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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7970135" data-attributes="member: 18">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. 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.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), 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.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.At least RAW, in 5E, you as the player can go "Okay, wow, last two levels I rolled a 1 for HP, I'm going to go with fixed HP from now on!" and somewhat rescue yourself that way.Anyway, rolling HP is a sacred cow long past it's meeting with the burger plant. It's literally only still there as a sacred cow.(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...OSR is a different kettle of fish, of course. I've seen plenty of "honest men" who roll their HP there.)</blockquote>

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