Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-30326084-20161026101955/@comment-31147727-20180129182638

Agubhagu wrote: - Asgore doesn't tell Frisk to stay DETERMINED. Frisk just recalls that. Asgore is saying that to Chara.

- So, Sans has one hope point, because the only bright thing in his life is Papyrus. How is it possible that he STILL has one hope point after Papyrus dies ? maybe Sans had more hope when papyrus was alive, but now he only has one HP because he's devoid of almost all hope: his only hope in the genocide battle is that you will tire of fighting him and reset to do a pacifist run.

I can sort of see HP meaning HOPE work: it would explain why your final attack in boss battles do the most damage: Toriel, seeing you are strong enough to not need her protection, loses any HOPE of having a family again; after all, you were the first human to fall down in a long time, she was probably desperate for someone to spend time with. Papyrus, who spares you at the end of the battle even if you were fighting him the whole time, has his HOPE shattered if you choose to attack him instead of accepting his mercy: he thought that you could be his friend, but instead you attack him. This kind of works with Undyne's genocide battle; she knows you killed Papyrus, and sees that Monster Kid had ignored her warning and was about to die because of it. She leaps in the path of your attack, knowing that if it strikes the kid has no HOPE of surviving. This means in that moment she believes the blow will be fatal, and doesn't have any time to HOPE that she can take it. Then, before she turns to dust, she realizes that you aren't just going to stop at monsters, but will kill everyone on earth; that she is the world's best HOPE of stopping you (she wouldn't know how powerful Sans is due to his laziness) and that thought fills her with DETERMINATION to stop you, and she is refilled with the HOPE of all the hearts in the world beating as one.

Along that same thread, HP meaning Hit Points wouldn't explain why your final attacks in boss battles do way more damage than your normal attacks: there would be no way that you could have dealt 356 damage to Toriel when throughout the entire battle you couldn't do more than 50. Even if Papyrus is putting his guard down, he still has a lot of hit points, more than enough to survive a surprise attack. there is no way you'd be able to one-shot Undyne at your current level in a genocide run; even if you leveled up in your last waterfall battle, that's still only a 1 level difference.

So, either HP, ATK, and DEF are all arbitrary, with Toby Fox overriding them for plot purposes, or it means something other than what we think it means. Which would you rather believe?