D&D General Rolling HPs

[Olrox17]

Rolling for HP is technically allowed in my game, but no one has ever shown interest in doing it, and honestly I'm ok with that.

 

[Horwath]

Will you someday start a thread to describe the above? I am curious (but not sure it's appropriate for this thread).

maybe

but, in short;

A combat encounter in not(usually) decided in one roll.
There can be dozens if not hundreds d20 rolls in in one battle(hard/deadly encounter).

So even if d20 is unreliable representation of one's skill in combat, it manages to be reliable if enough rolls are made.

Social/exploring encounter usually is decided by one or two rolls.

Fail one stealth roll? spotted, might get killed right away.

Fail one deception roll? caught in a lie, might get arrested and executed right away.

Fail a disable device? get 12d6 in the face.


d20 simple does not work for things that are not rolled over and over and over,

if 1 or 20 has the same chance of an average 10/11, that is not good representation of an individual skill.

 

[Li Shenron]

Do you roll/allow rolling HPs in your game? If so are you a 'hard line' "You decided to roll so your stuck with that 1" or do you have a way to mitigate bad rolls?
What options I've seen are:
Player and DM roll, DM rolls behind a screen, and player can decide to take either roll. Of course the player cant see the DMs roll before deciding.
Re roll 1's.
If you roll lower then half take half.

How do you go about it.

I go by the rules, but I encourage players to take the average. If they prefer to roll, there is no mitigation.

 

[Li Shenron]

In a tough campaign, I let the players roll and take the roll or average, whichever is higher.

That's what I would normally call a soft campaign.

 

[Monayuris]

5E I use the static values.

In my next Basic game I am going to use this (although there's no reason not to use it in 5E)

1st level max hit points.
Subsequent levels: Roll your entire hit dice and add your Con modifier times your hit dice. If this total is less than your current hit points, you add 1 to your hit points, otherwise this total replaces your current hit points.

So a 2nd level fighter with 12 hit points levels to 3rd. They roll 3d8. If that total is greater than 12, that is the new total, otherwise they have 13 hit points.

You get to start at max but your total hit points will trend towards average. A bad roll at one level will be countered over time and vice versa.

 

[Charlaquin]

Do you roll/allow rolling HPs in your game? If so are you a 'hard line' "You decided to roll so your stuck with that 1" or do you have a way to mitigate bad rolls?
What options I've seen are:
Player and DM roll, DM rolls behind a screen, and player can decide to take either roll. Of course the player cant see the DMs roll before deciding.
Re roll 1's.
If you roll lower then half take half.

How do you go about it.

If you roll and then get upset that you rolled a 1, you’re rolling for the wrong reasons. If you’re just doing it for the chance of more HP, take the average. It’s rounded up, so you’ll get more HP in the long run that way. If you want the random element in your character build, or the thrill of the dice roll, you should accept what ever result you get.

To answer directly, I do allow rolling HP or taking the average, but I make the above clear ahead of time.

 

[iserith]

If you roll and then get upset that you rolled a 1, you’re rolling for the wrong reasons. If you’re just doing it for the chance of more HP, take the average. It’s rounded up, so you’ll get more HP in the long run that way. If you want the random element in your character build, or the thrill of the dice roll, you should accept what ever result you get.

To answer directly, I do allow rolling HP or taking the average, but I make the above clear ahead of time.

Agreed. I do this according to the campaign. If I'm doing random ability score generation, then I'm probably doing random hit points, too. If it's point buy or standard array, then it's average hit points. Most of the time it's the latter fro me, but if I want to run a true zero-to-hero old school experience, then it's the former.

 

[Stormonu]

If you roll and then get upset that you rolled a 1, you’re rolling for the wrong reasons. If you’re just doing it for the chance of more HP, take the average. It’s rounded up, so you’ll get more HP in the long run that way. If you want the random element in your character build, or the thrill of the dice roll, you should accept what ever result you get.

To answer directly, I do allow rolling HP or taking the average, but I make the above clear ahead of time.

I have a slightly different outlook. I like some randomness to my character generation (it sparks ideas at time), but, I'm willing to cut off the lower bounds; writing those off as those who didn't survive the audition for play. As the matrix's architect stated, "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept."

For the record, my current method of stat generation is 4d6, drop lowest. Roll 6 stats, arrange to suit. At least one score must be 14 or better.

 

[Lanefan]

yes, and in D&D I see that as point buy more into constitution, play a dwarf, or take toughness feat.

Point buy?

Yeah, we play different games......

but the rules are here to make is as fair as possible to all.

D&D is already very luck biased vs skill game. at least the combat part. No need to push it towards 99% luck over skill.

Exactly - in many ways it's a luck-based game. Sometimes that luck runs well, other times not so; and sometimes in either case the effects of that run of luck last for ages.

Just like real life.

 

[Lanefan]

That's definitely not the whole point, it's actually been an issue D&D has struggled with for decades, and makes no actual sense at all in the modern framework of the rules (5E). It's fine in disposable-character-type OSR games, but anything that pretends to any kind of balance, it's absolute the worst design element in D&D.

There's the first mistake: caring about balance to that extent.

I think in one of the very first issues of Dragon I read they were talking about alternatives to rolling HP (so late 1980s early 1990s). And in 5E, RAW, it's a player choice. Any DM overriding it is going into house-rules territory and breaking a fairly fundamental RAW/RAI point.

Tough. I don't DM 5e but if I ever do this will be one of the very first changes I make: stats and hit points are rolled, end of story.

Your suggestion is an outright bad suggestion in 5E, because it's too late at that point. You can't "become an archer" suddenly, because at L1, you don't roll HP (unless you're playing a serious homebrew),

You would in my game. And as soon as you'd chosen your class, so the roll could help inform where you went with said class.

and you have to decide whether to focus on STR or DEX then, when you choose what stat goes where, and pick your Fighting Style. Most Fighters will choose STR, because the player wants to play a brave warrior who fights from the front. And everything about his character will say that. Except this weird random roll, that is at odds with the entire game design (which again is why it's optional and player-chosen, not DM-chosen, RAW). It would be even worse if say, you started rolling really poorly after L3, because then you'd be locked into a subclass as well, and if it wasn't a ranged one, you'd be stuffed, and just have an ineffective character, through literally no fault of your own.

This gets in to another real issue I have with all of 3e-4e-5e: the whole idea of pre-planning a character's "build" through the levels rather than leaving it to develop organically based on a combination of in-fiction factors and meta-elements like hit point rolls.

It also disproportionately impacts certain classes - specifically those with a larger HD. Wizards, for example, are designed around 1d6. If the roll low, it's bad, but it's not a total disaster for the character because they're balanced around pretty low HP. But if a Barbarian rolls low, that cripples his character. And because this is a matter of a single dice roll per level, with no possibility to correct or recover, that's it.

Can't speak to Barbarians so much, but the difference between a 10 h.p. wizard and a 10 h.p. fighter is the fighter can armour herself up to the nines and find ways of preserving those 10 h.p. that a wizard cannot.

(Also, I have to say, personal experience, but I'm always suspicious of people who push it as "essential" or whatever, because when I've seen the non-OSR melee characters that belong to those people, they universally have waaaaay above-average HP, or they're casters with at least average HP, and I never see "Wow that guy clearly rolled a bunch of 1s for HP!" characters belonging to them. So I'm not saying they definitely don't practice what they preach, or just cheat or fudge, but mathematically, it's likely one of those is happening... The only guy I ever called on it online, got all hoity-toity and say that his DM had "forced" him to re-roll some bad rolls, but he still preferred rolling... Yeah okay buddy sure that definitely was how that went down, and you preaching the virtues of rolling a 1 for HP is not at all hypocritical...

Fair enough - I assume in all cases the rolling is being done fairly and honestly.

That said, the cream will tend to rise to the top - the unlucky ones are more likely to die off before reaching high level, leading to a more rarified group. It's called natural selection.

And as it's fun to cheer for the underdog, so is it fun to see (or play!) a character who doesn't have the best luck with stats and-or hit points turn out to have a long and successful career.

OSR is a different kettle of fish, of course. I've seen plenty of "honest men" who roll their HP there.)

So why not take that same OSR mindset and apply it to 5e?