OD&D Conundrums: Hit Points

 In most versions of D&D, hit points aren't a conundrum at all.  You have a certain amount (increasing as you gain levels), you lose some when you get hurt, and when you run out you're incapacitated or dead.  Couldn't be much simpler than that.  Certainly there are quibbles over just what hit points represent, but their mechanical function is about as unambiguous and rock solid as it gets for D&D rule systems.

OD&D is a slightly different story, as a look at this snippet of the Fighting-Man table will show:

1st level is easy enough to figure out: a Fighting-Man of that level gets 1d6+1 hit points.  But then at second, the total is 2d6.  Where did that +1 go?  Ignore the plusses and it's a solid 1d6 per level progression.  But they are there, and they're inconsistently applied.  There's a similar problem with the hit point progressions for Magic-Users and Clerics.

Pretty much every edition of D&D follows the system introduced in Supplement I: Greyhawk.  You roll your hit points at 1st level, that's your total, and you add to it with another roll whenever you gain a level.  There aren't any odd fluctuating bonuses to worry about.

But the rules I'm concerned with are from before Supplement I.  This is primordial D&D, and it requires a little more interpretation.  Of course, greater minds than mine have tackled this problem in the dim dark ages of the OSR.  In a lot of ways I'm retreading ground that's been covered by others, but a lot of that was circa 15 years ago, so I figure someone might find it of value.  And I always find it helps solidify my own thoughts on things when I sit and type them out.  I'm well aware that solutions to this conundrum have been proposed, so I'll run through the ones I'm aware of.

• Add all the bonuses: This one is pretty straightforward.  You just add all of the bonuses as you go, so in the above progression it would be 1+1, 2+1, 3+1, up to 4+1 at 4th level.  Then at 5th level, an extra +1 would be added, and the total is actually 5+2.  By the time you get to 10th level, instead of the 10+1 indicated you'd actually have 10+9.  It's simple, but I feel like it's contradictory to the rules on the page.
• Roll every level: Whenever you gain a level, you roll what's indicated and that's your total.  At 1st level, you have 1+1 hp.  When you gain a level, you roll 2d6 and that's your new hp total, regardless of what you had before.  Oh, your hp total went down?  Sucks to be you, go cry about it.  Again, I don't love this one.  It would average out over time, but I don't like the thought of a high-level character getting stuck with a shitty hp total for a lengthy period of time.
• Roll every level, always increase:  This is basically the previous method, but your hp total always increases when you gain a level.  Some DMs let their players keep rolling until they get a higher total, and some will just give you a 1 hp increase if you roll lower.  I definitely don't love the reroll method, and even the heartless DM in my soul doesn't take much joy from enforcing a 1 hp increase.
• Reroll every adventure:  So with this method, the PC rerolls their hp total at the beginning of each game session.  Whatever you roll, that's what you're stuck with for that game, and you have to survive based on that.  Now this I do like, and I'll get into why at further length below.

As you might have gathered, I'm going with the last method listed.  I like the flavour and the uncertainty of it.  If we consider hit points as a measure of skill, well-being, health, divine favour, and other factors, those things can fluctuate.  Some days you feel great, some days you feel terrible.  Maybe you have the flu, maybe you're hung over, or maybe Gragnaxikull the Axe Lord isn't smiling down at you from his mountaintop today...  Whatever the reason, there'll be days where luck and skill are on your side and it seems like nothing can kill you, and there'll be days when the opposite is true.  That'll be up to my players to explain once the rolls have been made, should they care to.

Of course there are drawbacks.  The first is, how does this work with healing?  You regain hp at a rate of 1 per day (or in OD&D, 1 per other day; I'm still not sure if that's what Gary meant, but it's what he wrote).  But how does that work when your total fluctuates between games?  I'll probably have to record how much damage a character has taken on each adventure, calculate the amount healed between games, and apply any damage still left to their new roll.  Sometimes, a player might actually roll a hp total less than their wounds total, and this will mean their character just isn't up to adventuring.  They're sick, or their wound is infected, or something.  Whatever it is, that character's out and the player will have to use another for this game.  I don't think it's going to be a super-likely occurrence, but I'm sure the dice will make it happen at some point. (They always do...)

There will no doubt be players who will say, "What if we rest another day, or a week?  Do I get a reroll?"  To this I'll have to say no.  Sometimes the game is a game, and that's how the rules work.  I'm even considering not letting them roll until the first time they take damage; talk about uncertainty!  I like the thought of that added sense of mortality, but I also feel like it's unfair on the players.  They have to be able to gauge the level of danger they can take on, or the game becomes too based on random chance.

Another thing I'm thinking of is tying this into a character's upkeep payments.  As written in OD&D, a PC must pay gold pieces equal to 1% of their experience points per month.  (It doesn't actually say per month in the published game, but I'm going with that.)  What isn't written is what happens if a PC fails to pay that amount.  Hit point rerolls are my answer to that, in combination with the 5e disadvantage rule.  So if a PC can't or won't pay their upkeep at the start of a game session, they roll their hp total twice and take the worst total.  I know, I know, bringing 5e rules into an OD&D campaign?  Heresy, blasphemy, abhorrent apostasy...  But what can I say, I like the advantage/disadvantage rules.  They might be the best thing to come out of 5e.

Of course, this whole system probably only works in the kind of game I'm planning, where each session would be a single adventure or dungeon delve.  In games where time gets paused between sessions, it makes less sense for a character to suddenly drop in skill or divine favour or whatever.  But in a game with shorter delves, rotating players and PCs, and time passing between sessions?  I feel like it's going to work really well.  At the moment it's all conjecture, but I'll be reporting on it here when it hits the table.