Angry rant about hit dice

[korgoth]

This is basically a frothing rant, because I'm totally bummed out. Don't feel like you actually have to read the whole thing.

I am now sold on the "reroll every level" Hit Dice method of OD&D (and OEPT; in the latter it is the official rule and in the former merely an interpretation of the text) as utterly and completely superior to the "roll once and forever and you're stuck with it" method of virtually all other editions.

I have this Fighter in a Classic game. He is the coolest Fighter I've ever seen - he has an 18 strength! He smooshes the party's adversaries with his +1 sword and awesome strength. But every single effing level it seems like I'm rolling these effing 1s for my effing hit points.

We just killed a dragon. I hit enough XP to go to 5th level. I rolled an effing 1 for hit points. The DM enjoyed a big laugh at my expense. I have less effing hit points than the effing Magic-User. I have invested almost a year of playing with this character and at what should be the triumphant moment, killing a dragon, I'm only left being pissed that he didn't die gloriously fighting the beast, so I could start a new character that might have a chance at not being an effing sissy at high level.

Still here? If so you are quite a trooper. Rant over.

[Deleted]

korgoth said:

Still here? If so you are quite a trooper.

Nah, I just empathize with ya; I can see how much of a bummer that is (especially playing a fighter). But think about it this way: If you fought a dragon (& won) with only having rolled 1's for your HD (did you start off with max at 1st level?), your fighter isn't a sissy--he sounds pretty tough, actually. Maybe he should just be selective in his choice of adversaries. I do like the HD method of OEPT, however. Whenever this happens to a player in my group (it's happened to me as a player plenty of times), I always tell them: "The amount of HP you have doesn't matter; just don't get hit!" Yah, yah. I feel your pain, brother.

[wulfgar]

Personally, I'm very intrigued by the idea that's a few people mentioned on here of rerolling hit dice every ADVENTURE.

Sometimes your character has the flu and wishes he was home in bed, and sometimes he ate his wheaties and is raring to go dungeon delving.

[murquhart72]

Careful you don't used up all your chances at rolling effing 1s. You may end up rolling all effing 6s if you're not careful! Oh, wait...

[sham]

I used to always award max HP at level 1 for all new characters. This was when we played 'AD&D'. Now that I am reading and clarifying/interpreting the LBB for my own home brew, I am trying to figure out some way to give a 'bump' at first level.

I have already decided to use the OEPT method, with a little change in that a character will always gain at least one hit point each level.

Maybe max HP at level 1, maybe set a minimum for level 1, or maybe as rolled, and keep those 3d6 handy. With the OEPT rule, and my little tweak, even a bad roll at level 1 will be replaced at 2, or hopefully 3, with an average or above average total.

As a DM, I always hated seeing a hard earned level 5 character with the HP of a level 1. I'm a real softie sometimes, but it seems like a harsh penalty for the player.

[korgoth]

oltekos said:

(did you start off with max at 1st level?)

Nope. I've been behind the curve the entire campaign.

Oh, well. No use cryin' about it I guess! Thanks for the sympathy.


wulfgar

I could go with rerolling every adventure. It's not what I lean toward, but it doesn't seem unreasonable.

[calithena]

Hi Korgoth,

You reminded me of this nice article by Erick Wujcik:

www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/24/

It does suck what you're going through, but don't forget that you are The Man for making it to where you have with such a limitation in place.

[kesher]

Y'know, reading this and some other threads, I too am leaning towards the "roll your hp before every adventure" school of thought. It seems to dovetail nicely with the "hp as amalgam of luck, skill, divine favor", etc., and it would generally obviate the frustration korgoth is suffering.

At least, if the rolling goes poorly for one adventure, there's always the chance that it's going to greatly improve next time.

[Finarvyn]

korgoth said:

But every single effing level it seems like I'm rolling these effing 1s for my effing hit points.

We just killed a dragon. I hit enough XP to go to 5th level. I rolled an effing 1 for hit points.

Nice rant, but it left me a little confused.

Do you mean that you keep getting 1's each time on all of the dice? When you advance from 4th to 5th level did you roll a single die or roll the entire 5d6+1?

I ask because I used to only roll the single die, but then I had problems with going from 1+1 to 2 (for example) because it wasn't really another d6 I would be rolling but actually d6-1 so that the total would be 2. Made my brain hurt.

The way I do it now is to roll the entire dice each time I advance (so roll 4d6 at 4th level, then re-roll 5d6+1 at 5th level) but I rule that the hit point total can never go down so if your 4d6 roll got you 15 HP and 5d6+1 got you 13 you would still keep the 15 HP number.

I guess if you only rolled 1's ever you could be stuck with 6 HP at 5th level, but that would require that you roll 15 consecutive 1's.

[Finarvyn]

Another thought on this -- often people don't think about the probabilities of the dice and get frustrated when they ought to be happy. (Not saying that's the case here; if you often roll 1's you know you're below the average.) I recall a friend in high school who cast a 6d6 fireball and then got mad when he "only rolled 23 points damage" even though the statistical average is only 21.

In OD&D the hit point totals tend to be smaller anyway because of the d6's (compared to later versions of the game which used d8 or d10 dice).

Looking at the fighting man:
1st level = 1+1 HD = 4.5 HP
2nd level = 2 HD = 7 HP
3rd level = 3 HD = 10.5 HP
4th level = 4 HD = 14 HP
5th level = 5+1 = 18.5 HP
6th level = 6 HD = 21 HP
7th level = 7+1 HD = 25.5 HP
8th level = 8+2 HD = 30 HP
and so on.

If you're used to playing AD&D or later editions you may be caught up in the "stat inflation" that has generally crept into each successive version of the game and forget to mentally "scale down" the numbers to a more appropriate range.

On the other hand, maybe you want to try In Nomine where low rolls are better than high rolls. Rolling 6-6-6 on 3d6 is like rolling a fumble, while rolling 1-1-1 leads to some fantastic critical success.

[edsan]

Just thought I would give my two cents about this, since I'm running EPT and it uses the rule mentioned on this post as the official one (as korgoth mentioned).

My players have 4th lvl characters now, it may interest you to know that they ALL have not recieved any new HPs for the last two levels. Yup , them dice weren't nice.

They were not happy, of course. But they didn't moan, rant or threaten the GM's person either.

I do give full HP for Lvl 1 characters. And as far as I remember all D&D (whatever variant) groups I played used the ruling of re-roling new hit die rolls that came up as one.

Your GM sounds like a sadistic bastard korgoth

I mean, It's his perrogative if he chooses to force players to get stuck with 1's for new HP. But he doesn't have to enjoy a big laugh at the player's expense. That's just ignobile.

[Wothbora]

I've tried to move into a direction that the Arduin Grimoire suggested in volume 3... (honestly, it is hard to find a balanced manner of allotting Hit Points that is both consistent and not artificial). I do like the concept of having a larger amount of Hit Points that do not inflate to crazy levels the higher one advances (thus the Hero and Novice and can fight side by side and all adventures become something that all can participate in without having a minimum level requirement). The hard thing is figuring out how many Hit Points Monsters have and still be consistent with PC's...

Here's a blip to follow the gist that was originally posted at Dragonsfoot, but does a better job at explaining it than I could do...

starting hit points: Constitution score + special Constitution bonus + race base + class base

Note that Arduin has many more races and classes than your typical D&D game. In the interests of my fingers, I will give the scores only for those races and classes found in D&D.

Race Base
Dwarves, female: 18
Dwarves, male: 19
Elves, female: 20
Elves, male: 21
Gnomes: 16
Half-Elves, female: 15
Half-Elves, male: 16
Half-Orcs: 13
Hobbitts, female: 11
Hobbitts, male: 12
Humans, female: 15
Humans, male: 14

Class Base
Fighters (including sub-classes): 5
Clerics (including sub-classes): 3
Elven Fighter/Magic-Users: 3
All Other Classes: 0

Special Constitution Bonus
13 Constitution: 1
14 Constitution: 2
15 Constitution: 3
16 Constitution: 4
17 Constitution: 5
18 Constitution: 6

For example, say you have a 1st-level male human cleric with a 14 constitution. He would start out with 33 hit points, as the following break-down reveals:

14 (Con score) + 2 (Con bonus) + 14 (race base) + 3 (class base) = 33

OK, easy enough. How do characters gain hit points? Answer: Very slowly, as per below:

Clerics (and sub-classes): 1 hit point gained per every 2 levels
Fighters (and sub-classes): 1 hit point gained per level
Magic-Users (and sub-classes): 1 hit point gained per every 3 levels
Thieves (and sub-classes): 1 hit point gained per level

For example, our cleric will have 34 hit points at 3rd level, 35 hp at 5th level, etc.

David Hargrave explains his reasoning behind this system thus:

'People now have a chance to run a character or characters on any expedition they choose without regard to difference in levels of experience. They can have their 1st level Warrior stand shoulder to shoulder with a 10th level lord and hold the gate together! Just as in real life young and inexperienced Warriors accompanied older, more experienced fighters. They fought and died together.

'Yet the higher levels have their own rewards, more (but not grossly so) hit points, better fighting ability and the like.

'Each now has a more secure place in game play because each can now play each and every game. No more will there be "high level" and "low level" expeditions. A player can recruit from all available characters, not just a few! No one is left out.

'And the danger of death is equalized for all, no matter how high level a character becomes.

'No more will there be characters practically unkillable because of their hundreds of hit points (in some cases fighters had triple the hit points of the Dragons they faced!!), who were virtually demi-gods! Those days are over if you use the new hit point system. Game test it. I'm sure you'll appreciate its fairness and playability. After all it was over 3 years in the making!'

(All the above information was taken from pages 24-26 of The Runes of Doom: The Arduin Grimoire, Vol. III by David Hargrave, 1978.)

www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=260179&highlight=&sid=11a8aaaa9b090802d3d0fa2f32c66363

[badger2305]

Thanks, Wothbora, for a decent summary of Hargrave's method. I've thought about that, too. Roger Musson proposed something similar in an early White Dwarf, but he drew a distinction between "body points" - actual physical damage your character could withstand, and "fatigue points" - your capacity for fatigue.

I've used something similar to that, where your constitution (and a size modifier for monsters) governed your body points - and that part of it looks very similar to Hargrave's, with many of the same modifiers. Then you gained fatigue points as you went up levels, using the hit dice progression.

The way this worked in combat was simple. Most blows that connected took off your fatigue score - but critical hits went against your body points directly. Thus you could be wounded, but not winded, and vice versa. (This also allowed for a 1st level Cleric spell that restored fatigue, but Cure Light Wounds was different.)

And magic-use wasn't on a point system, but used fatigue to allow magic-users to cast more spells than they would otherwise be able to in a single day; one point per level of spell. A first level magic-user could cast a single spell, but if she wanted to push things, she could cast another first level spell and expend a fatigue point. But this would eventually add up - and you needed real rest to restore fatigue.

Just another houserule system to consider.

[robertthebald]

I have been reading this thread with great interest, as I have also had a problem with rolling low numbers on the dice. This contributed greatly to my characters tending to die before they could reach any higher levels. As a result, I would have a first or second level PC who would be adventuring with much higher level PC's. Since they wanted to go where the better treasure was, and this meant tougher creatures to fight, and I had so few hit points, this meant I was being killed almost every time. I very much like the system that Wothbra has presented. It makes a lot more sense to me, logically and for gaming purposes. I wish we had that system back in Blackmoor.

[korgoth]

admin said:

Nice rant, but it left me a little confused.

Do you mean that you keep getting 1's each time on all of the dice? When you advance from 4th to 5th level did you roll a single die or roll the entire 5d6+1?

Sorry. Rants can do that! The game is actually Mentzer Classic... and has cured me of preferring Classic to OD&D. Of course, back in the old days when I was a young feller playing Classic, I can't think of anybody who would force a player of a Fighter to keep those rolls. There was character death and tough breaks, but people still gave some slack sometimes.

A big problem with the game is that, at mid to high levels, monsters start to deal out ridiculous damage. Even the dragon that had very measly hit points could still bite for 8-32 points! And lets not even get in to trolls, etc. Stuff like that virtually never misses and always does horrendous damage. Fighters, on the other hand, stay at 1d8 + bonuses for damage. So if they have sucky hit points, they're meat.

Fortunately, these problems do not appear to exist in OD&D. First you have the fact that very few things do much worse than 1d6 damage, and nothing is sitting around doing 4d8 and such. Second, if you use EPT style hit dice, or even "reroll every adventure or session" style, you are not doomed to forever be haunted by a single bad die roll (or single unlikely series of bad die rolls). Third, you can even use the level/hit die based damage system from EPT, which allows high level characters and monsters to deal out epic damage to flunkies, but keeps such beings on parity with one another (I really like this method).

Also, thanks again for the commiseration, guys! You're the best.

[Wothbora]

badger2305 said:

I've used something similar to that, where your constitution (and a size modifier for monsters) governed your body points - and that part of it looks very similar to Hargrave's, with many of the same modifiers. Then you gained fatigue points as you went up levels, using the hit dice progression.

That sounds like it would work! Care to offer an example or two? It seems much more manageable than the Arduin method (which seems almost too inflated, but better than 3rd level fighter with 4 hit points).

[badger2305]

wothbora said:

That sounds like it would work! Care to offer an example or two? It seems much more manageable than the Arduin method (which seems almost too inflated, but better than 3rd level fighter with 4 hit points).

It's pretty simple, actually. Use your CON score as your body point total. If you think about it, fighters come out usually ahead, since they place a premium on CON as well as STR. Roll hit points normally, except these are now your fatigue points.

So let's take Hauk, a swordsman.

• Strength 16
  
• Intelligence 12
  
• Wisdom 10
  
• Constitution 14
  
• Dexterity 12
  
• Charisma 13
  
• Body Points - 14, Fatigue Points - 6 (at 1st level)
  

Hauk would get 14 body points to start, and then a d6 for fatigue. If you use Greyhawk's differential for classes, he'd get a d8, and magic-users would get a d4 (which would make sense, if you think about it).

If Hauk gets hit in combat, it would go first against his fatigue point total. If that gets exceeded, he starts taking real damage to his body point total AND he's winded (-negative DM to hit). If there was a critical hit (either a natural 20 or 10 over the roll needed), it goes straight to his body points. No hit location needed (or really wanted).

For a monster, describe it by size:

• very small (x 1/2 Con score)
  
• small (x 2/3 Con score)
  
• man-sized (normal)
  
• large (x 1.5 Con score)
  
• very large (x 3 Con score)
  

- then assign it a Con score, and roll hit dice (now fatigue dice) normally.

Beauty of this system is that it doesn't change the hit point accumulation - it's now just fatigue. The body point total is a layer adding a little survivability to 1st level characters, but also makes some monsters tougher to fight. It also makes combat a bit more interesting.

It's probably too complex for some people who want a streamlined system. It might be too complex even for me, now. But I put this together a long time ago (partly inspired by C&S, but also trying to make it more simple), and it worked pretty well.

[philotomy]

I, too, am sold on the EPT method. I have PC roll all their when they gain (or lose) a level. When rolling for level gain, they keep their old total if the new roll is lower. When rolling for level loss, they keep their old total if the new roll is higher. I like this for the following reasons:

1. It works great with the OD&D HD charts
2. It makes handling drained/lost levels smooth and easy.
3. PCs can't "lose" a good HD roll when advancing a level -- they'll never go down when advancing. However, if they roll really, really well, they might not gain any hit points the next time. It seems to work out well in play.

Rolling every adventure sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure if it's for me. (If I went that route, I think I'd dispense with the "safety," and have the new roll always replace the old one, even if it's lower.)

[ffilz]

philotomy said:

Rolling every adventure sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure if it's for me. (If I went that route, I think I'd dispense with the "safety," and have the new roll always replace the old one, even if it's lower.)

Oh definitely, otherwise, hit point totals would really quickly trend towards the maximum possible.

Frank

[Wothbora]

badger2305 said:

It's pretty simple, actually. Use your CON score as your body point total. If you think about it, fighters come out usually ahead, since they place a premium on CON as well as STR. Roll hit points normally, except these are now your fatigue points.

Oh Badger2305 that's definitely an Exhalt!!! I'm incorporating your method from now on. Totally makes sense, remains logical through level advancement and still makes everyone a bit different (just like we are in real life).

Excellent!!! Thanks!

[badger2305]

wothbora said:

Oh Badger2305 that's definitely an Exhalt!!! I'm incorporating your method from now on. Totally makes sense, remains logical through level advancement and still makes everyone a bit different (just like we are in real life).

Excellent!!! Thanks!

You're welcome. A couple of additional things:

• Fatigue gets restored by rest, usually at two points per hour of sleep, one point per hour of rest. (While it's called fatigue, it also includes some of the strain related to physical exertion that isn't actual damage, so even an experienced fighter may have to rest 2-3 days to get back to peak fighting condition.
  
• Medical magic is assumed to work on real damage to the body, so no changes there. This creates room for minor magics to help with fatigue, as well as relatively inexpensive "potions" to assist with fatigue recovery.
  
• Combats can take a little longer, as you need to do more damage to actually kill things (and then take their stuff). Even so, there's more strategy involved, because you can get winded and then need to retreat.
  

I wouldn't change anything else, though, particularly weapon damage. No need to engage in inflation of stats even through the back door. All I wanted here was a system that would provide a bit more depth to combat survival.

I think I will write this up for our 'zine, giving credit to both Hargrave and Musson for initial inspiration.

[supernaught]

Worthbora wrote:

I've tried to move into a direction that the Arduin Grimoire suggested in volume 3... (honestly, it is hard to find a balanced manner of allotting Hit Points that is both consistent and not artificial). I do like the concept of having a larger amount of Hit Points that do not inflate to crazy levels the higher one advances (thus the Hero and Novice and can fight side by side and all adventures become something that all can participate in without having a minimum level requirement). The hard thing is figuring out how many Hit Points Monsters have and still be consistent with PC's...

Hail and salutations!

Having been a long time player of Arduin, the question of hit points for monsters is vague in the original three Arduin Grimories. I developed an Arduin FAQ with a long time player of David Hargrave's campaign and can safely say the above method only applies to player characters and important NPCs. Monsters use the standard convention of d8 HD for HP determination just like AD&D/Greyhawk Supplement 1. This makes using the various monster books quite seamless when running a classic Arduin campaign.

Anyone interested in the FAQ can go to Emperors Choice's web page. It is listed under Classic Arduin I believe and will prove very useful for those looking for some inside information on how David Hargrave used these rules in his games ;D

Peace and light,

Roy

[drskull]

I ran a campaign of Catles and Crusades a year or so ago. I found that the only roll that mattered when creating a character was the first level hit die roll. If the guy was any kind of melee combatant and had 8 hit points or so, he'd make it, if he had 1-3, he was doomed. It seemed really harsh, and I wouldn't do it like that again.

I like how they did it in Mazes and Minotaurs. At first level, each character had either 12 hit points (warrior-types) or 8 hit points (magic-using types). At each additional level, you added either 3 (warriors) or 2 (mages).

In other words warriors have 1d6 HD, and get double max at first level and average, round down at each additional level. Mages have 1d4 HD, get double max at first level, and average, round down at each additional level.

[kenmeister]

Here's my house rules for BECM:

1. All characters receive the maximum hit points per hit die at 1st level.
2. After that, low rolls are rounded up as follows:
Magic-User: range of hps is 1-4
Thief: range of hps is 2-4 (if a 1 is rolled, it is bumped up to 2)
Cleric/Elf/Halfling: range of hps is 2-6 (1s are bumped up to 2s)
Fighter/Dwarf: range of hps is 3-8 (1s & 2s are bumped up to 3s)

Here are my hit point rolling rules for AD&D:

At 1st level, the minimum roll is the halfway point rounded up (as per UA pg 74). Beyond that, hit point roll minimums are the fixed amount of hit points that the class receives per level after its last hit die. For example, fighters receive 3 hp per level from 10th level onwards, therefore the minimum hit points a player character fighter can receive at levels 2-9 is 3; any roll of 1 or 2 is counted as a 3. The minimum for classes that do not run out of hit dice (monks, assassins, etc.) is 2.

This system is only used for player character and henchmen hit point rolls. Hireling and other npc hit points are left to the whim of the dice.

[longcoat000]

Mar 16, 2008 18:22:15 GMT -6 Wothbora said:

badger2305 said:

I've used something similar to that, where your constitution (and a size modifier for monsters) governed your body points - and that part of it looks very similar to Hargrave's, with many of the same modifiers. Then you gained fatigue points as you went up levels, using the hit dice progression.

That sounds like it would work! Care to offer an example or two? It seems much more manageable than the Arduin method (which seems almost too inflated, but better than 3rd level fighter with 4 hit points).

So, this system is basically just an OD&D version of Palladium's HP / SDC, only it increases the logical bit (Palladium SDC) as you gain levels, rather than the illogical bit (Palladium HP)? While this will increase survivability, it seems to make the game more complicated than it should and begin "stat inflation". Plus, if you allow stat swapping, players will pump up their constitutions up higher so that they have a higher "base" HP pool. Players will have more HP, so the DM will toss harder monsters at them to challenge them, and you end up with the fameous D&D "death spiral" of modifier inflation.

Personally, I prefer the "re-roll all your hit dice when you level" method that I read about on another thread. It's easy to use, easy to adjust for level loss, a character isn't screwed for the rest of their adventuring career from one bad roll, and it's one of the few things a player can look forward to getting when their character levels up.

[badger2305]

Sept 5, 2008 14:40:10 GMT -6 longcoat000 said:

So, this system is basically just an OD&D version of Palladium's HP / SDC, only it increases the logical bit (Palladium SDC) as you gain levels, rather than the illogical bit (Palladium HP)?

Well, no - Roger Musson wrote about this in White Dwarf originally; I came up with this similar system, loosely borrowed from Chivalry & Sorcery. And both of them predate Palladium's system.

While this will increase survivability, it seems to make the game more complicated than it should and begin "stat inflation". Plus, if you allow stat swapping, players will pump up their constitutions up higher so that they have a higher "base" HP pool. Players will have more HP, so the DM will toss harder monsters at them to challenge them, and you end up with the fameous D&D "death spiral" of modifier inflation.

Actually, this doesn't happen. What you get is more survival at lower levels, but higher levels don't end up being walking tanks (of whatever class). Critical hits bypass fatigue and go straight to the body, and once you are out of body points, you're dead. So even a 10th-level fighting man has to watch out, especially for mass attacks, which will take him down by sheer statistical probability.

Personally, I prefer the "re-roll all your hit dice when you level" method that I read about on another thread. It's easy to use, easy to adjust for level loss, a character isn't screwed for the rest of their adventuring career from one bad roll, and it's one of the few things a player can look forward to getting when their character levels up.

That's a great system, too. What I outlined earlier is just another way of doing things. If it is too complicated for you, then don't use it. There's lots of room here for different ways of doing things.

[longcoat000]

Sept 5, 2008 14:58:50 GMT -6 badger2305 said:

Sept 5, 2008 14:40:10 GMT -6 longcoat000 said:

So, this system is basically just an OD&D version of Palladium's HP / SDC, only it increases the logical bit (Palladium SDC) as you gain levels, rather than the illogical bit (Palladium HP)?

Well, no - Roger Musson wrote about this in White Dwarf originally; I came up with this similar system, loosely borrowed from Chivalry & Sorcery. And both of them predate Palladium's system.

D'oh! I thought that Palladium was the first to come up with this. Teaches me to get my fake grognard beard from a shifty dwarf...

Sept 5, 2008 14:58:50 GMT -6 badger2305 said:

Sept 5, 2008 14:40:10 GMT -6 longcoat000 said:

While this will increase survivability, it seems to make the game more complicated than it should and begin "stat inflation". Plus, if you allow stat swapping, players will pump up their constitutions up higher so that they have a higher "base" HP pool. Players will have more HP, so the DM will toss harder monsters at them to challenge them, and you end up with the fameous D&D "death spiral" of modifier inflation.

Actually, this doesn't happen. What you get is more survival at lower levels, but higher levels don't end up being walking tanks (of whatever class). Critical hits bypass fatigue and go straight to the body, and once you are out of body points, you're dead. So even a 10th-level fighting man has to watch out, especially for mass attacks, which will take him down by sheer statistical probability.

I brought this up because several other posters on rpg.net (Keep in mind that it's rpg.net, so take it with a grain of salt) that this system, when used with the Star Wars d20 system, ended up making higher-level combats more deadly, because of the number of effects that bypassed the "regular" HP and went straight to vitality (or Body, in this system). Because Vitality did not increase and damage output did, characters would generally take the big dirt nap (or come close to it) much more often than if the attack just did an increased amount of HP damage.

But now that I think about it more, since 3LBB damage doesn't ramp up like it does in later editions, there shouldn't be many problems with an insta-kill that you would otherwise have.

Something still doesn't quite smell right about it, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's because it clashes with my mental image of what OD&D should be. I'll have to think on it some more.

[Deleted]

One variant I've used in the past might be of some interest, too. I would allow players to reroll their HD rolls, once and once only. If they made the decision to reroll they were required to accept the new result.

This gave a boost to the unlucky player who rolled a "1" but (usually) prevented someone with an average result rerolling in hopes of getting a higher result.

[dwayanu]

However much we skew the odds, someone's got to "win" the lottery.

As I think has already been mentioned, you're some kind of champ for getting so far on so little! It's easy to blame failure on chance, not so much such success.

A "backwards" approach to the problem, with d6 hit dice per Vol. 1, is to roll HP before choosing class. If fighters start out above average by this selection pressure, then poor rolls the first few levels are likely to be less telling. Consider that HP may be more significant to survival than the six basic Ability scores combined.

It may ease the sting to have a "stable" of characters. Considering how often the most promising paragons fail to make it to second level, I think that a good idea.

There may (Dare I say ought to?) be some enchantment -- e.g., a Wish -- somewhere in the campaign, potentially attainable by a Fighting Man of such proven (probably bard-sung already, as he's a Hero) prowess and courage, that can exorcise the curse of statistical inferiority. Perhaps inquiries are in order ...

(I hope it's not called Stormbringer! )

[thegreyelf]

I'm...having a horrible brain fart.

What is EPT??