Temporary hit points are something that are very clear about what they're doing, mechanically, but what about fluff-wise? How does it feel to get stabbed with a sword but have all of the damage taken out of temporary hit points? What does it look/sound/smell like?
How does it feel to be on death's door but then receive a boost of temporary hit points so you're mobile again?
This is excluding an aether kineticist's temporary hit points from their defensive power since that's very clearly deflection, unlike other temporary hit point sources.
I always envisoned it kind of like Wolverine's healing factor: while you have Temp HP, you get wounded but they immediately close as if you weren't wounded at all. Not 100% accurate, but it's how I see it.
As for the second point, a sort of extrapolation: gaining temporary HP closes some of your wounds/sets some bones/whatever you need, enough to let you act again, but once they expire all the wounds come back and you go down like a sack of bloody potatoes (unless someone actually healed you, of course.)
Temporary hit points are something that are very clear about what they're doing, mechanically, but what about fluff-wise? How does it feel to get stabbed with a sword but have all of the damage taken out of temporary hit points? What does it look/sound/smell like?
You're not being "stabbed with a sword" unless that strike represents the last of your hit points. Hit points are an abstraction of near misses, bruising, etc.
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You're not being "stabbed with a sword" unless that strike represents the last of your hit points. Hit points are an abstraction of near misses, bruising, etc.
I've always hated that explanation for several reasons. First, somehow whatever "luck" it represents is directly healable via fast healing, cure light wounds, and the like. Second, every single hit is a hit. Poison is inflicted, a touch attack definitely connected and discharged into the person, falling damage is inflicted etc, and this explanation seems to run counter to that. Third, it minimizes the fact that these people are superhuman. These are not "our world people, but some of them have magic". They're all superhuman from level 1 and on and they can achieve absolutely amazing things.
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Drahliana is right. HP is an abstraction. I say it is simply a measure of a characters ability to turn a fatal blow into a non-fatal one and leave it at that.
Trying to justify it in real-world terms is a path that leads only to darkness.
As a person who uses HP meat points in my games rather than "luck points", temporary hit points act either as your body automatically healing itself or acts as a forcefield depending on the nature of the ability granting the temp hp.
Trying to justify it in real-world terms is a path that leads only to awesome anime blood and high level fighters who end up being skeletons with glowing eyes when they are on really really low health.
Fixed that for you :P
What I'm currently thinking of using: Hit Points and Temporary Hit Points represent basically the same thing; a pool of life (or unlife) energy that can close up wounds inflicted so that the wielder can keep going. (Temporary hit points are just something external to that person's own pool and thus don't work quite as well in some ways)
If they're hit in the throat with a dagger (critical hit, maximum damage roll!) that wound is inflicted, and then the person floods it with energy to heal it up either completely or sufficiently to keep fighting without penalty. Harm and Heal directly affect this pool of energy but can't strike at the body itself; this is why it cannot bring them down below 1 hp.
Bleed damage is damage that resists this automatic healing and requires a constant stream of energy to refrain from bleeding out or whatever (which would inflict constitution damage and is thus very much something to avoid). Once below 0 hp it's similar; they cannot flood their body with sufficiently "high-pressure" energy to actually close up wounds reliably; all they can do is hold things in place and hope that they get lucky or outside intervention arrives.
This allows for proper superhuman capabilities, doesn't fall apart narratively in any situation I can think of, and fits all of the mechanics I'm aware of without retroactively changing what happened at any point.
Edit: Nonlethal damage represents damage that doesn't need to be healed to keep functional and will be restored fairly quickly on its own, and thus people leave it be. (Since there's basically no circumstance where spending the energy to close it all up is worth it, especially since natural healing will fix it relatively soon and magical healing will clear it up as a side-effect of restoring the energy pool)
Personally, I do view all hits as being damage to the character. If you get hit by a sword and take 6 damage, you've been hit by a sword and are now bleeding. It's just that 6 damage means something different narratively when looking at 1st level as opposed to 10th level. At first level that might be a stab in the gut, something seriously painful to you that took away a lot of your hit point total. At 10th level, their blade barely scraps you and leaves a thin, bloody gash as opposed to a grievous wound. You can take a dozen of those little cuts before they get to you, but they will eventually, while the same damage in one hit is still something grievous like being stabbed right through the stomach. As for temporary HP, I think of it as something akin to endorphins, where you haven't actually healed any damage but your body's natural pain response has dulled your pain somewhat so you can fight longer than you would normally be able to. Spells like False Life or something might help with immediate effects of damage like blood loss; it magically replicates your blood cells or partially heals some tissue damage, but not enough for it to actually hold and these blood cells either die off quickly or moving around too much will tear what little tissue damage was repaired very easily, which is why you lose them.
Of course, some of my players in a game have like Fast Healing 10, so they get impaled all the time and walk it off in a few hours time.
One of the things I dislike about that "at higher levels X amount of hit point damage represents less physical trauma" is that it also requires them to recover from injuries slower at the same rate. Cure light wounds? Less effective. Their own fast healing? Less effective.
It also gives weird results like "a first level character is given a hundred temporary hit points; she's now exceptionally good at turning attacks into glancing blows". And this includes things like "falling at terminal velocity", "being crushed by the ceiling pushing down on her", etc.
Also, what about somebody who's continuously having their temporary hit points replaced? They keep accumulating small wounds that, regardless, never actually impair them at all.
Earthdawn had the best answer to this, every class was somewhat magical and had a talent that directly reinforced their body to make them more resilient. You really did get shredded when you took a lot of damage, you just kept going because you had magic holding you together.
Don't worry about the flames. I'm not actually on fire until my HP get really low.
Yeah, hit points make more logical sense when it's more like "As a 1st level character, getting stabbed in the kidney was potentially fatal. Now? I have three arrows and four sword thrusts through my lungs, and I'm still talking to you. Are you SURE you want to mess with me?"
I also change how hit points recover in my game so that's a bit less of an issue for me. I certainly do have it represent more than a literal scrape, it's just that I tend to save really horrible injuries for higher HP damage; one of my players is a damage sponge and will take on the enemies that deal 70-80 damage at a time because he can take it and dish it back out, so he still regularly gets impaled and ripped to pieces and has a horrible time. When it comes to things like falling damage with lower level characters, I tend to see it as a non-issue because people don't tend to encounter that amount of falling damage at that point in a game. Now my players just jump off of cliffs and break their legs and let the fast healing fix it while they run.