D&D 5E Losing HP as you level up

[DEFCON 1]

There didn't need to be a Sage Advice for you to be able to lose HP upon leveling up if your Con is sufficiently low. It was always the case. Because it's always been in the rulebook. Crawford answered because somebody asked. And now you are having a fit because Crawford answered a question.

The rule was "official" with or without Crawford answering the question.

I put this to you: Without reference to anything tweeted by Crawford how do you determine, by the rules, HP upon leveling up? And, by following the rules, is it possible to lose maximum HP?

A player never needed this tweet to go to a table and say that you could lose HP upon leveling with a sufficiently low Con and rolling for HP.

I believe you are confusing me with someone else. It was other people who were saying that there should be errata written stating that a PC should not be able to lose HP and that there should always be a minimum of 1 HP gained even when you roll HP and have a negative CON modifier... which I was arguing against.

They were the ones who wanted rules changed (or "clarified") within the errata. And I was arguing against that because doing so changes the editorial policy of what WotC wanted 5E errata to be, and besides which anyone can choose for themselves to give a minimum of 1 HP to a PC at their table if they so chose. Errata need never come into it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I guess I don't see why one needs to denigrate those who want to play RAW. A lot of people play AL, and that's all RAW.

It's because I don't agree that AL is "all RAW" and actually I believe that is furthest from the truth. Because AL is DMd by people... and those people interpret the rules all the time in AL. Because you have to. You will never play a game "RAW", because the game has been written such that it is impossible to do so. That's the whole point of them having written it in natural language and with sections left deliberately vague. Because they wanted everyone to finally get over this idea of needing completely air-tight, non-parseable, computer-code level writing and rulesmanship.

They had that in 4E. And they kept changing and ruling and re-changing and re-ruling every single facet of the game so as to make it as unambiguous as possible... resulting in an errata document that was huge and hundreds of different little rules were nitpicked here and nitpicked there so that there was no unbalancing and no misunderstanding and everything worked exactly as everyone wanted.

And then the game died.

Now granted... one didn't cause the other. But what we can certainly say is that it didn't help it. So to try and get back there even when WotC has been telling us "Stop worrying about it and just make something up for yourself!" is a waste of time, money and energy if you ask me. And if others keep demanding it anyway... I'm going to point out that its an unwarranted demand.

 

[Satyrn]

It's because I don't agree that AL is "all RAW" and actually I believe that is furthest from the truth. Because AL is DMd by people... and those people interpret the rules all the time in AL. Because you have to.

I swore off the phrase a few years ago as unhelpful to my game.

Now, it just means Monday night wrestling to me.

 

[KahlessNestor]

It's because I don't agree that AL is "all RAW" and actually I believe that is furthest from the truth. Because AL is DMd by people... and those people interpret the rules all the time in AL. Because you have to. You will never play a game "RAW", because the game has been written such that it is impossible to do so. That's the whole point of them having written it in natural language and with sections left deliberately vague. Because they wanted everyone to finally get over this idea of needing completely air-tight, non-parseable, computer-code level writing and rulesmanship.

They had that in 4E. And they kept changing and ruling and re-changing and re-ruling every single facet of the game so as to make it as unambiguous as possible... resulting in an errata document that was huge and hundreds of different little rules were nitpicked here and nitpicked there so that there was no unbalancing and no misunderstanding and everything worked exactly as everyone wanted.

And then the game died.

Now granted... one didn't cause the other. But what we can certainly say is that it didn't help it. So to try and get back there even when WotC has been telling us "Stop worrying about it and just make something up for yourself!" is a waste of time, money and energy if you ask me. And if others keep demanding it anyway... I'm going to point out that its an unwarranted demand.

Except that there are severe limits to how much you can "interpret" in AL. And that is because they do play RAW. Just because 5E is a bit more loose than 4E doesn’t mean RAW doesn't exist or isn't important or required.

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[pemerton]

This is an odd change to D&D. In AD&D, for instance (PHB p 12) the rule is "subtraction can never reduce any hit die below 1, i.e. if a die is rolled and a 1 comes up, or if a 2 is rolled and the penalty due toconstitution is -2, the die is read as 1 (hit point) regardless of subtractions."

 

[Argyle King]

At first, the ruling sounded odd. However, I think I've come to like it.

Having that low of a CON would (likely) mean you have health problems. Slowly losing HP makes some amount of sense.

Even ignoring that, from a game perspective, I think it gives a player more motivation to not dump CON. I imagine most would call foul on putting an 8 in Con, but still having that character get the same HP.

 

[Nikosandros]

This is an odd change to D&D. In AD&D, for instance (PHB p 12) the rule is "subtraction can never reduce any hit die below 1, i.e. if a die is rolled and a 1 comes up, or if a 2 is rolled and the penalty due toconstitution is -2, the die is read as 1 (hit point) regardless of subtractions."

Yes, I was surprised by it too. The minimum has been there in all previous editions (except 4e where there's no option for rolling HP, of course).

I thought that the omission of the minimum of 1 HP per new level was on oversight and was not done on purpose. In the unlikely case of this happening in one of my games, I would house-rule it.

 

[Stalker0]

This is one where I would houserule to just give them 1 hp. Lets be honest, if your character only gets 1 hp when they level up, they are going to have a lot of problems staying alive.

 

[pemerton]

Having that low of a CON would (likely) mean you have health problems. Slowly losing HP makes some amount of sense.

But if hp are luck, skill, etc - as well as meat - then it looks a bit odd again. It's one thing to say that some hp are sheer toughness, and so good CON leads to more hp; but another to say that the feeble are so feeble that the god's curse them as they struggle through life!

 

[DEFCON 1]

But if hp are luck, skill, etc - as well as meat - then it looks a bit odd again. It's one thing to say that some hp are sheer toughness, and so good CON leads to more hp; but another to say that the feeble are so feeble that the god's curse them as they struggle through life!

The other way to look at it though is that those people in the world that had both a negative CON modifer and roll for HP are never going to "level up" anyway because they don't have the functionality to be effective PCs. They'll start and stay with their Max HP from their one hit die minus 4 from their Constitution of 3. And they won't level up because in the fiction of the world, "adventuring" is literally killing them. They probably in the fiction *have* to be constantly bedridden and fed by another person, which could explains WHY they have a 3 CON in the first place. And if this person tried to get up out of bed, strap on a dagger, and then walk out of town to go hunting a wolf... they pretty much are signing their own death warrant. Because when they "level up" with game mechanics... they potentially lose their remaining hit points and drop dead because they aren't getting their nourishment through a straw anymore and their bones can't handle the stress of walking around.