Does pain equal damage?

[omgFIREBALLS]

I see this in a lot of games. To name a few, World of Warcraft: Pain Suppression reduces the target's damage taken by x% for y sec. Heroes of the Storm: Sonya's Ignore Pain reduces her damage taken blah blah. And here in PoE I can drink beer to take less damage.

 

On the one hand, this is asinine. By extension, if I were to acquire a full-body full-effect pain suppressant, I would be immortal? Of course not. But on the other hand, what's a hit point? Does your hit point total represent how much of a beating you can take before you die or just how much you can take before you can't maintain consciousness - at which point your injuries will probably make short work of you even if your enemies don't deliver the killing blow to your defenseless body. Because in that case, being numb to the pain obviously keeps you standing longer, still anything that damages your brain; directly through a blow or indirectly by cutting off its oxygen supply (decapitation, impaled heart) would outright kill you, and a spear through your chest isn't going to be any less fatal regardless of your level of intoxication.

 

Obviously the health/endurance system (which I'm for the record not opposed to) of PoE makes this a trickier discussion but... does pain equal damage?

[Eos]

Ignore Pain just sounds cooler than Ignore Wounds

[Anthile]

It's just a game, you should really just relax.

 

As any decent roleplaying book will tell you, any number in a game is always an abstraction and can potentially mean a lot of things. Generally it's whatever is most interesting for the story.

[petrivanzyl]

I this game pain = endurance and damage = health. So it kinda make sense that as long as you can remain standing you don't lose hit points yet.