Hitpoint rolls
velehal
Member Posts: 299
Does anybody know how exacatly works hitpoint rolls on level up. What are the chances on good roll, average roll.... That rolls are not quite random because the good rolls are more often than the bad ones.
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pull the difficulty slider all way to the left, level the character, set the slider again to the difficulty you are playing. on the easiest settings the hp gain is always maxed, no need to multiple reloads.
to have it as an option like in EE is surely more convenient as a player can forget to change the difficulty before leveling, but in the original to have maxed hp was never an hassle.
i did not know it and now that i learn it from you i must say that i am not happy at all of this very arbitrary game mechanics change, imo not needed at all.
i like to always roll for hp. i find that to have parties with low hp makes the game way more tactical, challenging and interesting to play.
it can be not so apparent to some players but actually a maxed hp pool makes the game more easy then introducing op items or rolling super stats.
every time a party member of a player that uses maxed hp roll in a battle reaches low hp, for a spell like adhw or physical damage, in a not maxed roll run would be the death of that toon, often triggering a chain reaction where all the party members die one after the other.
if i perfectly understand why EE makes more convenient to have maxed rolls i fail to understand why it compels me to play at a lower level of (actual) difficulty then how i like.
and difficulty mods are not a solution, as i play the original with difficulty mods, as well as the newly introduced LoB is not a solution as it changes the whole game mechanics altering enemies st, and buffing their hp in a way that make most of the damaging spells inadequate if effective at all.
Might have been deliberate, might have been compiler shenanigans breaking v1.3's function. We'd have to hear from a developer to know for sure.
D10 changes from 5.5 to 7.15, or an average of 12 HP for a warrior.
D8 changes from 4.5 to 5.81, also about 12 hp for a priest or monk.
D6 goes from 3.5 to 4.47 for 9 hp for a rogue or bard
D4 goes from 2.5 to 3.13 for 6 hp difference for a Mage.
So yeah, in the long run these health increases barely matter unless your characters are living by that low hit points. It does make PCs slightly better than NPCs in Bg2 due to a better average, but that's neither here nor there.
still at tob level cap a mage will have with a single roll an average of 69hp, at lev 18 when he start to cast lev 9 spells an average of 33hp, so we are talking of something just under 10-20% hp difference for a high level mage, less noticeable, but still very present.
and before it is even worst, at lev 10 is 25 hp vs 31 on average.
a lot of things that kill a 25 hp toon but not a 31 hp one can happen, while the 40 hp mage that automatically rolls always for maxed hp has a much wider margin of error before he dies having not 6 points more then the one that rolls once, but 15 hp.
Huh. I never knew that! It would have saved me SO much grief as a teen if I'd known! XD
im pretty sure that only works for BG2, in BG1 vanilla ( no mods ) im pretty sure even if you lower it to the lowest difficulty it still wont give you max HP ( i recall trying it like a million years ago )
Original game: 58.5
EEs: 64.1, which is still a 10% difference and a 6 level advantage, but the only thing that's really doing is stopping PW:K from instantly taking you out.
I'm not comparing averages to maximums, but old average to new average.
For whatever it's worth, the probability to roll X out of a dY with this setup is (2X - 1)/Y^2, so you get a much better chance of rolling maximum than minimum, but rolling average (Y/2, Y/2+1) is pretty close to a constant distribution.
it is true, i did not factor in familiar and high con bonuses.
but if familiar is only allowed to the protagonist, at least if he is not a diviner.
for a custom party created in multiplayer is possible to have a mage or sorcerer that is not charname, i had them.
and 16 con is not granted, i would say that a person that chose to not have the maxed hp on leveling up because he likes the challenge to have low hp pools will probably also don't roll super stats, at least it is what i often do.
and to know that EE compel me to have a little less challenge then i would like to have surely does not break my fun playing, but still i would prefer the single hp roll.
and we are talking of average hp rolls, but some play troughs you are lucky and have more then that, others you have less.
also a flame arrow from a lev 10 mage and possibly few other spells or some traps can reach the dmg threshold to one shot kill or leave alive, but with very low hp, a lev 10 mage.
failing the save a lev 10 flame arrow do 2x (1d6 + 4d6), so up to 60 dmg, 90 if the mage that cast has lev 15.
also it is not granted that the mage (or other class) that takes the damage is at full health, he may had already taken damage, but the cleric had other tasks and he also choose to use his round to cast a spell, let say to breach or disrupt a dangerous enemy, so can not use a potion.
in modded games, but also in vanilla, i feel that even few more hp are sometimes noticeable.
every time a mage in EE goes under 7 hp or a fighter goes under 13 hp with the single roll would probably be dead.
again it is absolutely not a real big problem for me, not knowing it i did never noticed it, i never really felt that my toons had too much hp compared to the expected one.
but reading i still hope that the single roll will be adopted also for EE.
as the players that don't like it can opt for maxed hp gain, or maybe save and roll 2 times or whatever times they like, but a player that likes to roll only once can not undo the automatic 2 rolls it seems the solution that makes everybody happy.