True or false?

[Masakan]

You should not be anywhere near the frontlines if your HP is less than 100 at level 20.

[Crake]

You should not be anywhere near the frontlines if your HP is less than 100 at level 20.

As an absolute statement? False. There are too many ways to just ignore all kinds of attacks at level 20, and most of the ones you wouldn't be ignoring are ones that don't particularly care about HP damage.

As a general rule? Yeah, probably.

[AlanBruce]

False: Depending on what class you are and assuming a 20th level wizard is in the party with Foresight, your 100 hp PC should not even be at risk, as the wizard can act even before his turn on initiative and move you to the back of the line through various short term teleportation spells.

Be aware that even without a wizard with Foresight, by 20th level your "weak" PC should have tremendous wealth and thus, acquire a plethora of items that should negate damage outright or reduce it considerably.

Items that grant Contingencies should not be uncommon at that level of play either. Flatfooted or not.

Ultimately, if this PC is so concerned about being in the front lines... stay in the back- let the 200HP PCs march forward.

[Necroticplague]

Correct, but with one modification: " You should not be anywhere near the frontlines if your effective HP is less than 100 at level 20."

In which "effective HP" =HP/(chance to take damage, represented as decimal)

If you have a large amount of ways to defend yourself that let you stretch your HP, you can get away with less. Whether that's a large amount of immunities, incorporeal, ethereal, regeneration, fast healing, damage reduction, Blinking, displacement, miss chance, or all of the above, they all have the same effect of essentially giving you more hit points (statistically, 100 HP and 100% chance to be hit is the same average durability as 50 HP and 50% chance to be hit (admittingly, the standard deviation and variance of those would be different).

Of course, depending on your offensive capabilities, it's entirely possible for the statement to be entirely false. What need have I for deference when all my enemies lay as ashes before me?

[AvatarVecna]

Commoner 20 with 14 Con averages less than 100 HP; they belong absolutely nowhere near the front lines, because they are a near-epic-level farmer.

Rogue 20 with 12 Con averages less than 100 HP; they can be on the front lines without huge issues, if they're optimized for melee combat, although they might want to optimize UMD as well for the extra edge.

Monk 20 with 10 Con averages less than 100 HP; I'm reasonably certain a monk can be optimized in a way that allows them to be fairly capable on the front lines, since that's one of the basic design goals of the class, but some people might disagree. Nevertheless, I'm sure they could be there.

A Cleric with 12 Con averages less than 100 HP, but you'll have to pry each and every one of them from their cold dead hands, because the only way you're outrunning all the healing and damage mitigation they've got available is to skip right to the killing with Save-or-Die spells...assuming they haven't boosted their saves into the stratosphere or have any immunities.

A Wizard 20 with 1 Con averages 20 HP...in fact, they can have nothing other than 20 HP before feats/items become involved, because the Con penalty outweighs their HD, but you always gain at least 1 HP per HD. Nevertheless, a Wizard 20 with 1 Con, with some decent optimization, can operate precisely wherever the **** he wants, including the front-line of a "Wizard 20 vs the armies of the world" battle, and that 1 point of Constitution is him flipping you the bird because he knows it.

HP are a decent measuring stick for martial character's ability to remain close to danger, but casters generally have ways of avoiding/mitigating/undoing the issues caused by HP damage, making their HP total kind of a moot point for almost all cases.

[ILM]

Honestly sometimes I wonder if people on this forum ever play 3.5 anymore or if they just sit around theorycrafting casters in the Tippyverse. Yes duh, less than 100 hp at 20 means you should probably stay away from the front lines, unless a) you're an optimized T1 and you know how to play him (in which case you can do whatever the f**c you want anyway and you probably broke the game 7 levels ago in the first place), or b) you play in a reasonably high-op group and are loaded with immunities.

Short list of low-op things that can one-shot you with 100 hp and little to no immunities:
- Polar ray
- Power word kill (or stun for that matter)
- Disintegrate
- a full attack from a level-appropriate bruiser
- 4 or 5 single arrows from low-level mooks if they can beat your AC
- a couple Orbs of X

I mean, a Marilith is just CR 17; have you looked at what a full-attack would do to 100 hp? Seriously, 100 hp is less than d6 HD and 14 con. What the hell are you doing trying to go toe to claw with an old Red Dragon?

[Hal0Badger]

It is false.

[Necroticplague]

Short list of low-op things that can one-shot you with 100 hp and little to no immunities:
- Polar ray
- Power word kill (or stun for that matter)
- Disintegrate
- a full attack from a level-appropriate bruiser
- 4 or 5 single arrows from low-level mooks if they can beat your AC
- a couple Orbs of X

I mean, a Marilith is just CR 17; have you looked at what a full-attack would do to 100 hp? Seriously, 100 hp is less than d6 HD and 14 con. What the hell are you doing trying to go toe to claw with an old Red Dragon?

As in, if you don't have immunities, or there's little way to be immune to them? Because each of those is easy to deal with:
-Friendly Fire
-Mind Blank (or deformity (madness), or cowl of warding, or being undead)
-Friendly Fire
-Abrupt Jaunt,Mirror Image, various miss-chances, (Greater) Blinking, Ghostform.
-Keyword 'if they can beat your AC'. And overcome DR. Also, see all of the above. Also, arrows don't get a stat to damage normally, so it's a bit closer to 10 arrows, assuming no DR.
-Friendly Fire

If I'm incorporeal, exactly nothing (unless I'm missing something, none of those swords are magical). Trying to deliver the Shivering Touch that ends the encounter with said Old Red.

[AvatarVecna]

Honestly sometimes I wonder if people on this forum ever play 3.5 anymore or if they just sit around theorycrafting casters in the Tippyverse.

I played a 3.5 Wizard IRL for 3 years in my old gaming group, from levels 3 to 16. I hadn't discovered char-op yet at the time, and looking back, it's pretty obvious; nevertheless, picking only options in the Player's Handbook because I didn't want to get overloaded with options, I still stole the spotlight by accident every session until I learned to tone things down; on more than one occasion, I stumbled onto game-breaking BS by accident. It's actually what first sparked my curiosity about the discrepancy between casters and non-casters, particularly towards the higher levels, and some online research gave me the incredibly depressing results of "wizards are gods, monks suck at life".


Yes duh, less than 100 hp at 20 means you should probably stay away from the front lines, unless a) you're an optimized T1 and you know how to play him (in which case you can do whatever the f**c you want anyway and you probably broke the game 7 levels ago in the first place), or b) you play in a reasonably high-op group and are loaded with immunities.

You don't have to be super-high-op or have a pile of immunities to operate on the front lines, you just have to have a way, any way, of not tanking the damage, but rather avoiding it. Immunities do this well enough, but having a good AC (including FF and Touch), decent saves, and DR/ER can help tremendously, and that's not even touching on spells that can get you out of the way of danger...or give you the ability to tank the damage, such as the Polymorph spells (admittedly broken), Iron Body (decidedly less broken), or even just freaking healing spells to undo the damage.


Short list of low-op things that can one-shot you with 100 hp and little to no immunities:
- Polar ray
- Power word kill (or stun for that matter)
- Disintegrate
- a full attack from a level-appropriate bruiser
- 4 or 5 single arrows from low-level mooks if they can beat your AC
- a couple Orbs of X

Let's address this one at a time.
Polar Ray: This has to bypass SR, succeed on a touch saving throw, and then deal 20d6 cold damage (assuming you don't have Cold Resistance/Immunity). That damage, assuming no immunities and successfuly hitting Touch AC/bypassing SR, deals an average of 70; admittedly a good chunk, but not the immediate one-shot you claim it to be. It can deal 100, sure, but that's as likely as it dealing 40...in both cases, the odds as so small that anydice.com doesn't even bother reporting the number; it requires your 20d6 to average 5 damage per roll.*
Power Word Kill (or Stun): Admittedly both of these are fairly good effects without taking immunities into account: SR Yes, but there's no attack roll or saving throw involved, it just checks your current HP and affects you if it gets through the SR. The immunities are worth mentioning, though, because of how common they are: both spells are Mind-Affecting (which isn't exactly rare, especially at 20th level), Death Effects (when there's an hours-long immunity buff of much lower level for that and a couple creature types that can get it), and stunning (which multiple creature types are immune to automatically, and immunity can also be received from some comparatively cheap items). Power Word Kill can definitely be a problem for the low HP crowd, but it has two descriptors that are fairly easy to become immune to...and there's still the SR to consider, although that's almost a footnote.*
Disintegrate: 40d6 is certainly impressive damage, and it's not even cold damage like Polar Ray, so you can't be immune to it. The problem is, you've got to bypass the target's SR, hit their Touch AC, and they've got to fail the Fort save vs severely reduced damage. Even if you only need decent luck on each roll individually to disintegrate them, getting good luck on all of them on the same Disintegrate can be more tricky than it sounds if you haven't at least partially optimized your SR penetration, mage attack bonus, and save DCs...and of course, that's three things your target can optimize their defenses for, and one of the design philosophies in 3.5 is that it's more effective to spend resources defending than attacking, meaning that's probably not an arms race the aggressor can win.*
A Full Attack from a Level-Appropriate Bruiser: Without more information on the bruiser in general, it'd be pretty debatable. Are we talking a charging build using Power Attack and nothing else? Without pounce, that could be an issue...assuming they get to charge at all, which is kind of easy to defend against. A more traditional melee-guy, like a Greatsword-specialist Fighter? That's a bit harder to make useless if you're already in melee with him, but there's ways to do it...not easy ways, but ways.*
Low-Level Mook Archer Volleys: Uh...what? "4 or 5 arrows", you say? From mook archers? If they were all crits, maybe; the damage of mook archers is likely to be pretty low (maybe 1d8+10, if they've got enchantment/good Str). At that point, you're dealing 5d8+50 before crits, and even the maximum on that can't hit 100; if you throw a crit in there to be nice, it gets bumped to 7d8+70, which averages just over 100, but that assuming that we got a crit and no misses from mooks. Mind you, if they were higher-level mooks (maybe like level 12 instead of level 6), they'd probably be a bit more impressive at the whole archery thing, especially given how high AC can get even on unoptimized monks by level 20. And of course, it's not like there's any low-level (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/windWall.htm) spells that (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/sanctuary.htm) **** (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mirrorImage.htm) over archers (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fogCloud.htm) to fall back on...oh well.*
A Couple "Orbs of X": The Orb spells, I'll admit, are pretty useful combat spells. That said, they generally require a successful attack, and of course they're energy damage, so immunities exist (maybe not necessarily as ubiquitous as some others, especially if you choose the right energy, but still). Beyond those things, the biggest ones deal less damage than Polar Ray, and that already had trouble killing people on a one-shot; two of them can do the job on average (assuming no immunities and they both hit), but just barely, and even then getting off two of them with one shot is expensive outside of Incantatrix cheese.*

*: And all of these can easily be tanked/dodged by "Contingency: Celerity" and using the standard action for whatever defensive/mobility spell is appropriate tanking/dodging it. Alternatively, save yourself the spell slots and just Shapechange into an Old Silver Dragon.


I mean, a Marilith is just CR 17; have you looked at what a full-attack would do to 100 hp?

Yes. The answer is "lots, if you just assume every attack hits and doesn't have it's damage reduced/avoided/mitigated/undone by anything whatsoever". The problems with assuming that's an immediate issue are Armor Class, Damage Reduction, Magic Healing, Fast Healing, Concealment, Cover, Miss Chance, and Contingency: Celerity". Oh yeah, and the previously mentioned "Shapechange: Old Silver Dragon".


Seriously, 100 hp is less than d6 HD and 14 con. What the hell are you doing trying to go toe to claw with an old Red Dragon?

Note to self: Rogues with less than 14 Con, and Monks with less than 12 Con, have no business fighting on the front lines against the likes of Old Red Dragons, because they are going to get themselves killed instantly in melee combat trying to be relevant. Meanwhile, a wizard can move up to the dragon quickly using mobility spells cast previously and can make a melee touch attack (against Touch AC 6) to take away an average of 10.5 Dex points with a single spell...when they've only got 10. Empower Spell, Maximize Spell, or Twin Spell makes that a virtually guaranteed helpless dragon. But since the wizard has less than 100 HP, he really has no business going toe-to-toe with such a beast in his squishy wizard body, since there's no way he could beat it. Sure.

[Uncle Pine]

False: even at 20th, many useful summons have less that 100 hp. I'd rather have them in the frontlines than me.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I find it both hilarious and disappointing that people cite all the defenses of a high-op party and then assume that the DM in question uses his monsters straight out of the book.

What, you seriously play high-op games and your DM doesn't optimize his encounters to match? Do you just curbstomp every encounter? Is that actually fun?
The very same tactics that a wizard uses to bypass monster defenses work just as well against player characters, and there's quite a few monsters with casting.

Bad rolls happen. Getting a no-hit, no save spell to the face happens, and few player characters get SR. Unless you happen to be immune to everything (unlikely) you'll want to be able to take at least one solid hit, no matter if you're standing in melee range or not.

If you're squishy there's tons of ways to get more HP, most of them pretty cheap for a caster (or one who has a caster in his party), and you'll want at least a bit of a buffer unless your DM is seriously going easy on you or doesn't know how to optimize.
The only situation where you can even come close to not caring about hp is if you're using Astral Projection, and even then getting your projection disrupted at a critical moment sucks even if it doesn't kill you.

[Necroticplague]

I find it both hilarious and disappointing that people cite all the defenses of a high-op party and then assume that the DM in question uses his monsters straight out of the book.
I don't assume they do that in actual play, I merely assume that for the purpose of a forum discussion because going outside of the default monster entry makes it completely impossible for me to predict enough to get useful information from. If not the default Marilith, what should I assume? Marrilith with Ghost Touch weapons? Marilith Wizard 20 (in which case, of course it grinds my ECL 20 face to paste, it's CR 37!).

What, you seriously play high-op games and your DM doesn't optimize his encounters to match? Do you just curbstomp every encounter? Is that actually fun? No; no; wouldn't know.

[AvatarVecna]

I find it both hilarious and disappointing that people cite all the defenses of a high-op party and then assume that the DM in question uses his monsters straight out of the book.

What, you seriously play high-op games and your DM doesn't optimize his encounters to match? Do you just curbstomp every encounter? Is that actually fun?
The very same tactics that a wizard uses to bypass monster defenses work just as well against player characters, and there's quite a few monsters with casting.

Bad rolls happen. Getting a no-hit, no save spell to the face happens, and few player characters get SR. Unless you happen to be immune to everything (unlikely) you'll want to be able to take at least one solid hit, no matter if you're standing in melee range or not.

If you're squishy there's tons of ways to get more HP, most of them pretty cheap for a caster (or one who has a caster in his party), and you'll want at least a bit of a buffer unless your DM is seriously going easy on you or doesn't know how to optimize.
The only situation where you can even come close to not caring about hp is if you're using Astral Projection, and even then getting your projection disrupted at a critical moment sucks even if it doesn't kill you.

I was pointing out the basic issues with the methods suggested as being one-shot-kills for 100 or less, when they're not at all a guarantee, or even necessarily likely (Polar Ray, as an example). There's higher-op options than what I suggested that could cover every presented situation at once (I even named a couple powerful ones, but not in the direct address pointing out the flaws in those plans).



In general, with all other things being equal, it's definitely better to have more HP than less; a wizard with 20 HP is more vulnerable to potentially dying than a wizard with 100 HP, even if the rest of their build is exactly the same. That said, because a Wizard has a wider variety of options that potentially mitigate, redirect, or ignore the damage, while Fighters or Barbarians have lots more HP, but virtually no such methods other than tanking the blow on his HP, it's difficult to compare their ability to function "on the front lines" purely on their HP total without taking other things into account.

The question asked was whether you could...and you can. It's easier with high-op, but there's options available that are less "super-combo detected!" and more "who thought this **** was balanced again?" that don't exactly require any system mastery to use effectively (Polymorph and the like are the big examples here). That's not to say you would necessarily want to fight on the front lines; I prefer my rogues to have some range to them, and my monks to be more...skirmishy. Similarly, just because my wizard is capable of no-selling everything in existence from the front lines doesn't mean that's how I want to spend my resources.

That said, if you wanted to do that as a low-HP wizard...or cleric...or druid...you could probably get away with it it as long as you had some reasonable spells at the ready; your HP total is not the end-all be-all for determining your ability to take part in close-range combat, at least not any more so than literally every other stat is the end-all be-all on that.

[atemu1234]

I find it both hilarious and disappointing that people cite all the defenses of a high-op party and then assume that the DM in question uses his monsters straight out of the book.

Because that needs to be assumed for an actual discussion to take place. We can't really discuss theoreticals - we need an assumed starting point, which those monsters are.


What, you seriously play high-op games and your DM doesn't optimize his encounters to match? Do you just curbstomp every encounter? Is that actually fun?
The very same tactics that a wizard uses to bypass monster defenses work just as well against player characters, and there's quite a few monsters with casting.

When you have a monster with wizard 20 casting out of the box, we'll talk.


Bad rolls happen. Getting a no-hit, no save spell to the face happens, and few player characters get SR. Unless you happen to be immune to everything (unlikely) you'll want to be able to take at least one solid hit, no matter if you're standing in melee range or not.

Yeah... there are a few spells that require absolutely no rolls that any wizard worth his salt would be using.


If you're squishy there's tons of ways to get more HP, most of them pretty cheap for a caster (or one who has a caster in his party), and you'll want at least a bit of a buffer unless your DM is seriously going easy on you or doesn't know how to optimize.
The only situation where you can even come close to not caring about hp is if you're using Astral Projection, and even then getting your projection disrupted at a critical moment sucks even if it doesn't kill you.

There are definitely other times you won't be caring about HP. Immunities are easy to stack up with spell effects.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Because that needs to be assumed for an actual discussion to take place. We can't really discuss theoreticals - we need an assumed starting point, which those monsters are.
Not really. A basic understanding of "if the PCs have access to it so do their enemies" and "monsters with high int score act intelligent" isn't that big an assumption to make, especially when it comes to overdone tricks like Shivering Touch vs. Dragon.


When you have a monster with wizard 20 casting out of the box, we'll talk.
Wizard casting is actually rather rare as an innate ability. The highest i'm aware of are Black Ethergaunts with innate wizard casting at level 17. Sorcerer casting on the other hand shows up more often, as does cleric casting. Look for yourself. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1582)

Yeah... there are a few spells that require absolutely no rolls that any wizard worth his salt would be using.
Why wouldn't a wizard use a no hit, no save, no SR spell, especially in an environment where casters regularly run around with immunities and other defenses mentioned in this thread? Casting Hail of Stone, Haboob or Slashing Dispel makes a hell of a lot more sense than using Scorching Ray, Fireball or Finger of Death if everyone worth their salt runs around with SR, Friendly Fire and buffs + immunities to everything they can get.
In the same environment every warrior worth his salt will get Illusion Bane as the first ability on his sword if at all possible and take the feats of the Mage Slayer line.

There are definitely other times you won't be caring about HP. Immunities are easy to stack up with spell effects.
You're never immune to everything, and dispels are a thing.
You're also spending a lot more on all those immunities than you would on just getting a solid buffer of temp HP, making it far more efficient to get that instead of a bunch of rarely used and/or non-critical immunities.

[ILM]

Yes thank you, I'm somewhat aware of the ways that exist to defeat the options I mentioned earlier (I did learn a thing or two in ten years spent on this forum, and on the old WotC CO boards before that), and I think you missed my point.

Perhaps you were all born with the innate knowledge that Contingency: Celerity was a thing, and that of all the thousands of spells printed Shivering Touch was the one to always remember. Perhaps your first DM handed you a handbook of all the best forms to Polymorph into. Hey, maybe you all started out reading level 1 spells and thinking "Faerie Fire? Wow, that's the most powerful spell ever!" Perhaps your initiation to D&D was you announcing "I'm gonna roll Legolas meets Hawkeye" and the DM just said "nah don't bother, Wind Wall will completely shut you down after level 5".

Personally though, I started out thinking that Monks were awesome, Fighters in full plate were immortal, two-weapon Rogues were overpowered damage factories, and that an optimized Wizard threw fireballs while flying and invisible. And while I do enjoy optimizing characters as a thought experiment, few actual characters in the groups I've actually played with even remotely approached the level of optimization I'm capable of, let alone what you see here sometimes. When I read campaign journals here, I see Wizards but also Warlocks and Dragon Shamans and maybe the odd Warblade here and there, and I've rarely seen someone recount the one-sided adventures of Apocalypse Pete the Omniscient Wiz/Incantatrix/IotSV and his band of two-legged pack mules. Hell, half the players coming here for help on builds still seem to play with DMs who ban ToB because it's "so broken".

In other words, I think the average optimization level of people actually playing 3.5e is far, far lower than the average optimization level of the average long-time forumgoer, and I think that it would be occasionally refreshing to see a thread where any question isn't immediately answered with a reference to the trope of the invincible godlike wizard - who definitely exists within the rules of the game, but whom I don't believe is the norm in real play.

I mean, no disrespect to Mikasan, but if a player comes with a question about "how many hp do I need to live", you kind of know that the group's optimization ceiling isn't stratospheric. I don't think it's fair to automatically assume that at his table, every BSF is walking around Ethereal with immunity to everything, SR 30 and a 94% miss chance, and that T1 casters and unlimited access to a Magic Mart have squashed HP into irrelevance.

/rant, I guess

[ComaVision]

I've never played at level 20.

I have a hard time envisioning the "front-line" at level 20 because I can't imagine any melee brutes having a chance in Hel.

[Amphetryon]

Given the sheer breadth of mobility options available at level 20, I'm going to have to ask for a working definition of 'frontlines' as it pertains to the question. There's no default reason to assume that any given position on a battlefield, a map, or plane of existence is more - or less - vulnerable to the sort of attacks a credible 20th level threat can bring to bear.

[Flickerdart]

Here's the thing:

Dealing "yes" damage at 20 is trivial. A CR20 Old Red Dragon has 28 BAB to pump into Power Attack, and with 6 natural attacks that already dish out serious hurt, that damage is more than enough to kill your average warrior (d10 HD and 20 CON = roughly 10.5 HP per level).

By level 20, your hit points are not there as a defense, but as a buffer when your defenses have failed. The dragon above is not scary if you've invested in AC and miss chances like you should have, because as long as you have more than 1 HP and he misses you, you're fine. If the dragon is breathing on you, you should have energy immunity up since it's only a 6th level spell. If the dragon casts a spell, you should have superior resistance up (another level 6 24 hour spell) and maybe even a globe of invulnerability.

If you're walking into combat at level 20 with only HP as your defense, it doesn't matter what class you are or how many HPs you have. You should not be on the front lines, or adventuring.

[dascarletm]

Answer: Depends on the game.

In my games, true. At 20th level my players and the monsters they fight regularly trade full attacks. Having less than 100 hp in one of my games would not be recommended for a front-liner. It can be done, it is just risky.

Everyone will have ways to avoid getting hurt, but they will fail from time to time. You need adequate buffer. I'm not sure 100 hp is the line I would draw, but the concept holds.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Here's the thing:

Dealing "yes" damage at 20 is trivial. A CR20 Old Red Dragon has 28 BAB to pump into Power Attack, and with 6 natural attacks that already dish out serious hurt, that damage is more than enough to kill your average warrior (d10 HD and 20 CON = roughly 10.5 HP per level).

By level 20, your hit points are not there as a defense, but as a buffer when your defenses have failed. The dragon above is not scary if you've invested in AC and miss chances like you should have, because as long as you have more than 1 HP and he misses you, you're fine. If the dragon is breathing on you, you should have energy immunity up since it's only a 6th level spell. If the dragon casts a spell, you should have superior resistance up (another level 6 24 hour spell) and maybe even a globe of invulnerability.

If you're walking into combat at level 20 with only HP as your defense, it doesn't matter what class you are or how many HPs you have. You should not be on the front lines, or adventuring.

Of course you should have defenses that prevent you from taking a full attack. That doesn't mean you shouldn't also have enough HP to survive if one of those attacks hits, especially if the dragon has a high enough CL to cast True Seeing. Even if it only hits on a 20 it will roll one eventually.
Or it just casts Wraithstrike and attacks your touch AC, and with 5 attacks per round chances are one will get through if miss chance is all that's left.
Or maybe he uses Breath Substitution and hits you with acid instead, because chances are your party doesn't have enough 6th level slots to cast Energy Immunity 5 times per character.

If you're planning to stand in front of a dragon and trade full attacks you'd better be prepared to get some hits, so HP isn't something you can totally neglect.
Even if you're planning to stay as far away as possible you're still going to get hit eventually.

Sure, other defenses are usually more important because unless you've dumped Con you can usually take at least one hit when a failed save will kill you instantly.
But at 20 those classes with d4 or d6 HD are well advised to do something to get more HP, be it a +6 Con item or one of the many sources of temp hp (most of which are cheap and stack, so there's not really a reason not to). Ideally you get both, because there's really no such thing as "too much hp" unless you sacrifice other defenses to get them.

[AvatarVecna]

Yes thank you, I'm somewhat aware of the ways that exist to defeat the options I mentioned earlier (I did learn a thing or two in ten years spent on this forum, and on the old WotC CO boards before that), and I think you missed my point.

Perhaps you were all born with the innate knowledge that Contingency: Celerity was a thing, and that of all the thousands of spells printed Shivering Touch was the one to always remember. Perhaps your first DM handed you a handbook of all the best forms to Polymorph into. Hey, maybe you all started out reading level 1 spells and thinking "Faerie Fire? Wow, that's the most powerful spell ever!" Perhaps your initiation to D&D was you announcing "I'm gonna roll Legolas meets Hawkeye" and the DM just said "nah don't bother, Wind Wall will completely shut you down after level 5".

Personally though, I started out thinking that Monks were awesome, Fighters in full plate were immortal, two-weapon Rogues were overpowered damage factories, and that an optimized Wizard threw fireballs while flying and invisible. And while I do enjoy optimizing characters as a thought experiment, few actual characters in the groups I've actually played with even remotely approached the level of optimization I'm capable of, let alone what you see here sometimes. When I read campaign journals here, I see Wizards but also Warlocks and Dragon Shamans and maybe the odd Warblade here and there, and I've rarely seen someone recount the one-sided adventures of Apocalypse Pete the Omniscient Wiz/Incantatrix/IotSV and his band of two-legged pack mules. Hell, half the players coming here for help on builds still seem to play with DMs who ban ToB because it's "so broken".

In other words, I think the average optimization level of people actually playing 3.5e is far, far lower than the average optimization level of the average long-time forumgoer, and I think that it would be occasionally refreshing to see a thread where any question isn't immediately answered with a reference to the trope of the invincible godlike wizard - who definitely exists within the rules of the game, but whom I don't believe is the norm in real play.

I mean, no disrespect to Mikasan, but if a player comes with a question about "how many hp do I need to live", you kind of know that the group's optimization ceiling isn't stratospheric. I don't think it's fair to automatically assume that at his table, every BSF is walking around Ethereal with immunity to everything, SR 30 and a 94% miss chance, and that T1 casters and unlimited access to a Magic Mart have squashed HP into irrelevance.

/rant, I guess

I did not miss your point; you missed mine. I answered the question he actually asked; you're trying to answer the question you think he's asking. My point was that you don't need to be a super-optimized Wizard 20 for 100 HP to be sufficient, you just have to not be particularly unoptimized. If you decide you want your wizard to fight on the front lines, you can look through the wizard spell list for spells that let them do that, and you'll find them. They're not hidden in the huge pile of splatbooks, or only available online; most of them are in the Player's Handbook. They're not quirky little combos or tricks of RAW manipulation; shutting down archery is literally what Wind Wall does, and shutting down Mind-Affecting is literally one of the many things Mind Blank does, by design. The reason you don't here about *******s dominating the game with Apocalypse Joe the Super-Wizard is because nobody wants to play in a party with those guys, so the character (or even the player) is kicked out if they refuse to not continue ruining everybody's fun. I told you about how I had to scale it back when my wizard continuously broke the game by accident when I knew nothing of optimization, because I was making the game less fun for my friends; because I like my friends, and like hanging out with them, I didn't play Apocalypse Joe the Super-Wizard.

The question asked was "can it be done?". The answer is "it depends". I've said it before, and I'll say it again, bolding the entire thing this time: if one of your defenses sucks, and you want to be on the front lines, you need other defenses to fall back on; if your other defenses are sufficient, you can be on the front lines. Judging a person's combat ability purely on the number of HP they have is ignoring that HP are just one layer of defense; even Commoner 20 at least probably has a decent AC.

If the question asked was "here's the kind of game I'm playing, and here's the kind of character I'm playing; can I survive on the front lines with just 100 HP?", we could make suggestions based on his group's char-op level that are appropriate to the character he's playing...but that's not what was asked of us; we were asked a general question of whether low HP keeps people from being useful on the front lines, and the answer to that question (the question that was actually asked) is no, low HP does not necessarily keep people from being useful on the front lines, you just need to supplement those low HP with other defenses.
Monk 20s can very well have less than 100 HP, but they've also got high AC (all three kinds), innate SR, all good saves, improved evasion, a couple immunities, some self-healing, and even an uncommon DR at Monk 20; does that mean a Monk can operate on the front lines in a more standard char-op level game? Probably yes.
Rogue 20s can very well have less than 100 HP, but they've also got good AC (regular and Touch), can't be surprised (so FF doesn't come up), are fairly immune to SA, can hide in a crowded battle from most of the participants because they're just that skills, have improved evasion, and can shake off effects they failed to totally avoid sometimes; does that mean a Rogue can operate on the front lines in a more standard char-op level game? Probably yes.
Wizard 20s will rarely have more than 100 HP, bu they also have access to some pretty broken defense spells even without leaving Core or even really optimizing that much, and they can choose new ones every day depending on what they think they need; does that mean a Wizard can operate on the front lines in a more standard char-op level game? Probably yes...but it's going to eat into his resources if he's preparing generically; a wizard who doesn't know what's coming can still defend himself from most everything with just stuff in Core, but it's going to require a lot of spell slots; it's easier if he knows what's coming, via various information gathering techniques.


All three of these classes can be fairly defense-focused at 20th level, at least well enough that they can fight on the front lines. If the OP was asking how to make them more defensible, we could give answers to that question. But the question they actually asked is the one I answered.

[Flickerdart]

Of course you should have defenses that prevent you from taking a full attack. That doesn't mean you shouldn't also have enough HP to survive if one of those attacks hits, especially if the dragon has a high enough CL to cast True Seeing. Even if it only hits on a 20 it will roll one eventually.
I literally said the very same thing in the post you quoted.


"your hit points are ... a buffer when your defenses have failed."