Action games also began moving away from one-hit deaths to health systems allowing players to take multiple hits, such as SNK's arcade shoot 'em up game Ozma Wars (1979) numerically representing an energy supply that depletes when taking hits and Mattel's Intellivision game Tron: Deadly Discs (1982) allowing players to take multiple hits at the cost of reducing maneuverability. Some of the first home computer games to use hit points are Rogue (1980), in which health is represented by a fraction, and Dungeons of Daggorath (1982), which includes an audible heartbeat influenced by the player character's condition. This allows the character to survive several hits from an enemy. According to this system, each character has a certain number of hit points, which decreases with each blow dealt to them. Because players did not want to lose the characters they had become accustomed to, Arneson created a 'hit point' system based on similar mechanics previously used in the wargames Don't Give Up the Ship and Ironclads. However, this approach had one drawback: according to the rules of Chainmail, the player rolls the dice during each battle, and depending on the number rolled, the character either kills the enemy or is killed.

This also allowed them to act out the role of each squad member. While developing the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax based on the latter's previous game Chainmail, Arneson felt that it was more interesting for players to manage small squads than a large army. The term 'hit points' was coined by Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson.

Wow health bar under character