Quote Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle
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That's true for morale bonuses, but I'd figured it might be different with Hit Points because a General who loses more Hit Points than he has, dies. If the general isn't dead, he hasn't lost more Hit Points than he has, and I've had a Hypochondriac General who didn't die instantly upon acquiring the trait, ergo he had more Hit Points than he lost.

'Course, I hadn't considered the possibility that there might be a special subroutine that automatically adjusts the Hit Point total upwards if the penalties become greater than the bonuses -- a rather more sensible approach to the problem. I'd assumed the Generals' base Hit Points were very high because my unmodified Generals seem to stick around a lot longer than their bodyguards
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Rebellious, the reasoning is flawed. When you lose through a trait more hp than you have, that doesn't mean you die. It means it stays at one hit point. Also, the general doesn't usually die because he does usually have a bunch of bodyguards around him, and naturally has better stats than the lowly peasants he is fighting.

Hp is different from stats, if you watch closely during battle, most soldiers block or shrug off blows that don't deal more attack damage than their defensive stat. Hence a peasant with 1 attack can stab a knight a bunch of times and not kill him, but the knight has only 1 hit point. Same is true for generals. Don't let it fool you.

I can't prove what I say through the game's stat files, but I do think it makes sense, based upon observation. I've watched very closely those knife fights between my general and whoever he is fighting. He tends to get smacked around a lot by those weaklings before he dies, but a mounted knight might kill him with one charge attack, and a unit of heavy infantry or heavy spear might kill him instantly. All because you don't start with 9 hit points, otherwise you would be able to take 9 spears to the chest before you die in all cases without hypochondriac, and that simply isnt the case at all.