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Why should hit die be determined by class? Why should a halfling barbarian roll d12 while a half-orc wizard roll d4?

Why not base hit die on race, for example:

Halfling: d4

Gnome: d4

Elf: d6

Half-Elf: d6 or d8

Human: d8

Half-Orc: d8

Dwarf: d10

I admit that the idea of that a dwarf illusionist getting 9d10 hit points at ninth level takes some getting used to. But if hit points are "a representation of the overall health of the individual" (PHB 1st printing p. 119), then shouldn't race determine that rather than class?

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But if hit points are "a representation of the overall health of the individual" (PHB 1st printing p. 119), then shouldn't race determine that rather than class?

It's conceptually interesting although this would wildly overpower the dwarf and there wouldn't be much incentive to play an halfling or a gnome. Even if HPs are tied to class, race still remains a factor in their determination since some races get adjustments to CON. It is also pretty valid to associate HPs to the occupation of a character. For example, it's relatively reasonable to say that a manual laborer should get more HPs than a scholar.
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Some see hit points as how physically tough they are and thus how much damage one can take before being killed. I don't see it that way. I always looked at Hit Dice as a representative of combat training. The way I look at it, no matter the race, a stab to the heart kills all races the same. But the more combat trained one is, the better they are at diverting a potentially lethal hit into a less lethal one. And hit dice, and thus hit points, represents that. That's why when an unconcious creature is attacked, they are automatically killed no matter how many hit points they had. The hit dice and hit points to mean a thing if you aren't able to react to the attack. At least that's how I see it.

For me, all humanoid races start with a d4 Hit Dice. The better they are at combat, the higher the Hit Dice. And the d8 Hit Dice seen in the M&T for the basic races is the Hit Dice for a generic warrior. Not a commoner or shop keeper etc.

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Some see hit points as how physically tough they are and thus how much damage one can take before being killed. I don't see it that way. I always looked at Hit Dice as a representative of combat training. The way I look at it, no matter the race, a stab to the heart kills all races the same. But the more combat trained one is, the better they are at diverting a potentially lethal hit into a less lethal one. And hit dice, and thus hit points, represents that.

I agree for the most part but I guess it would be more accurate to say that both combat training and physical toughness are involved or else why would having a high CON give more HPs. Also, many of the creatures presented in the M&T, that wouldn't be considered to be particularly adept in combat, do get high HPs based mainly on the ground of toughness. I don't think we should try too hard to rationalize the HP system since a realistic system would always allow to deal death in a single blow and that's not very desirable to say the least...
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My House Rules v8

Yes I see your point. Toughness does play a part though conditioning of the body like martial artists do.

Personally, I've been a fan of the Wound/Vitality system.

Race based hit dice simply doesn't work because, things just aren't balanced that way in C&C. You'd have to redo the way experience works...

The simplest way to deal with it is to put an upper or lower bound on hit dice based on race. So, for example, if we say that elves are frail, they cannot get more than, e.g., d8. An elf wizard would still get d4, a rogue still d6 etc. but a fighter would get d8.

Dwarves could get a lower bound, i.e. they never get less than d6 hit die, so all classes except wizards and illusionists are left untouched.

This method leaves most of the classes "as is" and does not create great balance problems. I implemented it with other versions of D&D, and it worked very well.

Cheers,

Antonio

The d20 Farscape game did this with a twist.

Race gave you hit points, your class gave you luck/spell points.

With the spell levels in C&C, it might still work if you add a luck point system (something I've thought about to make C&C more epic.)

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According to the 1E DMG (Gary), HPs aren't just supposed to represent how much physical punishment you can take, but also represent your ability to dodge/roll with blows, your danger sense and your magical and/or divine protection.

As it was explained in the 1E DMG, the HP mechanic is very abstract.

I think it is one of the biggest challenges of DMing to represent HPs in an interesting and consistent way. Other game systems, like Gurps and Chaosium just make HPs physical damage. But D&D and hence C&C makes it a combination of factors.
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Korgoth wrote:
According to the 1E DMG (Gary), HPs aren't just supposed to represent how much physical punishment you can take, but also represent your ability to dodge/roll with blows, your danger sense and your magical and/or divine protection.

That's where I must have gotten my feelings on HP.

Dristram wrote:
That's where I must have gotten my feelings on HP.

Me too.

Dristram wrote:
That's where I must have gotten my feelings on HP.

That's also why there are no critical hits/feats/armor damage/blah blah blah, because combat itself is abstracted. and all of that stuff is assumed to occur. If you play a wargame, a unit can fire its weapons more than once every hour, but in a combat turn it's all abstracted to a single roll. Which is of course where all this crazy stuff came from anyhoo. That doesn't mean that it's wrong to add any of those elements, like critical hits, but none of them to me make the combat more "realistic".

BB

Well, Devil's Advocate here...

If Hit Points are supposed to be _more_ than just physical damage, don't you think that makes things like Cure Light Wounds a bit of a problem?

Also, most people play D&D (regardless of the edition) as "when you reach X hitpoints [0 or negative whatever], you're dead." If hit points is representing more than physical damage, declaring someone dead when their HP gets to a certain level isn't exactly consistent. It's a lot more fair to have the character simply "removed from combat", and work out what happened to it afterwards. But that of course would also go against the way that most people play.

If you really want to have hit points represent stuff more than damage, you should figure out a different way of actually determining damage so that it can be healed properly.

Scurvy_Platypus wrote:
If hit points is representing more than physical damage, declaring someone dead when their HP gets to a certain level isn't exactly consistent.

Why not? By definition, when you reach X hit points, something terrible occurs. Shock (physical, mental or both) simply makes your vital functions stop. It is just a threshold to make some things "happen". What those things mean, is up to the CK and the players.

Cheers,

Antonio

Scurvy_Platypus wrote:
If Hit Points are supposed to be _more_ than just physical damage, don't you think that makes things like Cure Light Wounds a bit of a problem?

Good point, you can always make the Cure Spells heal a certain percentage of hit points (or Up To a certain percentage) if you want it to be more abstract like Hit Points are. In a way, this would make more sense. You also have to remember, that Cure Lights Wounds healing hit points, means it is healing anything that causes hit point loss (weather it's a Cut, Trauma, Fatigue, etc) Though it may not make the "effect" of Fatigue or Trauma go away, it brings you up to a former level of health.

So you could say Cure Light Wounds heals 10% of your Hit Point total. That makes it work a little better with how Hit Points are represented vs. damage.

Scurvy_Platypus wrote:
Well, Devil's Advocate here...

If Hit Points are supposed to be _more_ than just physical damage, don't you think that makes things like Cure Light Wounds a bit of a problem?

Not for me. First, I'd like to say that "hit points" are an abstract representation in the game. Nothing meant to apply strict realism to. Curing spells just heal a character after he suffers damage, plain and simple. Trying to go too deep into what exactly the hit points represents will lead one down a frustrating path because they are not designed to explain exactly anyting in particular. Just a mechanic for the game to represent how long a character can last in a fight.

But the way I look at hit points from the original 1e description is in the following way. For simplicity we'll say 0hp represents death. A 1st and 2nd level fighter both face a killing series of blows in a fight which is faced every round an opponent attacks. The 1st level fighter has 10hp and the 2nd level fighter has 20hp. The DM rolling 10hp of damage means the 2nd level fighter had enough skill in combat to not be killed by the opponent's attack. But the 1st level fighter was not skilled enough.

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If you really want to have hit points represent stuff more than damage, you should figure out a different way of actually determining damage so that it can be healed properly.

I don't know. The way it works in my head works fine for me. FYI, in my games, if a character is immoble and gets attacked or suffers damage from a spell is killed instantly because they are not able to use their combat skill to get out of it. To me, every damaging spell and attack is meant to kill in one round no matter what the damage dice says. But hit points represent the character/monster's ability to prevent getting killed by the attack.

Racially assigned hit dice work best in a system that encourages each race to be wholly different, as in, a racial class method. After that, a means such as +x to HD rolls, or even "this race can re-roll any score under Y" can work, as well. After that, I think an average of race and class die could be good, but a tad encumbering and heavy. Lastly... and perhaps the "best" approach would be to have race supercede class if race is better.

phadeout wrote:
Good point, you can always make the Cure Spells heal a certain percentage of hit points (or Up To a certain percentage) if you want it to be more abstract like Hit Points are. In a way, this would make more sense. You also have to remember, that Cure Lights Wounds healing hit points, means it is healing anything that causes hit point loss (weather it's a Cut, Trauma, Fatigue, etc) Though it may not make the "effect" of Fatigue or Trauma go away, it brings you up to a former level of health.

So you could say Cure Light Wounds heals 10% of your Hit Point total. That makes it work a little better with how Hit Points are represented vs. damage.

When I want Grim & Gritty, I only allow one Cure spell of each kind per day per character. This "solves" the problem without any hassles and additional calculations

This would result in NOBODY playing a d4HD race unless it is for the annoying "to make a point just to prove I am a better roleplayer/martyr than you are" crud that some people of fond of shooting themself in the foot to do.

Honestly, there are some players who would rather play a race with lots of restrictions, and no special abilities, just for the "challenge" of it, but I don't personally know these people (though I have met them at Cons...)
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Actually, the races that tend to have lower HD make up for it by having powerful abilities, like innate spellcasting, or at-will spell like abilities. For example, many fey have low HD, but they are very commonly attributed with the ability to be invisible as often as they like, make use of several magical arrow attacks, can cast numerous spells, generally at levles much higher than actual level would indicate, and so forth... not to mention having the natural ability to fly, which is very powerful.

HP are not the factor that should determine whether a race/class is viable... but rather, its advancement and internal balance. What this means, simply, is: if the race gets d12 HP die, it should not also get this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this, all for a low XP amount, unless those thises are extremely minute in scope; in opposite, a race that has few HP should have something to counter, and those few somethings should be, roughly, as potent as three or four of the thises of the other. Its not about balance between race and race (per se) but the abilities already possessed within the one created.