Quote Originally Posted by Saph View Post
edit: Actually, I'm getting interested now. Could someone more familiar than me with pre-3e D&D figure out the average starting HP of a 1st-level character in the earlier editions? Would be interesting to see the progression.
Easy enough. 1d4 for wizard, 1d6 for rogue, 1d8 for cleric, 1d10 for fighter. By the rules you actually had to roll that, so you could have one hit point, although a common houserule was max HP for first level. Then, add +1 for con 15, +2 for con 16, +3 and +4 for con 17 and 18 if you're a fighter otherwise it doesn't count.

So about 5 hp on average, I'd say. People who didn't want to be so fragile would simply start a few levels higher; this just depends on what style of campaign you want. And mind you, the earlier editions explicitly gave XP for good ideas and roleplaying, so at level one you simply were not supposed to solve your problems through combat.