Hit Points, more commonly shortened to HP, are a core stat in the Fire Emblem series that serves as a measurement of a character's health in battle.
Overview
HP serves as a character's overall vitality and how much damage they can take before falling. In the Fire Emblem franchise, any character who loses all HP is removed from the current battle. In the traditional format of the series, these characters die off and are completely unavailable for use in subsequent battles should such an event happens to a character. A few exceptions do not die as they play plot-critical roles in the overall narrative, but nonetheless sustain grievous injuries that still leaves them unable to be fielded and may die according to their epilogue. A Lord character or character of similar importance such as an Avatar whose HP is reduced to zero usually ends in an immediate Game Over or force the usage of a Turn Rewinding mechanic. Since Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem, a less punishing mode, Casual Mode was introduced. While reducing a non-important player controlled character's HP to zero still removes them from the current battle, they become available once more in the subsequent battles with no penalties. The traditional permanent death gameplay feature has been officially titled Classic Mode.
All characters have an innate growth rate in HP just like every other stat with some having much higher growths than others. Several classes, namely high defensive classes like Knights and Fighters also tend to have higher growths and stat caps to emphasize their roles as melee fighters. Others like Archers and Mages may have far less HP to balance their ranged attack abilities and potency.
The cap for HP of the playable cast ranges from about 30 for first tier and trainee classes to 80 for second and third tier classes depending on the game, character, and class. Enemies are also subject to the same caps, though are determined by map/battle design and since they do not level up, do not change over the course of a battle, unlike playable characters. Certain bosses may have exceedingly large HP bars. If an enemy's health bar exceeds the normal cap of the game, these are usually highlighted with a "???" instead of the numeric value until the player reduces the enemy's health below a certain number, usually the actual normal health cap maximum.
Some damaging effects cannot reduce HP below 0 on their own such as Poison or some environmental damage. Instead, these reduce HP to the minimum of 1. In Heroes, several skills may inflict damage aside from actual attacks like Area of Effect specials and several after combat skills like Savage Blow or Fury. Miracle is a skill in numerous games that can leave a unit at 1 HP if certain conditions are met, even if the damage would have otherwise been reduced to 0.
HP Recovery
When a character has taken damage and lost HP, there are multiple options available to heal the injured unit. Recovery Items such as vulneraries are consumable items that recover lost HP and can be used by any unit. Classes with the capability such as Clerics can use Staves or White Magic healing spells to recover an ally's HP. Certain weapons, like the tome Nosferatu and the dark magic infused Runesword, drain HP from their target and heal the wielder by the same amount.
Some locations on maps, such as certain buildings and fixtures like fortresses, thrones, and gates may recover small amounts of a unit's HP if the unit ends their turn standing on that map tile. In some games, there are also skills like Renewal and Imbue which heal the character when certain conditions are met.