The problem of low hit points on humans

[Twan]

In legends and books you do NOT see heroes that get hit by axes and swords and fireballs, and just chuckle and say, "Sorry, I'm a Hero(tm), and you will need to impale me another 50 times before it will have any effect!"

It's why the D&Dian definition of hit points is "capacity to survive" *including all non conventional ways to avoid being hit*. The old D&D system even (perhaps not the last editions, I've stopped at AD&D 1 and this kind of concepts have been denatured by extra rules to sell paper since then) only included hp and armor (a little influenced by dexterity), not things like parry, acrobatic moves, zigzag runs to avoid missiles, having a bible which stop a bullet (oops Conan not Robert Mitchum), use of the corpse of a dead soldier as a shield, or any other thing Conan or Fafhrd will do 42 times per book. It's also why I consider logical if extra hp are given to heroes to represent that to give them also recuperation or regeneration to reduce the number of afflictions, as the extra h(it/eroic) points they lose are not supposed to represent real wounds in the heroes case (personnally I don't believe in culturism giving more than 1 or 2 "real" hit points).