How many hits should a 1st level Fighter be able to take?

[Quickleaf]

Why? A 1st-level Fighter *is* the average humanoid warrior.

I sympathize with the simulation/gritty argument, but one of the broad reaching house rules I saw in AD&D was max HP at 1st level. And even then you'd have characters dying with regularity.

The way I understand HP is that they also represent a fighter's resolve, tenacity, instinctive rolling with hits, as well as raw bloody damage. It may be that the 1st level fighter is just slightly physically tougher than a thug or about the same as an Orc, but by virtue of being an adventurer/hero/PC he has just got more chutzpah. Even at level 1.

 

[KidSnide]

Unless you're view of orcs is more bad-ass than usual, I disagree. I think fighter PCs should start out more powerful than the average humanoid warrior.

Why? A 1st-level Fighter *is* the average humanoid warrior.

Now you're just assuming your conclusion.

I don't think a 1st level fighter should be the average human warrior. I don't think playing the average human warrior is survivable enough to be fun for a player. I'll agree that 4e went too far in the hero-ification of the 1st level character, but I don't think "no better than the average" is the answer either.

-KS

 

[TrippyHippy]

I sympathize with the simulation/gritty argument, but one of the broad reaching house rules I saw in AD&D was max HP at 1st level. And even then you'd have characters dying with regularity.

The way I understand HP is that they also represent a fighter's resolve, tenacity, instinctive rolling with hits, as well as raw bloody damage. It may be that the 1st level fighter is just slightly physically tougher than a thug or about the same as an Orc, but by virtue of being an adventurer/hero/PC he has just got more chutzpah. Even at level 1.

Hold on. Up until 4th edition, it was built into the D&D rules that a 1st Level character only had a Hit Dice of HP available. This was entirely equitable with a n Orc or some such similar 'ordinary warrior'.

Where is it a law that a 1st Level Fighter should be tougher than that? Moreover, if people find this type of gritty game fun to play, then why should they be forced to beef up characters at the starting level? After all, it's perfectly easy to start characters at higher experience levels, if you want to play a more 'heroic game' - but it's not easy to play at a starting level that no longer exists, because a segment of the fans decide they need more HP to survive.

 

[Oni]

Hold on. Up until 4th edition, it was built into the D&D rules that a 1st Level character only had a Hit Dice of HP available. This was entirely equitable with a n Orc or some such similar 'ordinary warrior'.

Where is it a law that a 1st Level Fighter should be tougher than that? Moreover, if people find this type of gritty game fun to play, then why should they be forced to beef up characters at the starting level? After all, it's perfectly easy to start characters at higher experience levels, if you want to play a more 'heroic game' - but it's not easy to play at a starting level that no longer exists, because a segment of the fans decide they need more HP to survive.

I wouldn't be too fussed about it if that was how they chose to make that particular dial of gritty/heroic work, by simple altering the starting level relative to the rest of the game world. As long as it was very clearly spelled out in the rules. It's not really any different than games that give you different starting build points based on the competence level/heroicness of the campaign, and it makes a lot more sense than trying to do that just by allowing people to purchase higher ability scores.

 

[CM]

I've known level 10 players to run from kobolds. Have you played Dragon Mountain?

Yes, I actually ran it back in high school. If I remember right the kobolds had the advantage of a great number of traps and overwhelming numbers. You had to disallow the optional rule for high-level fighters making sweep attacks vs. low-level enemies, and the grappling and overbearing rules were modified heavily for the kobolds' swarm tactics.

It was a fun adventure (especially for a RBDM), but a group of only 6 kobolds vs. the hypothetical level 1 party wouldn't exactly get the same results.

edit: As an aside, this would be even easier to run in 4e, maybe I should consider sticking it in the next campaign...

 

[Quickleaf]

Hold on. Up until 4th edition, it was built into the D&D rules that a 1st Level character only had a Hit Dice of HP available. This was entirely equitable with a n Orc or some such similar 'ordinary warrior'.

Where is it a law that a 1st Level Fighter should be tougher than that? Moreover, if people find this type of gritty game fun to play, then why should they be forced to beef up characters at the starting level? After all, it's perfectly easy to start characters at higher experience levels, if you want to play a more 'heroic game' - but it's not easy to play at a starting level that no longer exists, because a segment of the fans decide they need more HP to survive.

Yeah I'd be content with a game that gave you more HP at higher level, just so long as the scaling wasn't nuts.

I've just played enough older editions to know that dungeon survival horror isn't my cup of tea. A lot that I like about older editions but that's one particular thing that I didn't like.

 

[Hassassin]

Now you're just assuming your conclusion.

I don't think a 1st level fighter should be the average human warrior. I don't think playing the average human warrior is survivable enough to be fun for a player. I'll agree that 4e went too far in the hero-ification of the 1st level character, but I don't think "no better than the average" is the answer either.

-KS

I don't get why a single Nth level character should be significantly more powerful than an Nth level monster. What's the point of calling the monster Nth level, then? Just make characters one or more levels higher from the start and use (multiple) lower level monsters, if you want that.

 

[howandwhy99]

Fighters can use d10 weapons and have d10 HD. Clerics get d8s, Thieves d6s, Wizards d4s.

1st level is 1 HD roll. Each hit is 1 damage roll.

On average each class can take 1 hit / level vs. their class as an opponent.

I know at least one OSR guy who has Hit Points rolled at every combat when damage rolls are taken because of this. Variable HP & damage each combat, but still 1 for 1.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

1d6

more seriously:

i liked the poll in the article:

although 4e´s 29 hp made a lot of sense in a 4e game and is really not as much as it were in older editions, many people complained about low level superheroes... which pc´s are definitively not.
Even 7th level PC´s in my campaign go down from 2-3 normal hits from equal level enemies in their favourite attack mode.

So the poll actually aims at how you "feel" about hp. So you can scale damage values up and down to have 2-3 hits render a PC unconsious. Lower levels most surely have a bit more variance in how many hits it takes to bring you down, but overall the math can be adjusted to match the hp of a first level fighter.

I voted for 14 hp. I think constitution score looks like a good amount of hp. Maybe 3-4 additional points per level, and you have a nice flat curve. And high and low con makes the difference of +1/-1 level in hp, which seems about right. A fighter of 10th level has 44 or 54hp, which is about 3-4 times as much.

 

[KidSnide]

I don't get why a single Nth level character should be significantly more powerful than an Nth level monster. What's the point of calling the monster Nth level, then? Just make characters one or more levels higher from the start and use (multiple) lower level monsters, if you want that.

No matter how you choose to handle monster levels, you have to deal with the fact that the PCs are supposed to win almost all of the time. If they win only 90% of the time (a very low percentage for D&D!), then they lose approximately once every 10 combats. Since most campaigns treat defeat roughly, this doesn't result in a long campaign.

The real question is what does a monster's level mean? If a monster's level and a PCs level are equal measures of power then you end up with the 3e solution, where 4 PCs are supposed to fight 1 NPC of the same level. I guess that's ok, but it forces the GM to do a bunch of math whenever they have 3, 5 or 6 PCs, or when they want to do a more complicated battle. I prefer the 4e solution, where a Nth-level NPC is an appropriate challenge for a single Nth-level PC.

-KS