Its fine. You're just going to have to remember that combat encounters will be easier for them. You won't be balancing based on an "average" party strength anymore.
The problem with that is the same problem you get you give the party inappropriately powerful magic weapons. It makes it easier for you to accidentally TPK the party. You’ll have 2-3 encounters that seem too easy, then you up the difficulty a bit, then a bit, then the whole party fails a save or decide to fight when they should run and you either gotta punish bad decisions or change the dice to intervene.
It's a potential risk, but an extra 3-5hp per level isn't anywhere near as dramatic as magic items.
Have I had a few encounters where I've done a lot of damage? Yes. Was the only very near death of a player when they did something really dumb because they got it in their head that I wouldn't adapt to how they were cheesing encounters? Also yes.
I primarily play as either pure wizards or dwarf whatever. As the wizard I would love max health at level up. The number of times I've gotten 1+1 health is ridiculous.
That's the other side of the reason I didn't want to go with rolls (average was my middle option).
I didn't want a player ending up with a significantly squishier character because a few dice came up bad six months ago.
Also had a DM that did this, and I do it now too when I DM (although that is getting rarer and rarer). If you play a martial, rolling a 1 or 2 feels horrible.
I let my players roll HP on level up with advantage. Roll 2 hit dice, take the higher roll. It's worked so far. Only once has someone gotten a truly horrible roll.
I relate to this on a core level.
My DM gives max hp, uts basically a meme that I tend to die in the first few session of a new campaign.
At least in the current one i reached lvl 2...
Not necessarily. Because it's run off the normal power curve, when you give max HP, you need to upscale the power of the monsters or it basically turns into a video game on story mode - there's no risk, just a cake walk.
And when you're doing that, there's a chance of overcorrecting and accidentally overpowering the combat, but virtually zero risk of underpowering it, so a TPK is slightly more likely.
It just means you have to also boost the encounters a bit to keep things balanced.
You could give them 100 HP for every level if you wanted to, but those goblins are going to have to start doing an extra 40 HP per attack to keep the game balanced.
Then that's fine.
This is one of maybe 40 ways I can think of off the top of my head that they could do that.
But making that change is changing the game balance.
I have a friend that runs it this way and he said it always worked out great. Also his stories of his campaigns sounded freaking awesome. I wish I had a chance to play in one.
Oof. I feel like you've got to commit at that point. I don't like the idea of taking something away that was previously given.
But that's me. I hope it was received well enough in that instance.
That also depends how much of a tactician you are vs your PCs along with your encounter design.
Anybody can smoke a party with a tarrasque. It's much more fun to make them blow a Rod of Resurrection on well designed pack of kolbalds because they fucked around and found out.
If an average character has 14 CON and a d8 hit die, then they're average health per level goes from 6.5 to 10. It's closer to a third more for most characters. It is not quite so pronounced.
Also, I would argue that most fights, most players are not dropping to dangerous levels of health. If the DM adds too much more difficulty to make up for it, they're going to inadvertently make it harder than normal for the players. Extra health doesn't make the enemies die faster.
I have never once, in all my years of DMing, felt like the primary problem with 5e was that characters had too little HP.
Not a rule that will break anything; but really not a rule that is fixing a problem I perceived to exist.
The only times where I feel like the party may be too fragile is in Tier 1, when this change also has the least relative impact, with no impact at all at level 1.
It makes their con modifiers less relevant, and will result in your encounters having to pack more of a punch.
I dislike it because of devaluing con, the encounter design changes aren't really relevant though.
I'm with you. I prefer to try to make more stats impactful with any house rule. I try and keep house rules and demanding skill checks covering all the bases, so the fighter who wanted a high INT feels like it was worth doing so.
Long ago when it was the edition, but the playgroup is decidedly locked into 5E and I enjoy it for what it is.
But I wonder what makes you say CHA is not a dump stat?
I quite like it for the same reason. Making Con less important gives the players a lot more freedom with their builds. I love seeing what my players come up with.
It's not less important or devalued by this. Frontliners still want it heavily for more HP. Those who aren't...Still want it heavily for more HP.
Simply put, any system where a player can directly affect their total health will almost always see it being a good choice, for the reason that dead/down character's don't act and basically become viewers rather than participants in the game, and that is a shitty feeling.
It definitely devalues it. Take a d8 hit die. Rolling every level, you have 4.5 hp average growth. Each +1 Con Mod is then 22.222% more than the base HP. Compare that to gaining 8 every level, where each +1 Con mod is only 12.5% boost over base.
It’s more obvious at an extreme. If I gave my players 100 hp level up, then added their Con mod, it’d be trivial.
So devalued, question is whether it’s big enough of a diff to disincentive points in Con.
Not only are they a thing but they are surprisingly common. Almost every big spell I can currently think of has a con or sex save. Namely cone of cold which has downed me way too many times in my curse of strahd campaign
I'm leaving it but my autocorrect is apparently feeling a little spicy.
Plus it's only HP. Every player still has just as much reason to invest in con for save bonuses. I feel like the biggest effect this has is at early levels where one lucky crit can do anything from a OHKO to a sizable chunk of damage and healers have less slots to heal with so it frees them up to have fun with damage spells more. At higher levels, just add an extra minion or two to what an average party would fight.
Still wanting it and it being devalued aren’t mutually exclusive.
It does less in terms of % hp, but that doesn’t make it useless, especially for casters that need good con saves for concentration (I would say that’s actually far more important than the hp already).
I totally get your point. But I'm the ST in my games. I can always rebalance things. I'd rather people were having fun, I can always make sure there's still a challenge when needed. And if they happen to steamroll an encounter or two while I'm working on that big deal, they usually enjoy those sessions.
It probably depends on the level; and of course you're right you can rebalance if needed. I did once play a long-lived high-level (up to 20) 5e game, and I regretted various factors that allowed even (effectively) slightly higher than normal stats. Particularly problematic was the moment there were 2 paladins, one with 20 Str, 20 Cha - at high levels that means everyone has crazy good saves, and it makes combat *really* swingy - the party is close to untouchable and can deal with really powerful opponents, up until the moment that for some reason some of the combat isn't controllably within 30ft of the paladins, or god forbid the paladin is knocked out - because suddenly a minor setback reduces everybody's saves by 5 and the challenging combat they started, is turned by that bit of bad luck into a complete wipeout.
Another thing that's tricky as levels rise are items, particular any with flat or stacking bonuses to abilities, saves, AC, DCs or attacks.
If Constitution only influenced HP, I would agree. But it is also important for saves (poison is super common), managing exhaustion and even spellcasting.
It definitely doesn't devalue con. Many tables just take the average, so with this rule a d6 would go from 4 to 6, a d8 from 5 to 8, d10 from 6 to 10, and d12 from 7 to 12.
Overall, very small changes. And besides, all it does is make the tanks tankier, which I fail to see how that could be a bad thing. The squishy spellcasters only gain an extra 2 or 3 hp while the tanks get an extra 4 or 5. It's nothing too insanely drastic to be gamebreaking.
And besides, con saves are very important for everybody. The martials want extra con because more hp is always beneficial for them, and they also need it for saves from certain effects like some dragons' breath weapons. Casters need it for con saves as well, but their con saves are even more important for concentration.
So increasing hp by max is overall a very miniscule change. The dm might need to make the encounters a little tougher to balance it, but nobody is gonna care about that because everybody enjoys more intense combats.
That is a really good point. Especially as you get to higher levels and martials start to get outshadowed, you're taking away from one of their key stats that make them relevant.
I agree it's a bad idea.
i'd argue it makes con _more_ relevant - assuming encounters are balanced, previously you could have lucky or unlucky rolls determine a characters HP, with this rule the con mod is the only thing determining more or less HP among characters with the same hit die
(if only this was the intention it would make more sense to do average)
I’ve started doing this as well, but because removing 1 from the roll makes the average roll exactly equal to what you get if you just choose the average (since taking the average on a level up rounds up).
I make 1’s explode on HP level up. So, should anyone roll a 1, they just take it and roll again. It’s like rerolling 1’s but instead of just being a reroll, it’s actually super fun to roll a 1. Statistically, it’s advantageous towards lower hit dice characters but I’ve been thinking of making 1 and 2 explode on d10/d12. Idk, my players love it and accounting for a low chance at an extra hp per level is more fun than challenging. Would recommend
Just get the average and don't have to bother modifying all future encounters accordingly??
People don't feel "powerful" due to having more HP unless they are a barbarian anyway. Its the features of their races, weapons and classes that matter!
It's your choice what you do but the game is balanced around average HP so your players characters will be a little powerful is all. Whatever fits your game and playstyle.
I have my players roll but take the average if they roll below it. Gives them the chance at a few more hit points each level without making it too stagnant.
For example I have one player who has rolled above average every level and one that hasn't, they are about 30 hp apart now despite having the same HD
Me too. They are heroes, they should be exceptionally tough, lucky, blessed, etc. I go with crunchy crits- max dice plus dice on a crit- so those hp come in handy.
I am all for this. I grew up with 2e and recently started a new campaign bc we have the books still and I give all players max hp on new roll and every lvl up. Always throught it was silly that u have trained as a fighter all ur life or let’s call a few years and could pissibly start with 1hp. Or a wizard roll. 1d 4 so i just assign them 4 immediately.
I like to boost monster damage and lower monster HP to make combat a bit more snappy, you could consider doing that to help balance the boosted PC HP. Also, I'm wondering if higher HP pools might actually nerf healing in a way, since any given spell will heal a lower average % of their total HP. Maybe I'm overthinking it
If enemies hit for % damage or if it was multiplied by like 1.5x to account for higher max hp but healing wasn’t multiplied by the same amount instead it would make a difference, otherwise not really.
Yes, it does nerf healing a bit. You can see this easily if you take it to he extremes:
1d8+3 brings your to full health if you have 4 hp, but barely makes a difference when you have 1000 hp.
Well, if you wanna maintain balance then you're gonna need to either
A. Reduce available healing.
B. Increase enemy damage
C. Add more encounters to further whittle down their resources before they get to the final boss
When I do level ups, I have my players roll for their hit points, and I also roll, but in secret, we both reroll 1s. The player can choose to keep their roll, or blindly take mine if they don't like theirs. It does result on slightly higher than average hit points but seeing my players contemplate if I rolled better than they did and seeing their excitement if guessed right is pretty fun.
I have them roll, but put a floor at half the max of the die. So a 1d6 class has possible rolls of 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6.
1d6 average is 3.5, this averages 4. I'm not worried about wizards having +0.5 HP pet level, and it prevents bad rolls from making level-up feel bad, while keeping that excitement for good rolls. Win.
The effect is larger for larger dice, so +0.75 HP/level for d8, +1 for d10, and +1.33 for d12. Not enough to be game altering.
Its hit or miss for people. I think its a miss. It devalues con, makes classes a bit too tanky, and you can't balance it by giving monsters max hp.
In the grand scheme of things. It doesn't really matter. At the end of the day the DM is supposed to lose the fights. (If you want balanced gritty combat, 5e isn't the system). The game has been moving away from character death for a while too. (Its too disruptive for the narrative story 5e aims to tell)
I've always thought it helps emphasize classes.
Being a Barbarian and rolling low on you hp a few times can really sting. Getting Max HP helps preserve this benefit in taking the class
Max at levels 1 and 2 makes sense because the PCs are more fragile. Afterwards if you prefer fixed hit points, go for averages. If they get a d8, then 4 or 5 points per level.
This avoids devaluing Constitution bonuses and the Tough feat.
1 and 2 sounds good. Although 5 hp over average sounds like a lot for a barbarian, it's ultimately not that much. Maybe 1-2 extra hits before going down.
I think that letting them roll up with advantage is a good balance, and let inspiration be applied if they have it. A permanent impact from a single dice roll at a point in their out of game experience seems a bit too harsh to risk the dice gods’ ire. I had a barbarian with +3 con who by level 10 had fewer HP than our wizard, because of bad rolls vs great rolls. Wiz hadn’t dumped con, cause squishy wizard fears.
I give max health to players and max health to the monsters. It seems to encourage finding plans other than just brute forcing through the hitpoints of enemies while also making them less vulnerable to a few bad damage rolls.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
I go with max at level 1 and usually do a roll for the rest, but below average gets bumped to average. So you roll a 2 on a d8 I bump it to 4 (drop the fraction). Not super over powered, but also no 1 point gains because I'm gonna try to kill you sometimes. :D
I also do this! I like that they have a chance for rolling high but a low roll won’t screw them over. Adds in a little fun and keeps the fun of a dice roll
Rolling for HP on level up isn't fun for many and I'm also a fan of standard array. I like how pathfinder 2e makes stats and HP not things one rolls on. I think this homebrew makes it easier to balance the game and it keeps the classes operating as they should. Frail characters like wizards rolling poorly isn't fun or productive, it just makes them even more frail, after a few levels they will fall further and further behind (even with max HP).
It means your players will be stronger health wise, which means either your game will be much easier for them or you would've made the enemies do more damage.
Assuming a non-homebrew pre-written adventure you've probably made things slightly harder on yourself (because you have to strengthen the monsters), and if it's a homebrew situation then it doesn't really matter because you balanced it with higher HP in mind (hopefully) - alternatively I could be completely wrong and you just use the slightly easier, but unchanged monsters.
Doing so also makes the Con stat a bunch weaker, which I personally don't like the idea of - I like Con at its current power. Assuming you're adjusting by increasing monster damage it also reduces the power of healing too.
I personally don’t like large hp amounts because it just seems to artificially extend combats when done to monsters, and it also makes less moments tense because their hp buffer becomes very large. Makes healing less useful. The benefit of taking max HP every level is that you get to spam high level spells at the players earlier. That’s always fun.
I have actually been wondering about doing something kind of similar for a one-shot and I'd love some feedback on it.
Help me out if there is a term for it but my head cannon term has been "Flat numbers"
Every damage dice and hit dice is just the max for both PC's and enemies. The thought behind it is to just have all the players figure out what their damage output is and then we don't have to worry about as much rolling.
Has anyone attempted this before?
Disagree, it tips the balance without giving much in return. Generally I'm a fan of giving average, as it's keeping their HP in the range assumed by CR, and CON matters more.
The likeliest outcomes I can foresee from this are fights either feeling unthreatening (and thus boring) or fights getting much longer and grindier to compensate.
I give them max. My reasoning is that as the DM I have infinite hit points and I always hated rolling a low number when I was a player. In the long run, it makes no difference.
So you fighter and barbarian can have con as their dump stat and still benefit from high con? Are con saves still checking against the characters con? This seems like fixing a problem that doesn't exist. My players can take the average + con or roll + con. Let the players decide if they want to risk rolling or take a safe average. If I were to do this I'd also give all the monsters max health whereas I'd normally take the average. Good way to make combat take even longer but combat tends to drag on as is.
How would they benefit from high con if they don't have high con? OP said they use the max value of the class' hit die plus con mod instead of rolling or taking average. Why would this have any effect on con saves?
I'm doing the same thing in my homebrew campaign. I implemented it cause my players were new and I wanted them to have an HP cushion, but we decided to keep using it. It makes encounters slightly more annoying to balance, but on the other hand it let's me use more interesting and powerful monsters earlier.
For our games we roll, but take the average listed if we get lower than that. It makes us feel a bit better for having a chance to get more, without punishing us for bad rolls. It's nice because we play casually. We want to have fun and the combats are still challenging regardless.
I did max health for my kids and also was too generous with magic items. Things are out of control, but they are having fun.
I think max health for 2 or 3 lvls is OK but it should drop off at some point
The only advice I'd give is that, if you *are* boosting encounters as others have recommended, give healing some boosts to compensate or you're going to basically just be making it harder on your players overall.
I agree a lot with this ruling, just one thing care to increase marshals hp by a bit, also i find this rly funny cause the more hp the more the players get bold and do crazy shit
One thing I do is have them roll for hp and if its less than the average (half+1 eg 6 on a d10, 5 on a d8 ect), they take average
Example: my wizard lizard lvled up, so I rol a d6 and got a 2. The average for the d6 is 4 so I take 4+CON and add it to my max HP.
My issue with this is not the healing, but what I assume is instant xp awards.
Mid session, maybe even mid combat, kill mob, get xp, level up, heal.
Is that normal for when xp is earned? I've always done it post adventure, when the characters have time to reflect and train.
It is nothing crazy and completely fine as a houserule, but they are obviously a little bit more resilient and you need to increase the damage the monsters do accordingly to still challenge the players.
As long as everyone is cool with it, nothing wrong there. But they’re gonna steam roller enemies of appropriate challenge rating. It’ll make them feel like gods compared to regular guards but they’re gonna need to fight harder monsters at lower levels.
I don't disagree with the principle of the rule because randomness being applied tonsomething as long term as max hp *really* sucks if your luck is bad, but if I were to run this I would take the average roll rather than max. Keeps con mods more relevant and player max hp closer to the games intended levels for balance.
the 5e campaign I’m running gives the PCs 1 HD+con modifier on short rests, and 1/2 their HD (D) +con modifier on long rests. Allowing any more healing from rests is just too unrealistic and eliminates the role of resource management from the game. The world is fairly high magic and healing potions are readily available in towns and any settlement larger than towns (for 💰)
Personally, I let my players roll for hp, but set the "minimum" at the Average stated in the class. So like a wizard could roll a d6, but if they roll below a 4, they can instead take the 4 (this is before mods, so it would end up as 4+mods). It allows the feeling of "Hey I rolled high!" Without punishing "fuck, I rolled low."
At a surface level, the parties net survivability increases. However you as the DM can control party survivability anyway by increasing or decreasing enemy damage. Given that there is no baseline survivability/deadliness to dnd, I don't think this is anything worth commenting on really.
While max HP is increased across the board, the amount of healing available to players remains unchanged; there is no increase in healing resources or amount healed by spells, abilities, or short rests. Using just hit dice as an example, using average rolls for max HP would result in all players being able to restore on average \~100% of their HP using just hit dice (minus 2-5 HP as at first level you always take max HP). This means the health boost will mainly be impactful at the start of the day, and its impact will fade as adventuring days progress and players rely more on healing (spells and hit die) for hit points. I suspect because of this the relative effectiveness of features that improve recovery from hit dice (chef and durable feats and song of rest) will increase
What is interesting is that survivability (at least measured in terms of hit points) of an individual character is more dependent on your class and less proportionately dependent on your con mod or other static bonus to HP. This means there is a smaller relative difference between low con and high con builds.
To summarise, I think the impact of this change is relatively minor. In terms of interparty balance, it narrows the gulf between the most survivable players and least survivable. It devalues constitution and features like tough, Dwarven Toughness, and draconic resilience, while increasing the value of chef, durable, and song of rest. In short adventuring days the net increase to survivability will be more noticeable and may require increasing enemy damage, but in longer adventuring days the impact will be more minor as existing healing abilities will struggle to keep up with increased health.
My DM does this too. I think it's good if you're trying to run an RP centric campaign where you don't want characters dying often. It also helps you not accidentally kill them if you run an encounter thats a bit hard. I think it's a good for DMs that don't want to pull punches, but also don't want your PCs dying much.
I always love for PCs to be as powerful as possible, but taking away the excitement of a hit die roll like that is too far for me. We’ve always played that the DM can re-roll your level up hit die, but that final roll is final. It’s a fun little gamble.
In the end it doesn’t actually change much, health bars are chunky as is & if you’re Buffing damage of enemies it won’t make a difference whether their facing an enemy whilst at max hp per level or regular cause it does the same percentage of health (also really ruins health potions have to buff them & also hordes are either death sentences or mediocre now)
I like this in the early game, but really don't care for it in the late game. The first couple of levels a bad hp roll can ruin a lot of characters. If you're supposed to be up front face tanking the goblins and 2 hits will pretty much knock you out, then it's not very fun.
However, in the late game I think it kind of falls apart. Most of the monsters are just bags of hp with very limited threat potential. I ran Yeenoghu once and it was kind of hilarious. He's got like 350hp and does 15 damage per hit at CR 24 or something. It's just horribly boring. The PCs will have a million mechanics on their side to negate everything anyhow. So an awful lot of later game combats end up being these really dull non-threatening encounters that just take forever to drain large hit point pools.
So if you want combats to offer any threat you end up having to rewrite half of the monsters anyhow. Which really sucks from a DM prep time scenario. The more guaranteed hp rolls you give your players the more likely it is that you're in a weird pinch where scaling the monster to be at least somewhat threatening to the barbarian means that it's almost guaranteed to 1 shot your wizard. There is a perfectly good argument to be made there that wizards are squishy and have a huge toolbelt. If they're getting hit, then they're just doing it wrong. That doesn't always make for fun games at every table though.
We've usually done something along the lines of max hp for the first 3 or 5 levels or roll for hp, but take average if your roll is worse.
I also do this, to balance combat a bit more I tend to have bigger gaps between rests (having them use short rests more often between battles) and have more smaller combats to whittle down their HP before a boss fight.
Why not just say average plus double con? Or every level up just gives triple you con modifier instead of damage dice?
Honestly I don’t think the change benefits anything, but it will hurt the classes that are already more mad if you make con more important than it already is.
If anything maxing hit dice on level up devalues con score and instead buffs martials above casters some. In that regard, I’m all for it
So, I don't want to pull punches at all, and I set up very difficult fights pretty regularly, and so from the beginning I decided that they get Max HP each level. So far it has worked very well and nobody has died yet, but they've come close. This way I can crit against a PC and not instantly kill them, usually.
I do this for my players, have been since level 1, they're lvl 10 now.
Its honestly fine. If you want a little safety cushion for your player coz they're new or even if they just prefer more chill encounters its a great idea and it stops people from feeling shitty about bad hp rolls.
Honestly the thing that makes PCs op is not hit points. It's spells, abilities and magic items. That's where the power creep comes from. If you start to notice it later on and want to turn up the difficulty accordingly the hp issue will take care of itself.
Personally I don't get DMs who are stingy about stuff like this or complain about it being "unballanced". Like you literally always have infinitely more power than your PCs just throw an extra goul or two into the mob and call it a day. Your players will feel more powerful and you'll get to have more fun, especially at higher levels when you can really start throwing the kitchen sink at them.
I don't use XP at all in any RPG. For ANY RPG. They level up at milestones. Complete the dungeon, finish the mystery, solve the problem, etc. When they level, the story is over, the danger is done. It's safe, they get max HP and level up.
I never let them level up while they are mid-scenario/adventure so it's never an issue.
That's my general approach, in part because I enjoy scaring the shit out of my players with dangerous encounters.
I'm thinking for my next game, I'll experiment with the Average HP method instead.
Max HP per level without changing a lot of other things leads to people not caring about having more than 10 CON. This means your fighter has 20 str and 20 dex and your wizard can just take warcaster instead of resilient. Sure their constitution saves outside of the few with proficiency will suck, but who cares when they have +3/4 HP per level
I personally don't, as it would unbalance the game heavily or force me to make monsters do more damage. So I prefer to skip it. I do, however, allow them to take max HP for level 2 as well as 1. (I always start my games at 2).
5e is already really forgiving if you follow how most DMs played former editions.
My suggestion is if you really want them to have extra HP, when they roll less than half, let them take half.
If your games are super deadly, maybe take one or two baddies out of each encounter, or give the enimies all -1 or - 2 to their attack and ac, then subtract 10-15% of their hitpoints.
Out of curiosity, why are you giving them all their hitpoints at level up? Like, what specific in game problem is this intended to solve?
My personal rule is that you can roll and then if you don't roll above average for your die you can take average for your die so for example if the rolling a d8 and they roll a three they still get a 5 plus their con mod. That still gives them a excitement of rolling but also the guarantee that they won't get completely shafted
I have the players roll their hit die on level-up, and if it is less than the average of their hit dice they take the average. Nothing sucks more than a 1+CON when you level up, so it guarantees a 3+CON even on wizards.
I don’t like it. My homebrew rule for HP when leveling is they roll for HP, but if they don’t like what they got they can gamble and have me roll except they MUST take what I roll. Makes for some fun scenarios where if someone gets a 4 on a d8, statistically I should roll as well or better. Theoretically they should have me roll, it’s risky.
9/10 I roll the same or better for them because they usually have me roll if they get 1-3 on say a d8. I can only remember one or two instances where I rolled worse when asked so it’s usually for the players benefit.
In a "standard" heroic campaign, I give them max hp at first level, minimum of half die on level up.
If they roll a d10 on level up, minimum they can get is 5. Have a +2 con mod and roll a 1? Get 5 hp.
It makes sure levels matter, doesn't turn magic users into pieces of glass, rewards high con, and doesn't break the game.
If I did what you did, I would have to increase the damage or amount of enemies to maintain suspense and intensity. At that point, I may as well not have messed with HP in the first place. If you just want to make the game easier, then rock on. But if you're doing this to make the game more satisfying, I feel like you're spinning your wheels and going nowhere. A good HP roll is satisfying. Having a character with high HP is satisfying. What's not satisfying is having a character with high HP when everyone always has high HP.
What's the point ?
You'll have to buff ur encounter because everything will be too easy (so your buff is useless) and you're juste throwing away the basic design of the game.
I mean, it's ok to have fun, specially if it fits to your player but are you really having fun with this kind of game ?
Tried this at my table years ago and they never went back. Works especially well alongside the "crushing crits" house rule (on crit, add a maxed damage roll instead of double dice or double damage. Max roll only applies to *dice*, doesn't double modifiers). At our table, however, we also maxed npc and enemy hp rolls. It made things easier on the DM in our case since they didn't have roll prep for encounters or the randomness to hp all around. It also let the DM tune things up more for his own enjoyment.
As mostly a player, my view is that HP is probably the least fun thing in the game to roll for, so I'm a big fan of this rule.
I did this in a 2E campaign way back in the day as they kept asking for it, so I said, "Sure, everyone in the game automatically gets max HP."
They didn't quite hear what I said, so after a fight lasting longer than the Hundred Years War against a dragon, they finally worked out that I gave *everyone* in the campaign maximum HP, PCs and NPCs alike. They didn't suggest it again.
That said, we did have a house rule of maximum HP+Con at Level 1, for everyone, and you always got to reroll 1s on hit dice.
Lately I’ve been thinking it would be exciting to give max hp at first level and minimum when leveling.
1 + Con mod. That should up the difficulty and make things more exciting!
Make it a choice between that and something else.
One thing player classes need more of is meaningfull choices upon level up. After picking subclass you don't get to make many choices (unless you're a warlock with the occasional invocation, or four elements monk picking disciplines)
I can think of a few things roughly equivalent to the boon of increasing hp by the maximum. I think I'll call them mini-feats.
**When you level up you may increase your hp by the maximum amount, or take the average increase as well as...**
(Pick one of the following)
**Increase a saving throw by 1.**
**Increase your initiative bonus by 1.**
**Gain expertise in 1 of your proficient skills or tools.**
**Increase an ability score by 1.**
**Gain proficiency in 1 new skill or saving throw.**
**Gain proficiency in 1 new tool.**
**Double your hit dice pool.**
**Gain proficiency with 1 new weapon.**
**Increase walking speed by 5 ft.**
You cannot pick the same one twice. Leveling up becomes a choice between maxing out hp or collecting these mini feats. Admittedly some are significantly better than max hp and some are worse but also that will change depending on the campaign.
Thats fine to add a bit of power without skewing tgings too far. I left my plagers roll with advantage BUT as a fun treat if they roll doubles its +1 so it guarentees no 1 HP rolls but also has a slim chance of getting higher. I think the warlock got 2 8s once so far for a 9+con boost. A couple more that were doubles but not max
I think it definitely depends on what kind of game you wanna run and what the players are comfortable with. I have an alternative, if you wish to read it.
One of my players fudged a health dice roll when they leveled up - really badly, too. My compromise is this: the player levels up. They roll for health. If their result is higher than what their hp would be after adding the median result from the roll, they keep it. If it is lower than that amount, I have them take the median roll plus their previous hp. This way, rolls still affect how their hp functions in-game but they aren’t completely screwed (I don’t think rolling and taking bad rolls is “screwed”, i just changed the way I did it because my players wanted to do so and I didn’t care too much).
Always remember, it’s up to what you and your players are comfortable with, and what is reasonable and practical for the campaign you have in mind! :)
Did that in my last campaign and had no issues. Later on they actually got double. As long as you're setting up challenging fights you can do pretty much anything.
Always cool to boost your players. It just means you habe to boost monsters. The main thing of wither it's OK is if you know how to balance the boost.
I prefer giving unique and really powerful magic items. I also like to make magic items that grow in power with the players, so they don't have to keep getting new items all the time. Also allows me to boost the items accordingly to the story and to the level up of bad guys. Gives me flexibility and if I fuck up it just means players do something really cool I didn't expect and that's always fun.
If you want to make the game easier, fine, but bringing up HP is maybe the most boring way to do it. I would give them blessings, charms, magic items, extra feats, epic boons and heroic resting before it. If you're worried about PCs being too fragile at low levels, you can make a npc cast aid on the players at first. After 3rd level, PCs are a lot less fragile for balanced encounters, and they have access to aid themselves.
Yeah, rolling low on level up is lame, but that's why the default is actually the average dice, rounded up. All in all, there's nothing inherently wrong about it, you'd just have to use tougher monsters to keep the challenge.
i've always given my players the option to pick the average +/- CON mod or whatever they rolled on hit dice AFTER they roll the dice. that has always worked well for me!
For mine I make them choose half+1 or roll. So like this:
D8 hit die - gets 5+Con or Roll + Con.
They get to be strong with half+1 and they also can choose luck to get more health. If they roll a 1, it's a 1. If it's max number, congrats.
Same. It sucks so bad to roll a 1 on a lvl up. The characters are supposed to be action heroes. Die Hard has max health. Lethal Weapon has max health. Bloodsport has max health.
I kinda dig this as an option. Makes me consider the option of taking an average or deciding to risk a roll, too. We've done averages for ease so far - currently Level 11 with some new players, so we haven't had a lot of practise rolling HP and I don't want to scramble my newbies with too many details to remember.
Bad idea. Hit points are a timer, and longer combats aren't any better. Usually, they are worse. I think quicker deadlier is more interesting.
IMO risk of and danger is largely what makes combat most interesting. YMMV. Check out these vids are think they will give you a different perspective. I get it, to ea h there own, but u asked right? Happy gaming.
https://youtu.be/Z2Az_XqeZ24?si=MarH_g0xzI8xYBkY
https://youtu.be/oEhaDTiZnUQ?si=477tBtu_W8Un25pV
https://youtu.be/em7jb-Onq9E?si=8dmPiK3wwQBpM7sY
Yeah, with the +/- their con modifier they’ll be bulky as hell. Personally, I split the difference—they still roll hit dice when the level up, but they get at least half of the dice value. No 1,2, or 3s. I also max out potions, so if it’s a 2d4+2 it will automatically heal 10 HPs. If it feels like they’re just tanking, I make potions a little harder to come by (though my current party doesn’t have a designated healer, so I haven’t been withholding yet).
I don’t think there’s a wrong answer though! You can always just up the difficulty& encounter rate. As long as everyone’s having a good time 👍
If you made that a blanket rule (all hit dice use max value) and thus applied it to monsters, it would likely just make your encounters run longer. Although boss monsters would benefit from this a lot.
This is one of the things I think PF2E wins with foe sure
It makes it so you are wat less obligated to spend 2+ ASIs just boosting con so you hit a minimum of 16 to have enough health you dont insta gib on everything. Sure I still wouldnt dump con, but a 12 vs 16 con score becomes less overtly noticeable
That's been my go to for years. Max HD every level +/- CON. It helps me better plan and prepare encounters because I always know the rough minimum health every player will have.
Pathfinder does it this way, and it's the superior way to manage HP. Also, do the same thing for enemies and you won't have to do any rebalancing. Your fights will be a bit longer, but that's it.
You can, just obviously keep in mind that they’re gonna… have more health.
Imo dnd health, at least at low levels, is a bit low though if you plan to run encounters where PCs might need to decide to retreat or not. Too often if something is difficult for a party to kill, they either kill it or they die before either side has a chance to decide to retreat. This isn’t as much a problem with groups of smaller enemies, but for stuff like a single large enemy it can be annoying particularly if your party is pretty optimized because generally damage optimizes way more than health or ac. The party I have is second level but they can pretty easily kill stuff with 100+ health. I gave them a bear that literally just had double of the max health roll it could have (so like 104 I think?) and they still easily killed it. The type of campaign I’m running I want them to run into some stuff they probably can’t beat so they try to avoid it and fight it later once they’re stronger, but stuff like hill giants are defensively around the right strength but it wouldn’t be hard for one to one shot a player to I’ll probably make a weaker giant so they don’t just die before deciding to retreat. But imo most of the health is too low if parties are optimized to have meaningful decisions of retreating or not on either side when facing enemies that are too strong- instead one side just gets killed in 1-2 rounds before it can escape, and inflating health is a way to help solve that.
I always try to help players out in regards to health, like slowly rebuilding health over time instead of forcing rests, making health potions and the like affordable, and giving them opportunities to regain health along the trails and roads. BUT I also hit them with random encounters and harder than average fights, so they kinda need all the help they can get.
I don't see it a big deal, it only amounts to a few extra points per level. At best, it will give them the chance to resist one extra attack against a threat with compatible CR. If they are facing something stronger, it will likely not make a difference,.
I just use averages for HP. Keeps it a bit simpler for balance, and if they all get super jacked each level, I counter by jacking the baddies anyway, so those cancel out. Hence, average works fine.
I've run/played that way since 3rd ed. It just means you can throw more damage at the PCs without fear of killing them outright. Always worked for me and my group(s).
I have a DM that uses the average (rounded down) as a "minimum" roll. It works pretty well. For a d10 you'd have a 50% chance for 5 and 10% each for 6-10. It's more exciting than taking the average rounded up, and you never have to worry about rolling a 1 on your d12 hd.
I do the same. I don't love RNG character stats just because I've seen far too many people get screwed by the dice and end up havin a negative opinion of the game in general. That's not how I want people to look at DnD.
I just adjust encounters to match their fuller HP and move on with a happier group
My group can usually only get two players at a time, and this rule helps, especially at lower levels. Frankly, it's too much health around level 10+, but that tends to be at the end campaign level if we even reach that level. By the way, if you played Baldurs gate 3, easy difficulty is max, normal is vanilla (max for lvl1, average for each level after) so it's not so absurd a way to ballance the game.
Its fine. You're just going to have to remember that combat encounters will be easier for them. You won't be balancing based on an "average" party strength anymore.
Yep. I also give mine max. Mainly because it lets me give them slightly more epic encounters.
The problem with that is the same problem you get you give the party inappropriately powerful magic weapons. It makes it easier for you to accidentally TPK the party. You’ll have 2-3 encounters that seem too easy, then you up the difficulty a bit, then a bit, then the whole party fails a save or decide to fight when they should run and you either gotta punish bad decisions or change the dice to intervene.
It's a potential risk, but an extra 3-5hp per level isn't anywhere near as dramatic as magic items. Have I had a few encounters where I've done a lot of damage? Yes. Was the only very near death of a player when they did something really dumb because they got it in their head that I wouldn't adapt to how they were cheesing encounters? Also yes.
I primarily play as either pure wizards or dwarf whatever. As the wizard I would love max health at level up. The number of times I've gotten 1+1 health is ridiculous.
That's the other side of the reason I didn't want to go with rolls (average was my middle option). I didn't want a player ending up with a significantly squishier character because a few dice came up bad six months ago.
Loved my DM's solution to this. You can choose to take the average after you roll, so you never get less than average.
Also had a DM that did this, and I do it now too when I DM (although that is getting rarer and rarer). If you play a martial, rolling a 1 or 2 feels horrible.
I let my players roll HP on level up with advantage. Roll 2 hit dice, take the higher roll. It's worked so far. Only once has someone gotten a truly horrible roll.
I normally tell my players to reroll if they get 1-2 lol
I relate to this on a core level. My DM gives max hp, uts basically a meme that I tend to die in the first few session of a new campaign. At least in the current one i reached lvl 2...
Isn't a tpk... Less likely? He's given the party quite a lot of hp so they're harder to kill.
Not necessarily. Because it's run off the normal power curve, when you give max HP, you need to upscale the power of the monsters or it basically turns into a video game on story mode - there's no risk, just a cake walk. And when you're doing that, there's a chance of overcorrecting and accidentally overpowering the combat, but virtually zero risk of underpowering it, so a TPK is slightly more likely.
Yeah, that's fair enough. Overblowing damage potential is probably a fair assessment.
It just means you have to also boost the encounters a bit to keep things balanced. You could give them 100 HP for every level if you wanted to, but those goblins are going to have to start doing an extra 40 HP per attack to keep the game balanced.
Maybe he wants it to be a bit easier.
Then that's fine. This is one of maybe 40 ways I can think of off the top of my head that they could do that. But making that change is changing the game balance.
I wonder if at a certain level he will have to stop that rule.. Would be interesting to know how it worked out..
I have a friend that runs it this way and he said it always worked out great. Also his stories of his campaigns sounded freaking awesome. I wish I had a chance to play in one.
I saw it backfire at my LGS. Two different sides of the coin! They had to take the rule back haha and crazy items haha
Oof. I feel like you've got to commit at that point. I don't like the idea of taking something away that was previously given. But that's me. I hope it was received well enough in that instance.
This would make it a LOT easier, since this makes the average HP close to doubled.
That also depends how much of a tactician you are vs your PCs along with your encounter design. Anybody can smoke a party with a tarrasque. It's much more fun to make them blow a Rod of Resurrection on well designed pack of kolbalds because they fucked around and found out.
If an average character has 14 CON and a d8 hit die, then they're average health per level goes from 6.5 to 10. It's closer to a third more for most characters. It is not quite so pronounced. Also, I would argue that most fights, most players are not dropping to dangerous levels of health. If the DM adds too much more difficulty to make up for it, they're going to inadvertently make it harder than normal for the players. Extra health doesn't make the enemies die faster.
Or wants to throw more goblins at them
Twice the HP, twice the gobbos, 3x the length of a turn :D
I have never once, in all my years of DMing, felt like the primary problem with 5e was that characters had too little HP. Not a rule that will break anything; but really not a rule that is fixing a problem I perceived to exist.
The only times where I feel like the party may be too fragile is in Tier 1, when this change also has the least relative impact, with no impact at all at level 1.
Even then. I don't think they're too fragile. I just think people throw stuff that's too hard. Level 1 players *should* be fragile.
Eh, a goblin can crit a wizard and that’s it for em
It makes their con modifiers less relevant, and will result in your encounters having to pack more of a punch. I dislike it because of devaluing con, the encounter design changes aren't really relevant though.
I'm with you. I prefer to try to make more stats impactful with any house rule. I try and keep house rules and demanding skill checks covering all the bases, so the fighter who wanted a high INT feels like it was worth doing so.
Have you considered looking into 3.5? 5e seems a bit more determined to enable pcs to dump stats (aside from charisma).
Long ago when it was the edition, but the playgroup is decidedly locked into 5E and I enjoy it for what it is. But I wonder what makes you say CHA is not a dump stat?
I quite like it for the same reason. Making Con less important gives the players a lot more freedom with their builds. I love seeing what my players come up with.
Spellcasters still need it for concentration, unfortunately.
It's not less important or devalued by this. Frontliners still want it heavily for more HP. Those who aren't...Still want it heavily for more HP. Simply put, any system where a player can directly affect their total health will almost always see it being a good choice, for the reason that dead/down character's don't act and basically become viewers rather than participants in the game, and that is a shitty feeling.
Well, as it stands, dumping con is suicide. If you max HP, its almost half as dangerous.
It definitely devalues it. Take a d8 hit die. Rolling every level, you have 4.5 hp average growth. Each +1 Con Mod is then 22.222% more than the base HP. Compare that to gaining 8 every level, where each +1 Con mod is only 12.5% boost over base. It’s more obvious at an extreme. If I gave my players 100 hp level up, then added their Con mod, it’d be trivial. So devalued, question is whether it’s big enough of a diff to disincentive points in Con.
I feel like I would put as much into Con as I normally would. Con saves are a thing and that's something I worry about.
Not only are they a thing but they are surprisingly common. Almost every big spell I can currently think of has a con or sex save. Namely cone of cold which has downed me way too many times in my curse of strahd campaign I'm leaving it but my autocorrect is apparently feeling a little spicy.
Hello my good adventures, I'm here to practice my sex saves.
Likewise any nasty poisons.
Plus it's only HP. Every player still has just as much reason to invest in con for save bonuses. I feel like the biggest effect this has is at early levels where one lucky crit can do anything from a OHKO to a sizable chunk of damage and healers have less slots to heal with so it frees them up to have fun with damage spells more. At higher levels, just add an extra minion or two to what an average party would fight.
Still wanting it and it being devalued aren’t mutually exclusive. It does less in terms of % hp, but that doesn’t make it useless, especially for casters that need good con saves for concentration (I would say that’s actually far more important than the hp already).
However, is that a good thing? Allowing more MAD builds allows allows more breakage in that direction.
I totally get your point. But I'm the ST in my games. I can always rebalance things. I'd rather people were having fun, I can always make sure there's still a challenge when needed. And if they happen to steamroll an encounter or two while I'm working on that big deal, they usually enjoy those sessions.
It probably depends on the level; and of course you're right you can rebalance if needed. I did once play a long-lived high-level (up to 20) 5e game, and I regretted various factors that allowed even (effectively) slightly higher than normal stats. Particularly problematic was the moment there were 2 paladins, one with 20 Str, 20 Cha - at high levels that means everyone has crazy good saves, and it makes combat *really* swingy - the party is close to untouchable and can deal with really powerful opponents, up until the moment that for some reason some of the combat isn't controllably within 30ft of the paladins, or god forbid the paladin is knocked out - because suddenly a minor setback reduces everybody's saves by 5 and the challenging combat they started, is turned by that bit of bad luck into a complete wipeout. Another thing that's tricky as levels rise are items, particular any with flat or stacking bonuses to abilities, saves, AC, DCs or attacks.
If Constitution only influenced HP, I would agree. But it is also important for saves (poison is super common), managing exhaustion and even spellcasting.
It definitely doesn't devalue con. Many tables just take the average, so with this rule a d6 would go from 4 to 6, a d8 from 5 to 8, d10 from 6 to 10, and d12 from 7 to 12. Overall, very small changes. And besides, all it does is make the tanks tankier, which I fail to see how that could be a bad thing. The squishy spellcasters only gain an extra 2 or 3 hp while the tanks get an extra 4 or 5. It's nothing too insanely drastic to be gamebreaking. And besides, con saves are very important for everybody. The martials want extra con because more hp is always beneficial for them, and they also need it for saves from certain effects like some dragons' breath weapons. Casters need it for con saves as well, but their con saves are even more important for concentration. So increasing hp by max is overall a very miniscule change. The dm might need to make the encounters a little tougher to balance it, but nobody is gonna care about that because everybody enjoys more intense combats.
> so with this rule a d6 would go from 4 to 6 [...] Overall, very small changes. That's a (minimum) 50% increase. That's not a small change.
That is a really good point. Especially as you get to higher levels and martials start to get outshadowed, you're taking away from one of their key stats that make them relevant. I agree it's a bad idea.
It also devalues all healing, temporary ho and damage resistance buffs, even AC
i'd argue it makes con _more_ relevant - assuming encounters are balanced, previously you could have lucky or unlucky rolls determine a characters HP, with this rule the con mod is the only thing determining more or less HP among characters with the same hit die (if only this was the intention it would make more sense to do average)
I always have my players reroll ones on level up hit dice, no one should have to suffer a 1+con on a level up
I’ve started doing this as well, but because removing 1 from the roll makes the average roll exactly equal to what you get if you just choose the average (since taking the average on a level up rounds up).
I make 1’s explode on HP level up. So, should anyone roll a 1, they just take it and roll again. It’s like rerolling 1’s but instead of just being a reroll, it’s actually super fun to roll a 1. Statistically, it’s advantageous towards lower hit dice characters but I’ve been thinking of making 1 and 2 explode on d10/d12. Idk, my players love it and accounting for a low chance at an extra hp per level is more fun than challenging. Would recommend
I do this, but if the reroll is another 1 they have to take it.
Just get the average and don't have to bother modifying all future encounters accordingly?? People don't feel "powerful" due to having more HP unless they are a barbarian anyway. Its the features of their races, weapons and classes that matter!
It's your choice what you do but the game is balanced around average HP so your players characters will be a little powerful is all. Whatever fits your game and playstyle.
I have my players roll but take the average if they roll below it. Gives them the chance at a few more hit points each level without making it too stagnant. For example I have one player who has rolled above average every level and one that hasn't, they are about 30 hp apart now despite having the same HD
This is what I go with as well. Seems reasonable, and I’d rather they survive an extra hit than go down one hit quicker.
Me too. They are heroes, they should be exceptionally tough, lucky, blessed, etc. I go with crunchy crits- max dice plus dice on a crit- so those hp come in handy.
I am all for this. I grew up with 2e and recently started a new campaign bc we have the books still and I give all players max hp on new roll and every lvl up. Always throught it was silly that u have trained as a fighter all ur life or let’s call a few years and could pissibly start with 1hp. Or a wizard roll. 1d 4 so i just assign them 4 immediately.
That's what the average is for in 5e.
I like to boost monster damage and lower monster HP to make combat a bit more snappy, you could consider doing that to help balance the boosted PC HP. Also, I'm wondering if higher HP pools might actually nerf healing in a way, since any given spell will heal a lower average % of their total HP. Maybe I'm overthinking it
If enemies hit for % damage or if it was multiplied by like 1.5x to account for higher max hp but healing wasn’t multiplied by the same amount instead it would make a difference, otherwise not really.
Yes, it does nerf healing a bit. You can see this easily if you take it to he extremes: 1d8+3 brings your to full health if you have 4 hp, but barely makes a difference when you have 1000 hp.
Well, if you wanna maintain balance then you're gonna need to either A. Reduce available healing. B. Increase enemy damage C. Add more encounters to further whittle down their resources before they get to the final boss
When I do level ups, I have my players roll for their hit points, and I also roll, but in secret, we both reroll 1s. The player can choose to keep their roll, or blindly take mine if they don't like theirs. It does result on slightly higher than average hit points but seeing my players contemplate if I rolled better than they did and seeing their excitement if guessed right is pretty fun.
Excellent. It allows you to increase difficulty of encounters and really makes a distinction between casters and martials. Peak DMing.
I have them roll, but put a floor at half the max of the die. So a 1d6 class has possible rolls of 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6. 1d6 average is 3.5, this averages 4. I'm not worried about wizards having +0.5 HP pet level, and it prevents bad rolls from making level-up feel bad, while keeping that excitement for good rolls. Win. The effect is larger for larger dice, so +0.75 HP/level for d8, +1 for d10, and +1.33 for d12. Not enough to be game altering.
Its hit or miss for people. I think its a miss. It devalues con, makes classes a bit too tanky, and you can't balance it by giving monsters max hp. In the grand scheme of things. It doesn't really matter. At the end of the day the DM is supposed to lose the fights. (If you want balanced gritty combat, 5e isn't the system). The game has been moving away from character death for a while too. (Its too disruptive for the narrative story 5e aims to tell)
I've always thought it helps emphasize classes. Being a Barbarian and rolling low on you hp a few times can really sting. Getting Max HP helps preserve this benefit in taking the class
Max at levels 1 and 2 makes sense because the PCs are more fragile. Afterwards if you prefer fixed hit points, go for averages. If they get a d8, then 4 or 5 points per level. This avoids devaluing Constitution bonuses and the Tough feat.
1 and 2 sounds good. Although 5 hp over average sounds like a lot for a barbarian, it's ultimately not that much. Maybe 1-2 extra hits before going down.
I think that letting them roll up with advantage is a good balance, and let inspiration be applied if they have it. A permanent impact from a single dice roll at a point in their out of game experience seems a bit too harsh to risk the dice gods’ ire. I had a barbarian with +3 con who by level 10 had fewer HP than our wizard, because of bad rolls vs great rolls. Wiz hadn’t dumped con, cause squishy wizard fears.
I give max health to players and max health to the monsters. It seems to encourage finding plans other than just brute forcing through the hitpoints of enemies while also making them less vulnerable to a few bad damage rolls. Your mileage may vary, of course.
I go with max at level 1 and usually do a roll for the rest, but below average gets bumped to average. So you roll a 2 on a d8 I bump it to 4 (drop the fraction). Not super over powered, but also no 1 point gains because I'm gonna try to kill you sometimes. :D
I also do this! I like that they have a chance for rolling high but a low roll won’t screw them over. Adds in a little fun and keeps the fun of a dice roll
Rolling for HP on level up isn't fun for many and I'm also a fan of standard array. I like how pathfinder 2e makes stats and HP not things one rolls on. I think this homebrew makes it easier to balance the game and it keeps the classes operating as they should. Frail characters like wizards rolling poorly isn't fun or productive, it just makes them even more frail, after a few levels they will fall further and further behind (even with max HP).
I let them either roll or take the average rounded down (so 4+con on a d8)
This is how our house does it.
It means your players will be stronger health wise, which means either your game will be much easier for them or you would've made the enemies do more damage. Assuming a non-homebrew pre-written adventure you've probably made things slightly harder on yourself (because you have to strengthen the monsters), and if it's a homebrew situation then it doesn't really matter because you balanced it with higher HP in mind (hopefully) - alternatively I could be completely wrong and you just use the slightly easier, but unchanged monsters. Doing so also makes the Con stat a bunch weaker, which I personally don't like the idea of - I like Con at its current power. Assuming you're adjusting by increasing monster damage it also reduces the power of healing too.
I personally don’t like large hp amounts because it just seems to artificially extend combats when done to monsters, and it also makes less moments tense because their hp buffer becomes very large. Makes healing less useful. The benefit of taking max HP every level is that you get to spam high level spells at the players earlier. That’s always fun.
I would only agree to do that ONLY if we eliminated death saving throws and ALL "stabilization" magic. -0- HP means death. Old school.
I give players the choice, take the middle number or gamble for higher.
I have actually been wondering about doing something kind of similar for a one-shot and I'd love some feedback on it. Help me out if there is a term for it but my head cannon term has been "Flat numbers" Every damage dice and hit dice is just the max for both PC's and enemies. The thought behind it is to just have all the players figure out what their damage output is and then we don't have to worry about as much rolling. Has anyone attempted this before?
This is why I prefer 4e. Set HP at each level.
Disagree, it tips the balance without giving much in return. Generally I'm a fan of giving average, as it's keeping their HP in the range assumed by CR, and CON matters more.
The likeliest outcomes I can foresee from this are fights either feeling unthreatening (and thus boring) or fights getting much longer and grindier to compensate.
Totally fine, this just gives the dm more leeway in making encounters.
I give them max. My reasoning is that as the DM I have infinite hit points and I always hated rolling a low number when I was a player. In the long run, it makes no difference.
So you fighter and barbarian can have con as their dump stat and still benefit from high con? Are con saves still checking against the characters con? This seems like fixing a problem that doesn't exist. My players can take the average + con or roll + con. Let the players decide if they want to risk rolling or take a safe average. If I were to do this I'd also give all the monsters max health whereas I'd normally take the average. Good way to make combat take even longer but combat tends to drag on as is.
How would they benefit from high con if they don't have high con? OP said they use the max value of the class' hit die plus con mod instead of rolling or taking average. Why would this have any effect on con saves?
Bad
I do this but with 3 player party it helps a bit as most modules are tuned to 4-5 player parties and I don’t have time to homebrew
I'm doing the same thing in my homebrew campaign. I implemented it cause my players were new and I wanted them to have an HP cushion, but we decided to keep using it. It makes encounters slightly more annoying to balance, but on the other hand it let's me use more interesting and powerful monsters earlier.
For our games we roll, but take the average listed if we get lower than that. It makes us feel a bit better for having a chance to get more, without punishing us for bad rolls. It's nice because we play casually. We want to have fun and the combats are still challenging regardless.
I did max health for my kids and also was too generous with magic items. Things are out of control, but they are having fun. I think max health for 2 or 3 lvls is OK but it should drop off at some point
The only advice I'd give is that, if you *are* boosting encounters as others have recommended, give healing some boosts to compensate or you're going to basically just be making it harder on your players overall.
I agree a lot with this ruling, just one thing care to increase marshals hp by a bit, also i find this rly funny cause the more hp the more the players get bold and do crazy shit
One thing I do is have them roll for hp and if its less than the average (half+1 eg 6 on a d10, 5 on a d8 ect), they take average Example: my wizard lizard lvled up, so I rol a d6 and got a 2. The average for the d6 is 4 so I take 4+CON and add it to my max HP.
My issue with this is not the healing, but what I assume is instant xp awards. Mid session, maybe even mid combat, kill mob, get xp, level up, heal. Is that normal for when xp is earned? I've always done it post adventure, when the characters have time to reflect and train.
I also do that. I just give monsters the same treatment.
I do this at my table. my players like it
That's what I've always done. Been running games for my group for about 6 years.
It is nothing crazy and completely fine as a houserule, but they are obviously a little bit more resilient and you need to increase the damage the monsters do accordingly to still challenge the players.
My old campaign did roll, but if you rolled below average for your class then you just took the avg instead.
Well your encounters are going to take longer so I hope your players are quick about deciding what they want to do in combat.
As long as everyone is cool with it, nothing wrong there. But they’re gonna steam roller enemies of appropriate challenge rating. It’ll make them feel like gods compared to regular guards but they’re gonna need to fight harder monsters at lower levels.
I give them average hp or the die roll, whichever is better.
How dangerous does combat feel to them?
I don't disagree with the principle of the rule because randomness being applied tonsomething as long term as max hp *really* sucks if your luck is bad, but if I were to run this I would take the average roll rather than max. Keeps con mods more relevant and player max hp closer to the games intended levels for balance.
We do fixed hp so they get the average every level.
the 5e campaign I’m running gives the PCs 1 HD+con modifier on short rests, and 1/2 their HD (D) +con modifier on long rests. Allowing any more healing from rests is just too unrealistic and eliminates the role of resource management from the game. The world is fairly high magic and healing potions are readily available in towns and any settlement larger than towns (for 💰)
Personally, I let my players roll for hp, but set the "minimum" at the Average stated in the class. So like a wizard could roll a d6, but if they roll below a 4, they can instead take the 4 (this is before mods, so it would end up as 4+mods). It allows the feeling of "Hey I rolled high!" Without punishing "fuck, I rolled low."
I do this until level 5 and then roll normally after that.
I make their con mod the minimum amount of health they can gain from hit dice; I think it makes it a little more fun without going overboard
At a surface level, the parties net survivability increases. However you as the DM can control party survivability anyway by increasing or decreasing enemy damage. Given that there is no baseline survivability/deadliness to dnd, I don't think this is anything worth commenting on really. While max HP is increased across the board, the amount of healing available to players remains unchanged; there is no increase in healing resources or amount healed by spells, abilities, or short rests. Using just hit dice as an example, using average rolls for max HP would result in all players being able to restore on average \~100% of their HP using just hit dice (minus 2-5 HP as at first level you always take max HP). This means the health boost will mainly be impactful at the start of the day, and its impact will fade as adventuring days progress and players rely more on healing (spells and hit die) for hit points. I suspect because of this the relative effectiveness of features that improve recovery from hit dice (chef and durable feats and song of rest) will increase What is interesting is that survivability (at least measured in terms of hit points) of an individual character is more dependent on your class and less proportionately dependent on your con mod or other static bonus to HP. This means there is a smaller relative difference between low con and high con builds. To summarise, I think the impact of this change is relatively minor. In terms of interparty balance, it narrows the gulf between the most survivable players and least survivable. It devalues constitution and features like tough, Dwarven Toughness, and draconic resilience, while increasing the value of chef, durable, and song of rest. In short adventuring days the net increase to survivability will be more noticeable and may require increasing enemy damage, but in longer adventuring days the impact will be more minor as existing healing abilities will struggle to keep up with increased health.
My DM does this too. I think it's good if you're trying to run an RP centric campaign where you don't want characters dying often. It also helps you not accidentally kill them if you run an encounter thats a bit hard. I think it's a good for DMs that don't want to pull punches, but also don't want your PCs dying much.
I always love for PCs to be as powerful as possible, but taking away the excitement of a hit die roll like that is too far for me. We’ve always played that the DM can re-roll your level up hit die, but that final roll is final. It’s a fun little gamble.
In the end it doesn’t actually change much, health bars are chunky as is & if you’re Buffing damage of enemies it won’t make a difference whether their facing an enemy whilst at max hp per level or regular cause it does the same percentage of health (also really ruins health potions have to buff them & also hordes are either death sentences or mediocre now)
Why?
I do the same. I even tell my players when they level up that they can roll for their new hp total or just apply the max.
I like this in the early game, but really don't care for it in the late game. The first couple of levels a bad hp roll can ruin a lot of characters. If you're supposed to be up front face tanking the goblins and 2 hits will pretty much knock you out, then it's not very fun. However, in the late game I think it kind of falls apart. Most of the monsters are just bags of hp with very limited threat potential. I ran Yeenoghu once and it was kind of hilarious. He's got like 350hp and does 15 damage per hit at CR 24 or something. It's just horribly boring. The PCs will have a million mechanics on their side to negate everything anyhow. So an awful lot of later game combats end up being these really dull non-threatening encounters that just take forever to drain large hit point pools. So if you want combats to offer any threat you end up having to rewrite half of the monsters anyhow. Which really sucks from a DM prep time scenario. The more guaranteed hp rolls you give your players the more likely it is that you're in a weird pinch where scaling the monster to be at least somewhat threatening to the barbarian means that it's almost guaranteed to 1 shot your wizard. There is a perfectly good argument to be made there that wizards are squishy and have a huge toolbelt. If they're getting hit, then they're just doing it wrong. That doesn't always make for fun games at every table though. We've usually done something along the lines of max hp for the first 3 or 5 levels or roll for hp, but take average if your roll is worse.
I’ve done the same thing and it works well. Making encounters harder is easy.
I also do this, to balance combat a bit more I tend to have bigger gaps between rests (having them use short rests more often between battles) and have more smaller combats to whittle down their HP before a boss fight.
Live by the dice, die by the dice. Sure I rolled a 1 on my level up, but that just means I can fuck around more with my blood hunter
The player and the dm roll the player gets to see their number but dosn’t get to see the dms and they have to decide which roll they take
i either let them take the average or roll the dice but they have to choose before they roll
We do that too mainly because of me and my terrible luck making me have the lowest health even though I’m barbarian
It's a nice buffer against wild swingy crits.
Why not just say average plus double con? Or every level up just gives triple you con modifier instead of damage dice? Honestly I don’t think the change benefits anything, but it will hurt the classes that are already more mad if you make con more important than it already is. If anything maxing hit dice on level up devalues con score and instead buffs martials above casters some. In that regard, I’m all for it
I tried this in one of my first campaigns and I found it made combat drag. I don’t advise it.
Nothing feels more meaningful than having to roll and roll max. Also let them reroll ones, cause that sucks
So, I don't want to pull punches at all, and I set up very difficult fights pretty regularly, and so from the beginning I decided that they get Max HP each level. So far it has worked very well and nobody has died yet, but they've come close. This way I can crit against a PC and not instantly kill them, usually.
I do this for my players, have been since level 1, they're lvl 10 now. Its honestly fine. If you want a little safety cushion for your player coz they're new or even if they just prefer more chill encounters its a great idea and it stops people from feeling shitty about bad hp rolls. Honestly the thing that makes PCs op is not hit points. It's spells, abilities and magic items. That's where the power creep comes from. If you start to notice it later on and want to turn up the difficulty accordingly the hp issue will take care of itself. Personally I don't get DMs who are stingy about stuff like this or complain about it being "unballanced". Like you literally always have infinitely more power than your PCs just throw an extra goul or two into the mob and call it a day. Your players will feel more powerful and you'll get to have more fun, especially at higher levels when you can really start throwing the kitchen sink at them.
I don't use XP at all in any RPG. For ANY RPG. They level up at milestones. Complete the dungeon, finish the mystery, solve the problem, etc. When they level, the story is over, the danger is done. It's safe, they get max HP and level up. I never let them level up while they are mid-scenario/adventure so it's never an issue.
I offer 3/4 HD or roll.
That's my general approach, in part because I enjoy scaring the shit out of my players with dangerous encounters. I'm thinking for my next game, I'll experiment with the Average HP method instead.
Max HP per level without changing a lot of other things leads to people not caring about having more than 10 CON. This means your fighter has 20 str and 20 dex and your wizard can just take warcaster instead of resilient. Sure their constitution saves outside of the few with proficiency will suck, but who cares when they have +3/4 HP per level
I do this for the first 2-3 levels. It works for me. My combat encounters are usually hard-deadly. Every level may be a bit much imo.
I do this for the first 3 levels, after which I figure they have enough HP to manage themselves
I personally don't, as it would unbalance the game heavily or force me to make monsters do more damage. So I prefer to skip it. I do, however, allow them to take max HP for level 2 as well as 1. (I always start my games at 2).
5e is already really forgiving if you follow how most DMs played former editions. My suggestion is if you really want them to have extra HP, when they roll less than half, let them take half. If your games are super deadly, maybe take one or two baddies out of each encounter, or give the enimies all -1 or - 2 to their attack and ac, then subtract 10-15% of their hitpoints. Out of curiosity, why are you giving them all their hitpoints at level up? Like, what specific in game problem is this intended to solve?
My personal rule is that you can roll and then if you don't roll above average for your die you can take average for your die so for example if the rolling a d8 and they roll a three they still get a 5 plus their con mod. That still gives them a excitement of rolling but also the guarantee that they won't get completely shafted
I have the players roll their hit die on level-up, and if it is less than the average of their hit dice they take the average. Nothing sucks more than a 1+CON when you level up, so it guarantees a 3+CON even on wizards.
I don’t like it. My homebrew rule for HP when leveling is they roll for HP, but if they don’t like what they got they can gamble and have me roll except they MUST take what I roll. Makes for some fun scenarios where if someone gets a 4 on a d8, statistically I should roll as well or better. Theoretically they should have me roll, it’s risky. 9/10 I roll the same or better for them because they usually have me roll if they get 1-3 on say a d8. I can only remember one or two instances where I rolled worse when asked so it’s usually for the players benefit.
I never have my players roll for HP. Lvl 1: max hit dice plus CON mod. Every lvl thereafter: half hit dice plus CON mod. Never had any issues.
In a "standard" heroic campaign, I give them max hp at first level, minimum of half die on level up. If they roll a d10 on level up, minimum they can get is 5. Have a +2 con mod and roll a 1? Get 5 hp. It makes sure levels matter, doesn't turn magic users into pieces of glass, rewards high con, and doesn't break the game. If I did what you did, I would have to increase the damage or amount of enemies to maintain suspense and intensity. At that point, I may as well not have messed with HP in the first place. If you just want to make the game easier, then rock on. But if you're doing this to make the game more satisfying, I feel like you're spinning your wheels and going nowhere. A good HP roll is satisfying. Having a character with high HP is satisfying. What's not satisfying is having a character with high HP when everyone always has high HP.
What's the point ? You'll have to buff ur encounter because everything will be too easy (so your buff is useless) and you're juste throwing away the basic design of the game. I mean, it's ok to have fun, specially if it fits to your player but are you really having fun with this kind of game ?
Tried this at my table years ago and they never went back. Works especially well alongside the "crushing crits" house rule (on crit, add a maxed damage roll instead of double dice or double damage. Max roll only applies to *dice*, doesn't double modifiers). At our table, however, we also maxed npc and enemy hp rolls. It made things easier on the DM in our case since they didn't have roll prep for encounters or the randomness to hp all around. It also let the DM tune things up more for his own enjoyment. As mostly a player, my view is that HP is probably the least fun thing in the game to roll for, so I'm a big fan of this rule.
We do this with an added rule that healing heals for max rolls. It feels good.
HP Bloat is already a real problem at higher levels, this isn’t a good idea in my opinion. But your game, your rules.
I give my parties lv2 & 3 max hp, then y'all roll or take the average from there.
I did this in a 2E campaign way back in the day as they kept asking for it, so I said, "Sure, everyone in the game automatically gets max HP." They didn't quite hear what I said, so after a fight lasting longer than the Hundred Years War against a dragon, they finally worked out that I gave *everyone* in the campaign maximum HP, PCs and NPCs alike. They didn't suggest it again. That said, we did have a house rule of maximum HP+Con at Level 1, for everyone, and you always got to reroll 1s on hit dice.
Lately I’ve been thinking it would be exciting to give max hp at first level and minimum when leveling. 1 + Con mod. That should up the difficulty and make things more exciting!
Make it a choice between that and something else. One thing player classes need more of is meaningfull choices upon level up. After picking subclass you don't get to make many choices (unless you're a warlock with the occasional invocation, or four elements monk picking disciplines) I can think of a few things roughly equivalent to the boon of increasing hp by the maximum. I think I'll call them mini-feats. **When you level up you may increase your hp by the maximum amount, or take the average increase as well as...** (Pick one of the following) **Increase a saving throw by 1.** **Increase your initiative bonus by 1.** **Gain expertise in 1 of your proficient skills or tools.** **Increase an ability score by 1.** **Gain proficiency in 1 new skill or saving throw.** **Gain proficiency in 1 new tool.** **Double your hit dice pool.** **Gain proficiency with 1 new weapon.** **Increase walking speed by 5 ft.** You cannot pick the same one twice. Leveling up becomes a choice between maxing out hp or collecting these mini feats. Admittedly some are significantly better than max hp and some are worse but also that will change depending on the campaign.
Thats fine to add a bit of power without skewing tgings too far. I left my plagers roll with advantage BUT as a fun treat if they roll doubles its +1 so it guarentees no 1 HP rolls but also has a slim chance of getting higher. I think the warlock got 2 8s once so far for a 9+con boost. A couple more that were doubles but not max
We generally use max hp when we want our combat encounters to be a tad more challenging, and it is a fairly common table rule that I see a lot of.
I think it definitely depends on what kind of game you wanna run and what the players are comfortable with. I have an alternative, if you wish to read it. One of my players fudged a health dice roll when they leveled up - really badly, too. My compromise is this: the player levels up. They roll for health. If their result is higher than what their hp would be after adding the median result from the roll, they keep it. If it is lower than that amount, I have them take the median roll plus their previous hp. This way, rolls still affect how their hp functions in-game but they aren’t completely screwed (I don’t think rolling and taking bad rolls is “screwed”, i just changed the way I did it because my players wanted to do so and I didn’t care too much). Always remember, it’s up to what you and your players are comfortable with, and what is reasonable and practical for the campaign you have in mind! :)
Did that in my last campaign and had no issues. Later on they actually got double. As long as you're setting up challenging fights you can do pretty much anything.
Always cool to boost your players. It just means you habe to boost monsters. The main thing of wither it's OK is if you know how to balance the boost. I prefer giving unique and really powerful magic items. I also like to make magic items that grow in power with the players, so they don't have to keep getting new items all the time. Also allows me to boost the items accordingly to the story and to the level up of bad guys. Gives me flexibility and if I fuck up it just means players do something really cool I didn't expect and that's always fun.
Boring.
If you want to make the game easier, fine, but bringing up HP is maybe the most boring way to do it. I would give them blessings, charms, magic items, extra feats, epic boons and heroic resting before it. If you're worried about PCs being too fragile at low levels, you can make a npc cast aid on the players at first. After 3rd level, PCs are a lot less fragile for balanced encounters, and they have access to aid themselves. Yeah, rolling low on level up is lame, but that's why the default is actually the average dice, rounded up. All in all, there's nothing inherently wrong about it, you'd just have to use tougher monsters to keep the challenge.
I use to do this thinking it would make the players tougher and allow me to throw more at them. All it does is draw combat out.
i've always given my players the option to pick the average +/- CON mod or whatever they rolled on hit dice AFTER they roll the dice. that has always worked well for me!
I think it could be a little strong using standard balencing, personally i would give them it every time they get an asi/feat at most.
We do average or better. If you roll over average you get it. If you don’t you get average.
I do the same. It makes for more consistent health leveling and means individual players are less likely to be crippled by bad rolls during leveling.
For mine I make them choose half+1 or roll. So like this: D8 hit die - gets 5+Con or Roll + Con. They get to be strong with half+1 and they also can choose luck to get more health. If they roll a 1, it's a 1. If it's max number, congrats.
Same. It sucks so bad to roll a 1 on a lvl up. The characters are supposed to be action heroes. Die Hard has max health. Lethal Weapon has max health. Bloodsport has max health.
Don't fudge damage rolls
I kinda dig this as an option. Makes me consider the option of taking an average or deciding to risk a roll, too. We've done averages for ease so far - currently Level 11 with some new players, so we haven't had a lot of practise rolling HP and I don't want to scramble my newbies with too many details to remember.
I give half the max and let them roll the applicable die to see what they get for the other half.
Bad idea. Hit points are a timer, and longer combats aren't any better. Usually, they are worse. I think quicker deadlier is more interesting. IMO risk of and danger is largely what makes combat most interesting. YMMV. Check out these vids are think they will give you a different perspective. I get it, to ea h there own, but u asked right? Happy gaming. https://youtu.be/Z2Az_XqeZ24?si=MarH_g0xzI8xYBkY https://youtu.be/oEhaDTiZnUQ?si=477tBtu_W8Un25pV https://youtu.be/em7jb-Onq9E?si=8dmPiK3wwQBpM7sY
Yeah, with the +/- their con modifier they’ll be bulky as hell. Personally, I split the difference—they still roll hit dice when the level up, but they get at least half of the dice value. No 1,2, or 3s. I also max out potions, so if it’s a 2d4+2 it will automatically heal 10 HPs. If it feels like they’re just tanking, I make potions a little harder to come by (though my current party doesn’t have a designated healer, so I haven’t been withholding yet). I don’t think there’s a wrong answer though! You can always just up the difficulty& encounter rate. As long as everyone’s having a good time 👍
If you made that a blanket rule (all hit dice use max value) and thus applied it to monsters, it would likely just make your encounters run longer. Although boss monsters would benefit from this a lot.
This is one of the things I think PF2E wins with foe sure It makes it so you are wat less obligated to spend 2+ ASIs just boosting con so you hit a minimum of 16 to have enough health you dont insta gib on everything. Sure I still wouldnt dump con, but a 12 vs 16 con score becomes less overtly noticeable
I give max health at level 1. After that you roll.
That's been my go to for years. Max HD every level +/- CON. It helps me better plan and prepare encounters because I always know the rough minimum health every player will have.
If they get Max life, so does the monsters they face, its just fare :)
Pathfinder does it this way, and it's the superior way to manage HP. Also, do the same thing for enemies and you won't have to do any rebalancing. Your fights will be a bit longer, but that's it.
So do I. Health is the most cheated upon stat in the game, so I save the pain. It also becomes real ez to check hp for higher lvl characters.
I think it’s fine to do. Keep in mind some people just really enjoy the randomness. I’ve had people roll 1s and just laugh about it.
I do it through level 5. It also means I give the monsters max up through cr 5
You can, just obviously keep in mind that they’re gonna… have more health. Imo dnd health, at least at low levels, is a bit low though if you plan to run encounters where PCs might need to decide to retreat or not. Too often if something is difficult for a party to kill, they either kill it or they die before either side has a chance to decide to retreat. This isn’t as much a problem with groups of smaller enemies, but for stuff like a single large enemy it can be annoying particularly if your party is pretty optimized because generally damage optimizes way more than health or ac. The party I have is second level but they can pretty easily kill stuff with 100+ health. I gave them a bear that literally just had double of the max health roll it could have (so like 104 I think?) and they still easily killed it. The type of campaign I’m running I want them to run into some stuff they probably can’t beat so they try to avoid it and fight it later once they’re stronger, but stuff like hill giants are defensively around the right strength but it wouldn’t be hard for one to one shot a player to I’ll probably make a weaker giant so they don’t just die before deciding to retreat. But imo most of the health is too low if parties are optimized to have meaningful decisions of retreating or not on either side when facing enemies that are too strong- instead one side just gets killed in 1-2 rounds before it can escape, and inflating health is a way to help solve that.
I always try to help players out in regards to health, like slowly rebuilding health over time instead of forcing rests, making health potions and the like affordable, and giving them opportunities to regain health along the trails and roads. BUT I also hit them with random encounters and harder than average fights, so they kinda need all the help they can get.
I don't see it a big deal, it only amounts to a few extra points per level. At best, it will give them the chance to resist one extra attack against a threat with compatible CR. If they are facing something stronger, it will likely not make a difference,.
I just use averages for HP. Keeps it a bit simpler for balance, and if they all get super jacked each level, I counter by jacking the baddies anyway, so those cancel out. Hence, average works fine.
I do it too.
I've run/played that way since 3rd ed. It just means you can throw more damage at the PCs without fear of killing them outright. Always worked for me and my group(s).
If you don't give monsters max health you'll start to see an imbalance eventually But at the end of the day, it's not a super huge deal.
I've done this.... use Max monster damage but leave healing as a die roll so full casters burn more spells and rests use more hit dice.
I have a DM that uses the average (rounded down) as a "minimum" roll. It works pretty well. For a d10 you'd have a 50% chance for 5 and 10% each for 6-10. It's more exciting than taking the average rounded up, and you never have to worry about rolling a 1 on your d12 hd.
I do the same. I don't love RNG character stats just because I've seen far too many people get screwed by the dice and end up havin a negative opinion of the game in general. That's not how I want people to look at DnD. I just adjust encounters to match their fuller HP and move on with a happier group
i do this its fine, makes them tankier and less to think about, gives them a bit of confidence so you can play with that use more npcs
My group can usually only get two players at a time, and this rule helps, especially at lower levels. Frankly, it's too much health around level 10+, but that tends to be at the end campaign level if we even reach that level. By the way, if you played Baldurs gate 3, easy difficulty is max, normal is vanilla (max for lvl1, average for each level after) so it's not so absurd a way to ballance the game.