Category: Subsystem Design (Page 2 of 2)

Hanging out with old school gamers will indubitably result in hearing fussing about hit points in D&D. One of the recurring laments among old school crowds is that of hit point bloat, especially when talk turns to AD&D. That’s often heard alongside the ongoing search for ways to generate hit points that aren’t as likely to cripple PCs when players roll badly. The whole concept of hit points, it seems, is good at a theoretical level and lacking in execution most of the time.

There have been many different ways thought up to address the issues surrounding hit points, and I have a new approach to toss on the pile that some may find useful. First, however, I think it’d be useful to take a look at hit points as they began and how they can operate in the systems that use them to serve their purpose a bit better.

The concept of hit points arrived from the world of wargames. In the years when RPGs were being developed and the years prior when the wargames that spawned RPGs ruled the field (!), six-sided dice were pretty much the only game in town, so to speak. D4s, D8s, and other fancy dice weren’t used in games, just the humble cubes of six-siders. That meant that wargames used D6s by default.

This meant that when a game used the concept of “hit dice” to reflect how much damage (in the abstract) a figure could take (or inflict), it was measured using a D6. A normal fighting man, in Chainmail, could take a D6 of damage because they had one hit die. That meant that any weapon could deliver a killing blow of one hit die, as any serious weapon was capable of killing a person with a single strike.

This is what brought about OD&D characters all having D6 hit dice — the highest hp roll on a D6 and the most damage from a weapon matched to reflect the relationship between them. Better fighters in Chainmail were rated in terms of equivalence to multiple normal, unremarkable fighters, so a hero had 4HD to reflect being equivalent to four normal troops, for example, and a superhero twice as many. A monster could be the equivalent of even more men, thus having more HD of that size.

Then the idea that some characters should have more hp than others by dint of class arose. Why would mighty fighting men and puny magic-users both have the same size hit dice? Surely a burly, trained soldier should be able to take more abuse than a weakling who spends far too much time reading musty old tomes. So hit dice of differing sizes appeared. (I think decreasing the HD size for magic-users was a bad choice, by the way — they’re still normal persons and if random people on the street have a D6, then M-Us should, also.)

This is the moment when hit point bloat started. Now, a weapon strike of 6 points wasn’t a guaranteed fatal blow for all characters. That sword that could certainly skewer any given person, killing them, suddenly couldn’t kill some people. That led to variable weapon damage, so that longer swords could still kill all characters — an arms race gauged by damage points.

Put that together with AD&D’s larger bonuses due to high attributes and now hit points quickly outpace what came before. A Chainmail Hero, at 4HD, averaged 14 hp. An AD&D 4th level fighter, at 4HD, averaged 22 hp. That’s without considering that the Chainmail & OD&D Hero gets no bonus for Constitution and the AD&D fighter can get up to +4 per die. Oof! That’s how we ended up with laments about hit point bloat.

Now, to solve that problem, we can take several steps. Most of the steps I list here are not unique to me, just ways others have addressed the issue over the years. I’m also listing those I’ve at least toyed with that proved to be effective to some degree without totally changing the feel of play.

Reduce the bonuses for extraordinary attributes. This can shave many hp from PCs, especially fighters with the highest scores. If no PC can gain more than 1 extra hp per die, then the worst excesses are eliminated.

Limit the number of hit dice to be gained. There are lots of tables where PCs only gain hit dice through six levels. That culls roughly a third off the possible totals gained through RAW nine levels adding HD.

Assign fighters smaller HD. Fighter PCs were the most egregious offenders of hit point bloat, with those shiny D10s they roll (and then barbarians arrived with D12s). Limit HD to nothing above a D8 and more points get shaved off possible totals.

Use shrinking hit dice. Use the regular hit die size for 1st level, then use smaller dice for the levels after. Drop everybody to D4s from 2nd level onward. Or drop HD size by step every level until down to a D4: D10 –> D8 –> D6 –> D4, for fighters; clerics D8 –> D6 –> D4; and so on.

Roll hit points differently. One way is to roll 2 dice and average them to get the hp increase for a level. Some folks hate the thought of having to do addition and division to do this, so not workable at some tables.

Roll a single die size for hit points. This is actually my solution, though it’s not quite what one would expect. I’m not advocating for all PCs to again roll D6s for hp. I’m advocating using a D4 for all PCs, with a different bonus added for each class.

The average of D4 rolls over the long haul is 2.5 per die. With a D6, that raises a point to 3.5, then a D8 another point to 4.5. That means the difference between an average D4 roll and a D6 roll is one point; we may as well roll the D4 and add a bonus to get a D6 average.

The price for using this rolling approach is that we can’t roll the maximum for a given die size, so no 6 results on a D4+1 roll. The larger the die size, the more lost off the top end. Notice that we also removed the lowest possible results from the mix, so no worries about only rolling a 1. With D8s and D10s replaced in this fashion, we remove even more of the lower end of the possible results.

So, a D4 straight up for magic-users. Range 1 – 4; average 2.5.

A D4+1 for thieves. Range 2 – 5; average 3.5, same as D6.

A D4+2 for clerics. Range 3 – 6; average 4.5, same as D8.

A D4+3 for fighters. Range 4 – 7; average 5.5, same as D10.

This approach meets a lot of preferences. It maintains the same average rolls. The math is easy. The results in the range are all evenly weighted, unlike with rolling multiple dice to sum or average. And, most importantly, it removes the highest totals from possibility, decreasing bloat.

Using this approach, that 4th level fighter still averages 22 hp from dice rolls; the max number of hp rolling this way for 4th level is 28, though, which eliminates anything even approaching the max roll of 40 using D10s. Use this approach in conjunction with limiting the number of HD to 5 or 6 and reducing the possible bonus to hit points due to Constitution, and hit point totals are much more manageable.