The swinginess of low levels.

[Trance-Zg]

In my case, willingly ignoring it; as the immediate problem becomes if commoners have 3 h.p. and the average 1st-level shlub has 25 how do you explain (or fill) the gap? If 4e ever did fix this I missed it, and it was one of its glaring problems right from day 1.

Lanefan

well, the wizard in 4E get's 10 HP + constitution score.

If we characterize commoner even weaker that wizard as a class it would get at least constitution score for 1st level HP, and probably 6 bonus and 1 HP per level.

 

[nightwalker450]

What we've got so far is fine. Add some suggestions for adjusting the HP's, but this is a good starting point.

I'd rather start with Robin the Hero, then have to play Tom the unlucky, Fred the unfortunate, Greg the inattentive, Thomas the clumsy, and lastly Robin the Paranoid, who bravely ran away enough times.

 

[Gorgoroth]

why

not just make such a thing as a "toughness" feat and suggest for a less "gritty" game, everyone in the party has it at level 1? "Favored by the gods" or "A cut above the rest" (ahem).

4e tried to make 1st level characters less smushy. They did that, waaaaay too much. A wizard with 22hp? wonderful. That'll take three hits in a row to kill him. But the problem is after battle, when you have 4-5 surges, each one's worth 5-6 hp. All of a sudden, you see your first level wizard has > 50hp, and that's without any help from anyone whatsoever, magical healing, etc. A dwarven fighter could easily have 100 hp at first level in 4e. eeeesh. No wonder they never died. I tried to run a "killer" adventure with EL+4 critters in Dark Sun for a party with a dwarven battlerager in it...I could *not* kill him. I tried. Wave after wave of enemies. They were stuck in an arena, Gladiator style. Eventually I just sent in huge red dragons to rip apart the entire colloseum and all the audience and they escaped...but I remember feeling : how is this balanced? It's not...it's waaaaay unbalanced in favor of party survivability.

I want D&D Next to not have players feel invulnerable. If I play a three year campaign and nobody dies...I'll similarly say that DDN hasn't lived up to my expectations, like 4e did. Hopefully they allow DMs to tone up or down the grittiness...because heck, some people like playing Doom in God-mode. I don't. What's the point?

 

[Neonchameleon]

In my case, willingly ignoring it; as the immediate problem becomes if commoners have 3 h.p. and the average 1st-level shlub has 25 how do you explain (or fill) the gap? If 4e ever did fix this I missed it, and it was one of its glaring problems right from day 1.

How you explain the gap is by making hit points exactly what Gygax flat out stated they were. A measure of a range of things rather than strict physical damage. 1hp either represents people who are untrained in combat and have no significant experience (meaning that it's easy to get a good hit on them) or people who are hopelessly outclassed. And we've been through the maths on a previous thread to show that a 9th level fighter with decent baseline equipment will often be able to 1-shot an ogre in AD&D.

How do you account for a level 0 princess who doesn't know which end of a sword to hold having about as much resilience in combat as an adventuring wizard? Because to me that's a far more glaring problem. As is the fighter on 1hp being almost entirely unimpeded - no penalties to attack at all.

Hit points are not a direct reflection of damage; Gygax was very clear on this. And any assumption that they are is going to fail in certain very predictable ways.

 

[Hussar]

I don't. In fact, I want exactly that. Combat should be dangerous and life-threatening, at all levels of the game. Surviving should be an accomplishment, not an expectation. At least, that's how I prefer to play the game.

[MENTION=37277]Mercutio01[/MENTION] Just out of curiousity, how often do PC's die in your games? Once per session? Once per five sessions? Once per campaign?

Because if simply surviving is an accomplishment, you should be whacking PC's every single combat. After all, if you aren't then it's not much of an accomplishment is it? If you can go ten+ combats without dying, then surviving isn't all that difficult.

I so do NOT want to go back to that level of lethality where you have 1500+ PC's in a given campaign (dig back into the very early issues of The Strategic Review and there's a story about exactly this).

 

[ExploderWizard]

I prefer combat, especially at the lowest levels, to be very dangerous. Dangerous combat is motivation to find creative solutions to obstacles or plan violent action with a bit of common sense that hints at a desire for self preservation.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I like the idea of all level 1 characters have con score hp. That is it. A wizard with a14 con a fighter with a 14 con a commoner with a 14 con all have 14 hp

Then each level the pcs get half hitdie so fighter (d10) get 5 hp per level, rogues and clerics (d8) get 4hp, wizard (d6) gets 3hp per level.

So the 14 con wiz and fighter at level 20 have 71 hp and 109 hp each.

A deadly fight at level 1 might do 3-10 damage per hit (avg 6-7) a deadly fight at 20th might do 18-39 damage per hit (avg 32).

A single crit from a deadly enemy should not one shot someone, but it should hurt alot.

(my examples were 1d8+2, and 3d8+15)


IMO

 

[Hussar]

I prefer combat, especially at the lowest levels, to be very dangerous. Dangerous combat is motivation to find creative solutions to obstacles or plan violent action with a bit of common sense that hints at a desire for self preservation.

Can I ask you the same question then? How do you define "very dangerous"? How often do 1-3rd (low level I think) PC's die in your campaigns?

See, I look at the math and it shows a somewhat different picture.

Take a Basic D&D fighter. He's got 5 hp on average. So, any given hit with a weapon has a 1 in 3 chance of killing this character. That's pretty high. However, that's not the whole story. A 1st level Basic fighter will likely have plate mail and shield (easily affordable at 1st level in Basic) so an AC of 2. The baddies, by and large, have a THAC0 (yes, I realize Basic didn't use THAC0, but, the principle is the same) of 19 and very little way to gain attack bonuses. So, generally speaking, they're only hitting about 15% of the time. A 1 in 8 (ish) chance of hitting and a 1 in 3 of killing means that you've got about a 1 in 20 chance of dying in any given round. Not particularly high.

AD&D is largely the same. The fighter will probably have an AC of 3 (banded and shield is easily affordable) and given a somewhat more generous chargen method (4d6 arrange to taste vs 3d6 in order) he's likely better than 5 HP and/or 3 AC. The baddies deal about the same damage and hit about the same number of times. Again, about a 1 in 20 chance of dying.

3e changes things significantly. The fighter now has 12 HP (not unreasonable) but only about an 18 AC (Scale+Large Shield+2 for Dex) and the baddies now have about +3 on their attacks and can fairly easily gain additional bonuses - flanking, flat footed, etc. Plus, the baddies, instead of dealing 6 or 8 as maximum damage, now deal 12 or 13 points. So, they are hitting twice as often and dealing almost twice as much damage. Sure, the fighter has twice as many HP, but, he's taking four times as much damage. He's got about a 1 in 10 chance of dying.

Move over to 4e and the combat numbers don't significantly change from 3e. The attack bonuses and damage dealt are pretty close. But, the fighter now has twice as many HP as the 3e fighter. Plus, he's got healing surges which means he's likely going to access even more hp in a given combat. So, the chances are probably lowest of any edition. There's still a chance he's going to die, of course, but, it's probably around 1% rather than the 5 or 10% of previous editions.

Now, the question in my mind is, what's a reasonable chance? To me, 3e was just too damned lethal. It was ridiculously lethal if you played it straight and never fudged. There's a reason that Paizo AP's are considered meat grinders. They really are. To me, a 10% chance of dying in any given round is too high. That means that someone should be dying just about every combat.

And, if they aren't, I really have to wonder why?

 

[Mercutio01]

Can I ask you the same question then? How do you define "very dangerous"? How often do 1-3rd (low level I think) PC's die in your campaigns?

Die as in outright -Con or -10 or whatever system "die"? In a combat heavy campaign (meaning more than 50% of all experience was earned from fights to the death), probably 1 every level between 1 and 3. Dropped to negative hit points and at death's door requiring the use of magical healing? Roughly every combat at level 1, every other at level 2, and every three or four combats at level 3.

Remember, that's a rough estimate, and it's also in a combat heavy campaign, which is not usually what I want to run. Sometimes player actions change my intent (it frequently did when I had the time and group for F2F gaming, in fact). In the average campaign I ran, which was probably less than 50% active combat, death came less often from combat (because combat was less frequent) and had accordingly fewer deaths.

That's what I meant about combat being dangerous and surviving combat an accomplishment. Combat was something that was dangerous to engage in, and thus not engaged in nearly as frequently.

As I now play most of my games via PBP (for various reasons), I'm far more forgiving when it comes to combat, especially since combat encounters take up exponentially longer amounts of time than non-combat exploration and encounters. That said, however, in my current game, I've actually moved my rolls from behind the curtain to in the open in order to make combat a little more lethal, because it's just been too easy so far. PCs are in the last encounter before they're going to rest (I think, anyway) and are about to level up, but none of the previous fights had enough sting, and I think the lack of the fear of death translated into a growing sense of apathy for the game.

Again, this is my playstyle, so nothing about playing right or wrong, but I find that when combat has a high potential for lethality, it happens less frequently, and I think that's a good thing. When combat has a low potential for lethality, it happens more frequently, and that's generally not to my preference.

 

[n00bdragon]

I do not understand this preference some people seem to have for low level D&D to be super deadly. If the "goal" of D&D is to not die why is the hardest level the very first one? I think if three decades of video games have taught the world anything it's that people prefer the first levels of a game to be easier and then become progressively harder. By that logic first level D&D should be a cake-walk but twentieth level should be ball the wall nightmare mode.

Here's a fun idea. Just give players triple their CON score as hit points and then never gain HP (outside of perhaps stat boosts every so many level ups which have proven popular in 3e and 4e).