I was just reading Saern's thread about point buy and I started thinking about a problem we've been having in our current campaign. Rolling dice for hit points just doesn't seem fun. It's not working out.
As of last adventure the party had a Bard, a Rogue, a Monk and a Fighter. Not your average party but that's cool, I'm not one of those "me against them" DMs and I'm happy to tailor an adventure to suit the PCs to an extent.
The problem we've been running into is doing hit points by the RAW. At first level they all get max HP and everyone's fine and happy etc. Now it's level 4 and the guy playing the Fighter has rolled two 1s and a 2 for his HP when he leveled up. The other players have all rolled high. So the only good melee combatant has 17 hit points at 4th level. The Bard for example has 28. And as there are no straight casters the challenges are nearly all melee and skill-based.
I told the guy playing the Fighter we would retcon his PC and he could take 5 and add his CON bonus (+1) for each level instead. Of course he jumped at the chance. But I've been thinking about it further and I really don't think the game would be particularly unbalanced if all the PCs just got their maximum HP at every level without rolling. I think the only difference it would make would be to increase everyone's fun. You should have seen the look on the guy's face after his second 1, it was just "this is stupid, why does my character's life have to rely on this dumb random roll?" But he sucked it up because it's the rules. Then I thought screw that, I agree with him.
OK, I'm long-winded as usual, but has anyone encountered any problems doing away with random HP? Seems to me anything that can kill a 10th level fighter will kill him whether he has 111 hit points or not.
Different hp methods are maybe the most common house rule in the game. The situation is so common and so often agreed on that I don't think the community at large even bothers to fight about it.
I mean if some one posts something about the way they do stats in a thread everyone quickly starts squabbling with each other of the pro's and con's. Do the same thing with hps and rarely do you elicit all that much comment.
More or less I agree with you that the current system is pretty brutal and its worse for the high hp players then for the low hp ones. I mean a wizard is not supposed to have many hps anyway but a fighter or Barbarian that just can't seem to roll above a 1 or a 2 level after level is a real bummer for the player.
The only thing I would caution with is the idea of giving your players max hps. That's going to throw things a little out of whack as that is going to turn into a lot of hps. If you do go down this road I'd simply have a rule that all creatures great and small get max hps. That evens the playing field. Otherwise you might want to go with something a little less generous that is still consistent. Probably the best option that does not involve modifying the monsters is to go with the a table along the lines of:
d4 = 3hps
d6 = 4hps
d8 = 5 hps
d10 = 6 hps
d12 = 7 hps
This is a tad above average at every level and is therefore good without actually being so good that the monsters need to be adjusted to keep things more or less fair.
I eliminated random HP partly and I'm very happy with it. IMC players roll their Hit Dice but can choose to get their dice average if they don't roll well. Thus they have above average HP which is fine as I do the same for NPCs. Balance is kept and there's no discrepancies between lucky and unlucky players and a fighter has always more HP than a bard. Players are happy with the system because they feel powerful even if they are not more powerful than NPCs. It's a win-win situation.
My two coppers.
Bran.
I use standard hit points as per the DMG, because it's just easier to ensure those average hit point statistics that have worked for so many years: Standardized Hit Point Chart
The main problem with random hitpoints is that you can't recover form a bad roll. Roll a one on a saving throw, and most of the bad effects can be overcome with a few spells. Sure they may get expensive if Ressurection or Wish is required, but it is still doable.
What options do you have for overcoming bad HP rolls? Roll a couple of ones, and you are stuck with HPs that are almost crippling for the rest of your career.
So yeah, alternative methods are required.
The only thing I would caution with is the idea of giving your players max hps. That's going to throw things a little out of whack as that is going to turn into a lot of hps. If you do go down this road I'd simply have a rule that all creatures great and small get max hps. That evens the playing field. Otherwise you might want to go with something a little less generous that is still consistent. Probably the best option that does not involve modifying the monsters is to go with the a table along the lines of:
d4 = 3hps
d6 = 4hps
d8 = 5 hps
d10 = 6 hps
d12 = 7 hpsThis is a tad above average at every level and is therefore good without actually being so good that the monsters need to be adjusted to keep things more or less fair.
I considered doing this, but the problem is that it actually rewards the low hit dice characters more than the high hitdice charcters. Wizards get 75% hit points, while the Barbarian only gets 58%. My solution was to give a scaling amount like this,
d4 = 3 HPs
d6 = 4 HPs
d8 = 6 HPs
d10 = 7HPs
d12 = 9HPs
But I realised that I actually like some of the randomness of rolling for hitpoints, and so I then had my PCs roll their Hit points, but if they rolled less than half, they got half their hitdice in hitpoints. (Eg, rolled a 2 on a d12, you get 6 instead).
Alternatively, you could go with the Iron Heroes method, which is to roll d4 + your Hitdice - 4 (So instead of a d12, you roll d4+8).
As a house rule I have amended the Toughness feat. It still grants an extra 3 hp, but in addition if anyone rolls a '1' for their hp they get to reroll the dice.
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IMC, I allow either "roll them and weep" or "average HP per level" per DMG rules with the choice made at the time of character creation and not changable thereafter. Of my five players, four chose the "average" method presented in the DMG.
The lone exception is the wizard. With d4 HP per level, the DMG average of 2 then 3 HPs is not all that much different than the range of the hit die (1-4). Also, at odd levels (when the DMG chart gives the higher value of hitpoints - 3HP in this case), there is a 50% chance that the roll will be at or above the listed hit point value in the table (3 or 4 on a d4) and at the even levels, the chance of getting at least what the DMG table would give increases to 75%. Best yet, there is only a 25% chance of ever getting a roll that is truely bad, and if the player in question is "lucky" (I am sure you know the type), then it makes sense for the wizard to just roll. Thus everyone at the table has average HPs except the wizard, who has slightly above average hit points for his level.
Regardless, everyone at the table is fine with the results and I have not had to do anything to monster HPs to compensate. I only use monster HP adjustments to vary the challenge of encounters (which works great by the way).
I give everyone max hit points at first level, and three-fourths of max hit points at all additional levels.
(So a Fighter with d10 gets 7 at level 2, then 8 at level 3; basically round down but note the fraction so the next time it adds in.)
We do "roll or avg", but the player chooses at each level. I think the trope of the low HP fighter would work well if it fed into the roll playing and equipping. Maybe the fighter realizes he is destined to die, but is fighting it by getting the most protective gear he can. He combs the bazaars, looking for that one amulet or charm that will save him from his fate. Maybe it makes him ultra religious after the first time he gets dropped, or decides it'll never happen again and starts specializing in pole arms to keep the bad guys as far away as possible. There's a universe of fun in every die roll :)
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... I really don't think the game would be particularly unbalanced if all the PCs just got their maximum HP at every level without rolling.
I would caution you against this. When we converted from 2E to 3E, I ran a number of playtests of the 3E rules with my group. They were joint learning sessions to familiarize ourselves with the rules. I premade some characters and gave everyone maximum hit points. For those few encounters, everything seemed great. When I started my first 3E campaign, I decided to keep the practice (telling myself that I would use the buffer to keep characters from dying due to my inability to challenge them with appropriate monsters or making bad rulings). As it turned out, the 3E system was very easy to run and my fears about sudden character death were unfounded since I followed the CR system pretty closely.
What I did find though was that a simple +2 bonus plus max hit points made a huge difference in character power. By 8th level, the rogue (14 CON) had 64hps and the fighter (20 CON) had 120HP. It made finding appropriate challenges for the group much harder. Even giving monsters max HP's didn't work out well because fights took longer to achieve the same result and more monster hitpoints allowed monsters to last longer and thus increased the likelihood that they could use their special attacks. If the special attacks were just damage related, perhaps this might be ok (eg a troll gets to fight longer to offset extra char HPs), but some were of the save or die variety, dominate effects or other effects that are terribly devistating to a character party. (Consider a beholder with max HPs and all the havoc those extra rounds of life buy it: extra uses of flesh to stone, disintegrate and other nasty spells that kill characters without attacking their HPs directly).
My advice is to stick to any one of the variations presented here, but do not grant max HPs per level. Things will get very strange once you hit mid level and above if you don't.
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For quite some time now I've been using fixed HP but our chart is a bit more generous. We've been using the same point assignments (*with additional entries)that appeared in the Living Force Campaign Guide.
d4=3hp*
d6=4hp
d8=6hp
d10=8hp
d12=10hp*
The characters after all are heroes and the added HP are not unbalancing.
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I give my players the high side of average or a roll. If they roll below average, they get one reroll and take the best of the two.
One of my players agitated for maximum at each level, but I won't do it. I'm a 'what's good for the goose is good for the gander' DM, so to do this I would do the same to the monsters. But that would just make fights longer without making them more interesting.
What I'd really like to do is more complex.
I'd like to give everyone their CON score (not bonus!) as their HP base. Then, at each level, give them fixed hp based on hit die type; d4=0, d6=1, d8=2, d10=3 and d12=4. My players don't like this plan for some reason!
Actually, it's me who won't follow through on this. Mostly because I'd like to do it in conjunction with making armour into DR instead of AC, and rescaling spell damage, and probably certain other damage effects as well (sneak attack, power attack and similar). At which point, I might as well just write a new game from the ground up. Which I've done before and probably will agian some day, but right now D&D works well enough. Also, I tend to run mostly premade adventures, or at least steal stat blocks and things wholesale, and I don't want to have to rewrite everything. Especially because in most cases, simply converting won't be enough. I'll have to rebalance everything too.
Craig Shackleton,
The Rambling Scribe
I feel mean.
I give my players max hp at first level and if they roll a 1, they get one reroll for all other levels.
Based on what I've seen here, I feel like I am some kind of cruel and heartless DM. Maybe I am...
You are not cruel or heartless. My husband allows us max hit points at first level, then we roll for hp every level after that and add our con bonus, he will let us reroll a one at times, but never a two. Luck of the dice.
I give max hitpoints and am very happy with the result. to balance things a little, I often make the party have to push on without resting and healing. I find players are often on single digit hit points after a long battle anyway. It seems to be the difference between a tpk and a rewarding challenge for my campaign.
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I feel mean.
I give my players max hp at first level and if they roll a 1, they get one reroll for all other levels.
Based on what I've seen here, I feel like I am some kind of cruel and heartless DM. Maybe I am...
Well, it depends how you balance it. I have a party of 6 PCs with 32 point equivelant stats, generous HP, and a feat every level instead of every third level. See how kind and benevolent I am?
Then I routinely put them up againt EL 9 or higher challenges, and rarely give them the recommended wealth by challenge treasure, and I have my own XP system that doesn't really give much bonus for fighting tougher monsters, and doesn't scale up as they go up (so level progression slows down over time). And I never fudge rolls. I also usually run two adventures simultaneously to make them divide their efforts (right now they're doing the Banewarrens and the Night of Dissolution for Ptolus, both with all of the challenges cranked up a notch or two). See how cruel I am?
Craig Shackleton,
The Rambling Scribe
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Two other options I have seen:
1: My first DM let us roll 2 dice and take the highest at each level. This is a lot like allowing a reroll every time
2: XP, the great moderator. I let people spend xp to increase their HP. I have found that 500 xp/hp works alright. They can buy 1 hp per game month, and cannot exceed the normal maximum for their class/con/level.
It helps keep the melee types' xp inline if the casters go all item creative.
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I allow players to reroll hit dice based on their Constitution modifier. My general rule is that you may reroll the bottom CON mod. x 10% of your hit die. We always round up, too, which means that a +1 CON modifier will allow ANY class to reroll 1s. It's hideously complex to describe but very simple to execute. A CON mod. of +2 will allow you to reroll the bottom 20% of your hit die (meaning that a d10 class would reroll 1s and 2s). It works really well, even if it does "double-dip" CON for hit point bonuses in a sense. We've had no complaints.
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In our campaign we are using a combination of fixed and rolled. Mainly because of my character. I had several 1s and 2s. My hit points were pathetic but I had great Ability Scores.
So we modified thinsg a bit
d10= 6+1d4 minimum 7
d8= 5+1d3 minimum 6
1d6= 4+1d2 minimum 5
1d4= 2+1d2 minimum 3
It has worked out nicely. Max at first level and then we use this. While there is some excitement about rolling, we know we will get more than half and can actually stand up in a fight.
I let my players decide on two options for thier hit points,
1. Roll the dice and take what ever result turns up except 1's warrant a reroll.
2. They can have max HP at every level but choosing so means the creatures also get max HP(Its only fair to the creautures!)
99% of the time they go for option 2 as it makes the adventures really interesting.
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You could always just make charts for everything. Throw the dice away. Why roll dice? They could make a random roll or something and screw you.
It's D&D! Point buy?!? Fixed Hit Points?!? How about just making fighters hit every other round, clerics every third round, wizards every four rounds?!? Remove that pesky random option! Skill usage? Auto take 10's, take 20 if you spend some time!
Roll the frickin' dice, take the chance, live with the outcome.
If you wanna make a rule to reroll 1s and 2s, great, but removing every random aspect of D&D is ridiculous. May as well play some other diceless system or something.
Arrrgggggghhhh.
FH
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Very Passionate, FH
Begin Sarcasm:
Wouldn't it be better to just say that Cure spells heal a fixed amount, rather than random? The problem only really comes up when you roll bad on HP and the healer (perhaps a fake) rolls bad on the cure.
End Sarcasm:
I agree with FH, let too much be none random, and you get to play dungeons and spreadsheets. Of course this doesn't eliminate the feeling of being crappy because your 4th level con 16 fighter has 25 hp simply because he can't roll higher than a 1. Hence letting people spend xp for permanent hp, at a limited rate.
As a House Rule here.
We currently play Eberron and use action Points, I allow the players to utilise a Action Point to re-roll a poor HP roll.
The Players all seem pretty pleased with this as it gives them a chance to alter the fates and gain more HP's.
It also helps as they tend to forget to use action points, or use them for trivial none important skill checks!
Our group usually uses the standard for HP. However, depending on the DM, we do a "yours or mine" where you roll you die and decide whether or not to take the DM's roll. If you decide to take the DM roll, you have to stick with it.
I use the RPGA guidelines and give them an option to roll their HP when I DM. They have to take the one they decide on.
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I'm with Fake Healer.
I mean come on, letting people choose stuff about their characters? Ridiculous! I never got to choose; I was born a male human. Players should have to randomly determine their character's race and gender. And really, your class is mostly determine by opportunities you had as a kid, or natural leanings. You shouldn't choose those either. I'd say that as you go up levels you could maybe get a modifier to improve your chance of continuing in the same class, but it should still be mostly random.
And what's up with set encounters? Get rid of all that crap. Why does the DM get to decide who and what the PCs meet. All encounters should be random too.
And generally, I recommend randomly rolling to decide what your character does in any situation. I mean, we can't really know their motivations. It's not like we can decide what other people do in real life. PCs proabably have their own reasons for doing what they do. We shouldn't interfere.
Geez, people, this game isn't about being happy with your character or playing what you want, it's about rolling dice, and saying "D'oh" or "Woohoo" as appropriate. Why do you want it to be more than that?
Craig Shackleton
The Rambling Scribe
I use the following:
Level 1 and 2: Max hit die value + modifiers (Con, toughness, etc)
Subsequent levels: Half max hit points + modifiers (Con, toughness, etc) + 1
Seems to work out pretty well for us.
Rambling Scribe I just laughed so hard.... Thank you!
I give my players two rolls for their hit points and they take the higher of the two rolls.
This gives higher than average hp, without overbalancing things.
My games also use a "yours or mine" method. I roll in secret when the player rolls. If they don't like what they got or are feeling adventurous they can take my roll, whatever it happens to be. This method tended to give above average HP. That is, until I put some more ranks in my Bluff skills.
A system that has worked rather well for the group I have had for nigh on 18 years is thus:
1st- 3rd--Max HD value plus Con Mod. (now plus any other feat-related Mod)
4th-10th dice roll + Con Mod.(+etc.)reroll less than 50% HD
11th plus- dice roll plus Con mod.
I've been guilty of making monsters uber to give the pc's a shake, but often found that tactics made for a heck of a lot more interesting fight.
I guess I'm horribly cruel. Roll 'em and weep. If you amuse me with your weeping enough after rolling a 1(and only a 1) perhaps I, in my infinite wisdom, will allow a re-roll. I'm with Fakey and Rambling Scribe. In my games, EVERYTHING not under the player's control is random- even swag- without becoming chaotic.
I too give max hit points for several levels then the a choice of reroll for hps, but your stuck with the second roll for better or worse. From what I have seen it really makes no difference to my side of the screen; I would let my players max their hps every level as it just doesnt affect game balance. The hit points system itself is really pretty lame; but as we are using it; it seems to only make a difference to the player as I can easily adjust my mobs to get the outcome I desire.
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For my next campaign I'm leaning towards the following:
D4= D3+1
D6= D4+2
D8= D5+3 (1/2 D10)
D10= D6+4
D12= D8+4
Yeah, I know, the Barbarians and Warblades will cry, but I'll deal with that later...This guarantees that the wizard won;t roll better hit points than the fighters, while still allowing plenty of variation.
In my D&D campaigns I use the "average hit points if you don't roll well" clause that most other DMs (at least on this thread) seem happy with. Of course, in my Call of Cthulhu d20 campaign I let the dice fall where they may. Players whinged when I first did it, but after experiencing a few Cthulhu monsters they realized that hit points were pretty much useless. Sanity on the other hand. ;-)
Our house rule is that you get the greater of half the maximum on the die roll (e.g. 3 for a d6) or the roll itself.
Thats the way we do it as well. Its funny, too, because at my table this method was my idea as a DM.
Now Im the player, and when I get the minimum hit points (half of die), I still feel somewhat dejected knowing I didn't get the max. Then I shrug and look at the "1" staring at me knowing it could have been worse.
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The system I currently favor is to go max for first level and after that players get to choose between a die roll and the high average upon each level advancement. They have to decide before the roll though, so If you want to roll the dice and you get a 1, then that was your choice and you are stuck with it. I am curious to see how this works over the next few levels... I'm guessing that players will tend more and more towards taking the high average (4 for d6, 5 for d8, 6 for d10, 7 for1d12)
For easy going and nicety, I'll do this.
You roll for HP. IF it is under Half the HD amount (so for a d10, if it is lower than 5), they get to roll again...and if it's still under half the HD amount...roll again. In fact, I'll let them roll until they get half the HD amount or higher.
The other method, is to let the fighter reroll all his HD again when he/she levels. If it is higher then their current amount of HP...they can keep it...or choose which they would like to keep.
Wow, 7 year thread necro guys! Good job.
Depending on the type of game I'm running I'll use the 1/2 rounded up, 3/4's or full HP rules, depending on numerous factors like difficulty and how combat heavy/lite the game is.
I stopped using rolled HP's when a 7th level wizard had more HP's than the barbarian, and this was in 3.5, not PF.