NPC hit point calculation: CoT vs Kingmaker

[Chris Braga]

I've noticed that in Council of Thieves named NPCs receive max hit points at first level whereas in Kingmaker they do not. Why this switch?

[James Jacobs]

Chris Braga wrote:

I've noticed that in Council of Thieves named NPCs receive max hit points at first level whereas in Kingmaker they do not. Why this switch?

Author and/or developer preference. Which can change over the course of a day, week, or month.

As a general rule, we give maximum hit points at first level for any NPC that has class levels in PC classes, but not to NPCs that have only NPC class levels or only racial hit dice.

But sometimes we change that out. Sometimes we deliberately assign lower or higher hp values to increase or decrease the challenge of the encounter or simply to give that NPC a little bit more flavor.