D&D 5E 10HP Bonus for Level 1 Characters. Thoughts?

[Waterbizkit]

I join in with the "if this will work for you and your players, do it" crowd. It won't break anything. Like others have said through the easier way to do it would be to simply give them the HP of a 2nd or 3rd level character out of the gate and not have them gain HP again until 4th level. Seems easier than tracking an arbitrary 10 points.

All that said, this is all well & good but not my thing. In our current campaign I killed two out of five PCs in the first session. The Rogue was straight up one-shot by a ghost and the Ranger got mauled after he went down forcing failed death-saves. I like the game to have a lethal feel right out of the gate, otherwise what's the point? I don't like my players to feel like their characters are immortal. Powerful yes, but not invincible.

Anyway, the trick is always to find what will work best for your game and your players. It might require some tinkering, but you'll get there and ideas like this are where that process starts. So give it a go and see how it all works itself out

 

[Awesome Adam]

Instead of a flat 10 bonus HP have you considered giving them their Constitution score in bonus HP ?

Their constitution determines their base HP. Any hit dice gained from classes represents fortitude the've aquired through determination and training.

 

[Emerald Logic]

Thank you all very much for the suggestions. There are ideas here I hadn't considered at all. At the moment I think I'll likely take different approaches depending on if a game has new players or if a game has veteran players.

New Players: Give them an HP bonus equal to their constitution at first and remove instant kills from the game for at least the first few levels.

Veteran Players: Leave the system as is for the players. Perhaps adjust the stats of lower level creatures to lessen the damage for crits. I feel this would be a good behind the scenes approach that still leaves the excitement of a possible critical. Maybe I'll just give the creatures a "Fumbler" or "Untrained" trait that lessens critical damage instead of stat decreases.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think it would be fine if you intended to keep players at low-levels for longer periods of time than the normal 5E XP chart would imply. By the time they are level 5 it will make absolutely no difference, as other people point out, levels 1-5 are a fairly quick pace.

 

[Awesome Adam]

If you are the DM, you can simply ignore the crits of low level monsters, or, better yet, apply a non damage based crit.

Goblin crits level 1 PC ? Have the PC disarmed, or knocked down, instead of extra damage.