Paul, I don''t mean to be rude, but jsut forget about D&D five minutes ... you can''t fix what is broken by putting coats and coats of paint over it...
but anyway
you can see Breath points as a measure of how tired you are. Simple as that. Fighting is, simple as that, tiring. You need a good breath for any physical effort, and fight is one of those. If you get hit, bumped, stunned, your breath is disturbed, eventually having you pass out. Luckily, to recover your breath, you just need to take a break and relax for a little while.
So yes, the comparison with the overhating is very good.
Except that you can be made to lose BP by other things than yor actions (that is, you lose BP by being attacked...)
But don''t take BP as a buffer kind of thing ! If you are attacked by a monomolecular garrot, you won''t be stunned at all, but you''ll be dead all the same !
another thing, in combat, BP are used to power-up your tests. Basically, by making an extra effort (and thus losing a BP), you can increase the power, the precision, or speed of your attack. This simulates nicely the fact to tire yourself with too much effort, but it can save your life. When you know that BP are also used to fuel your magic, and when you know you have only 4 little points ... you realise quicly that you have to make choices. And you don''t have stupid restrictive rules for magicians... (guess who I am pointing at).
youpla :-P
*oooooh, listening to Limp Biskit and getting that tickely feeling on the back of my neck*
-----------------------------Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !
and anyway, most magic users can''t work without a decent Mana storage device ... and I won''t go into the magic system now, or we are all doomed to end in an off topic ramble 
