D&D 5E First Level Hit Points Need to Increase

[Sunseeker]

I personally think the spells deal far too much damage. 1st-level spells shouldn't be dealing an average of nearly DOUBLE the average HP. That's just silly.

Gritty games are not defined by how readily you die, but how readily death is present in the game. The protagonists of a "gritty" game indeed don't even ever have to die in order for a game to gain grit. Their friends, their family, random NPCs. Killing lots of PCs on a regular basis leads to people not caring about their PCs, and while that's fine for some people and it's logical extension of making dozens of uninteresting, uninvolved "Generic Fighter #2" characters is fine for some groups, but that alone doesn't create grit. It can often create boredom.

Grit comes from the fear of death, the reality of it's presence. Not the fact that you actually died. Actually dying is fairly insignificant in D&D.

It doesn't eliminate the built-in heroism simply by lowing HP when PCs are still wielding nuclear magic missiles at 3d4+6 a pop.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

My biggest gripe with HP as they stand is that we're STILL adding Con mod every level, undermining the actual value of your hit die and giving certain classes yet another ability they can't scrimp on. It's fine for spellcasters though, they can prioritise Con second in almost all cases.

 

[keterys]

I personally think the spells deal far too much damage. 1st-level spells shouldn't be dealing an average of nearly DOUBLE the average HP. That's just silly.

A non-daily good attack hits for about 1d12+1d6+4 = 14 damage. So, 3d4 + 6 = 13.5 damage magic missiles as daily expenditures? Not a lot of room to go lower there.

We know that a normal hit from your fighter or barbarian type starts at 1d10+4 or so and goes up from there. That means that anything that adds a little bit of extra damage on top of that also pushes the necessary damage baselines appropriately. If monsters operate under a completely different system, PC hit points doesn't necessarily need to track, but it's probably better if we assume that they do, because it seems likely monsters will get access to some spells, and some PCs will be caught in their allies' spells, or get attacked by their (confused/dominated/etc) allies.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's also very easy to fix.
Don't want fragile characters? Start at third level. This is simple and requires no house rules.

No, that would be a mistake.

You don't want fragile characters -> you give them more HP, faster/more healing, better ST/AC or a combination of these.

Starting at third level to achieve better survivability is nonsense, unless you throw 1st level monsters at them. But if you then put the PCs against a 3rd level adventure, you're back to square 1 in terms of survivability. Higher level has not much to do with survivability, or maybe it might have depending on the edition/system, but it could even be the other way around.

Also, starting at higher level always means more complexity (at the very least because of the presence of higher level spells, but in almost every system also because of additional abilities to every PC) which might or might not be something the group wants, in any case it's one thing to keep in mind.

It is true that it is very easy to fix, but just give your 1st level PCs more HP and you're done.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Dials and knobs are good.

Starting with 27 HP at level 1 as the default has to die a blistering, and decisive death! It took my DM 3 years to realize the fact that 4e's default setting was ruining our fun because we had never had a single PC death using the standard modules and rules. The majority have decided, the default is level 1 characters need to be somewhere between AD&D and 4e, I just cannot fathom personally how anyone can have fun in a game with effectively immortal characters. When you drop to 0hp or below, you're usually out of the fight, not completely dead, then it becomes a war of attrition. Adding more HP by default messes up the entire balance of the rest of the game. 4e starts you out at roughly 4th level, then doesn't adjust the monster difficulty up to raise the challenge. They overreacted to previous editions having grittiness baked in (vulnerable starting characters).

IMO if you are playing a game with insane risks and you rarely die, something is wrong. No more munchkin D&D! PC are SUPPOSED TO DIE!!! That's what makes D&D fun, surviving. Only the few should make it to 9th, i.e. name level. Don't grade on a bell curve. The graveyards should be littered with the corpses of middling swordsmen and unlucky robes-wearers who dared venture into the treacherous depths of yon mountain caves.

 

[JamesonCourage]

HP damage can be "low". It's fine. If it's really a sticking point to a lot of fans (not even the majority), put it at default on a dial at Standard and up. Assign to taste.

Spell damage seems too high, if this is where HP is. You can scale at-will attacks better. Do so.

First level characters in my game will never, ever be "heroes" from level 1, unless they act heroically and pull it off (significantly more difficult at level 1). Yours can (and likely will) be different. Dials are good, here.

Also, I agree with Chris_Nightwing: let's stop using Con mod for bonus HP each level. That's what's throwing your math off.

I think I could settle, as a dial setting: HD (as they are now) + 1 per Con score above 10. So, if you had a 16 Con, you'd start with 6 + class HD. And, if you ever gained Con, you'd gain that much HP. Obviously, still too low for the original poster, but as it's more than good enough for me, it just goes to show how important (and easy to implement) dials are, here. This isn't a hard issue to solve, even if it's a big issue to a lot of players and GMs. As always, play what you like

 

[Li Shenron]

IMO if you are playing a game with insane risks and you rarely die, something is wrong. No more munchkin D&D! PC are SUPPOSED TO DIE!!! That's what makes D&D fun, surviving. Only the few should make it to 9th, i.e. name level. Don't grade on a bell curve. The graveyards should be littered with the corpses of middling swordsmen and unlucky robes-wearers who dared venture into the treacherous depths of yon mountain caves.

That's one way of playing the game, and in that gamestyle I expect PCs to die often.

The opposite gamestyle is just as good, in which case I expect a PC to die only when it fits the story and its player agrees.

I'd rather have one of these two extremes than a half-baked cake, but I would not really expect the default game to give something other than a half-baked cake in this regard.

 

[Jester David]

No, that would be a mistake.

You don't want fragile characters -> you give them more HP, faster/more healing, better ST/AC or a combination of these.

Starting at third level to achieve better survivability is nonsense, unless you throw 1st level monsters at them. But if you then put the PCs against a 3rd level adventure, you're back to square 1 in terms of survivability. Higher level has not much to do with survivability, or maybe it might have depending on the edition/system, but it could even be the other way around.

Also, starting at higher level always means more complexity (at the very least because of the presence of higher level spells, but in almost every system also because of additional abilities to every PC) which might or might not be something the group wants, in any case it's one thing to keep in mind.

It is true that it is very easy to fix, but just give your 1st level PCs more HP and you're done.

Didja read the rest of my post or just stop at the point you didn't agree with?

 

[keterys]

It's pretty easy to kill PCs in every edition of D&D. In 4e it just involves bigger hits. For example, a level 1 fledgling white dragon can do as much as 80 damage to a PC in just one round (though the average will be in the 30s, merely enough to drop most PCs and outright kill almost any already-bloodied one)

It's all about figuring out how much damage things do, and how many hits you want PCs to take. So, there's a big difference between an ogre who swings for 1d10 (AD&D) and one who swings for 4d10+4 (4E). One would expect the AD&D PC to have about 1/4 of the hp of the 4E PC by that example.

 

[Celebrim]

My current system does 1st level hit points as HD+Con Bonus+Size Bonus (8 for a medium-sized creature). Since PC's at least get max hit points at first level as a result of being Heros, this means that PC's tend to have between 12 and 24 hit points at first level. Since they don't die until -10, and since most attacks do 1 die of damage, this tends to make them very durable. Tying the hit points to size also resolves the problem of famous house cat problem (too little distinction between a house cat and its owner) and other issues like the whale problem (large creatures requiring massive hit die to reflect their durability, but gaining all the other benefits of HD as well).

It does however have a problem I haven't figured out what I'm going to do about and which I mentally refer to as the 'deer problem'. At an average of 12-24 hit points, first level characters can take on average 3d6 to 6d6 damage before even being in danger of dying. This means that in general, it's hard to one shot even a 1HD target without a critical hit. Thus, how do 1st level humans hunt game like deer? A 1HD animal is no longer threatened by a 1HD weapon. A 1HD soldier requires multiple attacks with 1HD weapons to stagger or kill. It hasn't been a huge problem of me, but it nags on me, and I can see why some people wouldn't want to put it into their game.