How do you guys do Hps? And why?

[WizarDru]

Other: In my games, your roll for your hit points...if the result is a '1', you get one more chance, but if it's a '1' the second time, fate has spoken. Don't like a barbarian rolling a '1'? That's what CON bonuses are for.

 

[Schmoe]

In my campaign, I make players roll, but if they get less than half of the max, then they get exactly half of the max.

So the minimum that a fighter can get is 5, and the minimum that a wizard can get is 2. It prevents the "hopeless" syndrome of rolling 1,1,3,2 for your fighter's HP, it retains randomness, and it also doesn't increase the number of characters with very high numbers of HP, they are just as rare as they otherwise would be.

In the campaign I play in, he allows us to roll two dice and take the higher. While this also helps to prevent "hopeless" characters, it makes it more likely that a PC will get maximum HP throughout his or her career, and it is still possible to get very low results - both of these are undesirable IMHO.

 

[MadScientist]

Full HP at first level and the HD/2 rounded down every level after that. Just like the optional rule in the DMG. It works well for us.

I would deffinately have reservations about playing in a campaign where HP's are rolled randomly. It's just to easy for some lucky rolls by one player and some unlucky rolls by another player to completely unbalance the game. If you haven't guessed we always point buy for attributes as well.

 

[bret]

In my campaign we just use maximum hit points. No rolling at all.
[ snip ]
2) Fair. Avoids the Barbarian-rolls-bad-and-gets-one-hitpoint-per-level problem.

This tilts the classes.

With the normal system, it would only require +1 higher attribute modifier to stay even when the next higher HD. For example, a Rogue would need 2 higher Con (+1 modifier) to be even with a Cleric, 3.5 +1 vs. 4.5 hit points per level.

With your system, it would be 6+1 = 7 vs 8 hit points.

The rogue is fragile enough in combat, you are making it much worse. It becomes almost impossible for the rogue to be effective under your system.

Anything that goes too far from the average would have this problem, where an exceptional Con could no longer make up for a low HD.

You would have the same situation with Barbarian vs. Fighter, it would take a much higher Con for a fighter to compete with a Barbarian.

 

[MerakSpielman]

We roll and hope for the best.

Except

We reroll 1's.

Fighter types get to reroll 1's, 2's, and 3's.

 

[Datt]

We always roll. If we don't like what we got we take the average of three rolls and are stuck with that. So if you roll a 4 and then roll a 2 1s you are stuck with the 2 average. On the other hand if you roll a 3 and roll 2 10s you get the 8. It usually works out in our favor but not always.

 

[Clumsy Bob]

It is a difficult mechanism to use rolling HP's each level. In my last game I was running a fighter, out of a group of a monk, sorceror, bard and barbarian all with an average +3 CON bonus I finished at 13th level with the 4th lowest total, behind the sorceror!
OK so he always rolled 3 or 4 and I rolled numerous 1,2 or 3's such are the dice, but personally I think the HD per level should be replaced with (example) fighter !d5+5 Wizard 1d2+2 etc, this gives the tanks the HP's they need to take a beating and the (typically) low HP guys the chance of surviving a savage attack.
But, then again I am only a player and in nearly 20 years of playing the standard method of rolling HP's has never changed for us.

Bob,

FEAR THE CHANGE

 

[Benben]

Here's the system I use for the table I DM.

1. Reroll 1s.
2. If you don't like your roll then the player may opt to take the DM roll instead. The DM rerolls 1s also.

This system is very nice to the smaller Hit Diced classes, but still guarantees better than average hit points for the fighter and barbarian types.

Taking the DM's roll instead of the player's roll is another house rule I use for healing.

 

[Sejs]

Max hp at 1st level. Subsequent levels you can either take average, or roll for it, rerolling the first result of 1. If you get two 1s in a row, thems the breaks.

 

[orbitalfreak]

1st level: Max hit points

Every level after that: Roll twice, take the higher result.