D&D 5E Why the disparity in hit dice between classes? between classes vs. creatures?

[Charlaquin]

6. Why is the HD rolled to regain HP mechanic in 5E is half-baked?

And the answer is because WotC realized they needed to not make people reliant on magical healing, but hadn't come up with any particularly good solution by the time they "went live" with 5E, so went with a really underdeveloped approach. Worlds Without Number does the obvious thing and makes magical healing "use up" these HD, and I hope DND2024 takes a similar approach personally.

Hit dice worked the same way since pretty early in the D&D Next open playtest, with the only significant changes being when they increased the length of a short rest to an hour, when they removed the requirement to spend a use of a healer’s kit to spend them, and when they changed long rests to only give back half of your HD instead of all of them. They had plenty of opportunity to iterate on the mechanic during the playtest but didn’t, which suggests to me that it wasn’t a matter of not having time to develop the idea, but rather a matter of the mechanic having been satisfying enough for enough of the players polled right off the bat that they were afraid to mess with it too much from there.

I’m hoping that the autognome in Unearthed Arcana is a sign they finally feel like they can explore the design space of hit dice a bit more. Fingers crossed that the ‘24 revisions do something with it.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You're missing:

6. Why is the HD rolled to regain HP mechanic in 5E is half-baked?

And the answer is because WotC realized they needed to not make people reliant on magical healing, but hadn't come up with any particularly good solution by the time they "went live" with 5E, so went with a really underdeveloped approach. Worlds Without Number does the obvious thing and makes magical healing "use up" these HD, and I hope DND2024 takes a similar approach personally.

I disagree. Hit dice are trying to solve a fundamentally different problem than their "equivalent" in WWN.

In 5e, HD are intended, as you say, to keep players from being wholly reliant on magical healing.

Whereas in WWN, it's designed to establish a limit on how much you can be healed in an adventure. Once you're out, you can't typically be healed, even by magic. This is at least in part because, in SWN and WWN you can have characters with unlimited healing potential (and are therefore limited by the amount of healing their target can receive).

Don't get me wrong, I liked healing surges in 4e a lot. Those are conceptually much closer to WWN in terms of design space than 5e HD.

 

[Quartz]

4. Could hit dice be gained in ways other than by leveling, such as a magic item?

In various editions there was the Potion of Heroism. This added up to 4d10. There was also a Potion of Super-heroism too.

As for HP, try this: everyone rolls d6 plus Con bonus, but clerics add an extra +2 per level, fighters add an extra +4 per level, and barbarians add and extra +6 per level.

 

[DND_Reborn]

As for HP, try this: everyone rolls d6 plus Con bonus, but clerics add an extra +2 per level, fighters add an extra +4 per level, and barbarians add and extra +6 per level.

Ha-ha. Oi...

 

[Charlaquin]

In various editions there was the Potion of Heroism. This added up to 4d10. There was also a Potion of Super-heroism too.

As for HP, try this: everyone rolls d6 plus Con bonus, but clerics add an extra +2 per level, fighters add an extra +4 per level, and barbarians add and extra +6 per level.

That math is off if you’re trying to emulate the class HP disparity of 5e. Increasing die size by one category is equivalent to +1 HP per level, not +2.

 

[billd91]

QUESTIONS:

1. Why would a barbarian earn a d12 for hit dice, while a sorcerer gains only a d6? What is the reason why some classes have larger hit die types than others?

Because they play different roles in the D&D game - some are expected to soak damage or are expected to need to do so more than others. Some are intended to be more vulnerable to damage than others and differing hit dice incentivize different ways of playing the characters.

2. Medium creatures use a d8. Most PCs are medium in size, so why not give them the same d8 for hit dice? If we did, would it be too harsh on small characters to give them the d6 small creatures gain for hit dice?

Yes it would be too harsh. Various iterations of D&D have experimented with different ways of modeling character size differences and most of them haven't been worth the complication (particularly to hit/defense modifiers and weapon sizes). Given the core importance of hit points for nearly all characters, handicapping small creatures that much would be excessively painful.

3. Due to the metaphysical or abstract nature of hit points, why is only the Constitution modifier used? Would the other abilities represent other abstract aspects of hit points, such as Dexterity representing the reflexes aspect, equally well? What about Wisdom or Charisma representing divine favor or luck, etc.?

Since the beginning, while hit points have always been abstracted and included a variety of non-physical factors (luck, skill, divine protection, whatever), physical toughness has always been a component. And a high Con character has, therefore, gotten a bonus to their hit points for a long time. From a game design standpoint, this is a pretty good thing as it means that characters have to be built with multiple goals in mind when it comes to rolling/picking their base 6 stats and that means trade-offs need to be made and no single stat is dominant.

4. Could hit dice be gained in ways other than by leveling, such as a magic item?
5. Could a creature or character have more hit dice than its level?

There's generally no way to gain hit dice from any source other than leveling up for a character. It's a fairly important limiting factor for them. Monsters can have considerably more hit dice than their CR value. But then, they do a lot less with their hit dice other than gain hit points.

 

[Blue Orange]

1. Why would a barbarian earn a d12 for hit dice, while a sorcerer gains only a d6? What is the reason why some classes have larger hit die types than others?

Like people have said, tradition. It fits the roles of the characters but it goes back to 1E when clerics had d8, fighters d10, thieves d6, and magic-users d4.

2. Medium creatures use a d8. Most PCs are medium in size, so why not give them the same d8 for hit dice? If we did, would it be too harsh on small characters to give them the d6 small creatures gain for hit dice?

Easier just to mess with the number of HD and Con modifier rather than put a third variable in there. They did have different-size HD in 3e, not sure why they quit.

3. Due to the metaphysical or abstract nature of hit points, why is only the Constitution modifier used? Would the other abilities represent other abstract aspects of hit points, such as Dexterity representing the reflexes aspect, equally well? What about Wisdom or Charisma representing divine favor or luck, etc.?

Probably tradition again--DEX does raise AC and make you harder to hit, for instance. Characters have been piling on extra HD at each new level since 0E.

4. Could hit dice be gained in ways other than by leveling, such as a magic item?

I mean, you could--people have always made homebrew items. There were items like the potion of heroism and superheroism that would temporarily add them on in older editions, as said. I suspect hit dice are seen as too permanent for something 'detachable' like a magic item. But no reason you couldn't invent a shield that gives d8 extra HP as a magical property.

5. Could a creature or character have more hit dice than its level?

It's an interesting idea. You could just boost CON to give the extra HP though, to reflect the creature's toughness.

 

[Yaarel]

Re the hit dice of the player classes, the non-Fighter classes are moreorless "spending" their hit points to purchase other features.

Re the hit dice of the monster statblocks, the hit points correlate tightly with CR, attack, damage, DC and saves, but not much else.

 

[Shiroiken]

A quick history lesson, since legacy answers a lot of questions. Hit Dice were a term used back in miniature wargaming, and when fantasy rules from it became the combat mechanic for early OD&D, it came along. HD was used to determine your attack ability and HP, as each representing the average number of hits it would take to kill you ("hit" dice). Originally everything used 1d6 (sometimes modified by a -1 or +1), and they were not directly equal to level. Fighting Men gained them quickly, while the magic user gained them slowly. While the name HD remained, the concept has been completely forgotten over the editions (it might even have been modified by one of the OD&D supplements).

1. The Barbarian was introduced in AD&D 1E supplement Unearthed Arcana. Before this point, the range of HD was based on the class: fighters with 1d10, clerics with 1d8, thieves with 1d6, and magic users with 1d4. The monk and ranger were different, and while I don't remember the monk, the Ranger started with 2d8 and had a 1d8 after that. The Barbarian broke this mold, and I assumed this was to make up for the fact that they'd be lower level forever (xp per level was based on class, with barbarian being three times higher than fighters). This legacy was continued in 3E and 5E (I don't remember 2E or 4E)
2. Once HD (and everything else) was moved away from just being d6, monsters normally used 1d8 as the standard. The meant from a design perspective thieves were physically weaker and magic users significantly weaker than the "average" creature of their HD. This idea still technically holds, but with only Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizards weaker than medium creatures, while the martial classes are all better, with the Barbarian much better. To move everything to size would make small races harder to play, and completely unbalance the classes. It could be done, but most of the classes would need to be rebalanced to reflect this.
3. As size takes "meat" into consideration, so would Constitution. Having a higher Con would mean you had better meat, making you tougher. Secondly, and probably more importantly, Con also represents your ability to endure. Whatever the impact of HP, your character suffers some physical or mental impact from damage, and having more Con means you can endure the pain/loss of wind/anguish better.
4. There's no reason why not, but there's no official material that does so yet.
5. Almost no creature has a class level, so they all have more than their level.

 

[Quartz]

That math is off if you’re trying to emulate the class HP disparity of 5e. Increasing die size by one category is equivalent to +1 HP per level, not +2.

I know the maths doesn't give the same averages. Rather it gives the same maxima,