D&D General Rolling HPs

[Charlaquin]

This is why I stopped letting players roll for ability scores. Had too many people say they were okay with rolling, only to suddenly not be okay with it as soon as they rolled low.

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

This is exactly what I mean by rolling for the wrong reasons. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re ok with the possibility of rolling low, but your brain is tricking you. You think you’re ok with the risk because subconsciously you think you’re probably not going to get a low roll. Human brains are terrible at statistics and tend to over-estimate the chances of a favorable result and under-estimate the chances of an unfavorable one.

Now, some people really are fine with the low result. But it’s impossible to tell who’s actually ok with it and who’s fooled themselves until you see that low result. That’s why I always tell my players, if you want the best chance of high HP, take the fixed value. It’s rounded up, so over 20 levels you’ll get an average of 10 fewer hit points if you roll. It’s a sucker’s bet.

I do know a few players who like to take the fixed HP for the first 3-5 levels to build up a buffer and then roll. Seems like a nice strategy if you want the excitement of the roll but don’t want your character to get one-shotted in those vulnerable early levels.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

In the last game I GMed: Roll (accepting the result, no rerolls) or average. If you chose to roll, you had to announce it to the table and roll it in front of all of us so we could cheer or comiserate, as appropriate.

In the current game I GM: Average. With point-buy of ability scores, character generation involves no random numbers at all.

 

[Lanefan]

Now, some people really are fine with the low result. But it’s impossible to tell who’s actually ok with it and who’s fooled themselves until you see that low result. That’s why I always tell my players, if you want the best chance of high HP, take the fixed value. It’s rounded up, so over 20 levels you’ll get an average of 10 fewer hit points if you roll. It’s a sucker’s bet.

Wonder how many would choose to roll if you truncated the .5s off the fixed averages instead of rounding them up.

Because then, rolling would on average turn out slightly better.

 

[CleverNickName]

I let the player choose to roll or take average, and I'm strict with enforcing their choice. The players almost always choose to take the average, because the fear of being stuck with a 1 far outweighs the fear of missing out on max.

 

[Monayuris]

This is exactly what I mean by rolling for the wrong reasons. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re ok with the possibility of rolling low, but your brain is tricking you. You think you’re ok with the risk because subconsciously you think you’re probably not going to get a low roll. Human brains are terrible at statistics and tend to over-estimate the chances of a favorable result and under-estimate the chances of an unfavorable one.

Now, some people really are fine with the low result. But it’s impossible to tell who’s actually ok with it and who’s fooled themselves until you see that low result. That’s why I always tell my players, if you want the best chance of high HP, take the fixed value. It’s rounded up, so over 20 levels you’ll get an average of 10 fewer hit points if you roll. It’s a sucker’s bet.

I do know a few players who like to take the fixed HP for the first 3-5 levels to build up a buffer and then roll. Seems like a nice strategy if you want the excitement of the roll but don’t want your character to get one-shotted in those vulnerable early levels.

Its funny, I use rolling for PC and monster hit points in OSR games, but averages in 5E. But rolling is my favorite method.

To me, its just a game.

I prefer roll abilities and hit points and make due with the results. There can be a lot of fun in running the way weaker character.

In my experience running Basic. All those characters with super high stats and high hit points...

...they die first.

Players get cocky and over confident and they forget that the game will chew them up and spit them out no matter how many 18s they have.

I say just enjoy the absurdity of having a Strength 3 character with 1 hit point. See how far it can go and don't be surprised if it survives longer than expected or dies ingloriously in a pit trap. Some of the most meaningless deaths are the most amusing.

The most fun I ever had playing D&D was running a level 1, 2 hit point thief in a B/X game. I was split from the party and was on my own for several game turns. I survived long enough to rejoin the party by playing well ( hiding... avoiding encounters..., I was like Obi Wan Kenobi in the Death Star).

Of course after rejoining the party, I screwed up by walking into a room full of spider webs and got one shot killed by a giant spider, but whatever, it was a blast anyway.

The funny thing about that session was the reason my character died wasn't because it had 2 hit points (or low stats for that matter), it died because I got overconfident (based on past success) and made a dumb move.

The choices made by the player are always going to have more impact and more weight in their character's success and failure than the stats or numbers or powers.

I know this approach is not compatible with the expectations brought about by modern games, but I think there is some merit in just letting the game be the game and not getting overly emotional about numbers on a piece of paper.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

When I GM it's either picking high average or roll it and keep it In the past I tried a variant to raise the floor but keeping some variability by using the system below. I've also just given MAX HP with the caveat I was going to take the GM gloves off.

D12=8+d4
D10=6+d4

In the end I don't think that anything that anything permnant like stats or HP should be rolled. There is already so much variability and randomness in combat a couple extra rolls aren't going to make much of a difference.

As far as my choices as a player, I always choose the known over the rolling when possible. Real life is challenging enough, I don't want to spend my DnD night playing some crapsack of a character who sucks at their job.

Yes, I'm looking at you Harn campaign where my "fighter" with the second lowest STR in the party, no armor, and a sharpened stick fashioned into a spear slept in the barn and contracted a severe case of body lice.

Yes, I'm also looking at you, other Harn character who was a wizard and the only magical thing I could do was to enchant metal armor but it took a month per piece and nobody could even remotely afford to buy a piece.

#suckycharactersjustsuck

 

[Charlaquin]

Wonder how many would choose to roll if you truncated the .5s off the fixed averages instead of rounding them up.

Because then, rolling would on average turn out slightly better.

I actually don’t think it would change many people’s preferences. Folks who like to roll would still do it, whether because they want a chance at better-than-average HP or because they genuinely want the risk of worse-than-average HP would still roll, though the former camp would probably feel a bit more justified in doing so. Folks who don’t like to roll I think would mostly see .5 HP/level as an acceptable tradeoff for the certainty of near-average results. The only way you’d get that camp to switch is if the fixed value was well below the average, and even then they might just house-rule it to be average anyway. I think
The only people who would actually switch are the ones who just want the best chance at above-average HP and have been convinced that the fixed value is the best way to get that, and I think that’s a relatively small portion of players.

 

[Charlaquin]

Its funny, I use rolling for PC and monster hit points in OSR games, but averages in 5E. But rolling is my favorite method.

To me, its just a game.

I prefer roll abilities and hit points and make due with the results. There can be a lot of fun in running the way weaker character.

In my experience running Basic. All those characters with super high stats and high hit points...

...they die first.

Players get cocky and over confident and they forget that the game will chew them up and spit them out no matter how many 18s they have.

I say just enjoy the absurdity of having a Strength 3 character with 1 hit point. See how far it can go and don't be surprised if it survives longer than expected or dies ingloriously in a pit trap. Some of the most meaningless deaths are the most amusing.

The most fun I ever had playing D&D was running a level 1, 2 hit point thief in a B/X game. I was split from the party and was on my own for several game turns. I survived long enough to rejoin the party by playing well ( hiding... avoiding encounters..., I was like Obi Wan Kenobi in the Death Star).

Of course after rejoining the party, I screwed up by walking into a room full of spider webs and got one shot killed by a giant spider, but whatever, it was a blast anyway.

The funny thing about that session was the reason my character died wasn't because it had 2 hit points (or low stats for that matter), it died because I got overconfident (based on past success) and made a dumb move.

The choices made by the player are always going to have more impact and more weight in their character's success and failure than the stats or numbers or powers.

I know this approach is not compatible with the expectations brought about by modern games, but I think there is some merit in just letting the game be the game and not getting overly emotional about numbers on a piece of paper.

It’s a different style of play. Makes the game more like a roguelike, where you play in part to see how far the character will make it, and if they die, that’s no big loss, you just make another one and try again. I think for a lot of people, that’s not what they want out of an RPG though. They don’t want their characters to be disposable, they want to create and detail a character to play through an epic story, for character death to be a significant and tragic moment in said story. They want to tailor their stats to make the best version of the character they envision, rather than playing a randomly-generated character the best they can. Both styles can be a lot of fun, but IMO you have to know which style of game you’re playing in and embrace it, or you’re gonna have a bad time.

 

[S'mon]

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.

Anyone silly enough to roll in 5e rolls in front of me & takes what they get. A surprising number of players do opt to roll.

 

[sim-h]

Odds are against a roll being better than taking the (rounded up) average so 90% of the time my players take the average. There have been rolls - one guy rolled low, but then stuck with it and rolled max at the next level.

I've seen some people posting here they would allow a reroll on HP rolls because they are low, or that they allow multiple rolls. Surely that completely defeats the object of rolling. If you don't want to chance it, take the average! It's that simple.

Maybe if the average was rounded DOWN, there would be more rolling going on...