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

[Destil]

I'm all for random stat gen, but I don't think random HP buys you anything.

Agreed. Random stats can be interesting and lead to variety. There's a real question if 18 14 14 12 10 6 is 'better' than 16 16 15 14 12 11. And you can end up with scores that are out of place as an interesting character trait.

I suppose the fighter who rolls 5 1's is, in a way, interesting.... but, not in a good way.

 

[yu gnomi]

For all former AD&D players: remember Exceptional Strength and it's percentile roll? It always seemed to me that when you looked at player characters attributes, significantly less than half would have values between 01 and 50.

It also seemed to me that it would be statistically unlikely for you to even know someone who "rolled" an 18/00 Str character.

And yet if you played with many different people, fighters with Str values of 18/51+ abounded, and there were several who claimed to have rolled an 18/00. While 18/01 to 18/50 was relatively uncommon.

My argument against random hit points is that they are less random for some people than for others.

 

[DracoSuave]

Randomized attributes are a holdover of roleplaying game technology that has long been obsolete. You should be able to create the character that pleases you, and not be beholden to the luck of the dice. If you -do- roll well, then your success comes down to the fact you rolled well on 3d6, or on your hitdice rolls, not on actual skill.

-Real men- don't rely on the dice-lottery for their successes. They -make- them as suits them.

 

[Jack Colby]

I'm playing 4E by the rules, but I would have preferred it if it was designed with random HP. Game balance means nothing if the game isn't fun, and it's fun to roll for HP and see what happens. They also de-emphasized random-roll ability scores, but my group is using them, becuase to do otherwise would be so dull and dreary we couldn't stand making a character.

 

[Jack Colby]

Randomized attributes are a holdover of roleplaying game technology that has long been obsolete. You should be able to create the character that pleases you, and not be beholden to the luck of the dice. If you -do- roll well, then your success comes down to the fact you rolled well on 3d6, or on your hitdice rolls, not on actual skill.

-Real men- don't rely on the dice-lottery for their successes. They -make- them as suits them.

Wow. i seriously hope you are joking, otherwise you have not a clue how this game works. And rest assured I am not joking about that. I'm actually insulted by your comment if you're being serious.

EDIT: Let me add, that I don't mind if you prefer non-random generation. But you utterly miss the fact that random-roll stats are a spur to the imagination for a large number of people. If you're coming to the game with some concept of what you want to play, fine, use a standard array or some other un-exciting but safe point buy method. If you sit down and want to play without a concept in mind, random roll is a great tool and an inspiration that can generate truly exciting and fun characters. Ones you may never have even considered on your own. Random rolls spur the imagination - I can't put it any plainer.

Oh, and real men play what they roll without whining and complaining.

 

[blargney the second]

Chuck Norris is built on point buy, that's good enough for me!

 

[AtomicPope]

My argument against random hit points is that they are less random for some people than for others.

Yep. There's always that guy with max hitpoints every level and straight 18's. Play long enough and you'll meet him.

 

[AtomicPope]

As to the actual point of the thread, random (or at least semi-random) hp is the only system that makes sense to me. If you have two soldiers in the Army with the same amount of combat experience and both get hit with some sort of ammunition in roughly the same place on their bodies, there is no reason to believe they will be affected identically. None whatsoever. Proponents of fixed systems will say that what I'm describing is their relative Con scores, but it goes well beyond how tough a person is. Look at Bob Woodruff for example. Or, in more amusing terms, some beer-bellied pseudo-handyman who manages to impale his brain with a powered nail gun or a screwdriver or something and feels no ill effects.

Look, an actual argument from a proponent of rolled hp that doesn't talk about it in anecdotal D&D terms about how it adversely affected a single character.

Your point only proves why we roll for damage.

 

[AtomicPope]

There is a distinct problem with rolling for hitpoints which is not being addressed. Unlike rolling stats for a character, you continue rolling for hit points is done after you've made character. We all know that rolling for stats is a scharade. When people roll up a character and all the stats are terrible what do we do? Roll again. Terrible? Roll again. We act as if rolling up stats is a flawless enterprise when everyone will immediately ditch the awful rolls for a new batch. But rolling for hit points doesn't allow rerolls.

The problem with saying, "it will all average out" is it fails to address the low number of rolls to achieve that average. Most D&D games don't last more than 13 levels. If you attempted to determine a statistical average and you chose a sample size of 13 people your evidence would be considered drastically incomplete. Gamers instinctively know this but still worship the sacred cow by creating house rules to keep the worshippers and the cow appeased. For example, nobody complained when all characters in 3e started with max hit points instead of rolling. Why? Survivability.


It's a plain and simple fact that D&D characters don't have the luxury of waiting 10 levels for their hit points to average out.


If you're a fighter and your roll a 1 at 1st level (in 1/2/3e), you won't be a fighter very long. Give him an 18 con and if he rolls 1's for the next three levels he'll be just as tough as a lucky wizard with a 12 con. But unlike the wizard who can hang back, the fighter needs to be in melee. After all, that's what the 18 con is there for. We assign our stats at character creation only to find out that rolling for hit points turned us into a ranged fighter. Now we have a 4th level fighter with a 19 con and 20 hit points in 3e - dead man walking. But unlike the character that was rolled up five times to get that one 18, he's not rerolling hitpoints until he gets a roll he likes. Answer? Another house rule.

Players want their characters to survive so the house rules and rules changes come in to save the day. Rather than just ditch rolling for hit points we roll a die and if it's too low with take 1/2 Max + 1. Why? Because we instinctively know that rolling for hit points isn't practical in a game of survival. It puts too much at stake on a single die roll. Rolling a single die every level for hit points is more important than every attack you've made to get that level. After playing for over twenty years I can think of hundreds of examples where a party in a game I ran or played in was saved simply because the last character was down to his last hit point and was able to stay in the fight.

The fact is we're not playing to level 1000 where the rolls for hit points will average out. We're usually playing to level 15 or 20 (in 4e at least). Fifteen or twenty is not enough rolls for an accurate mean.

 

[Switchback]

I'm fine with the fixed HP approach 4e uses. It seems most that like the random rolls don't have the courage to go all the way anyway. People create a random + fixed hybrid system (i.e. D8 = 4 + D4) that more than not simply awards more HP than the players would have had anyway. In older editions I've played, we always allowed rerolls on 1's and sometimes 2's as well. Which kind of again, defeats the purpose of true randomization and usually ends you up above your expected average, which of course all players like.

My impression from the old systems, was that Constitution was the thing that was supposed to save fighters, or other classes worried about HP, who rolled low. A 1 or 2 is bad sure, but when you are still getting 5 or 6 anyway because of your 18 constitution it doesn't hurt as much.

That was one real boon of the old system, not the dice roll itself, but that you could have a modicum amount of control of your HP vs your expected average simply by how much you wanted to spend or could luckily afford on your Constitution and in turn, bonus per level. I miss that far more than rolling D4 as a Wizard for example.

Then again, my groups discovered long ago that at 1st level CON = HP went a long way to extending the life of characters vs the ridiculous chance of rolling 1 or 2 HP at 1st level. So after that point, you could afford some poor rolls at higher levels, because you had about a 6-10 point cushion to fall back on. It would take many bad rolls to make you fall behind your normal expected average and of course more than not, most characters would end up doing better.

For a concerned DM, random was never really 'random' anyway. A Fighter who rolled low HP for a few levels just happened to get some magic armor +1 better than was initially planned, or the party happened into more healing potions or scrolls than they might otherwise. For the 'unconcerned' DM, that Fighter simply met a early end, sometimes intentionally and suicidally, and the player came back with a new one who had the stats he would have preferred the first time around. Mostly a huge hasstle and timewaste.