D&D General Rolling HPs

[Charlaquin]

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.

I get that for rolling ability scores at character creation. Cutting off the lower bounds is what standard rolling practice evolved from 3d6 to 4d6 drop lowest - and plenty of groups have other modifications like rolling 7 scores and dropping the lowest of those, or letting you replace one score with an 18, or your example of requiring at least one 14, or whatever. That makes sense to me because having semi-randomized character creation can foster creativity, but you don’t want to end up with a useless character or having to roll a dozen sets of stats until you get something acceptable. When it comes to rolling HP though, I don’t get it. Being able to roll low is the point. If you don’t want that risk, I don’t see the point of rolling.

 

[Lanefan]

Agreed. You never see a video game where an incremental power increase is random and "locked in", unless the entire game is designed around that purpose (like a hardcore mode or a Rogue-like). ['/QUOTE]That's just it, though: in many ways D&D is a Rogue-like!

The only difference being that you don't (usually) have to restart the whole game/story when you die.

Any system with escalating challenges requires a high degree of predictability, or at least knowing how much and which systems should have random elements. You are playing with fire if "staying power" (health/hit points) is one of the systems you choose.

You would also be hard-pressed to find a large audience for your game. That much swinginess isn't fun.

Oh, I don't know about that - D&D seems to have survived well enough with it for the several decades prior to 4e.

 

[Lanefan]

I get that for rolling ability scores at character creation. Cutting off the lower bounds is what standard rolling practice evolved from 3d6 to 4d6 drop lowest - and plenty of groups have other modifications like rolling 7 scores and dropping the lowest of those, or letting you replace one score with an 18, or your example of requiring at least one 14, or whatever. That makes sense to me because having semi-randomized character creation can foster creativity, but you don’t want to end up with a useless character or having to roll a dozen sets of stats until you get something acceptable.

Exactly.

The trick is to let the dice to some extent inform what class/personality/style your character's going to be, rather than coming in with preconceived and fixed ideas with whihc the dice might not agree.

When it comes to rolling HP though, I don’t get it. Being able to roll low is the point. If you don’t want that risk, I don’t see the point of rolling.

Exactly. And (in any edition) if you're that concerned about being hosed by bad rolls you can always put your highest stat in Con.....

 

[billd91]

When it comes to rolling HP though, I don’t get it. Being able to roll low is the point. If you don’t want that risk, I don’t see the point of rolling.

For some of the variations people have brought up, it essentially means narrowing the range. If it's roll and take average or roll, whichever is higher - you're basically rolling for the upper half of the character's range. Constrained - but not utterly determined.
For methods like the one the groups I play with use - roll twice, take higher - the probability curve is changed, though the range stays the same. Distribution changes - but not utterly determined.

In both cases, there's some room for variation to emerge - which is what a lot of us are looking for - while keeping the most unfortunate variations on the rarer side.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

If you want to get that technical, the player choice is between 4d6 drop lowest and standard array. Point buy (or “customizing ability scores” as the book calls it) is a variant rule, and therefore up to the DM to decide if it is used or not.

(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.

There’s definitely some cheating involved there, but there’s also a lot of selection bias. The characters who get shown off are the ones who survive, which usually means the ones who got lucky rolls on abilities and HP. Nobody’s going around flaunting their character who rolled a 1 for HP and died immediately.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

We roll, but if you roll low one level, you have to roll high the next. It gets close to the average without being exactly the same. Low would be 1 on a d4, 1-2 on a d6, 1-3 on a d8, 1-4 on a d10 and 1-5 on a d12.

 

[Horwath]

For some of the variations people have brought up, it essentially means narrowing the range. If it's roll and take average or roll, whichever is higher - you're basically rolling for the upper half of the character's range. Constrained - but not utterly determined.
For methods like the one the groups I play with use - roll twice, take higher - the probability curve is changed, though the range stays the same. Distribution changes - but not utterly determined.

In both cases, there's some room for variation to emerge - which is what a lot of us are looking for - while keeping the most unfortunate variations on the rarer side.

This is by definition taking the above average rolls.

here is an idea for some that want to roll and keep the same average as fixed values(4 for d6, 5 for d8, etc)
And it will "force" results to the average a little.

for d6(4 fix value); roll 2d3, average is 4 and prevents the roll of 1

for d8(fix 5); roll 2d4

for d10; roll 1d4+1d6

for 1d12; roll 2d6

or if you want to keep to the +/-2 of the fixed value, just roll 2d3 and add +1 for every die larger than d6.
it gives 33% chance to be right on the fixed value.

 

[Prakriti]

I actually don't allow rolling anymore. You get the fixed value (average rounded up). I've tried rerolling 1s, reroll but you have to keep the second, either roll or take average rounded up, etc, etc. And invariably, somebody chooses to roll and rolls crappy or rerolls and the result is lower and then I get a sob story and the player is mad.

I've seen players want to make new characters at that point. And I'm talking veteran, good players and overall smart and well-adjusted people.

No more. You get average rounded up. Simple. Fair. Done.

This is why I stopped letting players roll for ability scores. I had too many people who said they were okay with rolling, only to suddenly not be okay with it when they rolled low.

Quite frustrating to me, since rolling is my favorite method, and I personally like to play the weakest character in a group.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I used to give players the option of rolling or taking the average but it turned out everyone who chose to roll wanted to keep re-rolling until they got an above average result.

There's something to be said in favour of rolling attributes - at least that tells you something interesting about the character. The problem with hit points is that they are both meaningless and vitally important.

 

[Richards]

Our campaigns have always been "let the dice fall where they may" - so while everyone gets max hp at 1st level, from that point on it's whatever gets rolled when you level up.

Case in point: my current (3.5) PC is a lizardfolk, so my first three levels were "lizardfolk only" - as in, no character class (and worse yet, only 2 HD split between those three levels). It wasn't until we made it to 4th level that I finally got to add a character class. I chose barbarian. So I rolled my 1d12 and wouldn't you know it, it was a "1." (Good thing I had a healthy Constitution modifier!) So that sucked, but I rolled better my next three levels and it's all worked out okay. It makes for a bit of variety. (We have a 7th-level dwarven barbarian in the same party and due to high rolls and a healthy Con bonus, he's got triple-digit hp already! Guess who we always throw in front of any monster who shows up?)

Johnathan