Why are hit points generated randomly?

[Thanee]

I offer three methods to my players.

1) Straight Roll, reroll any 1 once. (if you roll 2 1's, you get a 1)
2) Fixed Score, 1d4=2, 1d6=3, 1d8=4, 1d10=5, 1d12=6
3) Median Roll, Roll three of your die type. Pick the middle result. If two numbers (or I suppose all three) tie, then that tie result is the result. (This method is freguently picked by my characters with d10 and d12.

Does anyone actually use 2) in your game? Seems inferior to both other methods on a quick estimation.

BTW, if you use the method of rolling once with a minimum of half the HD (i.e. what method 2) gives above as a minimum result, if your dice comes up lower), you got all the advantages rolled into one, with none of the disadvantages of the individual methods (i.e. method 1) and 3), regardless of whether you had a chance... when you get a 1 or 2 on a d10 a few times and no high rolls to balance this out, your fighter still sucks).

You have the chance to roll good, while having a certain minimum slightly below the absolute average which you cannot fall behind, and you get an average result, which doesn't differ too much from the mean of just one roll.

That method is really very, very good.

Bye
Thanee

 

[DragonLancer]

I think we have a candidate for "week's weakest rationale" here. Characters are not reduced to "carbon clones" simply because their hit points are averaged. Hit points have very little to do with character variety.

Ooh, sarcasm because I have a different opinion. Yep, must be ENWorld.

Actually, it does help make carbon clones. If every PC wizard or fighter has the same HP as every other wizard or fighter, theres no variation. Add that to the point buy system for stats, and how the skill rank system works, you can end up with carbon copies.
Thats why I prefer rolled stats and HP. Now, I'm not saying you are wrong for playing different, I'm just stating my opinion.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

For the same reason that attributes should be generated randomly, because otherwise everyone is a carbon clone. Variety is the spice of life and gaming.

That might have been necessary in old edition games where the only differences between 2 fighters were their HP and their name, where it took 5 minutes to make another character when one croaked. (I heard people tell about games like this).

Nowadays, there's not only classes and ability scores, but race, skills, feats, weapon and armour choice, spells, and all that, all of which can make a character individual. Not to speak about all that personality thing some people insist on using when they roleplay. Those guys who won't stop playing their characters as if it were a real living thing instead of something we just use to kill things in a game.


All I know is that we have been using fixed HP, and point buy, and don't roll starting money, either, and no two characters of the same race/class setup were the same. In fact, they were not even close.

There's also a bit of slippery-slope of rules development to consider. Assume, for the moment, that hit points by level are fixed per class. Well, might as well do that for monsters, too, right?

Already did that: I have used dozens of NPTs and monsters and all that, and I have actually rolled their HD maybe three times.

Then, there will be the pressure to make damage a fixed thing as well (since it is measured against known hit points, this leads to more mathematically sound balancing). And, of course, there's already point-buy stats. So, now we have standardized stats, hit points, and damage. Why, precisely, would we want to keep random to-hit, saves, and skill checks? Why not just go diceless and be done with it?

At some point along the way, you realize that there is some point to randomness in the game. All that remains is a decision as to where to draw the line between fixed progressions and randomness.

So because there is a slippery slope, we should draw the line a couple of inches before the field? Everything's random? If we go that way, we might as well go 3d6, in order. The class and race are rolled from a table as well.

And, of course, we roll the monsters' stats as well now. Not every ogre mage has Str 21, for example...

The discussion can go either way, so why not find a nice plane to draw a line? Like "things to do with character creation and advancement are fixed or assigned by choice, and things that involve actual actions are rolled:

Abilities, HP, Race, Class(es), choices in class abilities, skills, feats, spell selection - all this belongs to the realm of character creation/advancement (it is done once, and then doesn't change except in certain circumstances, where you deliberately change something, like sorcerer's known spells) - so it is fix: HP are something like 3/4, average rounded up, or similar; ability scores are bought with the amount of points that was agreed upon; class, race, skills and so on are the players' choice.

When you are actually playing the game (not creating characters or levelling them up), you roll the dice.

 

[jrients]

I was just joking. No one actually plays Man, Myth & Magic, Powers & Perils or Lords of Creation.

I know you were kidding, but I still find the idea intriguing.

Also, I played Lords of Creation last month.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I don't think Hit Points mean what you think they mean.

Hit Points derived from racial HD reflect how generally tough you are.

Hit Points derived from class HD reflect how well you can *almost* evade a potentially killing blow.

Take a look at a Ftr 1 with 10 hp and a Ftr 10 with 80 hp. Each is hit by a longsword, for 8 hp of damage. For the Ftr 1, it means an almost deadly blow, a deep cut or some other serious injury. Another one of those will certainly kill him. For the Ftr 10, the same attack was almost entirely dodged, resulting in a minor cut to the elbow or something. The Ftr 10 can keep dodging these blows, but each minor injury he takes compromises some of his ability to successfully dodge the next attack. When he gets down to 10 hp, he is so tired/worn out that his skill is no better than that of a rookie Ftr 1.

Well, I'm not sure there is an exact definition of what a Hit Point is, and how they work, but I understand your interpretation of it. Nevertheless, in your interpretation, why then don't Rogues have the highest hit points? They are usually the most skilled at avoiding blows (higher Dex, Evasion, eventually can't be caught flat footed).

When the Wizard and the Fighter both fall into the pit of fire, why does it take longer for the fighter to die if they both have the same Str and Con?

I'm just trying to point out that using logic when trying to determine how rules should be written can lead to the death of many holy bovines. I personally have no problem with many of these sacred cow rules remaining for no other reason than, "It is part of what makes the game D&D," and accept that I and others may choose to change the rule to something more suitable for our games.

 

[Klaus]

Well, I'm not sure there is an exact definition of what a Hit Point is, and how they work, but I understand your interpretation of it. Nevertheless, in your interpretation, why then don't Rogues have the highest hit points? They are usually the most skilled at avoiding blows (higher Dex, Evasion, eventually can't be caught flat footed).

When the Wizard and the Fighter both fall into the pit of fire, why does it take longer for the fighter to die if they both have the same Str and Con?

I'm just trying to point out that using logic when trying to determine how rules should be written can lead to the death of many holy bovines. I personally have no problem with many of these sacred cow rules remaining for no other reason than, "It is part of what makes the game D&D," and accept that I and others may choose to change the rule to something more suitable for our games.

Yeah, there are so incongruencies, but a few are explainable. The rogue doesn't train out-and-out combat, but a more stealthy approach to it. So he learns to attack from ambush, to get out of harm's way and eventually may learn how to roll with a potentially lethal blow. But a Fighter learns how to stand in the thick of combat.

Here's a quote from Jedi Counseling 101, which itself quotes the upcoming Star Wars Saga Edition (which now uses hit points):

Hit points (sometimes abbreviated "hp") represent two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a graze or near miss. As you become more experienced, you become more adept at parrying strikes, dodging attacks, and rolling with blows such that you minimize or avoid significant physical trauma, but all this effort slowly wears you down. Rather than trying to keep track of the difference between attacks and how much physical injury you take, hit points are an abstract measure of your total ability to survive damage.

The article continues to explain what hit points mean to different creatures and objects:

Hit points are not a universal gauge of concrete, physical toughness. If a soldier and a small tank both have 100 hit points, that doesn't mean the soldier is physically as tough as the tank! Hit points are deliberately abstract so that the same measure of damage can be applied to an inanimate object (such as a wall), an animate object (such as a tank), a massive creature (such as a Krayt dragon), or a high-level character. Consider what hit points mean to each of them:

• The high-level character's durability comes mostly from avoiding attacks, rolling with blows, and so forth. Only a fraction of his survival is based on his physical ability to absorb damage.
• The Krayt dragon's hit points include skill and speed, but a much greater portion comes from its sheer size and bulk. In other words, it's hard to hit something that big in a way that will cause critically injuries.
• The tank's hit points are completely physical in nature, but they aren't determined only by its size and mass. They also account for qualities such as the resiliency of the tank's systems, the volatility of its fuel and payload, the number of redundant and backup systems, and so on.
• The wall's hit points are completely physical and almost entirely determined by simple physical characteristics such as the type of material used to build the wall, the thickness of the wall, and so on.

Over the years, some players have developed a terrible misconception that a character with 100 hit points can be shot almost a dozen times in the chest. Not true! Both a high-level soldier with 100 hit points and a stormtrooper with 10 hit points will be grievously injured and possibly killed by a single blaster wound to the chest. However, the high-level soldier will dodge the first nine shots, and the stormtrooper won't. (If it helps, imagine that a high-level hero has a reserve of "virtual hit points" to offset attacks that would otherwise be lethal. Once he has exhausted his reserve, the blow that finally reduces him to 0 hit points will solidly connect and cause serious physical trauma.)

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

We use max HP for PCs and elite monsters/NPCs, ~half for other NPCs/monsters.

In the last Eberron game we had, IIRC, my psion had more HP than the Fist of Raziel, though that was likely due to my stacking his Con as high as I could get it, and the FoR's player was busy putting his stuff more into Wisdom and Str.

Brad

 

[Doug McCrae]

Also, I played Lords of Creation last month.

Wow! Cool session.

 

[Remathilis]

Hmmm... Might be worth a polling...

It seems there is 4 major variants for fixed hp. Average, Half, Half+1, or 75-80%.

Average 2.5/3.5/4.5/5.5/6.5 (every odd level, +1 hp)
Half 2/3/4/5/6
Half+1 3/4/5/6/7
75-80%: 3/5/6/8/9

There is a significant boost for higher HD classes. I guess its a matter of do you like having PCs with tons of hp or do you like them a bit more average. I could see it tied to Point buy amounts (25pts/average, 28pts/half+1, etc) as well.

Since my game is pretty high, I'm thinking 75-80% for now. It'd be interesting to see which is the most common though.

 

[Darrell]

I like randomness in play, and none in character generation.

Whereas my group prefers randomness in both. Our current game went 'old school,' in that we not only roll hit points, but character generation was 3d6 arranged in 'character sheet order (1st roll to STR, 2nd roll to DEX, 3rd to CON, etc.),' and character class was decided after we saw what the rolls were.

Regards,
Darrell