Health points (health power in some games) is the universal title given to the physical durability of a character, player or enemy. Usually represented as a number, as in the Final Fantasy series, or a percentage, as in Quake, when it reaches a value of 0 (or less) the character is usually rendered incapacitated, be this unconscious, dead or 'defeated'. In single player games, reaching a value of 0 will usually send the player to a Game Over screen, where they can choose to retry from the last available point. NPCs and enemies will usually perform an animation and then dissappear to save graphic processing power. In many cases the defeat of an enemy by the player will result in the player receiving loot and/or EXP. In multiplayer, when a player reaches 0 HP, they will be removed from the list of active players and added to a respawn list. Depending on the game and gametype, the time for which they are out of the game can range from about 1 second to over 15 minutes.

It should be noted that not all games have HP, and may rely either on a simple pass/fail logic where the player has either acheived ther goal or failed, or gameplay that relys on peaceful exploration.