How do you determine hitpoints?

[atom crash]

In the game I DM, I let the player roll a die and I roll a die, and the player takes the better result. In the case of both rolling a 1, I allow the player one reroll, but if that also comes up 1 then it was just meant to be. (That's actually happened once to a guy playing a paladin; it sucked for him.)

When creating characters above 1st level, I let the player roll hit dice for all levels over 1st (taking max HP at 1st level of course) but set the minimum score at about 3/4 of max potential HP. For example, I just had another player join the game by rolling up a 7th-level bard. He rolled 6 dice and added 6 for HP, and I set his minimum HP for 6th level at 31 (3/4 of 42). He rolled 32 or 33, so I didn't make any adjustments. If he had rolled below 31, I would have bumped up the score to that point.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

All of my games, and 99% of the groups I've played with, we use adjusted median.

d4 = 3
d6 = 4
d8 = 5
d10 = 6
d12 = 7

Much like point buy, I find it reduces grumbling AND cheating in equal amounts.

--fje

 

[Belen]

1/2 +1 +con. mod= hit points.

 

[Crothian]

Characters roll. If they are unhappy with what they get they can take feats or find ways to boost their con

 

[shilsen]

I have players roll and if they get less than 50% on the die rolled, they get the 50% amount. It prevents weird situations like the barbarian ending up with less hit points than the rogue. And in my experience the PCs can use the extra hit points

 

[diaglo]

roll them for every level.

 

[Jdvn1]

I give my players 3/4. It doesn't unbalance things since everything is a little more powerful, but it does give the players the illusion of power. The idea is to make sure the players like their characters, and if they have low hp, it can really suck.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Maximum hit points. I should probably go with the variant in the DMG where it's average (half one level, half +1 next), but maximum does it for me. I see hit points as a feature of class, not some random crap you wish on. Too many other point buy systems don't use random rolls and I fail to see why they keep it random in the first place.

 

[delericho]

Uh, the option I use isn't there.

We use fixed hp/level, at a value of approx 75% of the die type. So d4 ->3, d6 -> 4, d8 -> 6, d10 -> 8 and d12 -> 9.

Didn't we have this question just a few weeks ago?

 

[Sellis]

dX + [(dX + 1) / 2] x (Level-1) + (Con-mod x Level)

I say they get the middle value (and full at first level of course).

So the barbarian gets 6.5 every level after 1st (12+1/2) and the Wizard gets 2.5, etc

Total usable HP is rounded down, but recalculated at each level. Thus the example Barbarian has 18.5 (effectivly 18) hitpoints at second level (assuming no Con mod) and has 25 hitpoints at level three.