I have been playing patch 5 and feeling like my characters were underpowered. However, it was weird, because when I went into the Underdark I was able to handily beat the two minotaurs there just after I hit level 4. I completed the main storyline, so I have just been going around doing some of the side quests, and completed the hag as well. My next mission was to check out the gith patrol. I went up there, and when the fight started, one of the gith took down 3 of my characters in the very first round. I noticed the gith are all level 5 and they all have 65+ hitpoints. That's when I looked at my own characters hitpoints critically for the first time. Lae'zel is at MAX level with only 36 hps?! Are we rolling hps now on each level or something? What gives? Is this a bug?

For a second, I thought "maybe I'm crazy and I'm just imagining that level 4 toons have more hps" but then I went to look at some of my characters on DNDBeyond and all my level 4 fighter-type characters have well over 40hps, some even have 60 (a level 4 var human barb with 17 const).

I get that maybe we're not supposed to complete this particular piece at the moment, but something seems wrong with the way hps are being calculated, unless they are actually rolling hps. I didn't see that anywhere though, so if anyone has a link to the announcement, please send it my way. Thanks!

36 is what a d10 hit die character will have at level 4 if they take formal average each level and have a +2 constitution.

(10 + 2 at 1st, then 6+2 at 2nd,3rd and 4th = 36)

I don't recall any of our EA characters breaking 40 at any point under the various patches or versions, and the numbers they arrive at have always been the same, so I'm fairly certain that that is what they're doing.

The opposite to this is that *enemies* don't play by the same rules, under Larian.

The Githyanki patrol eat their Wheaties.

They may also eat their young.....

I hope they will stick with the average for player HP. Otherwise they will skewer balance again in favor of d10 classes and especially barbarians.

They should lower enemy NPC HP though. Pumped enemy HP only encourages more cheese tactics. Fireball and such "powerful" spells would feel miserable against lvl 5 gith with 91hp.

Not even that, you get a few dodgy dice-rolls at levelup and your front line fighter's only got 14 health. At which point they're just dead weight.

Classic DNd problem since the start. Ridiculous low hp at low levels, maybe they gonna fix that at 6e but i wouldn't bet on it.

Yeah random HP has never been a good idea. It's just a way to randomly ruin a character or make them mysteriously tougher than others. "Why is that 16 Con Fighter squishier than the Wizard" is a tough question to answer.

I also hope they're going to buff 1st level hp in 6e. One hit kills are just dumb when it's not even a critical hit. Something like Con score + HD avg would be appropriate imo to buff the starting HP to around 14-23.