Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 naderion Mar 30, 2008 7:24:24	I'm not really a fan of increasinly huge ammounts of hit points at the higher levels of the game, so I came up with a variant of hit point gain similar to 2nd Edition. It's only intended for non-epic play, with parties above level 16 becoming increasingly unlikely. - At first level, PCs get two times the maximal result of their hit die. They are still considered to have 1 HD and get one time their con-modifier as a bonus or penalty. All other creatures and NPCs get one time the maximal result of their hit die. - At level 2 to 10, new hit points are gained by the standard system. After 10th level, beginning at level 11, characters only gain a fixed ammount of additional hp, which ia 1 hp for d4 classes, 2 hp for d6 and d8 classes, and 3 hp for d10 and d12 classes. Level 11 to 20 are still counted as HD for the purpose of spells which affect only creatures of a given number of HD. The problem that could arrise here is, that I'd guess that 8th and 9th level spells assume insanely huge ammounts of hit points. Would I have to make adjustments to these spells. A maxed out barbarian with the standard rules could easily have 340 hp, with this variant rule it would be 182 hp. But on the other hand, a wizard with the standard rules would only have about 100 hp (and 54 hp with the variant rules). A maximized chain lightning spell at level 20 (and in a 9th level slot) would deal 120 points of damage, 60 on a succesfull save. Are there other things that would need to be considered?
#2 runestar Mar 30, 2008 8:08:22	Basically everything else. A lv20 wizard would easily fall to a single melee strike (a fighter has no problem dealing 50+ damage with power attack). Seems counterintuitive if you decrease hp, and have to readjustment everything else to compensate....
#3 squidyak Mar 30, 2008 10:06:00	Yeah, it would require a complete rewrite of the rules above 10th level. Conan D20 uses fixed hp over level 10, but magic is severely nerfed.
#4 katahn Apr 03, 2008 7:51:33	If you're going to go with fixed hit points per level, I'd start it off from level 1. d12 = 6hp/level d10 = 5hp/level d8 = 4hp/level d6 = 3hp/level d4 = 2hp/level At level 10 with no constitution modifier this would be: 60,50,40,30,and 20hp. At level 20 with no constitution modifier this would be: 120,100,80,60, and 40. It makes things a lot easier to calculate, but it also really increases the importance of getting a reasonably high constitution value for low HD classes. A constitution of 12 would be equivilent of increasing the HD of a wizard to d6 for instance.
#5 werral Apr 03, 2008 8:54:30	What's the problem with a fighter being able to kill a wizard in one strike? Sounds fine - everyone complains that fighters are too weak compared to casters. This way wizards become the classic "eggshells armed with hammers". Also wizard players will have to use more magic to defend themselves and this should balance out the damage from their spells.
#6 runestar Apr 04, 2008 21:31:10	What's the problem with a fighter being able to kill a wizard in one strike? Sounds fine - everyone complains that fighters are too weak compared to casters. This way wizards become the classic "eggshells armed with hammers". Also wizard players will have to use more magic to defend themselves and this should balance out the damage from their spells. Except that in dnd, the wizard and the fighter are fighting side-by-side, rather than pvp. Replace "fighter" with "dragon" and ... I don't think making wizards so fragile that the first hit they take will kill them is a good way of "balancing" them. If this is the case, then you might as well not even bother with giving them any hp, if they will still be one-shotted either way.