That's cool, I'm confident you know what's best for your group, and that's all that matters of course!beermotor wrote:Yeah, but even a more likely result of -1 or -2 is still potentially crippling, combined with the randomness of the HD rolls.phg wrote:Otoh, that character is *extremely* rare. First you have to roll a "3" for a stat (about 3% chance), and then for the Luck stat in particular (1/6 chance, cumulatively about .5% chance ), and then the auger for HP (1/30 chance, cumulatively about .015%). So out of 10,000 randomly generated characters, you'd end up with the poor fellow in question (1hp/level), but you'd also come across his uber-lucky cousin with +3hp/level...beermotor wrote: Maybe that's not a terrible result, but what if dude is average to solid otherwise, but has a 3 luck and gets Bountiful harvest. Yay, 1hp/level forever? That's not going to last long, no matter what the AC.
I liked what people were saying above about making the Birth Augur just a flat +1. I think I'm going to do that.
Some of this is just framing and perception, and has much, much less bearing on character viability/survivability than the thousands of happenstances that make up the character's life. Over a theoretical 20 session arc that takes a party from 1st to 3rd level, there will be only three rolls for HP. Regardless of the Birth Auger, it is entirely conceivable that Al the warrior rolls 8, 4, 9 (not bad!) whereas Bob the warrior rolls 3, 6, 2 (ouch!).
Please don't take this as an argument; I'm more just spitballing some observations! My favorite characters have sometimes been the "crippled" characters that manage to survive and ultimately flourish, if it isn't clear from my advocacy.