Hit Points?

[Lord Zack]

I say why not have options. If a DM wants to have hp rolled at every level, including first, well as long as he can convince his players, he should be able to do that. If he wants max hp at every level and 3x HD at 1st he should be able to do that too. As well as anything in between.

 

[keterys]

One of the reasons people said certain editions had a sweet spot was because the hp at certain levels was too low (or high).

3E had the highest variance since it starts very low relative to damage (orc hits you, you die), then surges very high with good Con modifier/polymorph.
4E's too high for some people, though some of that also suggests that damage per hit should be lowered.
You also saw some odd interactions in older editions with attacks that dealt damage based on level/HD or even raw hp. Like fighting a dragon that rolled good hp in 1st ed was... a bit silly sometimes, since it could one shot the entire party, often dropping people on successful saves.

So, what's a good number of hits to drop a PC? Let's say we're looking at three types of enemies in an adventure.

Wimpy goblins with daggers
Sword-swinging skeleton
Tree-smashing ogre

If we're not talking crits, how many hits should it take to drop a PC from each?

Is it okay if the ogre drops someone in one swing? Is it okay if it _kills_ someone (from full hp) with a crit?
Is it okay if the goblins need _at least_ 4 average hits to drop a PC (assume you're fighting a dozen of them)?

Now let's reverse that. You've got 3 PCs:
An unarmed halfling wizard
An elf paladin with a longsword
A half-orc barbarian with a greataxe
(using some slightly non-core options just to have greater variance)

How many average _melee_ hits from each should it take to drop the ogre? The skeleton?
Should any have a chance to not kill one of the dozen goblins in one shot?

Answer that enough times with enough variation and you can establish a baseline of expectations for damage. And, for many folks, probably quickly find your paradoxes.

I think we can safely assume we're keeping rolled damage, for example - so if we want a PC able to deal between 1d4 and 1d12 (potentially plus something)... and vice versa on the monsters. Well, your minimums and your maximums get interesting.

Like if a PC tends to deal 1d4+4 to 1d12+4 at 1st level, and we don't want minimum damage to kill the skeleton, it needs more than 5 hp. If we want non-crits to take 2 hits to kill a skeleton, it needs at least 12 hp.

You can then apply the same thing to PCs. If we don't want PCs to get one-shotted, then they'll need more than 12hp even at 1st level.

 

[delericho]

I want to be able to keep track of hit points using a manageable stack of poker chips. This almost certainly means reducing the numbers across the board.

Starting hit points for 1st level PCs is a bit low for my taste in 3e (especially with newbie players). 4e is probably about right in this regard.

However, 3e also increases the number of PC hit points too rapidly. 4e is better in this regard, too.

That said, after just a few levels, both 3e and 4e break my "poker chip" target.

Monster hit points in 4e are way too high. The same was also true of 3e at higher levels. Frankly, 1st Edition probably has it about right.

Oh, and Healing Surges either need to go, or they need to be renamed. "Healing Reserve" might not be bad.

 

[keterys]

Interesting metric, Del. What's your stack limit?

For example, let's say you had the following for each PC / monster:
2 100 chips, 5 25 chips, 5 5 chips, 5 1 chips

That covers up to 355 hp and is still fairly comfortable for number of chips for me. The trick is that I'd probably instead use a few extra low chips rather than making change all the time - especially if nothing really dealt damage that high, but eh.

*curious* How important is it to be able to roll many dice? I mean, is rolling 10d6 a requirement for D&D? Or 4d12, 5d8, etc?

 

[DonTadow]

I am a fan of lower hit points and healers that don't restore hit points, but prevent damage. Makes healers something "more" than a walking battery.

Regardless, combat should take 20 to 40 minutes at 1st level and 20 to 40 minutes at 20th level.

 

[delericho]

Interesting metric, Del. What's your stack limit?

I know it if I see it!

In truth, I had only ever used "1 chip = 1 hp", which made anything more than 20ish hit points too many to handle. Still, it worked well for low-level 3e/PF demo games.

A more sensible approach is as you suggest, of having different chip values. I think I'd need chips marked with numerical values, though, since I'd no doubt mix my 10's and my 1's in the heat of combat!

I reckon having three chip types, at 1's, 5's and 10's would work well, and allow hit point totals of up to 100 with ease. For anything but the highest-level Fighter, that should be enough.

*curious* How important is it to be able to roll many dice? I mean, is rolling 10d6 a requirement for D&D? Or 4d12, 5d8, etc?

My 'classic' D&D dice set contains 3d20 (actually, 9d20, because I'm currently teaching some offenders a lesson...), 2d12, 2d10 and 2 matching d%, 5d8, 10d6, and 5d4.

I kinda expect most multi-dice rolls to be d4, d6 or d8, and expect to roll largish pools of these pretty often. I don't expect to be rolling multiple d20s, d12s or d10s often.

For 5e, I would like to see d% reinstated.

I would also kinda like to see the game reorganised so players only ever require d20, d12, d8, d6 and d4, and DMs only require d20, d% and d6. (For some reason, a lot of players seem to have problems telling d10s and d8s apart, and my "colour coded dice" suggestion always seems to fall on deaf ears. So, reducing the die types seems to be a decent way forward. And DMs don't really need the extra granularity offered by the d4/d6/d8 choice, so it's probably worth reducing the dice types to speed up the game.)

However... all of that's very much just half a thought I've been noodling around. Other than bringing back the d%, it's barely worth mentioning.

 

[Mark CMG]

Hit Points?

I'd alt-term them as "Health Points" but include a separate "Injury" system that includes Major and Minor Injuries requiring actual time or beyond-standard magic to alleviate. Injuries could take the form of Mental, Physical or even Spiritual Injuries.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I'm in the 'more than 1e, less than 4e' camp. I think 10-15 HP at 1st level is about right, with 2-4 HP per level thereafter, up to around 20th level. Then go back to the 1e one HP per level after that. (Yeah, 1e did it at 9th-10th level, I know that.)

 

[cildarith]

Low hit point numbers.

Low damage numbers.

Sure.

Dying is super hard or impossible fro PCs in general (sans TPK), with lingering wounds being the negative re-enforcement for getting you butt kicked.

No. Absolutely not.

 

[The Human Target]

See?

We've proven there is no such thing as a D&D for everyone.