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Main Forums => Suggestions => Topic started by: PanamaLane on January 13, 2009, 10:17:49 PM

Title: HP
Post by: PanamaLane on January 13, 2009, 10:17:49 PM
So, yeah, I'm sure this has been a serious topic of debate, or at least has had to have been in the DM staff. I'd just like to point out among every PC I've talked to though, seems like everyone would favor a max HP situation as opposed to the random one in place.

I think it makes sense partly due to the 75% (or some such) rule regarding min HP, which is the system by which your min hp is decided as 75% of your starting HD.

The way the system works, if you have a low con, low hit dice character you end up -way- more likely to roll max HP and for your low HP rolls to not seriously effect your character. If you have a high con high hit dice character you end up much more likely to roll well below your max HP. and for your min rolls to be, well, devastating.

For example:
A 10 con cleric has a small range: 6-8hp (average 7hp)
A 14 con fighter has a much larger range:7-12hp (average 9hp)
You'll notice the average difference is only 2hp, which is just what the fighter should be gaining from his Con bonus. Furthermore your cleric has a 33% chance of rolling max hp compared to your fighter who has a 20% chance.

In regards to barbs v. fighters...the randomness plays into the fighter really, as a low con fighter has a much higher percentage chance of rolling max hp then a high con barb.

a 20 con Barb: 9-17hp (average 13hp, percentage chance max hp 12.5%)
a 10 con fighter 7-10hp (average 8hp, percentage chance max hp 25%)
So what you have in this instance is a fully toughened barb that is averaging only 4hp more (less then just his con bonus, not to mention his +2hd) then your weakling fighter and has half the chance at rolling max.

Seems a bit busted to me.

Additionally, I don't think people on the server really have a problem with your high HP people being your Barbs with high Con. I mean, that's the best part of having a high Con, high HD character in combat. Your low con, low HD characters should have, well, much less HP. The two don't need to be brought closer together, there should be serious differences.

Anyway, not complaining or anything, its just a number crunch I thought to point out. For what its worth, I think the vast majority of the server would be happier with a max hp system. Though, I'll admit it might make spawns tougher to asses, I think for the most part it should remain pretty simple. Hey, you could always just bump a spawns con up a point or two to even it out.
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Post by: ExileStrife on January 13, 2009, 10:57:31 PM
Before I even begin a response to this, can you provide a source to this "75% rule"?  I am genuinely curious as to whether this is fact or just wild speculation.  Regardless though, I know that what I plan to say won't be affected by the answer.
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Post by: 9lives on January 13, 2009, 11:00:08 PM
I thought minimum HP was half your class's HP per level (d4/d6/d8/d10/d12), plus corresponding HP bonuses from CON or toughness.
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Post by: Pup on January 13, 2009, 11:05:28 PM
I thought the same as 9lives.
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Post by: ExileStrife on January 13, 2009, 11:07:25 PM
half per level?  what the blazes does that mean?
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 13, 2009, 11:10:40 PM
I could be wrong about it. I remember Musachi of all people telling me that was the case and it seemed to fit the dice rolls. I'll look into it for you though. 9's thought seems to fit with numbers I've gotten as well.

To note though, even if it is half plus your con bonus, it still leaves the situation of larger ranges for higher HP characters and thus lower percentage chance at max. In fact, it might even make it worse. Though getting the Con bonus straight up certainly helps? I don't know?

Let me find the answer and crunch the numbers.
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Post by: AKMatt on January 13, 2009, 11:15:23 PM
It is not 75%, because I have definitely rolled lower than that with two characters.  nwn.wikia.com shows the hp range per level as being 2-4 for d4 classes, 3-6 for d6 classes, 4-8 for d8 classes, and so on (half/level minimum).
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Post by: chatellerault on January 13, 2009, 11:17:43 PM
Quote from: 9lives;104614I thought minimum HP was half your class's HP per level (d4/d6/d8/d10/d12), plus corresponding HP bonuses from CON or toughness.

This is my understanding as well.
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Post by: Egon the Monkey on January 13, 2009, 11:21:03 PM
Riiight. I have no idea what this is going on about.

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Hit_dice says minimum per level is 1+CON+toughness. Could someone please explain this all slowly for the clueless people like me who hate the HD system but probably dont' understand it?

I'd be all for any adjustment that reduces variation between identical builds, because with the lower level of the server, good/crap rolls are not going to average out as much. It's the only aspect of char creation that's random, it's not like you gamble on skillpoints or what BAB you get each level.
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 13, 2009, 11:22:06 PM
"At higher character levels, the number of base hit points gained is equal to a roll of the hit die, but with the provision that rolls under half the maximum are re-rolled. Thus, if a level 3 PC gains a level of fighter, the PC will gain between 5 and 10 base hit points (inclusive)." -Con is then added on top.

So to make it clear, its half your hit dice plus your con bonus.

I think the problem still exists though, although slightly better then the scenario above.

In this case your 14 con fighter now rolls 7-12hp (20% chance max)
Your 14con wizard rolls 4-6hp (33% chance max)

Certainly its better!

Still though, a fighter rolls a 7, 20% of the time. A wizard rolls a 6, 33% of the time, so there is still a slight "problem" so to speak when your 14con fighters are somewhat likely to roll only 1hp more then your 14 con wizard. (granted the fighter also rolls a 12, 20% of the time, but yeah, you get it by now!)

Also, the wizard is averaging 5hp per level where your fighter is averaging 9hp, a difference of 4hp per lvl, which is well below the design i should think.
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Post by: ExileStrife on January 13, 2009, 11:42:19 PM
I don't know what the point of arguing this "20% chance to get max compared to a 33% chance to get max" is.  The useful statistic here is the mean of HD distributed among the classes because it can easily be used to predict the HP of a class at any given level.

For the sake of argument here, I'm going to use the extremes, barb HD and wizard HD.  Using this "minimum = half max HD" rule, we get ranges for barb and wizard to be 6-12 and 2-4, respectively.  Their average rolls (the value that's relevant in our current server with the hidden HP rolls) are 9 and 3, respectively once again.  The difference is 6, so we can expect barbs to have 6*level more HP than a wizard of equal level and that's how everything has been balanced with the careful collection of the DM team's experience in these matters.

With max rolls, this "difference" simply increases.  The expected hp roll for a wizard becomes 4, and for a barbarian it becomes 12, the difference now being 8.  The difference in the hidden-expected-vaules and the max-expected-vaules isn't much, but it's going to mean that equal level barbs will have an additional 2 more HP per level than wizards.  This is equivalent to suddenly giving every barbarian 2 free stacking Toughness feats.  I don't think our game is currently balanced for a change like this, and I'm not sure it's wanted as much as you make it out to be (though this thread could prove me otherwise).

I don't think it's worthwhile to consider the average consitution for these classes because regardless of the hidden or max HP roll situation because it affects the important difference in the same way.
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Post by: Thomas_Not_very_wise on January 14, 2009, 12:13:44 AM
Mechanics....ew

Can we all pick Daisies?
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 14, 2009, 12:41:18 AM
QuoteThe difference is 6, so we can expect barbs to have 6*level more HP than a wizard of equal level and that's how everything has been balanced with the careful collection of the DM team's experience in these matters.

You've got a point certainly. But the percentage is where the argument is at because you can't expect the difference to be 6/lvl, because in this scenario your wizard rolls max hp 33% of the time, your barb only 12.5% of the time. Thus as the two progress in levels, its far more likely the wizard will get good rolls then the Barb.

Not to hammer on the percentages game to much, but its important to the picture I think. I was thinking of it this way.

A 14 Con Wizard has a 66% chance of rolling a 5 or a 6.
A 14 Con Fighter has a 60% chance of rolling a 7, 8, or 9.

At the greatest difference your talking about 4hp. At your closest you're talking about 1hp. So, all said and done, you have about a 60% chance of a 1-4hp difference. Seems fishy, right?. It totally is because I'm using fuzzy math. Still, it shows how important the percentages are to the argument.

And one more scenario:

a 10con rogue has a range of 3-6
a 10con barb has a range of 6-12

This would seem to be closer to how the game was designed (obviously). However, in this case the rogue is literally twice as likely to roll max as the Barb, right? Not to mention, a barb rolling a min 6 is just plain devastating. I know he has a 10con, but a 6hp Barb, yuck!

Finally, outside of the number game entirely, I think there is a real desire for this from the players anyway. I know whatever character I'm playing, I'd prefer to have the max available. I'd prefer for everyone else to have their max too. It just seems too darn important to leave up to a dice roll, -especially- for players who are designing their characters specifically for high HP. I mean honestly, can you imagine a 14con Barb getting the same hp at lvl up as a 10con cleric? I can, because it happens nearly 20% of the time, over 5 lvl ups that almost assures it happens at least once, and it just plain shouldn't go down like that.

For comparison sake:
A 16con lvl 8 Barb has at max 120hp. Not unreasonable I think.
A 16con lvl 8 Barb at current averages out at 96hp. Also not unreasonable.

The difference between the two, however, is often life and death. So why not give the tougher characters the benefit of the doubt? Especially since the way the system works currently, you could end up with lvl8 16con barbs with only 80hp and potentially less. I mean, it never happens, but that's because those characters die. That's the hard truth. Can you dig it?
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Post by: ExileStrife on January 14, 2009, 01:19:20 AM
This "max HP roll percent" thing just doesn't work, Panama!

I will give you a game with two choices, with the goal to get the highest score over a large number of runs.  You have to pick and stick with one of two different distributions of values, each value having an equal percent chance to be chosen among the other values in that given distribution (namely, %-to-be-chosen = 1/#-of-values).  Pretend these are your choices:

A)  1 3 5
B)  1 2 3 4 5

With your argument, you would choose A) to play this game, since 5 has a 33% chance of being picked, compared to the 5 in B) which only has a 20% chance of being picked.  But that's just arbitrary and doesn't mean anything.  The only value you can use to make a proper choice in this game is the distribution's expected value, which happens here to be the mean (3 in both A) and B)).  The distributions are identical for our purposes and will yield the the same result in the long run.

I'm not trying to be mean, but I just can't follow anything else you are saying because of this fault.
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 14, 2009, 01:37:27 AM
Word, we are working it out which is cool.

Using your game scenario, try it this way:

A:1 2 3
B:1 2 3 4 5

Now your goal is not to get the highest value, but instead to get the closest value to the total value possible over ten picks. Group A gives you an average of 20/30. B gives you 30/50. Group A gets a passing grade (barely), B failhards.

Where this makes the biggest difference game-wise is in your low HD high Con characters compared to your low Con high HD characters. Just to use the most severe example...A 20con wizard rolls 7-9. A 10con Barb rolls 6-12. In this scenario, over ten levels your wizard earns a score of 80/90. Your Barb earns a score of 90/120. One will get you through college, the other one won't. And no, there was no bias because the wizard was a white guy.

That or I'm completely wrong, which in a discussion over math, with the likes of Exile, I'm fully willing to admit.
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Post by: efuincarnate on January 14, 2009, 02:17:05 AM
I won't pretend to understand the  mechanics in this thread, but if it helps with the examples, I had a wizard with a 8 con, who regularly rolled 1 hp for level advancement, giving him 11 hp at level 5. Not sure how the mechanics break down, but he was one gimped Arcanist.
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 14, 2009, 02:25:46 AM
I take it all back, I've been crunching numbers and exile you were completely right. The efficiency is entirely dependent on the con score, not the class. With that being the case, I retract this suggestion on the basis that math works and there is no such thing as luck. One gets the hand they are dealt.

But still, max hps would be sweet!

<_<
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Post by: 9lives on January 14, 2009, 02:35:34 AM
efuincarnate, the modifiers are applied after the roll - So you were rolling the minimum 2, but then that was dropped down to a 1 from your low CON.
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Post by: ExileStrife on January 14, 2009, 03:07:29 AM
Low HD classes will be closer to their maximum possible HP than the high HD classes, that is definitely true.  If we give max HP, it will benefit higher HD classes more than lower HD classes, since their gains will be much greater because they are further away from their potential max.  Why do this?  Like I mentioned before, it would be equivalent to leaving the system as it is and giving barbarians 2 free Toughness feats, fighters 1.5 Toughness, clerics 1 Toughness, and rogues .5 Toughness.

I want to walk through your the example you made in your first post (however correcting it).

A 20 con barbarian will get between 11 and 17 HP per level.
A 10 con fighter will get between 5 and 10 HP per level.

Yes, the fighter does technically have a better chance to be closer to max HP.  He will get that 10 20% of the time, and the barbarian will get that 17 only 16.7% of the time.  Why is that important, however?  At level 10, we'll expect the fighter to have 75 HP and the barbarian to have a whopping 140 HP.  Yes, it is possible for the fighter to end up with 100 HP and the barbarian to end up with meager 134 HP (remember the first four levels are already fixed at max), but that will only happen for the fighter .20^6=.0064% of the time and for the barbarian only .167^6=0021% of the time.

This argument isn't getting through to me.
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Post by: ExileStrife on January 14, 2009, 03:08:40 AM
How did I manage to take 30+ minutes to write this post and not see your response?  T_T
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Post by: Tyrael on January 14, 2009, 03:21:47 AM
This makes my head hurt...
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 14, 2009, 04:07:13 AM
LVL 10 CHARACTER

---------d4------------d6--------------d8---------------d10--------------d12--------
Con-HP/Max/Eff---HP/Max/Eff-----Hp/Max/Eff-----HP/Max/Eff------HP/Max/Eff-----
10- 30/40(75%)_45/60 (75%)__60/80 (75%)__75/100 (75%)__90/120 (75%)
12- 40/50(80%)_55/70 (78%)__70/90 (78%)__85/110 (77%)__100/130 (77%)
14- 50/60(83%)_65/90 (81%)__80/100(80%)_95/120 (79%)__110/140 (79%)
16- 60/70(86%)_75/90 (83%)__90/110(82%)_105/130 (81%)_120/150 (80%)
18- 70/80(87%)______________________________________130/160 (81%)
_____________________________________________________________________



A little chart to confuse anyone still paying attention. The HP is your average and the Max is your, well, your max. It does show that at lower HD's and higher Cons you do get a very, very slight advantage then your counterparts with higher HD's and higher Cons. In the end it amounts to at most a 6% difference, and that's between a 70hp mage and a 130 Barb. So, yeah, the system works, but it still sucks when it doesn't work for you. Such is life, eh?
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Post by: Nihm on January 14, 2009, 06:25:54 AM
First three, not four levels, get max hp.  The difference luck makes grows the higher level you become.
 
I think the first three levels should continue getting max, the next three get 75% plus Con mod, and the ones after that get 50% plus Con mod.
 
That way people don't have to feel cheated when their 14 con barbarian gets 8 hp a level after three when the other guy lucks out and gets 12 per level with only ten Con.  It doesn't balance and it doesn't average.  You can consistently get low hp roll level after level.  Your chances of getting a low roll are always the same no matter if your last roll was low or not.  
 
If this was in effect (no idea if scripting it is easy or not) then people with higher consitution would actually be assured of having more hp than their low constitution counterparts, instead of having a fickle chance at getting more, maybe, if the dice are kind.  As it is, you can load points into Constitution and effectively still get a crap deal on hp, whereas the benefits of the other stats are fixed.
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Post by: Letsplayforfun on January 14, 2009, 07:03:49 AM
Definitely not in favor of this.

All damage spells will be even more useless if every one has max HP. Not even mentionning weapon balancing. All this will do in the end is give more hp to warriors and barbarians, which are already powerful as is.

Personnaly, i'd settle for minimum or average hp for everyone if anything was to be done about this hp issue, as well as deleting the max hp until lvl3 that is already in place.

Beside the technical aspect, we're forgetting the funny side of randomness. It's a dice roll game, after all.
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Post by: Jasede on January 14, 2009, 07:04:02 AM
Very strongly in favor of max HP for everyone; that'll encourage the sweet straight Fighters and Barbarians you see too little. At least I do.

If you PVP with direct damage... meh, whatever. ILS will still be good; but you're supposed to first disable your enemy anyway. I /like/ how direct damage wizards tend to suck unless meticulously played, it's not Final Fantasy; it's Wizardry 8 where you definitely want to use Itching Skin and Paralyze way more than Magic Missile or Fireball.
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Post by: lovethesuit on January 14, 2009, 08:20:43 AM
:rolleyes: Oh Panama and his 75 per cent solution.
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Post by: Cruzel on January 14, 2009, 10:23:57 AM
You guys are dumb. Max hp 90% of the time. Anything less and you suck.

There are also (OTHER) modifiers in the NWN engine that affect your HP roll. They shouldn't, but they do. If you guys were not such powergamers, you would have higher HP rolls.
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Post by: Egon the Monkey on January 14, 2009, 10:35:31 AM
Explain, oh great Cruzel :P.
Just for comparison, I had an epidemiology exam yesterday. It was less complicated than this thread.
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Post by: tooh on January 14, 2009, 04:00:43 PM
why all this paranoia about balance and equilibrium ?
The classes and races HAVE diferent rules and progressions.
Most genious at random may prefer alter the odds.  why?
EFUA is Toril not Nemedia.
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 14, 2009, 04:22:29 PM
75% solution? The chart is the way it is, not the way it should be, imo. But, honestly, the math does work. Law of averages should balance over time despite a -very- slight advantage to your lower HD high Con characters. I did find it interesting to note that with a 10con you should average 75% of your max no matter the class. So, Musachi was partly correct after all.

Still outside the math, it does suck a lot to roll min HP and I still think its just too darn important to leave up to a single dice roll. Rolling min three times in a row, for example, as a front liner is often a death sentence. Which might be a blessing in disguise, because you get to re-roll your HP, but still, who wants to die in order to do that?

But whatever, not altering it at all is still a "fair" system, but being lucky helps. I'm the most unlucky person I know. In 6 HP dice rolls, I've rolled 4 mins and never rolled over an 8 (my range being 7-12). By the last time, I started to think something was fishy, and hence this thread. But alas, no fishiness, just plain old bad luck. Drat! But hey, maybe karma will balance elsewhere, right?
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Post by: johanmaxon on January 14, 2009, 04:43:41 PM
Keep it as it is in my opinion, I like it.
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Post by: Gippy on January 15, 2009, 05:05:59 PM
Me too! Luck matters.
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Post by: ScottyB on January 15, 2009, 05:29:16 PM
I believe that luck should only matter during combat rounds, not character building, and that even during combat it shouldn't affect things to as great a degree as it does.

But then we'd be playing 4th Edition D&D, not NWN.
(NWN3, I'm waiting for you~!)
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Post by: tooh on January 15, 2009, 07:31:22 PM
roll (1D6+1D6+1D6) / 18 * HPclass + CON bonus.
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Post by: Oskar Maxon on January 15, 2009, 08:17:38 PM
What?
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Post by: PanamaLane on January 15, 2009, 08:19:06 PM
Don't let tooh throw you off scent. For ease of mind, lets keep this a max vs. luck debate.
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Post by: Mort on January 15, 2009, 09:28:52 PM
More variability between PCs is always good.