D&D 5E More HP - was it a good idea?

[Sacrosanct]

Eh not really though. In 5e the healing burden has just shifted to healer classes like the cleric. Instead of a fighter who is self sufficient and can fully recover twice per day, in 5e you have a fighter who can recover about half of his HP per day and needs a healbot to cover the rest.

What 4e did allow for is for every encounter to be dangerous. In 4e because Hp totals for Pcs were lower (after around level 3 or 4), it meant each encounter was more likely to drop a PC leading to tender and more dangerous fights. In 5e the HP bloat means that the first few encounters will rarely bring a PC to even 50% of their max HP. It's only when you get to 3+ encounters without resting that combat even begins to feel challenging in 5e.

I would personally rather have more HP per day if it meant each individual encounter could feel challenging in 5e.

We're not talking about reliance on other classes. We're talking about hit point availability. And the 4e PC has WAY more HP than a 5e one does, over an adventuring day. If a 160hp 4e fighter has 13 healing surges, that's roughly 520 extra hit points. A 5e fighter has about 110 due to hit dice. Additionally, there are many ways in which a 4e fighter can use healing surges in combat, where hit dice can't be used. So even if a 5e fighter has 20 extra max hp, the 4e fighter still has a ton more that are actually used; his HP resource pool is much greater.

So from a pure HP resource context, 5e's HP are down from the previous edition. Both from monsters, and from classes. And by a large amount.

Your second part of your quote doesn't make sense. 5e doesn't have HP bloat. At lower levels even without healing surges, 4e classes start with more HP. And even at higher levels, the difference is not significant at all--again ignoring healing surges which I don't think you can because it adds to the total HP resource of that class. In 4e, characters had access to more hit points than 5e. That's objectively true. So with less total available hit points, you're saying 5e is less challenging. That seems counter intuitive. Another poster above says the exact opposite of you, that his 4e fighter felt invincible while his 5e one felt challenged even at high levels.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[tombowings]

Eh not really though. In 5e the healing burden has just shifted to healer classes like the cleric. Instead of a fighter who is self sufficient and can fully recover twice per day, in 5e you have a fighter who can recover about half of his HP per day and needs a healbot to cover the rest.

What 4e did allow for is for every encounter to be dangerous. In 4e because Hp totals for Pcs were lower (after around level 3 or 4), it meant each encounter was more likely to drop a PC leading to tender and more dangerous fights. In 5e the HP bloat means that the first few encounters will rarely bring a PC to even 50% of their max HP. It's only when you get to 3+ encounters without resting that combat even begins to feel challenging in 5e.

I would personally rather have more HP per day if it meant each individual encounter could feel challenging in 5e.

But individual encounters in 5e are just as challenging if built right.

Here's one from last night.

PCs are walking down a sandstone hallway when they come to a room. Inside the room, they find a golden sapphire encrusted challis. On the opposite side of the room are three sharks' heads with closed mouths. If the challis is lifted, the a stone door walls from the only doorway, the sharks heads open, and the room starts to fill with water. There are set of three circular locks embedded in the the door. The first lock must be opened to reach the second, the second to reach the third. Each lock requires a DC 15 Dexterity (thieves' tools) check to open. The door falls through the floor when opened and the water drains away into the adjacent corridor.

Round 1: The door shuts and the room starts to fill with water.
Round 2: Water up to the PCs' knees.
Round 3: Water up to the PCs' wastes.
Round 4: Water up to the PCs' chests and five reef sharks spill into the chamber.
Round 5: Water is over the PCs' heads and characters must swim to stay afloat.
Round 6: The chamber fills completely. Better get those locks open before you run out of breath or those sharks eat you all.

Thanks to the party rogue, the PCs made it out by round 8.

 

[Sacrosanct]

lowkey13, You're quite charitable with the paladin. I would think that paladins have to give their HP to the monsters. As penance for choosing to play one.

 

[Fleetwood C. DeVille]

There’s nothing like the “thrill” of playing a 2HP wizard with an AC of 9.


I am totally down with the higher HP. It means that even at low levels, the PCs can take on some exciting foes, instead of just streams of giant rats and measly goblins (not that those can’t be exciting, when done right).

This.

The DM has a lot more leeway in crafting encounters when the PCs can stand up to more than one hit. I'm sure that's why there was the -10hp optional rule for death in 1e. I almost never got into the game when my 1st character took 20 minutes to create and lasted 4 seconds.

"You walk into the cave and see a skeleton. Roll for initiative."
"The skeleton attacks. It hits and does 5hp damage. You are dead."
"Wait...that's it?"
"Yes, you had 4hp and took 5. You are dead. Do you want to roll up another character?"
"Um....let's go play Atari."

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Tony Vargas]

But, interestingly, spell damage didn't go up

8d6 fireball at 5th level? 3d4+3 Magic Missile at 1st level? At-will attack cantrips (how much damage did cantrips do in AD&D? - maybe 1 pip, mostly none at all, IIRC). Spell damage scales differently in 5e.

and *some* healing didn't go up - a healing potion does exactly the same amount of healing in 5e as 2nd ed.

Spells heal significantly more than back in the day, while the healing potion has gone from healing more than a CLW to less than Cure Wounds with a level 1 slot, yes.

But it's really not one clear trend. Relative to 4e, for instance, hps have gone up (because of CON bonus every level), but healing has gone down (6+ 1/4-max-hp surges vs ~ 1-max-hp for total HD), and even that's not a clear trend, because hps at 1st level went way down relative to 4e, while hps at 20 are potentially huge relative to 4e.

Those low HP really helped balanced out the might of the 2nd ed wizard.

More specific question. No, they really didn't in 2e, nor in 3e, spells were just that powerful. In 4e wizards got more hps, and at-will and encounter spells, but the power of all their spells were greatly curtailed. In 5e, spells were powered back up, and CON bonus can give the wizard /more/ hps outside of apprentice tier.

Was this a good move to increase HP? Or did we lose "something"?

We did lose something, we lost the fast-scaling-with-level bonuses (OK, in 1e it was target numbers on matrices, but same net effect) of /every prior edition/ in favor of BA. Instead, 5e handles scaling with more hps & more damage. Without that leveling would lose a lot of impact - especially for the fractional- and non- caster sub-classes.

A minor but significant change also was that unlike earlier editions, in 3e (and beyond?) you get auto-max h.p. at 1st level, giving a nice foundation to build on.

Max hps at 1st was a very common variant (I think it came from one of Len Lakofka's articles, along with the d10 initiative variant), in my area some of us even did max + 1d6 (we called them 'peasant points' on the theory that 0-level NPCs had 1d6 hps, and it made no sense for one that became a wizard to potentially lose 2hps - yep, was over-thinking stuff back then, too).

If the monster h.p. go up by the same proportion as the PCs - which they mostly did - all that happens is an arms race escalation.

Scaling, yes.

In 3e it sort of worked because both PCs and monsters could give out damage fast enough (at low-ish levels anyway) to chew through all those hit points in a reasonable amount of time.

It did work, as a sort of hp/damage-'treadmill,' I suppose. It also became irrelevant as the game degenerated to SoD rocket tag.

In 4e it seems the damage given out was cut but the overall hit point totals increased (except for minions, which went the other way), leading to longer combats

Yep, 4e was designed for fewer, longer, more dynamic combats, because 3e had full-attack-based 'static combat' and 'rocket tag' issues. 5e was designed for more faster, simpler combats. It's a pendulum thang. ;P

Low hit point totals also serve to make combats more swingy

Low hps relative to potential maximum damage, if said damage tends to be swingy, sure. A d12/20x4 weapon in 3e, for instance, gives very swingy damage (especially if you're of the roll-1d12-and-multiply persuasion). Crits in 5e, not so much, but 5e PCs start out with such low hps even a high damage roll can ruin their day, sure.

Can't speak to what happens at really high level in any edition as I've never played such.

In the classic game, a rock/paper/scissors/nuke magic-item (if not artifact) contest and/or 'weird wizard show.' In 3e the afore-mentioned 'rocket tag.' In 4e, with feat taxes it gets a little easy,ithout the combat dynamic shifts a little to hitting a bit less often with bigger critical hits and use of daily powers mattering more. 5e aims for the classic feel in every other way, so I don't expect it shakes out too much differently - in ultimate 'feel,' that is, the underlying mechanics are obviously different - at high level, though if the 'no items' assumption isn't broken, that aspect's not going to kick in.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Eh not really though. In 5e the healing burden has just shifted to healer classes like the cleric.

Shifted /back/, sure. It just hasn't shifted all the way back to pre-3e levels. Just as rituals relieve the demand for out-of-combat slot use for utility, HD relieve the demand for out-of-combat slot use for healing. In essence, giving casters a lot more spells/day in spite of the return of some of the 'healing burden.'

Similarly, in 3e the healing burden was relieved, out of combat, by cheap made/bought items, like potions, WoCLW, or, later, WoLV.

It was only in 4e, though, that the healing burden was virtually eliminated. Healing cost the 'Leader' classes a minor action twice/encounter (the actual healing came from the target's surge). Additional healing they might pick up was usually a rider on an attack, or another minor action for a utility (plus the opportunity cost of not choosing a non-healing utility, though most leader utilities were still to help allies).
Of course, the Leaders who were casters lost so many daily 'slots' relative to other editions they didn't exactly come out 'ahead.'

5e HD are only 2/3rds to 1/4 the self-healing resources that surges were, and they're useless in combat, so in-combat healing burden /is/ back, and does put some pressure on slots, though it could always be pushed to potions or be efficiently held back until an ally drops (whack-a-mole healing) to minimize that burden.

In 5e the HP bloat means that the first few encounters will rarely bring a PC to even 50% of their max HP. It's only when you get to 3+ encounters without resting that combat even begins to feel challenging in 5e.

Yeah, you have to think of taking 20% of your hps in a fight as 'challenging.' (because you're going to have 5-7 more fights, at at 20% per you're gonna die...).

1) Proficiency bonus to armor class: because something you are proficient in should give you a proficiency bonus.

Could be combined with armor that reduces damage rather than adds to 'A'C (though, you'd have to call AC something else, like 'Defense').

2) Proficiency bonus for the number of saves characters are proficient in. Obviously first level characters start with 2 proficient saves, but they get to have an additional proficiency each time their proficiency bonus goes up. Which conveniently maxes out at +6, so at level 17+ all characters are proficient in all saves.

Better'n what we have now.

3) Cantrip scaling can be eliminated. I really don't like cantrip scaling, for some reason it just feels wrong to me. ... very little else in the game follows this mechanic so it feels out of place.

Nod. It's a little dischordant, but it does track the de-facto scaling of Extra Attack.

But, I also think low level characters have too little HP and high level characters have too much (or more specifically, Con feels too valuable at high levels).

Absolutely. CON score at 1st rather than CON mod every level is a neat/obvious fix. To give PCs a little more staying power across the day, CON mod could still add to HD rolled on a short rest.

 

[ccs]

The increased HP haven't changed things too much.

The much lower bar on where you get + ability score modifiers though.... Not a fan.

 

[Lanefan]

Some posts here made me realize something (that should have been) obvious when discussing this: it's not just the amount of actual hit points one has that changes across the editions, but how easy it is to recover them during a day or even during an individual combat.

In 1e (as written) recovery was pretty much limited to what your party's Cleric or Druid could cast, what potions you had, and occasional other oddities like Staff of Curing or Paladin's lay-on-hands - nearly all of which took place outside of combat. Resting got you little to nothing. So, that 45 h.p. you started the day with had to be somewhat carefully managed because they might have to last you all week.

In 5e there's recovery all over the place - in-combat healing, hit-dice healing, full h.p. recovery overnight - in addition to everything mentioned above plus what Bards can do. This means those 45 h.p. only have to last through the day and you're far more likely to be able to recover some/all of them during the day as well...so in effect you've got way more hit points to play with than just the 45.

Max hps at 1st was a very common variant (I think it came from one of Len Lakofka's articles, along with the d10 initiative variant), in my area some of us even did max + 1d6 (we called them 'peasant points' on the theory that 0-level NPCs had 1d6 hps, and it made no sense for one that became a wizard to potentially lose 2hps - yep, was over-thinking stuff back then, too).

We've never done auto-max h.p. but we long ago added "body points"...which on first blush sound close enough to your "peasant points" that I wonder if they were inspired by the same article.

Lan-"and thus was born our body point-fatigue point system"-efan