How Do You Determine HP?

[Aust Diamondew]

IMC You can either take slightly above average or roll (d4=3, d6=4, d8=5, d10=6, d12=7). If you roll you get to reroll on a 1.

Max HP could be cool, battles would last longer and characters would be harder to kill.

 

[IronWolf]

Like several of the others I tend to use the 'Roll to beat the average'. If that roll is less than HD/2 then you get HD/2 that level. It seems to work well so far and leaves some of the fun in there to have the chance to roll to get something better than average without the worry of rolling a 1 or 2.

 

[Kabol]

Me - i like my players to have good HPs, that way i dotn have to worry about them so much and they dont feel so fragile - so i do "High Side" you get one of the top 2 possable rolls - and we just flip a coin - so a fighter has either 9 or 10, a cleric 7 or 8.. yadda yadda

 

[xazil]

My group uses roll dice, if you get 1/4 or under possible you can reroll as often as needed to get above that. It means d4 and d6 rerolls 1s. D8 and d10 on 2s. D12s get 3s.

In some ways this is like the point buy versus rolling in keeping the party balanced with each other. If you have strong rolls versus weak rolls it can breed some ill feelings, while if everyone is low or high then this happens less.

As an example, right now I'm playing and I have been averaging 6 on my d8s (Psywar) while the other party front liner is averaging about 3.5 on his d8s (cleric).

An example in which uniform rolls was great fun was a 1st Ed campaign we played exactly by straight rolls and at first level everyone rolled a 3, from the fighter to the magic user. We ran screaming when accosted by thugs with daggers.

 

[LazarusLong42]

Both my PCs and their opponents get 75% of max at every level above 1st. It makes for easier bookkeeping, and keeps the power levels relatively consistent between the two. (The opponents also tend to have higher-than-average ability scores to counter the PCs' higher-than-average scores.)

 

[elrobey]

No one has suggested the way that I used to do it, so I'll throw that idea out there, even though I don't do it that way anymore:

at each level, roll for hit points. Keep the roll, or roll a second time, and (here's where it's different from others) keep the average of the first and second rolls. (Round up.) The player gets a chance to roll high, and a chance to remove some of the sting of rolling low, but that first low roll still has a significant effect.

But I don't do it that way anymore. I had an epiphany in which I realized that the Toughness feat gives you +3 hit points, so if you let hit points be established randomly, you're giving out the equivalent of a portion of a Toughness feat to anyone who rolls above the norm, and penalizing anyone who rolls below the norm. That's just ... wrong. You wouldn't let a spellcaster roll d6 to determine how many new spells she can cast, would you? You wouldn't give a character a 1 in 4 chance at each level of gaining +1 to an ability score of choice, would you? Or a 1 in 3 chance at each level of gaining a new feat? But this is the sort of thing that goes on with hit points.

End of rant. What I do now is give everyone average hit points, rounded up. That doesn't mean a fighter gets 6 per level; it means a fighter gets 6 at first level, 5 more at second level, 6 more at third level, and so on.

YMMV.

 

[Malin Genie]

I like the system of rolling for hp, and allowing any number of re-rolls, with the proviso that a cumulative -1 applies to each subsequent re-roll.

So if you roll a 3 on your d10, you can roll (d10-1); if, for example, you roll a 3 again, you get 2 hp - with the option of re-rolling, but now on a (d10-2), etc...

In practice you rarely get less than half hp, but it can happen - and max hp only occurs on a 'natural' roll (on your first attempt) so is something special.

 

[Gort]

You shouldn't hand out max HP, cause that alters the balance of the game, making effects that cripple or kill depending on saves or checks more powerful compared to HP damaging effects.

I do max HP at first level, then the average on the dice. So a D10 gets 5.5 HP a level etc. It leaves people with 135.5 hitpoints, but that's just to remind you that you get an extra HP next level, it doesn't actually count for game purposes.

Of course, I find that my players annihilate my monsters in a round or two, so I've had to double their HPs (I've found that putting higher CR creatures against them leads to unhittable monster ACs/unbeatable SR/really high saves and I prefer people to feel useful. I mean, what would you prefer - "You cleave mightily into the worm, dealing 50 points of damage. The creature reels from the blow but steadies itself and comes back at you." or "Your pathetic blow fails to even scratch the worm. It disdains your worthless fighting skills.")