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

[pemerton]

In the 4e adventures I've written, I have to often insert surge recovery methods so that PCs can finish an adventure without having to take extended rests at times inconvenient to the speed of plot. For example, I know a paladin who used 26 surges going through 7 encounters in an adventure. That's a lot of surges.

Similarly, I've dealt over 1000 hit points of damage in one encounter to a group who had a total of 600 hit points.

And had 7 deaths in the course of one (intentionally) particularly violent adventure.

In my 4e game I've had one TPK and 2 other PC deaths between 1st and 20th level. That's not especially high, but I know PC death is clearly a possibility while playing the system within its indicated parameters.

And my players certainly chew through their surges. In one recent fight the 20th level fighter, who has a 150-ish hp total, took over 400 hp damage. And in the same encounter I got within single digits of having a mind flayer eat the sorcerer's brain (but the cleric was pumping him with surges quicker than I could bore through his skull).

I think it's pretty much agreed upon that 4th edition characters can withstand MUCH more than any character of previous editions. I don't think it's anecdotal at all especially since he stipulated that he was playing rules as written with standard characters and standard monsters.

Well, so am I. And so, I assume, is Keterys. (And in fact it turns out that Gorgoroth was not running the standard rules, but rather was halving monster hit point.)

It was just too much micromanagement of every little action you can do, and at the end of it what was the reward? Woo, some magic items that you're not interested in because by Paragon you're already "locked in" to your build and favorite items and don't care that much.

That's why the game favours "wish lists" for magic item allocation.

 

[Jester David]

Sure, so let's look at the level 1 adventures in the playtest packet and what monsters are in them.

Level 2 Dark Adept deals 4d8 damage with its inflict light wounds.

A single dark adept is a tough encounter. So it's a boss fight. Boss fights are meant to challenge. Plus a DC 12 Con save for half damage. It's a nice glass canon. If the character makes its save, the adept is going down.
Plus, again, it doesn't matter if a L1 PC has 5 hitpoints or 50. If the monster is meant to be able to one-shot you it will be able to one-shot you.

(That said, the numbers are a little in flux as PCs were taking monsters apart effortlessly the last two packages. They're likely seeing how far they can push in the other direction.)

Level 3 Wight deals 2d8 + 4 with its multiattack. Ditto Level 4 Drow.
Level 4 Ogre also deals 2d8 + 4.

At 130xp, a single wight is a "tough" encounter for three L1 PCs and an average encounter for six. It's a little like putting a 4e party against a 3rd level elite; they can win but it's not the best example of the math.

Orcs, often encountered in fair sized groups, deal 1d12 + 2 each, while the accompanying Orogs deal 1d12 + 3. Not to mention, the Orc Leader can grant all of them a +5 damage bonus or do 2d12 + 6 himself.

Orcs are 3rd level monsters as well. An orc is a good example of what PvP might look like: hard but not impossible to win.

 

[pemerton]

But my design philosophy is that it's easier to add. If the game is playable it's always easier to add power, making the PCs hardier and deadlier. Adding extra hitpoints is easy, but if the game works taking them away is much trickier because it might make the game too hard or swingy.

I don't see how this is relevant to choosing between +Con score, and +Con mod per level, given that the first produces more 1st level hp but fewer high level hit points, and the second produces the converse.

Which one counts as adding extra hit points?

 

[Jester David]

And orcs do a lot of damage. Since most people consider orcs to be appropriate threats for 1st level characters, this supports my argument that 1st level PCs should have more HPs.

Right...
Orcs have always been a "challenge" monster for first level PCs. You *could* fight them but they're not the default and it's going to be a hard fight. A couple orcs were a challenge in 3e and the lowest level orcs in the 4e MM were level 3 (the sample encounter groups were level 4, 6, 9, and 10).
This is changing more than just starting hp.

But even if we do double or triple starting hp, this means one of three things:
1) monster damage goes up at the same rate, so PCs die just as fast
2) monster hitpoints go up at the same rate, so combats last longer (and PCs have the same chance of death)
3) monster hp and damage do not change and PCs just become much harder to kill

The question then is, why do you want PC hitpoints to increase? What's your motive?
Likely, you want PCs to have better odds at surviving at low levels. Okay, this is irrelevant to the actual hp numbers, and is actually a factor of the hp/damage ratio. You could achieve the same results as doubling hp by halving monster damage.

Much hardier PCs that can survive in combat longer is also a personal preference, and one not necessarily shared by the majority of players.

So there becomes two options: higher hitpoints with many people reducing hp to fit their playstyle or lower hitpoints with many people increasing hp to fit their playstyle. Ostensibly, the two options are equal, but there are some subtle differences.

First, it's easier to add power than take it away. This is just basic psychology: people are going to be more accepting if you're giving them something extra. It's just easier for players to have low hp as the base and add Hit Dice as an option.

Second, there's the power balance. Level 1 monsters are the lowest of the low, because they can't have Level 0.5 or Level 1/3rd monsters (and they don't want to go back to the CR system for fear of negative feedback). So a level 1 monster is not equal to a level 1 PC. A level 1 monster is an unfair fight slanted to the PC.
If hp start out low and you add and fights are too easy, it's a simple matter to choose tougher monsters or make use of options that make fights harder, such as hindering terrain or templates/levelling up monsters.
If PC hitpoints start out higher then the Level 1 monsters likely have to be a tad more challenging and the game is balanced around that. So if you take away hitpoints and monsters are too hard, there's no way to adjust for it. You can't choose easier monsters because there are none.

Lastly, there is the tradition factor. There are people who have been playing D&D longer than I've been alive (and I'm not young, being married with a kid) and hit dice and hitpoints have mostly been the same for that entire time. It worked back then, so there's no reason it can't work now.

 

[Jester David]

I don't see how this is relevant to choosing between +Con score, and +Con mod per level, given that the first produces more 1st level hp but fewer high level hit points, and the second produces the converse.

Which one counts as adding extra hit points?

Because it's adding more hitpoints right now at the cost of hitpoints maybe sometime in the future. The immediate gratification makes it much more appealing.

Plus it still doesn't automatically make any difference. Monster damage could be adjusted accordingly to start higher and increase slower so there could be no change to PC survivability.

 

[Sunseeker]

Does str add its damage per level? Or Dex add to initiative per level? Con should certainly add to hit points, but that doesn't say anything about per level being the correct answer.

Every attack. Statistically speaking, comparing how many times your str mod affects the game vs adding con mod(or even score) to HP once makes con statistically insignificant.

 

[pemerton]

Because it's adding more hitpoints right now at the cost of hitpoints maybe sometime in the future.

Huh? Above-1st level play is a part of the game and its maths now just as much as 1st level play is.

The key is getting the ratios right across two dimensions: hp growth per level; and damage per attack.

And my own sympathies are with those who think there's something wacky about damage per attack being overkill at 1st level but comparatively feeble at upper levels.

 

[GSHamster]

In general terms, I think it would be better to define the problem in terms of attacks. Should a single spell or attack from a 1st level character be able to one-shot another 1st level character?

1. Yes
2. No
3 Yes, on a crit (or low probability)

I lean towards No, simply because it's no fun to die before you even get an action.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I find Con score at 1st level a bit too much, but I appreciate that it means we don't have to add Con mod at every level. I think an extra quantity of HP at 1st level wants to be around the same order as the hit die range (6-12). I think these extra HP could be included as a racial feature - giving a little more differentiation there. It could be 4 for elves, 6 for humans/halflings, 8 for dwarves, so starting HP would be 4+4+con mod for an elven wizard (return them to d4!) up to 8+12+con mod for a dwarven barbarian.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

as long as you don´t do a monsters as character thing later on, this would also explain, why goblins don´t have much hp... their racial hp are 0.