D&D 4E Should hit points continue to be generated randomly in 4e?

[Cadfan]

I used to play at a college gaming club. I was the rules guy, to a certain extent, so I've overseen dozens of people doing character creation. All of them claimed to be familiar with the rules.

Nearly 100% of them had some sort of character creation house rule which they were adamantly convinced was real. I had to get the book out to prove otherwise on innumerable occasions. They all loved rolling up new characters, but they tended to roll 7 stats and discard the lowest, 5d6 discard the two lowest, straight rolling but everything gets automatically increased to at least 10, automatic do-over if you don't get at least one 16, etc, etc, etc.

This rapidly soured me on rolling for stats. So I introduced point buy in my games, and tried to convince other people to use it. Everyone was uniformly shocked that a viable character was supposed to be possible on a 25 point buy. Point buy was eventually adopted, but most DMs other than myself allowed points in the range of 40. I myself had to increase to 32 due to popular complaint.

I've seen similar things with rolling for hit points. I give them the option of taking exactly half hit points, completely with the .5 remainder (two of them add to 1). The players all want to roll, but the moment someone rolls a 1 or a 2, they give me this puppy dog look and ask if they can roll again.

And you always end up with that one guy who announces loudly that he's going to roll for hit points, rolls out on the table in front of everyone, then snaps up the dice before you can see it and announces he got max or nearly max hit points. When you make him roll again where you can see, he acts offended, like you're stealing his good roll. So annoying.

We already have randomization for how often you're hit, and for how much damage that hit does. Adding randomization for hit points doesn't add much more to the system, and adds a significant encouragement to cheat or intentionally misremember the rules. My experience suggests to me that people like rolling for character stats and hit points because they have an expectation of obtaining more favorable results than if they simply took the statistical average or used a point buy.

 

[funkysnunkulator]

it is strange perhaps...

have been playing d&d for many many years (70's). never even heard of "point buy" until this year.

anyone given any thought to just having the deck of characters? that is standard, inalienable templates. character level 1, character level 2, etc?

it seems as if a majority of the gamers are assuming wotc is listening to every word and eager to implement everything suggested. if this is the case, then it becomes a "lowest common denominator" situation. if every single objection were included, there would be no more game.

template characters would eliminate anyone ever having fewer hit points or abilities or anything than another character. that way everyone could have a nice safe BALANCED game.

and that is what everybody wants right? balanced this and balanced that. game balance, power balance, ecl balance? quite a balancing act, isn't it?

hahahahhaha.

isn't it a little strange that gamers are making proclaimations about what should be and the new system isn't even released yet?

lets go over that again....

the game isn't even released yet and many are already declaring it broken.

sorry folks. that strays from the point of this thread. or does it.

randomized stats exist so that characters are NOT all equal. ON PURPOSE. it causes the gamer to take different approaches even in a game where the typical gamer just creates a combat machine. encounter fight loot. granted, different strokes for different folks... everyone has thier preference, but perhaps gamers should just let the developers do thier job and develop.

think of this game like a movie or tv show or video game. if you try to create a product to please everyone, it will please noone.

again, not personally looking foreward to v4, but give it a chance. it will have flaws. gauranteed. likely this means there will be a v4.5 type thing.

keep the random generation. rolling dice is kind of like a gamble. gamers are taking a chance. anyone unwilling to take the chance, likely needs to be playing something....

safer.

 

[Gargoyle]

Good lord, if I want to play a fantasy game where attributes are done with a point buy system and hit points are determined by a formula, then I might as well play GURPS instead of D&D.

I am sorry that a lot of people online seem to feel that random generation of attributes and hit points "ruins" their game....

Oh I wouldn't go that far...I just prefer point buy and static hp. It's really a very minor point and wouldn't influence my decision to play a particular edition. I certainly hope there is still an option in the core rules for people to choose, I'd just prefer that point buy and static hp be the default option, since that's what my groups seem to like best.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

so.... all characters and npc's must be created equal?

No. But all characters and npc's need not be created randomly.

No other mechanical part of character creation (except maybe starting money, which quickly becomes irrelevant) is random. You don't roll your race, or class. Many people prefer to be able to decide everything about their character. Some want a Wizard with a high int and relatively low values in the other stats, another likes to have three good stats and three weaker ones. If you don't roll a high stat (17+), the first one becomes impossible, and if you only roll one great stat and mediocre ones for the rest, the latter isn't an option.

3e (and, I guess, 4e) has tons of options to make a character unique. You don't have to resort to different stats or HP rolls to make them different.

Besides, it's just weird how two guys in the same line of work, with the same experience, both equally tough (say, two characters who are both fighter 3 with con 15 and the toughness feat) might not nearly be equally endurable (the first one rolled 2 10s and has 39 HP, the other rolled 2 1s and has 21 hp)

We're not talking about cloning characters (I understand that was popular in early editions, where the only difference between 2 fighters was their name and stats), we just want to offer everyone complete choice about their characters. They get to choose how their stats are distributed (not just whether the 1 roll they made goes towards str or dex and so on, but how much of their character's power goes to each ability score.)

Even if the stats are completely the same, and HP are completely the same, two characters can be completely different.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The players all want to roll, but the moment someone rolls a 1 or a 2, they give me this puppy dog look and ask if they can roll again.

Yeah, I've seen that too. There's an expectation that you get to reroll anything below average.

It really detracts from the idea that rolling is the manly option.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Good lord, if I want to play a fantasy game where attributes are done with a point buy system and hit points are determined by a formula, then I might as well play GURPS instead of D&D.

If I want to play a game where everything is rolled, I might as well play yahtzee.

If I had to tell someone about D&D and what sets apart D&D from other RPGs, rolling for HP and Ability Scores would not come up.

I am sorry that a lot of people online seem to feel that random generation of attributes and hit points "ruins" their game. The hundreds of D&D players I have met over the last 28 years have almost always preferred to roll for these things. Lately, the two groups I have that are playing 3.0 were given the option of rolling for attributes and hit points or following one of the determinist methods in the DMG. Out of the 19 players none of them chose to use a point buy system. They all wanted to roll for everything.

Good for them. That doesn't mean that everyone wants to do that, though.

I would prefer it if we kept random rolls for hit points and attributes and had deterministic methods as an option. Removing the random generation method entirely would surely prevent my players from wanting to use this edition.

They could always make point buy and fixed HP for characters the standard (which would make sense, because you could create a character all by yourself and then play that character in an online game where the DM doesn't have to be present while you create that character) and make rolling for them optional.

 

[Doug McCrae]

if you try to create a product to please everyone, it will please noone.

Then we'd better go with what the majority wants. Which is against rolling for hit points, if this poll is any guide.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Streamlining.
Guaranteed balance and proper scaling.

Add to that ...

1. Weapon damage is random, so combat is not predictable anyway. No need to layer on HP randomness on top of that.

2. A single (or many!) low roll(s) punishing you for the rest of that PC's career is not fun. This is a game, which is supposed to be fun.

3. No other class ability is random. Fighters don't get 1d2 Feats, and Wizards don't increase the number of spells / day randomly.

 

[Ahrimon]

Then we'd better go with what the majority wants. Which is against rolling for hit points, if this poll is any guide.

Except that EnWorld represents a very small portion of the DnD community. So, right or wrong, this can't be used as a guide either way.

Personally, while I can see the advantages of non-randomized, I just can't wrap my head around it. It feels so wrong.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Personally, while I can see the advantages of non-randomized, I just can't wrap my head around it. It feels so wrong.

Did you ever have bad luck with your HP rolls, not just with one roll, but most of the rolls for that character? Was that character a front-line fighter. Was being a fighter with high con, big HD type and a glass jaw any fun?

I was that trooper. It wasn't fun. A few bad rolls can turn your tank concept into someone who drops way too fast to defend anyone, which IMO isn't fun, and I can't imagine it ever being fun - not when I intended to play a tough character with decent staying power.

That alone convinced me to drop random rolling. The other advantages became apparent only later.