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7 months ago ::
Nov 16, 2012 - 11:02AM
#11
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I guess taking that first level in adventurer means retraining your one level in commoner.
The bestiary lists a human commoner has having 1d8 (or 4) hit points. Oddly, non-adventurers get one less hit point per level than adventurers, even though rolling HP would yield the same average. That oddity equalizes wizards with commoners, except in healing. With the larger hit die, commoners have a slight edge.
The bestiary doesn't mention squirrels. The least terrifying monster in the bestiary is the cave rat. Despite being a tiny beast, it has a five foot reach with its bite attack, making a tiny rat's teeth as long as a sword. The cave rat's bite deals 1d4+1 damage and has +1 to hit.
An unarmed human commoner deals 1d4 damage at +0 to hit. Picking up a club, axe, or knife does nothing to improve the commoner's unarmed strike.
In a fight between a tiny rat and a knife-wielding human commoner, the rat hits on a 9 and has a 50% chance of killing the human in one vicious chomp (not counting critical hits, which would help the rat more than they help the human). On average, the rat deals 2.1 damage a round.
If the human survives the initial onslaught of a tiny rat, the human hits on a 12 and kills the rat 75% of the time. On average, the human deals 1.1 damage per round. The observant will note that a crazy lady with a knife is much less threatening than her pet rat.
In a fight between a tiny rat and a human, both sides will usually kill the other within two hits. The fight is decided by who goes first. With a Dexterity of 12, the rat has initiative of +1, so the rat goes first 55% of the time (assuming all initiative ties are decided by a coin toss). The tiny rat makes mincemeat of the knife-wielding human in slightly over half of all encounters.
Housecats hunt tiny rats.
I think it's fine to say that certain common animals are below the threshold of D&D's ability to model. Most small animals do less than one point of damage, and they survive because their prey has less than one hit point.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 17, 2012 - 8:47PM
#12
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Date Joined:
Aug 18, 2007
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My very first D&D character, back when it was still AD&D, was a 1 HP elf ranger. I rolled really low, but rules as written, that 1 HP was completely within the realm of real possibility for every class. The fact that the game had to be so commonly houseruled to prevent that kind of thing really seems like a flaw in the game.
What I'm getting at is that I'm kind of in agreement with CGilmore here. One of the things that sold me on 4E was that no character was ever a weakling. When it came to HP, they were just varying degrees of awesome (even the wizards). I feel like adventurers should be tough as nails, able to take a couple hits the common rabble couldn't, but neither do they need to immortal. At first level, I think 4E really got that balance right. Constitution score + die roll or Constitution score + flat number certainly wouldn't be hard to houserule into Next, but it seems to me that it's a little sad that it has to be houseruled. The only thing I worry about is HP bloat at higher levels since Next damage doesn't always scale. That's certainly something 4E got wrong, with players eventually becoming walking bags of HP.
I am, however, not unsympathetic to the crowd that wants gritty style HP. I think it would be awesome if Next had rules for Heroic HP and Gritty HP balanced and fun from the beginning. I think that would go a long way to satisfy the most number of people. Even better if it were possible to convert from one system to the other on the fly when the narrative required it.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 17, 2012 - 8:58PM
#13
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The first essential checkpoint of character toughness that Next must pass:
What's the minimum possible HP that a level-1 character can have?
What's the maximum possible damage an ordinary housecat can do to one PC in one attack?
That minimum HP must be greater than that maximum damage.
Yes, some previous editions failed this test. Which is why a VERY common houserule was that first-level PCs got an automatic maximum on their HP "roll". Sometimes this was extended to second-level as well.
Next needs to pass this test without houseruling. Preferably without making a special case either.
Well, the rule right now is you basically get your max hp roll +con at first level, and at each level you get at least half your hd+1 as minimum. So, sounds like it passes....
I agree that in previous editions, a cat doing a d4 damage against a mage with 4hps was rather silly. But so far it looks like Next has a good hp system going. Oh, and mages did get bumbed to 6+con instead of 4+con, and 4+con per aditional level instead of 3+con. So far the hp levels have been pretty good in my play tests. The question is, how much damage can a house cat do? If it does 3d12, yeah, thats a problem. It probably should just do 1 point of damage per hit, and have a terrible to hit bonus. I think a house cat doing 1d4 damage, the same as a dagger plunged into you up to the hilt, was more of the silly part.
Ah the housecat myth. The creature doing 1d2-4 with 2hp that someone decided was the equal to the wizard...
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7 months ago ::
Nov 17, 2012 - 11:08PM
#14
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Date Joined:
Jul 19, 2012
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Option 4 : the DM gives 1 free xp
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7 months ago ::
Nov 17, 2012 - 11:40PM
#15
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Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2012
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Option 4 : the DM gives 1 free xp
+1
I wouldn't give xp to someone who 'hunted' a squirrel for xp anyway.
Unless of course, that squirrel could eat your face . . .
oh wait it did.
Currently running a playtest, weekly, online D&D Next Session using a virtual table system called roll20.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 18, 2012 - 1:26AM
#16
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2012
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Squirrels aside... I think the problem in most D&D editions was:
- too few HPs when you were 1st Level
- too many once you started advancing after 10th
I would propose:
a) Starting characters should get their Constitution *Score*+Full Hit Dice
b) No Hit Point advancement (or limited advancement) after a certain level (eg. (1+CON) HPs per Level
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7 months ago ::
Nov 18, 2012 - 12:34PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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Squirrels aside... I think the problem in most D&D editions was:
- too few HPs when you were 1st Level
- too many once you started advancing after 10th
I would propose:
a) Starting characters should get their Constitution *Score*+Full Hit Dice
b) No Hit Point advancement (or limited advancement) after a certain level (eg. (1+CON) HPs per Level
Sounds a bit like a Dave Arneson house rule I once heard about .. his earliest game idea was everyone started as 4HD range. And the house rule element I heard of included Armor class increasing in place of hit points increases.
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7 months ago ::
Nov 18, 2012 - 1:21PM
#18
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Date Joined:
Feb 19, 2012
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I could dig a higher initial hp w/ slowly increasing amounts. I'd expect 3+con mod for fightertypes, 2+con mod for clerics, rogues, and monks, then 1+con mod for wizards. But, I know some people really like rolling for hp, so I don't know if this idea would float.
AC by level is an interesting idea, but having limits on accuracy (like in a bounded accuracy system) makes me guess it would be unlikely to see.
"What's stupid is when people decide that X is true - even when it is demonstrable untrue or 100% against what we've said - and run around complaining about that. That's just a breakdown of basic human reasoning."
-Mike Mearls
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6 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 8:53PM
#19
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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I could dig a higher initial hp w/ slowly increasing amounts. I'd expect 3+con mod for fightertypes, 2+con mod for clerics, rogues, and monks, then 1+con mod for wizards. But, I know some people really like rolling for hp, so I don't know if this idea would float. AC by level is an interesting idea, but having limits on accuracy (like in a bounded accuracy system) makes me guess it would be unlikely to see.
Oh I agree quite unlikely... it seems in fact to have gone the opposite direction with everything being progressive hit points (well maybe the monsters dont seem up to there purported snuff) and progressive damage with PC to hit remaining high and unfrustrating.. so I cant totally complain about that
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6 months ago ::
Nov 19, 2012 - 9:08PM
#20
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Date Joined:
Apr 16, 2009
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The first essential checkpoint of character toughness that Next must pass:
What's the minimum possible HP that a level-1 character can have?
What's the maximum possible damage an ordinary housecat can do to one PC in one attack?
That minimum HP must be greater than that maximum damage.
Yes, some previous editions failed this test. Which is why a VERY common houserule was that first-level PCs got an automatic maximum on their HP "roll". Sometimes this was extended to second-level as well.
Next needs to pass this test without houseruling. Preferably without making a special case either.
Well, the rule right now is you basically get your max hp roll +con at first level, and at each level you get at least half your hd+1 as minimum. So, sounds like it passes....
I agree that in previous editions, a cat doing a d4 damage against a mage with 4hps was rather silly. But so far it looks like Next has a good hp system going. Oh, and mages did get bumbed to 6+con instead of 4+con, and 4+con per aditional level instead of 3+con. So far the hp levels have been pretty good in my play tests. The question is, how much damage can a house cat do? If it does 3d12, yeah, thats a problem. It probably should just do 1 point of damage per hit, and have a terrible to hit bonus. I think a house cat doing 1d4 damage, the same as a dagger plunged into you up to the hilt, was more of the silly part.
Ah the housecat myth. The creature doing 1d2-4 with 2hp that someone decided was the equal to the wizard...
Ah, the housecat-myth myth. Some people think other people thought that a housecat was equal to a wizard.
Sorry, no. That never happened.
What DID happen was a housecat single-shotting a first-level character.
But go read the description. It took the character having the minimum legal HP, and the housecat doing the maximum possible damage. Or very close to that.
And if the PC happened to win initiative, he had a good chance to single-shot the housecat. He could single-shot creatures rather tougher than a housecat.
Now turn to reality. A housecat can't single-shot even a half-grown child, let alone a healthy adult.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
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