Quote from: Doom;912206I think 56 hp is bog standard for level 9 Wizard in 5e. You just need a 14 Con and you're set. Toss in an AC 20 (with a 14 Dex, and you'll always have access to Mage Armor and Shield), and uncounterable spells, too, and wizards are surprisingly great at defense. Offense, too. And utility.

Until they run out of spell slots, of course. Surprisingly :rolleyes:, balance is affected by how often a long rest is possible.

Quote from: GameDaddy;912175You are welcome to anything there, and I would appreciate it if you happen to still have those IPP files I emailed you a few years back, if you would email them to me, or upload them to the GitHub so I could get them back (and everyone else can use them.)

Sure thing I can do that tonight (evening of the 10th). PM me if i forget. I have a handful of new ones to throw in as well. The main being a table where I coded up the AD&D 1st edition NPC personality charts and the Paizo Gamemastery personality chart into a monster Personality Stat Block. Real handy when I am creating a town and need ideas for a mass of NPCs.

It looks like this.

QuoteAlignment: neutral evil, Possessions: average
Age: ancient, General: immaculate, Sanity: normal
General Tendencies: moody, Personality: Introverted: rude, Disposition: unfeeling/insensitive,
Nature: vengeful, Honesty: average, Energy: normal, Morals: virtuous, Intellect: average,
Materialism: greedy, Bravery: fearless, Thrift: average, Piety: reverent, Interests: politics
Background: Criminal who retired after betraying rest of gang, Goal: Find a better job, Physical: Very hairy,
Personality: Ask rude question without realizing they cause offense,
Secrets: Is a member of a secret local cult, Reward: Sabotage a bridge, road, or something equally important

I rarely use the entire thing as is but pick stuff out that inspire me. This one led too.

QuoteFinesmith, Quality Good, Prices: High
Leudast, age 64, was once a pirate on the Bloody Mary captained by Black Edward. His duties as the ship's carpenter including being able to repair all the metal fittings and parts. Forty years ago he secretly betrayed Black Edward to the Kingdom of the Isles in exchange for a pardon and a master's license in the Finesmith guild. Eventually Leudast wound up establishing himself in Mikva. He works hard at presenting a respectable front.

He has continued to maintain his contacts among the pirate community. Currently he operates as a fence and source of information for Moran Lodar of Carra, the leader of Piall's small Thieves Guild. Leudast is careful about keeping the two sides of his business and has murdered a dozen people over the years to keep it that way. He has about a half dozen associates he uses for his criminal activities. He and Ecgric do not like get a long and Leudast is looking for some leverage in order to bring him under his control.

Leudast's distinguishing physical characteristic is his extreme hairiness. Despite his age it has remained mostly black.

Quote from: Pat;912185Only in a special case. Here it is again:

The first sentence says a creature taken to 0 hit points is unconscious. There's no imprecision here -- it applies to a creature who has brought to exactly 0 hp, no more and no less. (Or 0 to -3 hp, if caused by one blow when using the optional rule.)

This is followed by a rule that covers unconscious creatures with anywhere from -1 to -9 hp, but it's not a general rule. Because the second sentence is predicated on the first, and thus only applies when a creature has been brought unconscious under the conditions in the first sentence.

Now the rules don't say what happens if you're taken to -4 hp in one blow, but they also don't say what happens if you're dropped to -100 hp. Presumably the same thing happens -- you're dead.

So if you're dropped to 0 hp (exactly), you're unconscious and may take 9 rounds to bleed out and die.

If you use the optional rule, then you're unconscious if you're dropped to 0, -1, -2, or -3 hp with a single blow, and may take 6 to 9 rounds to die.

AD&D never granted an extra 10 hit points (with conditions). It's an extra one hit point (or with the optional rule, 4), with a timer.

That is definitely one way to read it and makes the -3 comment understandable. However I don't view it as definitive.

One has to keep in mind that the DMG contradicts what the PHB say on the matter. So regardless the Dungeon Master has to make a ruling for his campaign.

From page 105 of the PHB.

QuoteDamage is meted out in hit points. If any creature reaches 0 or negative hit points, it is dead. Certain magical means will prevent actual death, particularly a ring of regeneration

Quote from: rawma;912189But steadily degrading in effectiveness without being dead or unconscious is a death spiral, which doesn't seem much better either.

True, going from 50 to 5 hit points, even without any penalties applied still means you are dramatically reduced in effectiveness, you're basically unable to dodge or shrug off any blows, the next attack might kill you.  It's just the way HP work - with a low AC, you could cleave through 40 orcs without any reduction in offensive capability and as long as they didn't land that one hit, you're basically fine.  Of course in a BRP game if you had 150% weapon skill, you could do the same thing with a 50% penalty.  It's one of those things that doesn't seem odd when you're playing, only when you look at it off the table.

Which kind of goes to what Mearls was saying in the other thread - at the table is key, another thing he's taking from the OSR and other Indie movements which tend to be all about at the table.  (Although carefully edited and acted video performances from people whose retirement plan is making money off Youtube probably isn't the way to do it.)

You shut yer piehole and just play the game, players can usually ignore a lot of stuff that might bother a GM.

Quote from: rawma;912233Until they run out of spell slots, of course. Surprisingly :rolleyes:, balance is affected by how often a long rest is possible.

Agreed, as soon as they run out of cantrips, they're screwed.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;912201Yeah, 5e has definitely backed down from where it was in terms of HP during the playtest, at least as far as I'm concerned.  But it's still up there.  I have a 9th level wizard in an on-again/off-again game we run that has...I want to say 47 hit points?  While that's not outside of the realm of possibility in AD&D it is high.  Not 4e high though.  And he has a lot more defensive options than a 9th level 1e Magic User would have.

Wizards in 5e use a d6 as opposed to pre-3e ones which used a d4. So on average a 9th level AD&D MU will have 22 HP with a max of 36 (not factoring possible CON bonuses) and a 5e Wizard will have 34 and a max of 54.
At that level my Warlock had 56, (average is 44 but with a 12 con that bumps the average up to 53)  My last playtest Wizard had 44 HP at level 9 due to some good rolls and a 12 CON. So not too far off from yours.

The early playtest versions of the Wizard used a d4 though. Not sure when they transitioned to a d6.

Quote from: Omega;912261Wizards in 5e use a d6 as opposed to pre-3e ones which used a d4. So on average a 9th level AD&D MU will have 22 HP with a max of 36 (not factoring possible CON bonuses) and a 5e Wizard will have 34 and a max of 54.
At that level my Warlock had 56, (average is 44 but with a 12 con that bumps the average up to 53)  My last playtest Wizard had 44 HP at level 9 due to some good rolls and a 12 CON. So not too far off from yours.

The early playtest versions of the Wizard used a d4 though. Not sure when they transitioned to a d6.

It was an interesting design choice to up the wizard's hit points. I imagine at some point someone will realize "hit points are magic, so wizards should have the same hit points as fighters." Perhaps in 6th edition?

I was in a Dunning-Kruger echo chamber of game design, and someone suggested for 3E/PF that the wizard should have the same BAB as the fighter. The idea didn't receive nearly the scorn that, admittedly only a biased person could have...and they've rather already done that in 5E anyway.

Quote from: Doom;912277It was an interesting design choice to up the wizard's hit points. I imagine at some point someone will realize "hit points are magic, so wizards should have the same hit points as fighters." Perhaps in 6th edition?

I was in a Dunning-Kruger echo chamber of game design, and someone suggested for 3E/PF that the wizard should have the same BAB as the fighter. The idea didn't receive nearly the scorn that, admittedly only a biased person could have...and they've rather already done that in 5E anyway.

1: Seems going that way... bleah!
Actually I think Mearls just caved to the incessant whinning.

2: To be fair. In BX everyone starts out at the same fighting level. Think OD&D too? But after a point the other classes/races accellerate ahead of the magic user in to-hit progression.

I think flattening of the combat abilities among classes basically destroys the core value of D&D as a game, and no amount of fiddling the to-hit, AC, or saving throw mechanics can hide it. This is why I think 1E is vastly superior to 4E and significantly better than 5E just in terms of rules design. You can make fun of 1E's ridiculous diversity of die rolling mechanics, absurd reliance on tables and all the rest of it, but these are mechanical details that have little to do with the way the game is structured.

Quote from: Larsdangly;912298I think flattening of the combat abilities among classes basically destroys the core value of D&D as a game, and no amount of fiddling the to-hit, AC, or saving throw mechanics can hide it. This is why I think 1E is vastly superior to 4E and significantly better than 5E just in terms of rules design. You can make fun of 1E's ridiculous diversity of die rolling mechanics, absurd reliance on tables and all the rest of it, but these are mechanical details that have little to do with the way the game is structured.

This was actually a brilliant (albeit quite possibly accidental) idea by Gygax. By throwing so many different subsystems together, it made it much more difficult to say "this class is stupid". In later editions, things get so homogenized that we can say "class A has 12.347 DPR, while class B has 11.865 DPR, so class B is inferior, as both classes have the same diplomancy/intimidation mechanic" (note: this is hyperbole), because there really isn't as much to distinguish classes.

Quote from: Larsdangly;912298I think flattening of the combat abilities among classes basically destroys the core value of D&D as a game, and no amount of fiddling the to-hit, AC, or saving throw mechanics can hide it. This is why I think 1E is vastly superior to 4E and significantly better than 5E just in terms of rules design. You can make fun of 1E's ridiculous diversity of die rolling mechanics, absurd reliance on tables and all the rest of it, but these are mechanical details that have little to do with the way the game is structured.

I prefer how OD&D handles it. After playing several campaign with OD&D, I find AD&D values to inflated and PCs rise in power too fast. One reason I review 5e positively is that it returned the progression back to how OD&D handled it as opposed to trying to one up AD&D as 2e, 3e, and 4e did.

Quote from: Doom;912302This was actually a brilliant (albeit quite possibly accidental) idea by Gygax. By throwing so many different subsystems together, it made it much more difficult to say "this class is stupid". In later editions, things get so homogenized that we can say "class A has 12.347 DPR, while class B has 11.865 DPR, so class B is inferior, as both classes have the same diplomancy/intimidation mechanic" (note: this is hyperbole), because there really isn't as much to distinguish classes.

There was never any golden age where players did not optimize, With OD&D/AD&D it was more of a matter of trying to find the right magic items than tweaking in your character abilities. But in the goal was the same, to be the baddest and quickest at killing things. I was personally pretty good at and still own a beautiful hand paint miniature that I won by beating everybody in a AD&D battle tournament. I don't care what era of tabletop roleplaying you pick except perhaps the very beginning in the early 70s. The lion share of the players were focused on optimization by any means they can. The early 70s are an exception because nobody really knew the fuck what they were doing with this new fangled game. From reading the various account the focus was more on one-upping the other players and the referee by clever schemes than rules manipulation. Once rulebooks became common and tournaments became part of the scenes, then everything we see today started up back then.

The trick was to play a 8th level druid with a handful of minor item. The key ability was the healing that resulted from using the shapeshifting ability. Combined with spells like Entangle, I was able to out maneuver and more importantly out last everybody who tried to fight me. I bought a magic scimatar and enough minor magic items that I was doing OK damage every round. The healing was the key tho.

Quote from: Omega;9122962: To be fair. In BX everyone starts out at the same fighting level. Think OD&D too? But after a point the other classes/races accellerate ahead of the magic user in to-hit progression.

In OD&D everybody uses the same to-hit chart the only thing that differ is how fast you progress to the columns with a better to-hit chance. At first level everybody had the same to-hit change. In fact prior the Greyhawk Supplement everybody did the same die of damage too. Fighters would get a strength bonus for damage of course. People forget that in OD&D, the magic-user could contribute a lot more to combat after using his one spell at first level.

People bitch at 5e but from playing both OD&D and 5e, 5e goes further than any subsequent edition to restore the balance between the classes to where it stood with the original three books. Again to stress how 5e does this compared to OD&D is very different. But the results are similar.

Interesting discussion.

Earthdawn uses a count up Damage mechanic, and each character has a Wound Threshold, Unconscious Rating, and Death Rating. Take over Wound Threshold damage in a round and you get a -1 mod to all rolls. These are all based on starting Constitution score, and each level ("Circle") you get slight bump to your KO rating, and a slightly bigger bump to your Death rating (scaled so casters get less then "specialists", who get less then fighter-types). Throw in bleeding wounds (+1 damage per round for each), and you basically have everything, I think.

Oh, waking people up from a KO is much easier, but that's because DEATH (the god/Passion) is trapped under a gigantic lava-sea at the center of the world-map, which allows all sorts of crazy healing-magic in-setting.

Quote from: estar;912355In OD&D everybody uses the same to-hit chart the only thing that differ is how fast you progress to the columns with a better to-hit chance. At first level everybody had the same to-hit change. In fact prior the Greyhawk Supplement everybody did the same die of damage too. Fighters would get a strength bonus for damage of course. People forget that in OD&D, the magic-user could contribute a lot more to combat after using his one spell at first level.

People bitch at 5e but from playing both OD&D and 5e, 5e goes further than any subsequent edition to restore the balance between the classes to where it stood with the original three books. Again to stress how 5e does this compared to OD&D is very different. But the results are similar.

Same with BX. In fact they use the same to hit progression. Though BX's to hits are harder by about 2 points in general. EG: If O need a 15 then BX needs a 17.

Which is why so many compare 5e to BX too as its got that same initial feel of an even start.