are to unconsciousness/death.
* Averted in ''Tabletopgame/BattleTech'', a sci-fi miniatures game. As your 'Mechs ([[HumongousMecha huge bipedal war machines of death]]) take damage, they can lose weapons, take engine hits, their gyros can be disrupted, and quite realistically [[SnipingTheCockpit the pilot can be killed with a headshot]]. Ammunition can also explode, critical heat sinks destroyed... whenever a 'Mech runs out of armor in a location, bad things happen. A mech ''can'' go from to full to zero with mostly center torso damage, but it is justified as the center torso houses the mech's fusion power plant and stabilization gyroscope, and is also the structural core of the whole machine.
** The pilot hitpoint system seems to play it straight at first, until you get to the consciousness system. As you take damage, it becomes harder and harder for your pilot to keep conscious after taking more injuries. So while you can technically fight at full power with only one HP left, you'll probably fall unconscious long before that happens.
** Played straight with PoweredArmor units, however. You can strip all the armor off a trooper, but until you take out that last damage box representing the trooper himself, he fights at full power.

* Somewhat subverted in most Sanguine Productions [=RPG=]s, notably Ironclaw and Albedo. There are hitpoints in Ironclaw, but take too many wounds and you have to start rolling checks against blacking out, and you can die with only six wounds if you fail a death test. Albedo doesn't have hitpoints and instead has threshold checks to see if you die, or take body point damage.
* The ''Warhammer'' franchise:
** Averted in ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'' and the 9th (current) edition of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' for the most part. Units with a large amount of [[HitPoints wounds]] (generally 10+), like monsters and vehicles, have some of their statistics reduced when wounded, becoming slower, weaker, and/or less accurate. Units with few wounds (1-3) do not degrade in the same way, but they rarely survive more than a few successful attacks anyway, so it doesn't really matter. The trope is only ''really'' played straight for the select few units that lie somewhere in the middle (6-9 wounds), such as the Daemon Prince, the Dreadnought, or the Hive Tyrant: tough enough to survive for a while, but not tough enough to warrant a degradation table - these units are particularily dangerous on the battlefield as a result.
** This trope ''was'' played straight for multi-[[HitPoints wound]] models in previous editions of ''Warhammer 40000'' and ''[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}} Warhammer Fantasy Battles]]''. Only a few units had any special rules that were based on the wounds remaining/taken - a Steam Tank had more chance of blowing up if you push it hard when it's already taken damage, a Doomwheel had a greater (even more than usual...) chance of going out of control the more it gets damaged, and Hydras had their number of attacks linked to the number of wounds (read: heads) left. Of course, it worked both ways as there were also items or special rules that give bonus attacks or powers as the model or unit gets closer to death.
** ''Horus Heresy'''s general rules both avert and play this trope straight, depending on whether or not you are talking about vehicles or monstrous creatures. A vehicle will avert the trope, losing hull points and taking damage to the weapons/motivational units (whatever they may be, it IS a big galaxy) or having crew react poorly to having bullets or worse (usually worse) ping off the hull, even having various destruction options based on the severity of the killing blow. On the other hand, monstrous creatures will suffer no ill effects until the final wound is lost, at which point the trope is displayed brilliantly and they are simply removed from play, rarely with any damaging effects to the battlefield around.
** In ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'', creatures don't automatically die at zero HitPoints. Any attack that deals more damage than they have HitPoints remaining causes a random CriticalHit effect based on the [[SubsystemDamage location]] and severity of the blow, ranging from "die instantly" to "suffer a minor penalty for one round".
* Played somewhat straight in ''TabletopGame/{{Nobilis}}'' 2nd edition, where the characters are basically gods. All Nobles have one or more deadly, serious, and surface wounds they can take before death. A Noble suffers no ill effect for ''any'' lesser damage until they have used up all their wound ranks of a higher level.[[note]] Therefore, you can't beat a Noble to death with your bare hands without miraculous strength because a Noble can take an infinite number of surface or serious wounds as long as that Noble has a single deadly wound left. Gets worse when multiple gifts like Durant and Immortal increase the minimum threshold of damage needed to inflict each level of wound.[[/note]] Even the weakest Noble could survive three gunshots to the head without being significantly impaired. You do however have to spend slightly more miracle points on miracles when out of deadly wounds (and more when out of serious wounds).

* Subverted in ''TabletopGame/TheDresdenFiles'' RPG, where the player can elect to remove damage by taking "Consequences" like Bruised Ribs or Broken Leg, which have lasting effects (possibly even persisting the rest of the character's life, depending on the severity) and can be exploited by opponents to do extra damage or otherwise hamper the character's ability to act.
** Similarly subverted in other games using the [=FATE=] system, such as ''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury''. The mechanics are meant to emulate and serve storytelling conventions, so that the damage you take isn't even really damage, but "stress" against your health (or mental health, or reputation, or whatever else the game assigns them to). If you get a moment to rest, stress wipes away easily - but if it keeps piling up, then you have to start taking those Consequences or get taken out.
** Also averted by many (not quite all, though the two already given are among them) iterations of the Fate system where it's entirely possible for a character to be taken out despite still having stress boxes remaining. (In these versions, each 'hit' applied to the stress track marks off only ''one'' box, but it has to be one of appropriate 'size' or, failing that, the next higher-rated one that's still free. And if there isn't one left over, that character is out even if they still have lower-rated free boxes remaining.)
* Averted in ''TabletopGame/TunnelsAndTrolls'', but only for monsters: a wounded monster fights less well than an unwounded one, but player characters consider all wounds but the last one (when the character dies) to be superficial.
* Averted by ''TabletopGame/BurningWheel''. There's something that looks like a wound meter, but it's only used to determine just how incapacitating each wound is. Wounds aren't cumulative, but the penalties they impose are. It's very hard to land a single blow that kills an enemy. It's easy to keep hammering on a foe until it gives up, or to beat it into unconsciousness/immobility and then cut its throat at your leisure.
* Averted in most of ''TabletopGame/TheWorldOfDarkness'' [=RPG=]s by Creator/WhiteWolf: the more damaged you are, the more dice you lose from your actions, to the point where sufficient injury denies you the use of your skills entirely. It even varies from supernatural to supernatural, where vampires are able to ignore more wound penalties than humans, and so on.
** ''TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated'' plays it straight to emphasize the rampaging engine of destruction a Promethean can easily become. They take ''no'' penalties from damage, and unlike other supernatural creatures, do ''not'' risk falling unconscious when all their Health Levels are filled with damage, fighting to the very death. And if they ''do'' die, they can come back.
** In ''TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion'', a wraith's corpus (its physical form) is only a shell surrounding its psyche, so damage doesn't hinder you and pain is at most psychosomatic (you can even voluntarily sacrifice a corpus level to become temporarily intangible, which lets you walk through walls). If you lose every point, however, you are instantly in deep trouble, because the ''real'' purpose of the corpus is to anchor you to the Shadowlands, and without it your psyche is tossed into the Tempest (the "next level") where you're an open target for psychological attacks from your Shadow and its allies.
** ''TabletopGame/PrincessTheHopeful:'' The Practical Magic of Storms lets members of that Court (Noble and Sworn alike) invert the usual wound ''penalties'' into ''bonuses'' and not have to roll for unconsciousness.
** The ''Innocents'' {{Sourcebook}} for child characters has wound penalties that start sooner (e.g.: a -1 to all dice rolls starting at their fifth-to-last wound, rather than third-to-last for adults) and add extra effects, like losing the ability to use HeroicWillpower. The "Tough" merit lessens these penalties, with all the implicit fears for anyone who sees how inured to pain the kid is.
** ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' averts this... in theory. The more health levels you mark off with damage, the greater the penalty on rolls. However. Due to the low number of health levels even for people who invest heavily in Charms to get more, and the insanely high amounts of damage Exalts can dish out, and the availability of cheap [[NoSell perfect defences]], you end up with a situation in which two Exalts leap around for twenty minutes in a battle of attrition, perfectly evading or parrying each other's attacks, until one of them runs out of [[{{Mana}} Essence]] and [[OneHitKill dies instantly]], neither side having felt a wound penalty that wasn't instant death. Against most opponents without perfect defences, you skip the battle of attrition and cut straight to the instant death, ''still'' without the involvement of a wound penalty (and [[{{Mooks}} Extras]] [[MadeOfPlasticine die so easily]] almost nobody remembers they ''have'' wound penalties because you can kill them with harsh language or a [[FingerPokeOfDoom finger poke]]).
** As a shameless plug for the game, there are actual ways to kill with harsh language, literally.
** This new Exalted system of combat (which is known for its brokenness, to the point where a selling point for the 3rd edition is a complete overhaul of the combat rules) leads to a thing called "The death spiral" where, a player, having taken damage, takes penalties to rolls, and thus, continues to take damage, which make the penalties to rolls even worse....
*** Most Exalts have a Charm that allows them to bypass wound penalties, but not all of those are actually ''good''.
** Following the 2.5 errata, Exalted is now a full aversion, with no qualifiers whatsoever. With decreased lethality across the board, [[ArmorIsUseless armour actually being useful now]], and perfect spam being beaten with the nerf goremaul until it stopped twitching, those health level penalties are now actually relevant.
* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': You start with twenty life, and can gain into the hundreds with the right deck. Except for a few cards that respond to life totals at other levels, the only thing they do is say that you die at zero and that you can't [[CastFromHitPoints pay life you don't have]] for abilities. There are even a few deck builds based around a card that lets a player effectively pay life as mana coupled with an X-pay burn spell(which deals damage based on how much {{Mana}} you pay) to precisely kill the opponent on turn 2-3 with 1 point of life left.
** Likewise, creatures die when dealt damage greater than or equal to their Toughness in a single turn. Anything less is shrugged off. There are ''some'' exceptions. For example, many black kill spells penalize Power ''and'' Toughness, meaning the creature both deals less damage and dies from less damage. In addition, being reduced to zero Toughness by a penalizing effect destroys the creature on the spot (and because it's not damage, kills creatures that cannot be slain in battle).
** Averted with Planeswalkers. Planeswalker hit points are an abstraction called "Loyalty," meant to represent how much damage they're willing to suffer for their ally (the player) and what services they're willing to offer. Most Planeswalkers have an ability that gains loyalty, another, more powerful one that costs loyalty, and a very powerful one that takes several turns of building loyalty to call on (and often de facto wins the game). Importantly, a Planeswalker can't use an ability that costs more loyalty than it has. Dealing damage to a Planeswalker reduces its loyalty, putting some of its abilities out of reach.
* {{Averted}} in the ''[[TabletopGame/MistbornTheOriginalTrilogy Mistborn Adventure Game]]''. If an attack deals more than a quarter of your current Resilience in damage, you take a Serious Burden, which anyone attacking or opposing you can invoke to add a die to their pool. If the attack deals more than half your Resilience, you take a Grave Burden, which is worth two dice to your opponents.
* Both Played Straight, and Averted in ''[[TabletopGame/PokemonTabletopAdventures Pokemon Tabletop United]]''. A pokemon is equally dangerous at full hit points, as it is at 1 hit point, but repeated hurting and healing over time will lead to degrading durability. Dropping to any multiple of 50% Max. hit points, or taking at least 50% hit points in a single hit causes an "Injury" which can only be healed by dedicated medical attention, and time. Five or more injuries begins to cause damage every turn, and ten injuries means death.
* Used on a few levels in TabletopGame/{{Infinity}}. Most units, when they receive too many wounds, will become unconscious and can be revived with proper medical skill or killed by enemy attacks. However, there are a few [[ZigZagged different ways this can go]].
** [[InstantDeathBullet Shock ammunition]] will {{One Hit Kill}} models with one wound, which is standard. Some other nonstandard ammunition can have the same effect, skipping the Unconscious step and invoking this trope.
** Models with [[HeroicWillpower Dogged]] will continue functioning with critical injuries for as long as you keep assigning them orders. When you run out of orders or decide to focus elsewhere, they'll drop unconscious on the spot.
** Models with [[ImplacableMan No Wound Incapacitation]] ''completely'' run on this trope. Until they die, these models will continue to fight at full efficiency. Amusingly, a No Wound Incapacitation model can seek out medical care long past the point when they should be taking a nap, possibly by sprinting across the map to a safe place. If the doctor botches their Willpower roll to heal the injuries, the NWI character pauses for a second, notices their injuries and [[PuffOfLogic collapsing dead on the spot]].
* In ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'' you are as strong at 1 hp as you are at full HP. Oddly enough, some weapons damage limbs for exactly 1 turn and then your leg magically fixes itself... [[AWizardDidIt Somehow.]]
* Averted in ''TabletopGame/Sorcerer2001''. Not only aren't there any HitPoints in this game, but taking any damage in a fight is modeled as a reduction of the victim's dice pool for the upcoming actions, making its effects immediately palpable long before the character is taken out.
* Heavily averted in ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'', with damage taken off the character's statistics, drastically reducing their effectiveness. If it wasn't for [[PlotArmour Story Points]] most characters would walk around permanently crippled.
* PlayedWith in ''TabletopGame/VictoryInThePacific''. On the one hand, any damage whatsoever removes the gunnery bonus from ships that have it, and each tick of damage reduces a ship's speed by 1. On the other hand, as long a ship's damage is less than it's armor, it still gets the same gunnery factor and if it has airstrikes, they aren't affected at all. But then one more tick of damage such that damage equals armor, and any gunnery factor is reduced to 1 and any airstrike to 0.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasy [[http://www.finalfantasyd20.com d20]]'', a homebrewed conversion of ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'', makes this a special rule for "Shindroids" (read: [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Warforged]]): They don't follow the usual incapacitation/bleed-out rule the other races are subject to, dying when their negative HP equals their constitution score due to the fact that they're robots. They're still broken at 0, but they don't hurt themselves by moving like everyone else.
* Averted in [[https://zork.net/~nick/loyhargil/tsoy2/book1--rulebook.html The Shadow of Yesterday]]/[[https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/311958/Solar-System Solar System]]. Individual instances of Harm stack up. When you reach the "Bruised" level you incur a temporary dice penalty on your next action, then at the "Bloodied" level the penalty sticks around until you're healed. Hit "Broken" and you have to spend [[ResourcesManagementGameplay metagame currency]] to even act at all. Suffer any Harm past Broken and you're utterly defeated--this could mean death, but it depends on your opponent's intention, and Harm can be [[MaliciousSlander social]], [[PsychologicalCombat mental]] or [[BreakThemByTalking emotional]] as well as physical.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'' averts this with ''three'' health/energy bars, each representing a different pair of ability scores. Damage of a specific type carries over to the other bars once a bar is exhausted. If one of the bars drops to zero, you're injured, and everything is harder to do. If two bars drop to zero, you're reduced to crawling on the floor. You die when all three bars drop to zero.

* Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{Sorcerer}}''. Not only aren't there any HitPoints in this game, but taking any damage in a fight is modeled as a reduction of the victim's dice pool for the upcoming actions, making its effects immediately palpable long before the character is taken out.

** The ''Innocents'' {{Sourcebook}} for child characters has wound penalties that start sooner (e.g.: a -1 to all dice rolls starting at their fifth-to-last wound, rather than third-to-last for adults) and add extra effects, like losing the ability to use HeroicWillpower. The "Tough" merit lessens these penalties, with all the implicit AdultFear for anyone who sees how inured to pain the kid is.

* Averted in most of the ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' games, especially prior to the dissolution of FASA. This is at least partly because it reflects the original [[TabletopGames paper and pencil tactical sim]] they are all based on.
** Although the trope is used straight with battle armor infantry in the tabletop game, with the justification that the last point of armor represents the trooper inside, and at that point, even the weakest weapons in the game are powerful enough to invoke the ChunkySalsaRule on a squishy human body.

* Averted in [[TabletopGame/ProseDescriptiveQualities PDQ System]] games like ''Dead Inside'', ''Truth & Justice'', and ''Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies''. Your skills and traits (called "Qualities" or "Fortes" depending on the game) ''are'' your health, with damage gradually eroding your capabilities. The defender gets to choose which Qualities suck up the damage (with or without {{Handwave}} as to why getting punched reduces your Accounting skill), letting you preserve relevant skills in a contest at the expense of irrelevant skills.
** In early games, you were out once any of your skills went below the lowest possible rank, meaning you could opt to throw a fight by tanking your lowest skills quickly, or hold on at length by eroding all your skills evenly. By ''7 Skies'', you were down only once all your skills were out.
** Starting with ''Truth & Justice'', the first Quality you take damage to in an encounter is also supposed to be noted down by the GameMaster for later use as a "story hook," meaning the damage a PlayerCharacter takes creates consequences in their life. This leads to fan jokes that Franchise/SpiderMan had so many problems with his love life because he "kept getting punched in the Girlfriend" Quality.
* Played straight in TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering, you start with twenty life, and can gain into the hundreds with the right deck. Except for a few cards that respond to life totals at other levels, the only thing they do is say that you die at zero and that you can't [[CastFromHitPoints pay life you don't have]] for abilities. There are even a few deck builds based around a card that lets a player effectively pay life as mana coupled with an X-pay burn spell(which deals damage based on how much {{Mana}} you pay) to precisely kill the opponent on turn 2-3 with 1 point of life left.

* While most {{Tabletop RPG}}s have some kind of wound penalties, ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' does not, thus ensuring that any character with at least one hit point remaining (and several without that) is capable of any kind of action and exertion. This is {{Handwaved}} in some editions by the claim that hit points don't actually represent health, but the "ability to avoid injury" (despite the fact that they are recovered through bandages and magical curing spells). This, of course, inspired on RPG.net {{Fauxtivational Poster}}s of bloodied and beaten (but still standing) characters with a caption of "I've still got one HP left!" (Or of Creator/MontyPython's Black Knight, captioned "Anything over 0 means I'm good to go, baby!")

*** Also, drowning immediately sets your HP to zero. There are at least three ways to exploit this. One of them involves transfinite numbers.

* Completely averted in ''TabletopGame/ArsMagica'' 5th edition. There, every wound a character sustains imposes penalties on rolls, by an amount determined by the severity of the wound. Since you roll for everything, including defense, each wound makes it more likely that the next attack will kill/KO you, and it gets harder and harder to hit your opponent. And after a fight, even the lightest injuries have a chance of becoming worse through infection unless medically/magically treated.

** Averted in ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'' and the 8th (current) edition of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' for the most part. Units with a large amount of [[HitPoints wounds]] (generally 10+), like monsters and vehicles, have some of their statistics reduced when wounded, becoming slower, weaker, and/or less accurate. Units with few wounds (1-3) do not degrade in the same way, but they rarely survive more than a few successful attacks anyway, so it doesn't really matter. The trope is only ''really'' played straight for the select few units that lie somewhere in the middle (6-9 wounds), such as the Daemon Prince, the Dreadnought, or the Hive Tyrant: tough enough to survive for a while, but not tough enough to warrant a degradation table - these units are particularily dangerous on the battlefield as a result.

** The ''Saga Edition'' of the [=d20=]-based ''StarWars'' RPG would use hit points (for characters, vehicles, structures and objects alike), but both a damage threshold and a condition track. (Do damage equal to or greater than the damage threshold, the recipient moves down one step on the condition track, with a corresponding penalty to certain rolls: -1, -2, -5, -10, and then unconscious or unwilling-to-fight/resist.) Your character becomes unconscious if the damage is below its damage threshold, and killed or destroyed if the damage is equal to or greater than its damage threshold. An explanation in one of the preview articles was essentially that every blow failed to be serious or connect... except the one that dropped you to zero hit points.

** In ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'', creatures don't automatically die at zero HitPoints. Any attack that deals more damage than they have HitPoints remaining causes a random CriticalHit effect based on the [[SubsystemDamage hit location]] and severity of the blow, ranging from "die instantly" to "suffer a minor penalty for one round".

** In ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'', creatures don't automatically die at zero HitPoints. Any attack that deal more damage than they have HitPoints remaining causes a random CriticalHit effect based on the [[SubsystemDamage hit location]] and the severity of the blow, ranging from "die instantly" to "suffer a minor penalty for one round".

* Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{Traveler}}'', where damage is dealt not to HitPoints, but to your ''physical stats''; thus, the more damage you take, the less you're capable of doing. Once two stats reach zero, you collapse unconscious; when the third one joins them, [[StatDeath you're dead]].

** Likewise, creatures die when dealt damage greater than or equal to their Toughness in a single turn. Anything less is shrugged off. There are ''some'' exceptions. For example, many black kill spells penalize Power ''and'' Toughness, meaning the creature both deals less damage and dies from less damage.
** Averted with Planeswalkers. Planeswalker hit points are an abstraction called "Loyalty," meant to represent how much damage they're willing to suffer for their ally (the player) and what services they're willing to offer. Most Planeswalkers have an ability that gains loyalty, another, more powerful one that costs loyalty, and a very powerful one that takes several turns of building loyalty to call on (and often de facto wins the game). Importantly, a Planeswalker can't use an ability that costs more loyalty than it has.
Dealing damage to a Planeswalker reduces its loyalty, putting some of it's abilities out of reach.

* TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} Oracles can more literally do this to ''other'' people; one of the mysteries they can study is Time, which gives them access to a revelation ability that removes targets from spacetime altogether for a number of rounds if the target fails their Fortitude save.

* TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}} averts this, adding increasing wound penalties to all actions after the character is down to about half health.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasy [[http://www.finalfantasyd20.com d20]]'', a homebrewed conversion of ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'', makes this a special rule for "Shinradroids" (read: [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Warforged]]): They don't follow the usual incapacitance/bleed-out rule the other races are subject to, dying when their negative HP equals their constitution score due to the fact that they're robots. They're still broken at 0, but they don't hurt themselves by moving like everyone else.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasy [[http://www.finalfantasyd20.com d20]]'', a homebrewed conversion of Pathfinder, makes this a special rule for "Shinradroids" (read: [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Warforged]]): They don't follow the usual incapacitance/bleed-out rule the other races are subject to, dying when their negative HP equals their constitution score due to the fact that they're robots. They're still broken at 0, but they don't hurt themselves by moving like everyone else.

* A homebrewed ''VideoGame/FinalFantasy'' [[http://www.finalfantasyd20.com D20 conversion]] makes this a special rule for "Shinradroids" (read: Warforged). The don't follow the usual incapacitance/bleed-out rule the other races are subject to, dying when their negative HP equals their constitution score due to the fact that they're robots. They're still broken at 0, but they don't hurt themselves by moving like everyone else.