Will you someday start a thread to describe the above? I am curious (but not sure it's appropriate for this thread).
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.
In a tough campaign, I let the players roll and take the roll or average, whichever is higher.
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.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.
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."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.
Point buy?yes, and in D&D I see that as point buy more into constitution, play a dwarf, or take toughness feat.
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.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.
There's the first mistake: caring about balance to that extent.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.
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.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.
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.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),
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.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.
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.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.
Fair enough - I assume in all cases the rolling is being done fairly and honestly.(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...
So why not take that same OSR mindset and apply it to 5e?OSR is a different kettle of fish, of course. I've seen plenty of "honest men" who roll their HP there.)