HP isn't absolute, it's the amount of damage you can take in a given timeframe. If your HP is 10 then stubbing your toe ten times in a week isn't likely to kill you, but stub your toe ten times in a minute and you'll need surgery.
Indeed. It complicates it as HP just doesn’t work out. It’s also seldom the HP loss that kills you in real life. Usually it is the status condition.
So for example, breaking a bone generally isn’t considered deadly, but breaking your neck is generally not the same as breaking a toe, and a broken toe can cause a toxic or shock state that can kill you.
A stab wound generally doesn’t directly kill you, a bleed condition might, infection, lack of oxygen etc.
So a more realistic game health system is generally one where you aren’t too concerned with HP, or HP is more analogous to stamina and one’s ability to avoid complete incapacitation from exhaustion or shock etc. and you’d just be going around monitoring the severity of various status ailments you were suffering from, where if any status ailment became too severe or was too chronic you’d simply just die more or less on the spot or pass out and die if someone didn’t treat you in a certain time.
Arguably we might all have 1hp- as many common “1hp” injuries in games are easily deadly to real humans.
Or if HP is our absolute threshold of consciousness or stamina, we’d all have different HP and losing one may feel different. That said though, we can’t say 100% what others experience, but generally having a higher threshold doesn’t change the same experience. Someone with a high pain threshold still “feels” the same thing in theory when they get cut, they can just tolerate more pain without showing it or responding. Even if you are strong it isn’t like lifting 10 lbs doesn’t feel like 10lbs, you’re just able to lift it a little easier or carry it longer, but it isn’t like just because you can lift a car that a 200lb bag won’t still feel “heavy” or take effort.
So maybe 1hp loss feels like stubbing a toe or maybe it feels like after a brisk jog.
Of course… who says losing 1hp would feel the same in a game? Generally without an HP gauge you wouldn’t know what your HP is. Sometimes character movement or other graphics or dynamics change when a character is below a certain limit or in a “near death” mode- but beyond that there is no indication that the actual loss of the HP feels like anything. You can be sick and not feel any different than usual- but, to that point…
Even if you do feel some aspect of health- what it feels like depends. If being bitten by a bug in a game or falling off a small drop both took 1HP, I’d imagine the feeling you get from falling too far isn’t the same as being bitten by a bug, and afterwards a bug bite may sting or itch vs. the soreness one might feel over the feet and body after a fall.
TL:DR- HP doesn’t seem like a system that works well or works as in most games in real life, but inside a game world or in our world, I’d have to imagine that losing 1HP feels like whatever made you lose that HP. If you lose 1HP by being hit with a stick then losing 1HP in that case would feel like being hit with a stick, but losing 1HP to poison would feel like whatever that poison feels like, and you could lose 1HP to one type of poison or sickness and 1HP to another and it wouldn’t feel the same. Without an HP gauge you generally have no way to tell how much HP you’ve lost if any.
But it honestly depends on proportion to your total HP.
Losing 1HP at 10HP max will be much different
So for example, breaking a bone generally isn’t considered deadly, but breaking your neck is generally not the same as breaking a toe, and a broken toe can cause a toxic or shock state that can kill you.
A stab wound generally doesn’t directly kill you, a bleed condition might, infection, lack of oxygen etc.
So a more realistic game health system is generally one where you aren’t too concerned with HP, or HP is more analogous to stamina and one’s ability to avoid complete incapacitation from exhaustion or shock etc. and you’d just be going around monitoring the severity of various status ailments you were suffering from, where if any status ailment became too severe or was too chronic you’d simply just die more or less on the spot or pass out and die if someone didn’t treat you in a certain time.
Or if HP is our absolute threshold of consciousness or stamina, we’d all have different HP and losing one may feel different. That said though, we can’t say 100% what others experience, but generally having a higher threshold doesn’t change the same experience. Someone with a high pain threshold still “feels” the same thing in theory when they get cut, they can just tolerate more pain without showing it or responding. Even if you are strong it isn’t like lifting 10 lbs doesn’t feel like 10lbs, you’re just able to lift it a little easier or carry it longer, but it isn’t like just because you can lift a car that a 200lb bag won’t still feel “heavy” or take effort.
So maybe 1hp loss feels like stubbing a toe or maybe it feels like after a brisk jog.
Even if you do feel some aspect of health- what it feels like depends. If being bitten by a bug in a game or falling off a small drop both took 1HP, I’d imagine the feeling you get from falling too far isn’t the same as being bitten by a bug, and afterwards a bug bite may sting or itch vs. the soreness one might feel over the feet and body after a fall.