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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4047204" data-attributes="member: 32164">So, I was looking at the description of Toughness from Design & Development: Feats, and something jumped out at me. I had been assuming that Fourth Edition would work similarly to Star Wars Saga Edition, with a static number of hit points at 1st-level and then an increase at every level after that. That's how Toughness works in SWSE, but it's not how Toughness works in Fourth Edition. Here's the feat description:ToughnessTier: Heroic Benefit: When you take this feat, you gain additional hit points equal to your level + 3. You also gain 1 additional hit point every time you gain a level.That means that, at 1st-level, Toughness grants 4 hp, not 3. Or in other words, at least as far as Toughness goes, 1st-level grants both a kicker (+3 hp), and the ordinary hit point that any level does (+1).We can try to infer the mechanics by taking the example from Design & Development: Death and Dying of a 15th-level fighter with 120 hp, and applying some of the speculations that Steve Schubert implied were "on the right track" in the podcast - an initial boost and static hit points at each level after that. Here's my math:Let's assume that a 1st-level Fighter gets a first level "kicker" of 30 hp. Let's further assume that he gains 5 hp per level after that. If we also give him a +1 CON bonus (12 or 13 CON), that means 6 hp per level. Extrapolating out, that gives:1st - 36 hp2nd - 42 hp3rd - 48 hp4th - 54 hp5th - 60 hp6th - 66 hp7th - 72 hp8th - 78 hp9th - 84 hp10th - 90 hp11th - 96 hp12th - 102 hp13th - 108 hp14th - 114 hp15th - 120 hp16th - 126 hp17th - 132 hp18th - 138 hp19th - 144 hp20th - 150 hp21st - 156 hp22nd - 162 hp23rd - 168 hp24th - 174 hp25th - 180 hp26th - 186 hp27th - 192 hp28th - 198 hp29th - 204 hp30th - 210 hpThat's at least consistent with both the mechanics of the Toughness feat and the numbers in Design & Development: Death and Dying. Also, if you assume that they reverse engineered from the Hit Dice, it almost makes sense.In Third Edition, a fighter had d10 hit dice. Tripling that, á la Saga Edition (ported over from that stage of 4E design perhaps?), gives the "kicker" number of 30. Further, the base "per level" of 5 hp is a somewhat logical "half max on a d10," or "average on a d10, rounded down." Normalizing the progression of extra hit points to include Level 1 simplifies the math, so you're not accidentally figuring it as: "Let's see, Level 15 fighter = 30 + 5 x 15...no wait, 5 x 14..."Which I know I've done when calculating hit points in Saga...Under this system, your first "logical" instinct is also "correct." It's also consistent with how Saga handles attacks and defenses in that a starting 1st-level character gets both the "kicker" and his "first-level" bonus.Thoughts? Speculations on what it might mean for other classes?Personally, I think the d4 base is history, but I could be wrong.</blockquote>

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