Well ... title's pretty evident, no? Str really has pretty *small* roles in the game: a few skills, to hit and damage, weight capacity ... but what if you were to add str's bonus HP calculations? Or 1/2 str's bonus?
I mean ... *staying alive* is just a good idea anyway. I can't think of anyone more than big Str, big Con guys that *should* do this, but then it kind of makes sense that a big Str guy is going to be a bit harder to kill. If nothing else, then think of the muscles like layers of padding - lots of muscle=lots of padding to cut/get through. Not so much muscle = easy to cut/get through.
So ... yeah. Random thought, but how *bad* could this be if allowed?
I guess the net effect would be longer lasting PC's ... in general. Melee-heavies would also get a bit of a boost from this sort of a change.
Big-honkin' monsters would, IMO, reclaim that status and title by *right* rather than label (as mostly the big honkin' monsters aren't all that durable by a level appropriate challenges).
All of those, at first glance, seem to be good things to me ...
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Not really.
STR plays a *big* role in the game, as it shapes offensive capabilities of pretty much every melee combatant, and that's a vast majority.
Inflating HP without raising offensive capability would result in 4ed-like slogfest combats. Consider, say,a Storm Giant. Even with +1/2 STR bonus to HP, it will end up with 332 HP. That's an obscenely large amount for a CR 13 creature, and it will lead to extremely boring and resource-draining fights. RAW, a party of PCs should be able to handle a certain number of fights without blowing their resources away. Boost opponent HP and this number goes down, eventually throwing the balance out of the window.
If your campaigns are more about role play and tactical battles then it has not so much effect.
Giving Strenght to hp is however insane! The barbarian with con 14 and str 16 is not fun anymore at level 5. say he rolls avereage in total he has 50hp at least!
I played paladins and can tell you, if my game master should given me this, whow! The awful stat problem is over. you can drop con now!
Remember that most players are a little bit horney at str. Because their dmg output and hit chance increases. If you add hp then you make all the more likely to take a hig str, even as a Halfing Rogue!
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STR plays a *big* role in the game, as it shapes offensive capabilities of pretty much every melee combatant, and that's a vast majority.
Inflating HP without raising offensive capability would result in 4ed-like slogfest combats...Boost opponent HP and this number goes down, eventually throwing the balance out of the window.
+1
Strength is enormously important, especially as you have indicated, for fighter types. There's a reason why in 3.0/3.5 days the Half-Orc was given a +2 STR with a -2 INT and CHA; it was believed that the Strength bonus was worth more than the int penalty or charisma penalty individually.
If you're this hellbent on increasing hit points, I think the method provided in the beta is probably a bit less dramatic (1d4 for small, 1d6 for medium, 1d8 for large, etc.), but I'm still not convinced that more hit points is a solution.
For HP we have in our group a other solution. All players get the feat Thoughness as a bonus feat. It solves very much the level 1 problem: We have no HP and a kobold can kill the barbarion.
Make sure you know when your characters are light, medium, heavy loaded. A low strength means that a Backpack full with gold is to heavy to lift for the caracter.
In my game we use the racial hp option from the beta. That's worked out fine for us and it's allowed me to create 0 level NPC's and pretty much drop the commoner class.
I've always liked the idea of Str contributing to hp in some way, but dumping Con altogether would be a bad idea. One thing I'd like to see more of in PF is feats that can give fighters temporary hp in some situations. Maybe off of a sucessful crit or intimidate check. Maybe an amount equal to your Str mod. Just saying.
Not really.
STR plays a *big* role in the game, as it shapes offensive capabilities of pretty much every melee combatant, and that's a vast majority.
Inflating HP without raising offensive capability would result in 4ed-like slogfest combats. Consider, say,a Storm Giant. Even with +1/2 STR bonus to HP, it will end up with 332 HP. That's an obscenely large amount for a CR 13 creature, and it will lead to extremely boring and resource-draining fights. RAW, a party of PCs should be able to handle a certain number of fights without blowing their resources away. Boost opponent HP and this number goes down, eventually throwing the balance out of the window.
Hmm ... good point about combat duration and resource draining (didn't think on that - quick post and thought initially).
I'm sort of OK w/a freakin' GIANT taking a lot longer to drop, though ... it's a giant. Same thing w/very big critters overall.
Maybe that's what I'm actually aiming for - a way to get bigger critters to last longer than present. I'm ok modding things as long as that's my general trend (ie: bigger, stronger stuff takes longer to kill vs. smaller, weaker stuff being easier).
Maybe a feat-progression would be better? Say ... 1 feat to grant +1/2 str bonus as a flat boon (or str bonus) one time, then a 2nd feat to grant +1/2 str bonus to HP overall (2 feat investment).
Actually slow downs in 4E combat are more related to tracking conditions, and I am still learning how to streamline this process. In addition, there are solo elite and brute roles in regards to creatures, and they will be harder to take down. So for any encounter, the DM has to take care to mix it up, otherwise each encounter starts to have the same feel. I have ran into similar problems in 3.5 and 4E and I am a DM for both.
Perhaps having an option to substitute STR for CON, just to add some more flavor may be the route to take. Or figure a way to add STR to some skills as an extra feat, once again to add some flavor.
But in any system I have played, there always seems to be a step child in regards to attributes, or a dump stat based on class.
Well ... title's pretty evident, no? Str really has pretty *small* roles in the game: a few skills, to hit and damage, weight capacity ... but what if you were to add str's bonus HP calculations? Or 1/2 str's bonus?
I mean ... *staying alive* is just a good idea anyway. I can't think of anyone more than big Str, big Con guys that *should* do this, but then it kind of makes sense that a big Str guy is going to be a bit harder to kill. If nothing else, then think of the muscles like layers of padding - lots of muscle=lots of padding to cut/get through. Not so much muscle = easy to cut/get through.
So ... yeah. Random thought, but how *bad* could this be if allowed?
I guess the net effect would be longer lasting PC's ... in general. Melee-heavies would also get a bit of a boost from this sort of a change.
Big-honkin' monsters would, IMO, reclaim that status and title by *right* rather than label (as mostly the big honkin' monsters aren't all that durable by a level appropriate challenges).
I think big honking melee monster are already doing pretty well. Being big, they get substantial strength and constitution bonuses over their medium sized PC opposition. They've got some pretty good natural armor too. That cloud giant, for example, has already got 168 hp in his basic form, 96 of those being from the con bonus alone. He's got 12 points of natural armor. He's no pushover in a knock-down fight.
If you want to make some of these examples tougher, I'd suggest other ways of doing so. Toughness feats, a particularly robust individual who has got a higher constitution, add a few levels, put him in better armor, etc. I think calculating an additional hp bonus based on strength is overkill.
Strength doesnt play a small roll. It effects virtually every martial character. The 'big strong guys' are already harder to kill, they have bigger HD then the puny guys. A fighter and barbarian or giant with the same con as a wizard, or rogue will still have more hp. Also the bigger something is, generally the more hit dice it has. I dont think it would be balanced use strength in place of con and certainly not in addition to con for hp even at the cost of a couple of feats. These would become must haves for all melee characters, and honestly, any feat that becomes and automatic choice, is not a balanced one.
If Strength contributes to hp, you're eliminating most of the use you get from Con. At that point, Con only affects your Fortitude saves and the occasional ability check. While this helps characters with MAD, it also leads to strange situations where you have sorcerers, wizards, and bards with modestly high Strength scores and minimal Constitution, just because it now gives them hp as well as combat ability. Melee characters will be happier, as they could then discard their Con boosting to some degree and then deal even more damage.
Larger creatures generally get A) bigger hit dice, B) higher Strength and Con due to their size, and C) more hit dice for their CR. My party fought some frost giants (with class levels) at level 16 and we had serious trouble just getting them to fall over. It was even worse when some of them went into rage. If strength was added to their hit points, we'd have been dealing with giants that had more hit points than the neighboring dragon!
While a common solution to the problem of big creatures is to use battlefield control magic and then let the melee characters deal with them, an increase in hit points for the enemies will make this much more difficult. Even if the party benefits from this as well, combat will likely slow down as everyone now gets more hp that has to be chewed through, as the points spent to boost Con and the money later spent to do so will now shift more quickly to Strength. PCs will also put their remaining money into other things. I expect combat would definitely slow down.
Hmm ... certainly sounding like a major cascading effect ... ok. Thanks for the input.
Likely this'll just stay in thought-limbo/wherever banished ideas linger.