I'm new to d&d walking myself through an adventure (DMing and playing) for hopes of understanding it more before I start DMing for my little brother and his friends. I manual entered my stats, rolled for them. I rolled 4 1s for constitution so I had 3 cons, but overall 5 cons due to cleric, I think?. At level 3 I had 12 hp and -9 hp due to cons at level 4 I dropped to 11 hp with -12 hp due to cons.
I started with a fixed 8 hp then every time I leveled up I rolled a d8. I've rolled a total of 23 including the initial 8. Because of my 3 cons I get -12 max hp from my total giving me 11.
I can't seem to find anything saying I'm messing up, but a friend says I'm doing something wrong, But I don't see anything in the phb where it says I am.
So, as title states, am I doing something wrong with my HP?
Well welcome to the hobby I hope you enjoy it. Since your just starting out I recommend that you use the standard array for your attributes which will help out starting. Sounds like you are doing your hit points the right way. I believe you got the 2 extra con points due to race such as a Dwarf gets. Remember if your having fun your doing it right.
You're technically doing it right- and you just learned a good lesson moving forward! Negative ability modifiers *hurt* a lot, and a negative Con can hurt the most! It seems to me that you aren't missing anything though.
I also double down on the Standard Array suggestion. It helps to streamline the process for starting out a lot
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
As the other two have said; you're spot on with your maths, and your +2 Con is from racial bonus.
If you are a fan of the randomness of the dice there is a simple approach you can take to make your HP problem easier:
No stat can be under an 8. If a player rolls their dice and it is less than 8, they automatically get an 8 for that roll. It still has a negative modifier, but it is small enough that a racial bonus (+2 Con) could help, or an ASI from leveling up could help.
Hey, thank you all. I do like the randomness of the dice roll and when I start DMing for my little brother I will probably do something similar to your suggestion @DMThac0, wont be as hard on them as I am on myself. Being new and learning how this all works I wanted to make sure I was doing everything correct since my friend was saying I was messing up somehow.
Also yes, it was the dwarf racial that gave me the +2 cons not the cleric hah.
Another point to remember is that you do not have to assign the stats in the order you rolled them. So if you rolled 12, 10, 3, 8, 10, 10 - you do not have to assign them directly to STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA - you could assign the 3 to the least useful attribute for your class (commonly referred to as a dump stat) - for heavy armour wearers (paladins/some clerics), this can be DEX, for non wizard/arcane trickster/eldritch knight it can be INT. Although I would hesitate to put a 3 in INT as that would make you incapable of reading/speaking a recognisable language.
I love randomness too, but not in the ability scores.
If you want to make something equally as important as ability scores random, then make them randomly roll for race. Think about this, no one is allowed to pick their race in real life, you are born what you are born.
On page 73 of Xanathathar's Guide to Everything is a nice random table to use for rolling for race. That guide also has plenty of other things you can roll randomly, such as birth station, role playing characteristics, even a name. (Did you get to pick your name at birth? Didn't thunk so.) :)
It's a generally unspoken guideline that if you are going to have something with a boosted ability score, that character's score in that ability is better than average, or high,
to begin with. You don't say "Well, I've got a crap DEX score of 4, so I'll be a Rogue, for the +2 to DEX, for a total of DEX 6." ANY Rogue with a DEX 6 is going to do poorly.
Your Cleric needs a high CON score, to begin with, you take, for instance, a CON13, +2, for a total of CON 15, and you have the type of constitution it's going to take to game
a cleric successfully. Don't build the character around the score, build the score around the character.
Also, random dice rolling can give some interesting characters but also ones that turn out to be unplayable in a real adventure.
In your case, a dwarven cleric with a constitution of 5 has -3 hp/level. When you roll a d8 randomly for hit points your average hit points gained for each level are 1.5 ... and even with maximum hit points at first level you will only start with 5. A hill dwarf helps with this a bit since they gain an extra 1hp/level.
At first, on the surface perhaps this doesn't look like too much of a problem as long as he stays at the back away from combat. However. Even a hill dwarf cleric will only have an average of 16 hit points at 5th level. This is the level at which your party members and the opponents you face will start to have fireball and other area of effect spells as well as multiple attacks each round. A fireball does 8d6 damage which averages 28 hit points of damage (on a failed save). An average fireball will easily knock this character unconscious and result in them making death saving throws. A slightly above average fireball that does 33 hit points of damage would result in damage leaving your hit points at greater than your negative hit point total which causes instant death of the character.
In addition, a number of the more effective spells and spell like effects rely on constitution saving throws to avoid their negative effects. Unfortunately, this character is very unlikely to make their constitution saving throws against even an average difficulty class.
Basically, the character might be suited to running a temple in an urban environment but in the kind of world that most adventurers live .. he would likely die very quickly and might be a liability to their party in the long run. Of course, he may also be a great character for role playing and in the right party he might be able to survive .. but if I was playing such a character I'd play him for fun with the realistic expectation that he is unlikely to survive very long in the adventuring world.
If this is your own home game then you are free to roll up characters and they can be a lot of fun. However, in groups, rolling for stats can also be a real problem (especially for folks newer to the game or who might be younger). Rolling for stats results in a sometimes wide range of character stats between players. This is less of an issue in 5e than in earlier editions but if one player rolls no higher than a 11 or 12 while another player rolls two 18's and a 17 (I've seen this sort of thing happen) ... then the characters created will differ significantly in effectiveness ... and this may well make the game less enjoyable for the player who did not roll as well while the one who rolled high will tend to excel in a number of areas. Real discrepancies in character capability can significantly affect how the players perceive the game and whether they enjoy it.
To avoid this, I would tend to agree with the person above who suggested using the point buy or standard distribution systems. If you want to make that more interesting you can change the numbers in the standard array or the total number of points available to assign to attributes.
The other alternatives are modifying the dice rolling schemes and there are a lot of options available.
- minimum dice roll result (i.e. less than 8 becomes 8)
- maximum dice roll limits (i.e. only one 18 allowed ... second 18 is reduced to 17 or 16)
- 7 x (4d6 drop lowest) ... remove lowest number
- 8 x (4d6 drop lowest ... remove highest and lowest numbers (but folks don't tend to like removing the highest :) )
- 3 x [ 6 x (4d6 drop lowest)] ... pick your preferred set .. this tends to generate more heroic characters, however also tends to mitigate the situation when one player rolls a great set and another rolls badly (though this can still happen even when rolling multiple sets) ... this can also be modified by requiring the stats to be assigned in order
.. and pretty much an infinite variation on ways to generate six numbers :)
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I'm new to d&d walking myself through an adventure (DMing and playing) for hopes of understanding it more before I start DMing for my little brother and his friends. I manual entered my stats, rolled for them. I rolled 4 1s for constitution so I had 3 cons, but overall 5 cons due to cleric, I think?. At level 3 I had 12 hp and -9 hp due to cons at level 4 I dropped to 11 hp with -12 hp due to cons.
I started with a fixed 8 hp then every time I leveled up I rolled a d8. I've rolled a total of 23 including the initial 8. Because of my 3 cons I get -12 max hp from my total giving me 11.
I can't seem to find anything saying I'm messing up, but a friend says I'm doing something wrong, But I don't see anything in the phb where it says I am.
So, as title states, am I doing something wrong with my HP?
A Graduation to be Remembered | A Village Bathed in Crimson
Well welcome to the hobby I hope you enjoy it. Since your just starting out I recommend that you use the standard array for your attributes which will help out starting. Sounds like you are doing your hit points the right way. I believe you got the 2 extra con points due to race such as a Dwarf gets. Remember if your having fun your doing it right.
You're technically doing it right- and you just learned a good lesson moving forward! Negative ability modifiers *hurt* a lot, and a negative Con can hurt the most! It seems to me that you aren't missing anything though.
I also double down on the Standard Array suggestion. It helps to streamline the process for starting out a lot
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
As the other two have said; you're spot on with your maths, and your +2 Con is from racial bonus.
If you are a fan of the randomness of the dice there is a simple approach you can take to make your HP problem easier:
No stat can be under an 8. If a player rolls their dice and it is less than 8, they automatically get an 8 for that roll. It still has a negative modifier, but it is small enough that a racial bonus (+2 Con) could help, or an ASI from leveling up could help.
Hey, thank you all. I do like the randomness of the dice roll and when I start DMing for my little brother I will probably do something similar to your suggestion @DMThac0, wont be as hard on them as I am on myself. Being new and learning how this all works I wanted to make sure I was doing everything correct since my friend was saying I was messing up somehow.
Also yes, it was the dwarf racial that gave me the +2 cons not the cleric hah.
A Graduation to be Remembered | A Village Bathed in Crimson
Another point to remember is that you do not have to assign the stats in the order you rolled them. So if you rolled 12, 10, 3, 8, 10, 10 - you do not have to assign them directly to STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA - you could assign the 3 to the least useful attribute for your class (commonly referred to as a dump stat) - for heavy armour wearers (paladins/some clerics), this can be DEX, for non wizard/arcane trickster/eldritch knight it can be INT. Although I would hesitate to put a 3 in INT as that would make you incapable of reading/speaking a recognisable language.
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I love randomness too, but not in the ability scores.
If you want to make something equally as important as ability scores random, then make them randomly roll for race. Think about this, no one is allowed to pick their race in real life, you are born what you are born.
On page 73 of Xanathathar's Guide to Everything is a nice random table to use for rolling for race. That guide also has plenty of other things you can roll randomly, such as birth station, role playing characteristics, even a name. (Did you get to pick your name at birth? Didn't thunk so.) :)
But I reiterate the main rule: HAVE FUN
It's a generally unspoken guideline that if you are going to have something with a boosted ability score, that character's score in that ability is better than average, or high,
to begin with. You don't say "Well, I've got a crap DEX score of 4, so I'll be a Rogue, for the +2 to DEX, for a total of DEX 6." ANY Rogue with a DEX 6 is going to do poorly.
Your Cleric needs a high CON score, to begin with, you take, for instance, a CON13, +2, for a total of CON 15, and you have the type of constitution it's going to take to game
a cleric successfully. Don't build the character around the score, build the score around the character.
Also, random dice rolling can give some interesting characters but also ones that turn out to be unplayable in a real adventure.
In your case, a dwarven cleric with a constitution of 5 has -3 hp/level. When you roll a d8 randomly for hit points your average hit points gained for each level are 1.5 ... and even with maximum hit points at first level you will only start with 5. A hill dwarf helps with this a bit since they gain an extra 1hp/level.
At first, on the surface perhaps this doesn't look like too much of a problem as long as he stays at the back away from combat. However. Even a hill dwarf cleric will only have an average of 16 hit points at 5th level. This is the level at which your party members and the opponents you face will start to have fireball and other area of effect spells as well as multiple attacks each round. A fireball does 8d6 damage which averages 28 hit points of damage (on a failed save). An average fireball will easily knock this character unconscious and result in them making death saving throws. A slightly above average fireball that does 33 hit points of damage would result in damage leaving your hit points at greater than your negative hit point total which causes instant death of the character.
In addition, a number of the more effective spells and spell like effects rely on constitution saving throws to avoid their negative effects. Unfortunately, this character is very unlikely to make their constitution saving throws against even an average difficulty class.
Basically, the character might be suited to running a temple in an urban environment but in the kind of world that most adventurers live .. he would likely die very quickly and might be a liability to their party in the long run. Of course, he may also be a great character for role playing and in the right party he might be able to survive .. but if I was playing such a character I'd play him for fun with the realistic expectation that he is unlikely to survive very long in the adventuring world.
If this is your own home game then you are free to roll up characters and they can be a lot of fun. However, in groups, rolling for stats can also be a real problem (especially for folks newer to the game or who might be younger). Rolling for stats results in a sometimes wide range of character stats between players. This is less of an issue in 5e than in earlier editions but if one player rolls no higher than a 11 or 12 while another player rolls two 18's and a 17 (I've seen this sort of thing happen) ... then the characters created will differ significantly in effectiveness ... and this may well make the game less enjoyable for the player who did not roll as well while the one who rolled high will tend to excel in a number of areas. Real discrepancies in character capability can significantly affect how the players perceive the game and whether they enjoy it.
To avoid this, I would tend to agree with the person above who suggested using the point buy or standard distribution systems. If you want to make that more interesting you can change the numbers in the standard array or the total number of points available to assign to attributes.
The other alternatives are modifying the dice rolling schemes and there are a lot of options available.
- minimum dice roll result (i.e. less than 8 becomes 8)
- maximum dice roll limits (i.e. only one 18 allowed ... second 18 is reduced to 17 or 16)
- 7 x (4d6 drop lowest) ... remove lowest number
- 8 x (4d6 drop lowest ... remove highest and lowest numbers (but folks don't tend to like removing the highest :) )
- 3 x [ 6 x (4d6 drop lowest)] ... pick your preferred set .. this tends to generate more heroic characters, however also tends to mitigate the situation when one player rolls a great set and another rolls badly (though this can still happen even when rolling multiple sets) ... this can also be modified by requiring the stats to be assigned in order
.. and pretty much an infinite variation on ways to generate six numbers :)