Why are HD based on Class?

[Steven K]

Literally, the question in the title. It seems to me intuitively obvious that Hit Dice and HP should be based on race, not class. Who would seriously entertain the idea that a Goliath Wizard would have substantially less hit points than a Kobold Barbarian? Yet that is exactly what the standard rules demand is universally true about characters across settings: How durable they are depends exclusively on what their chosen field of expertise happens to be, rather than what biological characteristics they inherited from being born as a member of one entirely different species and not another.

Given that, is there a clear reason for Class remaining as the determinant for HP and Hit Dice, or is it entirely a legacy feature?

[stoutstien]

An attempt at balance mostly. HD themselves are mostly a gap filling feature to give HP some depth. They aren't a good representation on inherent toughness of race, or class for that matter, to begin with. That's better done with a high con modifier and features like stone's endurance or relentless endurance.

**Taken even further HP in it's current form isn't that great if an idea. Cut through all the discussion about what it's supposed to represent to the heart of what it's supposed to accomplish as a pacing and tension mechanic and its clear it doesn't work well.**

[Imbalance]

I keep hearing that it is because hit points aren't a life meter, they're not intended to represent "meat," and that vocational durability is the great determiner of how long a trained combatant can withstand harm in a fight. Thus, the more one trains and gains experience in their chosen vocation, the more proficient they become, and why a character on their last hit point is just as effective as they were at full HP. I think that's bs, but it's what I hear.

[Unoriginal]

Literally, the question in the title. It seems to me intuitively obvious that Hit Dice and HP should be based on race, not class.

There is no biological simulationism reasoning behind it, it is a question of class balance, plus of the fiction DnD seeks to be.



Who would seriously entertain the idea that a Goliath Wizard would have substantially less hit points than a Kobold Barbarian?

I would.



Yet that is exactly what the standard rules demand is universally true about characters across settings: How durable they are depends exclusively on what their chosen field of expertise happens to be, rather than what biological characteristics they inherited from being born as a member of one entirely different species and not another.

A class is not a "chosen field of expertise", it is what kind of archetypal aventurer the PC is. HPs and HDs are here to reinforce which archetype the PC is, on top of question of class balance and party role.

Also, HPs and HDs are mechanical abstractions of how tough the PCs are, not biological features. Characters don't grow additional livers and bone marrow as they level up to explain how they can take more than twice as much punishment at lvl 3 than they could at lvl 1.

Let's put things differently. If you play a Human Fighter, do you want to be told that the Goliath Commoner will always have more HPs than you, because they're a Goliath and you're a Human?



Given that, is there a clear reason for Class remaining as the determinant for HP and Hit Dice, or is it entirely a legacy feature?

It is not a legacy feature at all, it is simply a question of class balance, party role, and fictional archetype translated into a mechanical system.

[Mastikator]

Hit points in D&D represent more than physical health. Here's the first sentence of the rule on hit points in the Player's Handbook: "Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck."

Hit points (and thus hit dice) are not meat points as per game designer JC

A kobold barbarian has more of that than a goliath wizard.

Source: https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1270199872956686336?lang=en

[MoiMagnus]

Who would seriously entertain the idea that a Goliath Wizard would have substantially less hit points than a Kobold Barbarian?

HP's main factor is character level, constitution and class only have a minor influence. In other words, HP is about experience in fighting, and physics doesn't matter. By the same reasoning of yours, the level 1 Goliath Wizard should have more HP than the level 20 Kobold Barbarian. But it being the case would fundamentally go against the fundamental concepts of D&D.

Classes that focus their training on surviving hits and fighting in melee get extra HP from their experience.
Classes that must take a significant portion of their time studying arcane and get less HP from their experience.

The class's HD represent the tradeoff between the time someone can afford exercising in their regular days and the time they must use for study/meditation/prayer to keep their magical powers.

[Unoriginal]

Hit points (and thus hit dice) are not meat points as per game designer JC

A kobold barbarian has more of that than a goliath wizard.

Source: https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1270199872956686336?lang=en

And if Hit points were meat, the greatest human combatant would die in seconds if a tiger or a grizzly bear landed a hit or two on them.

And let's not talk about beings like dragons or giants.

[noob]

And if Hit points were meat, the greatest human combatant would die in seconds if a tiger or a grizzly bear landed a hit or two on them.

And let's not talk about beings like dragons or giants.

dnd character are obviously far greater than what is physically possible: you get to defeat giant monsters that would just collapse under their own weight in real life by hitting them with a sword: you are a fictional character that is basically hitting with a sword hard enough a fictional giant monster that is bigger than a castle and only in one fictional minute you kill it: it is far beyond anything that makes sense: what would be far more nonsensical would be that guy with such extreme power to be still as frail as a real life human: you can not hit stuff that hard if your arm would be turned in jelly by the force you use to attack.
The only vision that makes any kind of sense is for hp to actually represent the individual being physically more solid eventually becoming so solid they can use the kind of power they display in the game with no negative consequences for their health.

[Dienekes]

As others have said, HP is just an abstraction to tell you how long the character can keep fighting. D&D does not do a good job of demonstrating combat in any real sense. In the real world you parry and dodge and use your armor and very much don't get hit. Getting hit just once often means the end of the fight. But because D&D combat is really just two 5x5 squares standing in front of each other throwing attack rolls, it was decided that all that stuff would be sorta associated with HP and also some much less often used abilities because 5e does not do 1 for 1 recreations.

Now, like all abstractions there are breaking points. In the real world it does not matter how well trained you are, you can't really get covered in lava and walk away like a level 20 barbarian can, and an assassin stabbing someone in the face while they sleep doesn't have as difficult a task as they do in 5e. But, that was all deemed worthwhile for a simple and effective system.

[EggKookoo]

I keep hearing that it is because hit points aren't a life meter, they're not intended to represent "meat," and that vocational durability is the great determiner of how long a trained combatant can withstand harm in a fight. Thus, the more one trains and gains experience in their chosen vocation, the more proficient they become, and why a character on their last hit point is just as effective as they were at full HP. I think that's bs, but it's what I hear.

The answer to "are HP meat?" is "Well, yes, but actually no." HP aren't just meat. It's left to an exercise for the player to determine what percentage of a PC's total HP represents fleshy durability and what is a more abstract kind of combat readiness. But that separation is spelled out quite explicitly in the rules.

I tend to think a creature's actual meat is only the amount of HP generated via its Constitution modifier. The rest is something more abstract.

[Pildion]

Literally, the question in the title. It seems to me intuitively obvious that Hit Dice and HP should be based on race, not class. Who would seriously entertain the idea that a Goliath Wizard would have substantially less hit points than a Kobold Barbarian? Yet that is exactly what the standard rules demand is universally true about characters across settings: How durable they are depends exclusively on what their chosen field of expertise happens to be, rather than what biological characteristics they inherited from being born as a member of one entirely different species and not another.

Given that, is there a clear reason for Class remaining as the determinant for HP and Hit Dice, or is it entirely a legacy feature?

For balance purposes. Yes if Goliath and Kobolds were real, I would be willing to guess your right and the Goliath Wizard would have more then a Kobold Barbarian. But its a game so it needs to be balanced.

[Mastikator]

If HP was meat points then a riding horse would have more than 13 HP as well. (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Riding%20Horse#content) The issue is that it's really not that hard to kill someone by whacking them with a sword, a high level PC taking HP damage from weapon attacks that realistically should be extremely fatal is either glancing because fast or bouncing off because man literally to angry to die... Or whatever fiction you think is best for your PC. It's up to you (or the DM) to decide why your kobold barbarian can take so many hill giant clubs to the face.

[RSP]

Hit points (and thus hit dice) are not meat points as per game designer JC

A kobold barbarian has more of that than a goliath wizard.

Source: https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1270199872956686336?lang=en


And if Hit points were meat, the greatest human combatant would die in seconds if a tiger or a grizzly bear landed a hit or two on them.

And let's not talk about beings like dragons or giants.

HP are “meat points”, even per the JC quote (which is really just a RAW quote: “Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.”).

They also represent other stuff (luck, mental durability, and the will to live), but they definitely represent physical durability, or what some call “meat points.”

As EggKooKoo stated, the breakdown of those four elements isn’t in the rules. However, the rules do state that by the time a creature reaches ~50% HPs, they have “signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises”, so at least some of that “top” 50% of HPs are “meat points”.

[Kurt Kurageous]

You really don't want realism. Not really. Leave it alone.

I could rehash how HP came about in the design of D&D, but who cares? What I want to say here is D&D has always fallen apart when made into a simulation of RL. Trying to make it realistic leads to madness at the table. Leave that to computer simulations. And even there, you don't want realism because it won't be as much fun.

I cite an ancient example. One of the most complex rule sets I ever encountered belongs to the Avalon Hill franchise called Squad Leader. Squad Leader was a simulation of team, squad, platoon, and company level combat. It had rules in the basic game for navigating off map sewers, and the expansions eventually had rules for almost anything that might happen to a tactical unit in WW2 combat. But to play it, you had to learn it. And to learn it, you had to play it. And in playing it, you learned you aren't doing it right because there are many rules that you could forget to apply. And how to do this competitively? You needed to become a rules judge, not just a lawyer, because a lawyer argues for a side. Do you want to play a game whose primary mechanic seems to be arguing about the rules of the game until someone gives up? And you had to find someone who had an equal amount of dedication to the rules in order to get anything done in three hours. Three hours to simulate what might have been five minutes of combat...which now could be handled by an impartial CPU running a program in five minutes.

Don't seek realism. That way leads to unfun madness.

[Sigreid]

If you do want HP to be real ability to take actual damage there are systems for that. Rune Quest for example has your hp based on your size and your constitution and only goes up if you find a way to raise one or the other. Thing is, fights in that game tend to last until the first hit lands because no matter how awesome you think you are, an untrained peasant with a knife can incapacitate, maim or kill you with one lucky hit.

[Willie the Duck]

dnd character are obviously far greater than what is physically possible: you get to defeat giant monsters that would just collapse under their own weight in real life by hitting them with a sword: you are a fictional character that is basically hitting with a sword hard enough a fictional giant monster that is bigger than a castle and only in one fictional minute you kill it: it is far beyond anything that makes sense: what would be far more nonsensical would be that guy with such extreme power to be still as frail as a real life human: you can not hit stuff that hard if your arm would be turned in jelly by the force you use to attack.
The only vision that makes any kind of sense is for hp to actually represent the individual being physically more solid eventually becoming so solid they can use the kind of power they display in the game with no negative consequences for their health.

#1 reason is that D&D is a game (with definitive roles) and in this game frontline roles need to stand up to more damage than rear-line roles
#2 reason is that the game treats class and level as primary defining features and race as a secondary or tertiary one.


I keep hearing that it is because hit points aren't a life meter, they're not intended to represent "meat," and that vocational durability is the great determiner of how long a trained combatant can withstand harm in a fight. Thus, the more one trains and gains experience in their chosen vocation, the more proficient they become, and why a character on their last hit point is just as effective as they were at full HP. I think that's bs, but it's what I hear.

I could rehash how HP came about in the design of D&D, but who cares? What I want to say here is D&D has always fallen apart when made into a simulation of RL. Trying to make it realistic leads to madness at the table. Leave that to computer simulations. And even there, you don't want realism because it won't be as much fun.
Mike Mornard, one of the oD&D playtesters, has a great line (paraphrased as I don't have it at hand): 'Hit points stand for hit points and they represent hit points. The. <expletive>. End. All this 'meat,' 'luck,' 'pacing mechanism' or whatever else that gets hashed about on forums is retroactive justification (yes, even when Gary said it). We just found that the game worked better when you had states in-between perfectly fine and down (as it was in Chainmail) and it gave you points where you had to decide whether to press your luck or not.'

[Dienekes]

You really don't want realism. Not really. Leave it alone.

I could rehash how HP came about in the design of D&D, but who cares? What I want to say here is D&D has always fallen apart when made into a simulation of RL. Trying to make it realistic leads to madness at the table. Leave that to computer simulations. And even there, you don't want realism because it won't be as much fun.

I cite an ancient example. One of the most complex rule sets I ever encountered belongs to the Avalon Hill franchise called Squad Leader. Squad Leader was a simulation of team, squad, platoon, and company level combat. It had rules in the basic game for navigating off map sewers, and the expansions eventually had rules for almost anything that might happen to a tactical unit in WW2 combat. But to play it, you had to learn it. And to learn it, you had to play it. And in playing it, you learned you aren't doing it right because there are many rules that you could forget to apply. And how to do this competitively? You needed to become a rules judge, not just a lawyer, because a lawyer argues for a side. Do you want to play a game whose primary mechanic seems to be arguing about the rules of the game until someone gives up? And you had to find someone who had an equal amount of dedication to the rules in order to get anything done in three hours. Three hours to simulate what might have been five minutes of combat...which now could be handled by an impartial CPU running a program in five minutes.

Don't seek realism. That way leads to unfun madness.

Counter example, Riddle of Steel, designed by a mixture of HEMA and kenjutsu practitioners to be the most accurate melee combat simulator in ttrpg. It’s easily the most fun I’ve ever had as a warrior type in a system. Even the glorious Warblade is not even close to just a regular RoS character.

But it isn’t D&D. And most the things RoS designs around are the exact opposite of the feeling D&D provides.

[EggKookoo]

Mike Mornard, one of the oD&D playtesters, has a great line (paraphrased as I don't have it at hand): 'Hit points stand for hit points and they represent hit points. The. <expletive>. End. All this 'meat,' 'luck,' 'pacing mechanism' or whatever else that gets hashed about on forums is retroactive justification (yes, even when Gary said it). We just found that the game worked better when you had states in-between perfectly fine and down (as it was in Chainmail) and it gave you points where you had to decide whether to press your luck or not.'

The funny thing is, D&D has a reality-simulator component. It's between your ears. The rules are just, well, rules, designed to make the game playable at the table. They're no different than the rules to Uno, or chess, or poker. The mechanics are a game. How those rules manifest within the fiction is up to the players.

[Mastikator]

HP are “meat points”, even per the JC quote (which is really just a RAW quote: “Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.”).

They also represent other stuff (luck, mental durability, and the will to live), but they definitely represent physical durability, or what some call “meat points.”

As EggKooKoo stated, the breakdown of those four elements isn’t in the rules. However, the rules do state that by the time a creature reaches ~50% HPs, they have “signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises”, so at least some of that “top” 50% of HPs are “meat points”.

Yeah that's why you gain more hit points with more constitution. A wizard with 20 CON will absolutely have more HP than a barbarian with 10 for example. (182 hp wizard vs 145 hp barbarian assuming non-rolled hp)

Which means barbarians have combination of stronger will to live and more luck compared to wizards (all else being equal). This is also borne out by the class features, barbarian rage reduces damage (too angry to get hurt) and relentless rage (to angry to die). Similarly fighters get second wind, too much plot armor to die.

Edit- It should be noted that the game primarily functions based on game rules and narrative rules, not physical rules. D&D does not even try to simulate a physically consistent reality, PCs live and die at the speed of plot. Like that kid from the Matrix said, "there is no spoon", except in this case there's no meat.

[Willie the Duck]

The funny thing is, D&D has a reality-simulator component. It's between your ears. The rules are just, well, rules, designed to make the game playable at the table. They're no different than the rules to Uno, or chess, or poker. The mechanics are a game. How those rules manifest within the fiction is up to the players.

Uh, sure. That's a true statement whose relevance to my point you quoted that I am not catching.

[Unoriginal]

HP are “meat points”, even per the JC quote (which is really just a RAW quote: “Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.”).

They also represent other stuff (luck, mental durability, and the will to live), but they definitely represent physical durability, or what some call “meat points.”

As EggKooKoo stated, the breakdown of those four elements isn’t in the rules. However, the rules do state that by the time a creature reaches ~50% HPs, they have “signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises”, so at least some of that “top” 50% of HPs are “meat points”.

Let me rephrase my statement: if hit points/dice are based on biological facts extrapolated from real life, like OP was talking about, then the strongest human dies when they get hit once or twice by a grizzly bear.

[EggKookoo]

Uh, sure. That's a true statement whose relevance to my point you quoted that I am not catching.

Your post was in response to Kurt regarding simulation in D&D. I was just supporting your point.

[RSP]

Let me rephrase my statement: if hit points/dice are based on biological facts extrapolated from real life, like OP was talking about, then the strongest human dies when they get hit once or twice by a grizzly bear.

Sure, but if D&D were based on real life, there wouldn’t be any magic, monsters, planes, etc.

Thankfully for us, it’s not!

[Unoriginal]

Sure, but if D&D were based on real life, there wouldn’t be any magic, monsters, planes, etc.

Thankfully for us, it’s not!

Indeed indeed.