Why are hit points generated randomly?

[DragonLancer]

You seem to be construing a challenge against your assertion as a personal attack. I'm not being sarcastic because you have a different opinion, but rather because your assertion is just so darn weak.

Not a personal attack, just something that I have come to expect from ENWorld, that one person has a difference of opinion and for all intents and purposes gets jumped for it.
My opinion isn't weak at all. It just seems to be an aspect that you have been fortunate enough to either not experience or miss.

There can certainly be a great deal of variation between two fighters with identical hit points, chiefly their feats, which in turn tend to govern weapon choices as well as their ability scores (or be governed by their ability scores in the case of randomly-generated scores). And feats confer much more of a sense of variety than something passive like hit points. Are you claiming that a spidked-chain Spring-Attacking elven tripster is a "carbon clone" of a Monkey-Gripping dual-oversized-bastard-sword-wielding half-orc tempest just because they wind up with identical hit points (before Con bonus, that is)? How could anybody think that?

Allow me to put forward my experience. I've played with a lot of people, both at tabletop and online. Rarely do I ever see an example of what you showcase here. What I see are (example time) fighters with the same feat progressions (power attack through to whirlwind, as an example) with rarely any real variation. I can say the same for other classes. However, I can only speak from my experience not yours.

[quotes]And wizards? Their hit points are the farthest thing from being their most definitive trait.[/QUOTE]

I was using wizard as an example, not a statement of fact.

Ok, you did say that you "can" end up with carbon copies. Then again, you "can" end up with two characters with exactly the same hp's if you are rolling as well. And, really, does 5 points in either direction make much of a difference? If my fighter has 83 hp and yours has 87, is that a major point of difference between the characters?

Not really, but it is variety. I would hate to play in a game where everyone was built on the same points values and had the same HP (before con) as every other member of that class in the party. I can see what people say when they argue that dice rolling for stats can end up with unbalanced characters, where one is better than another but to me that is the spice of variety. When everyone is built on the same values there isn't enough variety IMO.

Silly me, but I thought things like personality, weapon choices, background and, y'know, role playing actually made the difference between characters. I guess it's just stats though. In order for my character to be different from yours, we must have entirely different stats. Strange though, when you look at something like Heroe's of the Lance, the heroes have pretty similar stats and hit points - compare Sturm, Riverwind and Caramon. I guess they were all carbon copies though.

We were talking game mechanics not personality and roleplaying.


I'm not looking for an argument, and I'm not not trying start one. It's a topic that is fairly fresh in my mind because my D&D players and I recently discussed something similar a few weeks back (might have been from a post on here, I can't remember).

 

[Aluvial]

Does anyone actually use 2) in your game? Seems inferior to both other methods on a quick estimation.

BTW, if you use the method of rolling once with a minimum of half the HD (i.e. what method 2) gives above as a minimum result, if your dice comes up lower), you got all the advantages rolled into one, with none of the disadvantages of the individual methods (i.e. method 1) and 3), regardless of whether you had a chance... when you get a 1 or 2 on a d10 a few times and no high rolls to balance this out, your fighter still sucks).

You have the chance to roll good, while having a certain minimum slightly below the absolute average which you cannot fall behind, and you get an average result, which doesn't differ too much from the mean of just one roll.

That method is really very, very good.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah, I've seen them use it. The main one was a fighter/stonelord who didn't want to get a score that was less. He also used one of the toughness feats to go with it. Since he stated up his Con, it seemed reasonable to me.

I never really thought about this topic much anyway. I like the roll aspect of HP and wouldn't ever really think that my players would change it. I think it shows some of the randomness of character that the PC's should have.

Anyhow, I reroll all of the HP for creatures based on their HD. All of my creatures vary. I also allow max HP at first level, regardless of creature type.

As a house rule, I allow all of my creatures to drop to their Con score in negative numbers before dying. So a Con of 14 dies at -14.

This change really made my campaign less lethal. Death still looms, but you need to get knocked pretty hard to perish.

Aluvial

 

[DonTadow]

In an online game (at playbyweb.com) I'm in, the party warblade has been rolling horribly for hit pts and is currently 1 hp ahead of the completely non-combat incarnate. We were discussing this and I started wondering if the die rolling method of hit point generation is a sacred cow that could use killing.

After all, it's the only standard class-based benefit in the game which is randomly generated. The other standard class-based benefits, namely BAB, saves and skill pts, all go up at a fixed rate, even though all of them have the same built-in assumption as hit pts, i.e. that some classes will have more than others. The rogue, for example, doesn't roll d12 for skill pts every level while a fighter rolls d4. So why have that for hit pts? They have just as much of an effect on a character's survivability and playability as saves do, and arguably more than BAB (since not all classes are dependent on BAB for effectiveness) and skills (since all classes aren't dependent on skills, as all do depend on HP to some degree).

The only real reason I can think of that hit point generation is die-based is because it's always been that way in earlier editions. What do you think? Am I overlooking some other major reason? And would it be a bad thing for the game if classes had a fixed HP progression?

I chalk it up to bad luck and permanent injuries. Reroll all 1s usually does the trick for us.

 

[Decado]

I have never liked rolling for Hit Points and cannot recall doing so in the last 20+ years of playing. What my group has always done is give max HP for each level. This system is also used for all monsters and NPCs just to be fair.

Decado

 

[Doug McCrae]

Allow me to put forward my experience. I've played with a lot of people, both at tabletop and online. Rarely do I ever see an example of what you showcase here. What I see are (example time) fighters with the same feat progressions (power attack through to whirlwind, as an example) with rarely any real variation. I can say the same for other classes. However, I can only speak from my experience not yours.

Randomly rolling hit points isn't going to fix that problem. Personality, alignment, race, class, PrCs, feats, skills, equipment and spell choice are much, much more important for giving a character a distinctive feel. Hit points are just a game abstraction. They don't really mean anything. Even healthiness is covered by the Con stat, not hp.

One way you could fix that problem would be to randomly roll feats or whatever else looks too 'samey', but I don't think that would be popular. Are these core only games? The variety when you add in all the complete books etc is amazing.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Allow me to put forward my experience. I've played with a lot of people, both at tabletop and online. Rarely do I ever see an example of what you showcase here. What I see are (example time) fighters with the same feat progressions (power attack through to whirlwind, as an example) with rarely any real variation. I can say the same for other classes.

I think at that point your problem is not whether HP should be used to make characters different, but lack of innovative players who fail to get out of their rut. If HP is the main difference between two characters, peopel should be encouraged to try something new.

If you're fine with everyone choosing the same stats, feats, skills, and all that nearly all the time, why the need for using random HP to make characters different? It really is a minor thing, and the characters already are virtually clones of each other. If you're not fine with characters being all the same, then random HP won't help you much, and it might be time to move on or shake people awake.

 

[DonTadow]

I also use this method. I roll hit points (the dm) and the player rolls. He can take my roll or use his roll. We both reroll all 1s. This makes for pretty average characters.

 

[hong]

Allow me to put forward my experience. I've played with a lot of people, both at tabletop and online. Rarely do I ever see an example of what you showcase here. What I see are (example time) fighters with the same feat progressions (power attack through to whirlwind, as an example) with rarely any real variation.

If all the fighter players you know took Whirlwind Attack, you have very dumb fighter players. In fact, it's such a concentration of dumbness as to beggar the imagination, or even stretch credulity.

 

[dcas]

Here's a method I think I might try.

Roll the hit die together with 1d4. Take whichever roll is higher.

With this method, a magic-user has a 1/16 chance of getting a 1, a thief a 1/24 chance, a cleric a 1/32 chance, a fighter a 1/40 chance, and a barbarian a 1/48 chance. So it would tend to favor the low hit die classes but they're the ones who really "need" an extra boost.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Not a personal attack, just something that I have come to expect from ENWorld, that one person has a difference of opinion and for all intents and purposes gets jumped for it.
My opinion isn't weak at all. It just seems to be an aspect that you have been fortunate enough to either not experience or miss.

And you know, I see where you're coming from. Uncontrolled randomness can act as a springboard for creativity and more interesting play. I got 13 int on my fighter? Maybe I should take Expertise.

It's just that your statement:

For the same reason that attributes should be generated randomly, because otherwise everyone is a carbon clone. Variety is the spice of life and gaming.

sounds suspiciously like you're stating it as a universal truth. Hence the snark. Something a little more cuddly would have gotten more agreement.