"I disagree with the change. Game has been balanced around this randomness, and it's simply more fun to play."
I don't think the game is that well balanced. To be balanced, the randomness should not have significant effect on gameplay, but it does.
Fighter with constitution of 16 gains 1D10+2 hit points per level up. This means variation in level 3 fighter is 18 - 36 hit points. So basically if you have good luck vs. bad luck, you can literally double your hit points. This makes large difference to gameplay, thus it is not really balanced.
I'm assuming the game forces the best roll at character creation, giving you 10+2 hit points to start with. Is this correct or could you have even far more variation?
As someone who reloads the game over and over again until I get max hit points, I gotta agree that this should be an option. (I say an *option* because I know other people like the random hit points. But others don't. Make it an option and make everyone happy.)
I said enforce for a reason. Competition is in the nature of games, even single player games. People have done speedruns in Super mario, and this is why options like this must eitehr be enforced or be a choice on character creation that cannot be undone coupled with a checkbox on the charactersheet that explicitely states that "this character have/have not" played with option X.
Just because a game is primarily a single player vs. environment experience doesn't make it less important to keep balance a primary focus, at the cost of freedom.
I remember one of my early playthroughs with a pure mage, and I reloaded every damn time to get high HP, cause otherwise my squishy mage would die by falling leaves...
There are also spells at higher levels that automatically kills anything below 60hp if I remember correctly (might be wrong on this one), and a mage with bad luck can easily end up in that category even at high levels.
Which makes sense, considdering 2nd editions totally wonky favourisation of mages in general. Mages fearing a single spell sounds like a good idea to me.
I get a bad roll in a real game, DM makes me keep it. Its the rules and im fine with that Computer gets a bad roll, i use my previous experience to be zen about it.
If you want to play D&D, play D&D...if you wanna be a pansy, slide the slider top "normal" or "low" >.>
enforced max HP would be simply better...why average after all? max is within the rules and i don't really feel ok when dices interfere with my character development.
max or half, it doesn't really matter. The point is that whatever threshold is chosen, the game will need to be balanced with that in mind. Currently the game is balanced for average rolls, and with max rolls you steamroll the whole thing (yes, I obviously play with max hp when the game allows me). Max is not within the rules as such, averaging is close to the rules, maximizing is a vast change toward easy.
The natural solution would be enforced average on medium difficulty and enforced max rolls on easy.
I think that you should be able to chose random, average and max in the settings. The fact that you can lower the settings to get maximum rolls is just a tedious way of playing a harder difficulty with max HP-rolls.
Currently there is no way of getting rid of the randomness (always max hp) and still keep the game balanced. Max hp is too much since the game is balanced for avg or even slightly less. There isn't even a single mod that offers enforced average HP.
Absolutely the easiest way to go with this is to keep everything in the game as they are now and simply add checkbox to menu that enforces average hit points. Since you cant accurately average 1d4 for example (2.5hp per level) you could round even levels down and uneven levels up, which would result in 2.5hp on average per level.
This should NOT depend on the difficulty, because I think if you can change the difficulty on the fly, it should not leave permanent effects on your character like it does now.
Max hp on everybody, including enemies, unbalances the spells which do dmg vs. those that disable or kill instantly. Again, average HP requires no changes to spells, nor enemies and keeps the game perfectly balanced as it is.
I reload and save for HP's early, but care less as I have some HP to play with. I did same in NwN. Essentially, I need to survive to have fun (wolves early on, ogres). I'd be even more retentive about this as a mage for the first levels, as a stray arrow ends the journey.
The rules should be remade, it's too desireable to cheat or do cheesy slide of difficulty, with this too great gain. If the base gain would be consisten of like +4 HP and the random gain be D4, then it would be less desireable to cheat.
Comments
I don't think the game is that well balanced. To be balanced, the randomness should not have significant effect on gameplay, but it does.
Fighter with constitution of 16 gains 1D10+2 hit points per level up. This means variation in level 3 fighter is 18 - 36 hit points. So basically if you have good luck vs. bad luck, you can literally double your hit points. This makes large difference to gameplay, thus it is not really balanced.
I'm assuming the game forces the best roll at character creation, giving you 10+2 hit points to start with. Is this correct or could you have even far more variation?
Just because a game is primarily a single player vs. environment experience doesn't make it less important to keep balance a primary focus, at the cost of freedom.
There are also spells at higher levels that automatically kills anything below 60hp if I remember correctly (might be wrong on this one), and a mage with bad luck can easily end up in that category even at high levels.
I get a bad roll in a real game, DM makes me keep it. Its the rules and im fine with that
Computer gets a bad roll, i use my previous experience to be zen about it.
If you want to play D&D, play D&D...if you wanna be a pansy, slide the slider top "normal" or "low" >.>
The natural solution would be enforced average on medium difficulty and enforced max rolls on easy.
Absolutely the easiest way to go with this is to keep everything in the game as they are now and simply add checkbox to menu that enforces average hit points. Since you cant accurately average 1d4 for example (2.5hp per level) you could round even levels down and uneven levels up, which would result in 2.5hp on average per level.
This should NOT depend on the difficulty, because I think if you can change the difficulty on the fly, it should not leave permanent effects on your character like it does now.
Isn't there a mod that forces max HP on all creatures?
If the base gain would be consisten of like +4 HP and the random gain be D4, then it would be less desireable to cheat.