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There is one final issue to touch on that I think does a good job of showcasing how we work with playtest feedback: Players consistently feel that their characters don’t have enough hit points. The feedback about number of hit points was overwhelmingly clear for the wizard.

Except that people are happier with the game than before.

And people consistently rated the monsters as being too weak.

It would be easy to simply raise hit points if monsters were rated as being too powerful and people were less happy with the game, but you don’t always have the luxury of a giant, glowing arrow pointing out your next move. Something more subtle and interesting is going on here.

In the case of hit points, we aren’t going to do anything other than give the wizard a boost (the wizard far and away came up the most in the data and in comments). Personally, I think the issue relates more to how much healing the characters have, how dangerous the monsters feel, and the overall level of tension in the game.

The real trick to figuring this situation out also relies on how the game plays. Of course players want more hit points. More hit points means less risk of a character’s death. On the other hand, risk is what drives excitement in the game. Some of the most memorable moments in D&D come about when you clutch that last hit point and pull off a brilliant idea or a ridiculous set of rolls to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

This is the only part of the article that really struck a nerve with me. Even though he admits that people overwhelmingly had a problem with the low number of hit points, he assumes that because people liked this packet more than the last, that he should just ignore that feedback, except in the case of the wizard.

I am hoping that Mr. Mearls is reading this thread, because I just want to make something clear. Yes, I liked this packet *overall* more than the last, but that doesn't mean I liked *everything.* And I most certainly did NOT like the reduction in starting hit points. Single digit hp for starting characters is something I have loathed in every edition of the game prior to 4th, and the result was that I never wanted to play the game at any level before 3rd. I'm certainly not alone in this. I know of many people who felt the same way. The game should be fun and playable at all levels. If the first few levels of the game are something that alot of people don't want to play, then something is seriously wrong.

The last paragraph seemed like he was saying players greedily want more hit points and just don't appreciate the need for danger and excitement for the game to be fun. That comment just struck me as really condescending, even though I'm sure wasn't intended that way. Believe me, I want there to be danger and excitement and the possibility of character death to be in the game. But there's a big difference between danger and having so few hit points that your character can easily die in one hit!

This is something that has always bothered me about D&D. Because of the way hit points scale, low levels are far, far more dangerous to characters than high levels of play are, even though the players are fighting much more powerful threats. Why should that be the case? I'd much rather see a game where a 1st level character fighting a 1st level threat is about equally in danger as a 20th level character fighting a 20th level threat. But that just isn't the way it is in 5e. A high level character can survive several blows even from an epic monster. A 1st level character is lucky to even survive one hit from an orc. That is just NOT FUN.

So please, Mr. Mearls. Take some time to reconsider this.