Hit Points

The pool of vitality that lets a hero survive more than one blow.

via Wikipedia: Hit points · see source

Hit points measure how much damage a character or creature can take before falling in Dungeons & Dragons. The term was coined by D&D co-creator Dave Arneson while he and Gary Gygax developed the game from Gygax's earlier Chainmail rules: under Chainmail a single dice roll decided whether a figure killed its enemy or died, and players did not want to lose characters they had grown attached to. Arneson instead gave each character a pool of hit points that drops with every blow, so a character can survive several hits, borrowing the idea from the wargames Don't Give Up the Ship and Ironclads. Computer games inspired by D&D copied the mechanic as early as 1975, and it became the standard health system of video games.

Quick Facts

Coined by: Dave Arneson
Origin: Dungeons & Dragons, developed from Chainmail
Inspiration: The wargames Don't Give Up the Ship and Ironclads

Facts from the source article.

Did You Know?

The early D&D-inspired computer games PEDIT5 and DND (1975), written for the PLATO system, were among the first to copy hit points.
Dungeons of Daggorath (1982) gave the player an audible heartbeat that changed with their character's condition.