D&D General Hit Points. Did 3.0 Or 3.5 Get it Right?

[Micah Sweet]

I wasn't suggesting following any idea to an extreme, and the hard numbers you're suggesting remove the random element (I always roll for damage). D&D isn't a series of perfect, unchanging equations, as your post seems to suggest.

So - rather than have the monsters have 60 hit points and the PCs deal 15 per strike, you'd prefer the PCs deal 10 per strike and the monsters have 40 hit points?

That is going to turn out to be essentially the same situation. Either way you need 4 hits to take a foe down. This is essentially a meaningless change. The only difference is that you reduce how precisely you can control hit points when you make the reduction you suggest. It isn't two bad at the levels I propose above, but people that played the old 'Dungeons and Dragons Minis' game in the early 00s can tell you that they limited themselves severely when they followed that idea to an extreme. It worked ok for a quick skirmish game - but it was pretty weak overall.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can see this in 4e where all skills and defenses and attacks went up one every two levels, but in 5e it is only proficiency bonus that goes up with levels, so only attacks and some skills and saves get better. More than half of the saves and skills never advance.

But the one you know how to use all get better at exactly the same rate, for everyone.

 

[Celebrim]

That is going to turn out to be essentially the same situation. Either way you need 4 hits to take a foe down. This is essentially a meaningless change. The only difference is that you reduce how precisely you can control hit points when you make the reduction you suggest. It isn't two bad at the levels I propose above, but people that played the old 'Dungeons and Dragons Minis' game in the early 00s can tell you that they limited themselves severely when they followed that idea to an extreme. It worked ok for a quick skirmish game - but it was pretty weak overall.

Not only are you right, but it's worse than you make it out to be. The primarily difference between the two situations is "How big and important is a +1 modifier to damage." If the expectation is blows do 10 damage, then +1 bonus is a 10% increase compared to a ~7% increase in the case of blows expected to do 15 damage. This determines how sensitive your system is to stacking bonuses. One of the reasons 3.X D&D got hit points closer to right than 1e AD&D is that 1e AD&D proved super vulnerable to stacking bonuses unexpectedly. In a thread where I discuss 1e AD&D balance, one poster commented that the problem was 100th level characters and +20 swords as if the problem was simply GMs too generous with wish fulfillment, but in my experience, it wasn't hard for players to achieve the same effect simply by stacking more bonuses than the system expected and that didn't actually take Monte Haul type play. All you needed was a little from here and a little from there, to have girdles of giant strength and a +4 sword and be double specialized in the weapon, and suddenly the game was blown wide open.

Heck, even the conversation about the relative power of a fireball is part of this. In 1e if the level of the caster was above the HD of the monster, fireball more or less ended the fight either immediately or with just a little cleanup. A 1e AD&D party could be expected by name level to take down more than 1 16HD creature per round because the creatures were going from taking 16 hits to take down, to each hit being worth much more than a single hit. A fighter with just an 18/75 strength and a +4 sword is doing like 6 hits by himself every round. Six such fighters would be doing 36 hits a round, and that's actually a rather weak example of a 10th level party yet its killing two of the toughest monsters in the game every round even without throwing into the mix how many hits a 10 dice fireball represents.

Hit point inflation as provided by 3.5e was absolutely needed to deal with just the basic modifiers and spells already existing in the game and hit dice inflation was needed to provide for gameplay beyond 12th level - and that's provable just from published 1e material alone.

Which is why I'm saying 3.X got it close to right.

 

[Shardstone]

No. Special rules or templates to turn an NPC into a minion are potentially too blatantly narrative for D&D depending on what you conceive "D&D" to be. "This NPC is a minion and therefore has 1 h.p. and a few other special rules so that it will serve the purpose of being a minion in my carefully designed story." is a bit to blatantly narrative for me. "This NPC is a relatively weak servitor or a more powerful NPC and therefore is it's "minion"" is closer to what I prefer.

Ive never seen the former, only the latter, so I really dont see a point in arguing for something that was never suggested.

 

[Celebrim]

Ive never seen the former, only the latter, so I really dont see a point in arguing for something that was never suggested.

Ah. Well, just because you've never seen a black swan doesn't mean that they are uncommon. It just means you've probably never visited Australia.

I wasn't making up anything with my comment.

 

[Shardstone]

Ah. Well, just because you've never seen a black swan doesn't mean that they are uncommon. It just means you've probably never visited Australia.

I wasn't making up anything with my comment.

Stupid metaphor. How about am example game that does it?

 

[Celebrim]

Stupid metaphor. How about am example game that does it?

4e D&D.

 

[Shardstone]

4e D&D.

4e was certainly not what you described. Being able to turn a monster into a minion is not narrative; in real life, not every dragon can handle punishment as well as it can dish. And, of course, the liches I know IRL sometimes get so frail that 1 hit can break'em up. So, 4e minion rules seem pretty alright to me given your criterion.

 

[Celebrim]

in real life, not every dragon can handle punishment as well as it can dish. And, of course, the liches I know IRL sometimes get so frail that 1 hit can break'em up. So, 4e minion rules seem pretty alright to me given your criterion.

You know more about IRL dragons and liches than I know about IRL wasps and squirrels. But I'm not sure how your knowledge of real dragons and liches makes the 4e minion rules alright given my criteria. I also think your claim that 4e's minion rules are intended as process simulation and rules as physics won't hold up to scrutiny, either in terms of analysis of them or the designer's stated intentions.

 

[Shardstone]

You know more about IRL dragons and liches than I know about IRL wasps and squirrels. But I'm not sure how your knowledge of real dragons and liches makes the 4e minion rules alright given my criteria. I also think your claim that 4e's minion rules are intended as process simulation and rules as physics won't hold up to scrutiny, either in terms of analysis of them or the designer's stated intentions.

Domt think most rules in dnd stand up to that same scrutiny either. Why are we focusing so hard on this one?