Let’s take a look at Hit Die, Hit Points, & Healing in AD&D, and find out why it is the best version of Dungeons & Dragons in this How to Play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series. Buy the AD&D Players Handbook: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/17003/players-handbook-1e?affiliate_id=50797
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Transcript
Cold Open
When you understand healing, you understand how important combat tactics truly are.
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today I am going to talk about Hit Die, Hit Points, & Healing in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate links. I am referencing the AD&D Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Unearthed Arcana for this information. If I leave anything out or misspeak, please leave a comment below!
Discussion
It is nigh impossible to discuss healing in AD&D without first addressing hit points. While I presented the concept briefly in the How to Make a Character in AD&D video, we should dive in a little bit deeper here. Every character and monster has a varying number of hit points. They represent how much damage you may withstand before being killed. In an abstract sense, hit points represent both the actual physical punishment you can sustain in addition to skill, luck and magical factors at higher levels. When you realize that the typical man-at-arms has a mere 5 hit points, it truly puts the concept into focus, including the importance for downtime between adventures and hirelings if you don’t have a cleric in your party, not to mention healing potions and scrolls for adventuring! All of this builds on the importance of economy in AD&D. For without adventuring you could never afford to hire hirelings or purchase potions or scrolls. But you can’t adventure without some form of healing and downtime.
Hit points are determined by hit dice. At first level a character has 1 hit die, with the exception of rangers and monks who begin with 2. At each successive level, another hit die is gained, with a level cap determined by your class. While you may regain hit points with magical spells, items and natural healing, you may never recover more than you began with. So if you have 10 hit points and lose 5 of them, then you are healed for 8, you would only be healed up to your original 10. Your character’s class will determine which die you use for your hit die in addition to its level maximum. Upon character creation you would roll that die, and apply any constitution modifiers you may have to determine starting hit points. And if you roll unluckily, you would begin with very few hit points. This is a common problem that was addressed in the Unearthed Arcana.
Because survival past the first level is so difficult in AD&D, the Unearthed Arcana offers an alternate option. If your initial roll for hit points does not meet or exceed the minimum offered, you instead take this minimum. This is intended to assist in the initial hurdle of potential bad luck in a PC’s roll. We should address multi-classed characters briefly here, as they handle hit points and hit die a bit differently. First of all only non- or semi-human characters may be milti-classed. With further restrictions on race and class options including the racial maximums per class. Humans have the dual class option which I will address in future episodes. Multi-classed characters would roll one hit die for each of their classes, then divide that total by the number of classes. So if an elven fighter/mage/thief rolled a 5 for his fighter’s d10, a 2 for his mage’s d4, and a 3 for his thief’s d6, he would have a total of 10 hit points to be divided by the 3 classes equalling 3 hit points. But if they referenced the Unearthed Arcana, and took that average, they would instead have 6 for fighter, 3 for mage, and 4 for thief equalling starting hit points of 4. While 1 hit point is only 1, at first level it could mean the difference between life and death.
Now that we understand what hit points are and how many you begin play with, let’s talk about regaining them. Everyone understands that you can lose them from interacting with the environment, poison and disease, combat and magical spells. But to regain hit points in AD&D, it is decidedly more difficult than modern versions of the game. The most mundane way to regain hit points is to rest for an entire day. You gain 1 hit point by doing this. If you rest for 30 consecutive days, regardless of your hit point total, you will be fully healed. Your character’s constitution also affects this both positively and negatively depending on the ability score. If you have a -2 hit point adjustment that is applied to a week of rest, so instead of 7 hit points you would recover only 5. With the first two days restoring no hit points. After the first week of rest a character with a bonus would restore the 7 hit points plus the modifier.
Thankfully this is not the only way to recover your lost hit points. Paladin’s have a ’lay on hands’ ability which equates to them praying over you and calling on their deity to heal you. Clerics have spells that, due to their deities’ power, may restore lost hit points. And magical potions and scrolls mimic those very same healing effects. Arcane magic may even be used to restore hit points, for example by a ‘wish’ spell.
Various divine and arcane spells and effects may even provide you with temporary hit points or even temporary levels which affect the number of hit die you have, and thus the number of hit points you have. All temporary hit die, points, or levels are lost after the spell effect lapses, so make sure you are keeping track of those changes. Once temporary hit points are lost, and they are the first to be removed on subsequent damaging effects after having gained them, you return to your original number of hit points, and if you had fewer than your maximum, you return to that amount. Some creatures’ effects even remove levels temporarily and permanently! So you will have to adjust your hit dice and hit points accordingly. To account for this, you may wish to keep track of what you rolled for each new level gained, and refer to it when you lose a level, to account for the accurate number of hit points lost and gained, or alternatively you can simply roll the hit die for that level lost and subtract that amount.
Naturally through the course of adventuring you may be reduced to 0 hit points. If you are reduced to 0 hit points, or up to -3 from the same blow, you fall unconscious. In each of the successive rounds, you will lose an additional -1 to your hit points until reaching -10 which means that you are dead. This is due to bleeding, shock, convulsions, non-respiration, etc. This continuous loss ceases immediately on the round that a friendly character administers aid to the unconscious character. This aid may take the form of binding wounds, starting respiration, administering a draught, or otherwise restoring life. Once restored the unconscious character will remain in a coma for 1-6 turns. Afterward they will require a full week of uninterrupted rest at a minimum before regular activity may be continued. This is even true for cure spells and healing potions administered after having reached 0 hit points. With the exception of a heal spell which removed the aforementioned restriction.
A final note is that any PC that reaches -6 hit points or greater will suffer scarring and loss of memory! The physical toll they have taken is simply too much for their physiology to handle.
When you understand just how malleable and random hit points may be, even within a single class due to the roll of a hit die, you begin to appreciate how important it is to work together, and plan out your adventure before leaving the safety of your town. And how important it is to have an ample supply of help, in the form of henchmen and hirelings, not to mention the cooperation and tactics involved in overcoming encounters and combat during the adventure.
Outro
But that is all the time I have to talk about hit die, hit points & healing in AD&D. What do you think of the difficulty in healing in AD&D? Does it make you appreciate clerics all the more? And finally do you use diseases in your home games? Leave a comment below.
I would like to take a moment and remind you to subscribe to this YouTube channel, ring the bell to get notified about upcoming videos and click the like button. This all goes to help other Dragonlance fans learn about this channel and its content. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time, remember:
Random chance plays a huge part in everybody’s life.
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