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Brand new DM to 5E and many concerns...
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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7520787" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>It was a conscious design decision that characters (both PCs and monsters) scale by damage output and HP, rather than by hit bonuses and AC bonuses. The idea is that it's really boring if both sides keep missing each other every round, so you should pretty much always be hitting. Missing entirely is something that you do at low levels, when things have so few HP that one good hit will drop them.</p><p></p><p>I'm not a huge fan of that choice, personally, but it works out alright from a math perspective, given how quickly characters can heal damage. A high-level fighter gets stabbed fifteen times, which sucks, but then they're better after they take a short rest.</p><p>Most level 1 characters should have a Con bonus. The average Con score for a level 1 character is around 14, with low-HP classes tending toward a higher bonus.</p><p></p><p>The other important factor is that you don't die until you go fully negative of your HP total, so a level 1 wizard with Con 12 (which is just about the weakest you'll ever see) can go all the way from +7 to -7 before they die. It can still happen, of course, but there are worse offenders (such as Cause Wounds); and level 1 was intentionally designed as a reference to how frail characters could be in older editions. If you don't want to risk sudden death with every swing, as things were in low-level AD&D, then you just start at level 3 and you never have to worry about it again. Levels 1 and 2 are also designed to go by in about one session each, so you can spend more time on the serious game where you aren't in constant fear of death.</p><p></p><p>Again, it's not necessarily my preference, but it's an intentional choice by the designers.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7520787, member: 6775031"] It was a conscious design decision that characters (both PCs and monsters) scale by damage output and HP, rather than by hit bonuses and AC bonuses. The idea is that it's really boring if both sides keep missing each other every round, so you should pretty much always be hitting. Missing entirely is something that you do at low levels, when things have so few HP that one good hit will drop them. I'm not a huge fan of that choice, personally, but it works out alright from a math perspective, given how quickly characters can heal damage. A high-level fighter gets stabbed fifteen times, which sucks, but then they're better after they take a short rest. Most level 1 characters should have a Con bonus. The average Con score for a level 1 character is around 14, with low-HP classes tending toward a higher bonus. The other important factor is that you don't die until you go fully negative of your HP total, so a level 1 wizard with Con 12 (which is just about the weakest you'll ever see) can go all the way from +7 to -7 before they die. It can still happen, of course, but there are worse offenders (such as Cause Wounds); and level 1 was intentionally designed as a reference to how frail characters could be in older editions. If you don't want to risk sudden death with every swing, as things were in low-level AD&D, then you just start at level 3 and you never have to worry about it again. Levels 1 and 2 are also designed to go by in about one session each, so you can spend more time on the serious game where you aren't in constant fear of death. Again, it's not necessarily my preference, but it's an intentional choice by the designers. [/QUOTE]
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