In many wargames, role-playing games, and combat-oriented video games, hit points are an abstraction for the amount of damage an object or player in the game can take before becoming ineffective. When an attack succeeds, instead of calculating detailed damage to its target, some number of hit points (determined by the type and strength of the attack) are deducted from the target's remaining supply. In most games using this system, losing hit points has little effect until a target reaches zero hit points, at which point it dies, becomes unconscious, or is destroyed.

Other names for hit points used in some games are health points, damage points, life points, or simply "HP", among countless others.

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game and D&D-derived games, player characters' hit points are determined by character level, and monsters' hit points are determined by a mechanism similar to character levels called Hit Dice.