Disclaimer: This topic is completely silly and for fun. Lets keep it light, I know how serious some people like to take this stuff. Also, for my 4d6 statistics, I ran 4 million random number simulations to get the numbers. So the % should be very close, certainly close enough for this, but they are not statistically perfect.
Its the eternal question. Sure PCs get big hitpoints and levels and XYZ, but how about your normal, stock human. How many hitpoints do they really have? Its the eternal question, and through the power of physics, it can finally be settled, once and for all!
So lets start with a fun fact: A human that falls from a height of 48 feet (4 stories) has a 50% chance to die. Yes its really that high, apparently we humans are more durable than you might think. Now doesn't mean your not heinously injured, but you can survive a very high fall a decent amount of the time.
5e teaches us that falling deals 1d6 damage per 10 feet, or 4d6 damage. Some of you may want to round up to 50 feet or 5d6....but this is dnd damn it, and we round down!
Now in 5e, there are two ways that a fall could kill us:
So our second fun fact: An unconscious 5e character has a 57.6% chance to survive without assistance. If nothing else in this post interests you, enjoy that statistic. That includes rolling 20s and nat 1, its the whole show, and took me some effort to calculate!
So now we crunch the numbers. What hitpoint number gives us the appropriate life and death numbers to get us our 50% survive rate?
The answer: 9 hp.
At 9 hp:
% Live Straight up (aka take 9 or less damage on 4d6): 9.75%
% Die Straight up (aka take 18 or more damage on 4d6): 15.90%
% Fall Unconscious (10-17 damage): 74.35%
Total % Death Chance: %Death + %Unconscious and Bleed out = 47.4%
That is the closest to the 50% number we can get. At 8 hp, the death chance is way too high (59.4%).
So I expect everyone to take this number as gospel and now go update all of your adventures so that all normal humans have 9 hp. The math has spoken!
Its the eternal question. Sure PCs get big hitpoints and levels and XYZ, but how about your normal, stock human. How many hitpoints do they really have? Its the eternal question, and through the power of physics, it can finally be settled, once and for all!
So lets start with a fun fact: A human that falls from a height of 48 feet (4 stories) has a 50% chance to die. Yes its really that high, apparently we humans are more durable than you might think. Now doesn't mean your not heinously injured, but you can survive a very high fall a decent amount of the time.
5e teaches us that falling deals 1d6 damage per 10 feet, or 4d6 damage. Some of you may want to round up to 50 feet or 5d6....but this is dnd damn it, and we round down!
Now in 5e, there are two ways that a fall could kill us:
- Deals damage = double our hitpoints = instant death
- Deals damage above hitpoints -> die by death saves
So our second fun fact: An unconscious 5e character has a 57.6% chance to survive without assistance. If nothing else in this post interests you, enjoy that statistic. That includes rolling 20s and nat 1, its the whole show, and took me some effort to calculate!
So now we crunch the numbers. What hitpoint number gives us the appropriate life and death numbers to get us our 50% survive rate?
The answer: 9 hp.
At 9 hp:
% Live Straight up (aka take 9 or less damage on 4d6): 9.75%
% Die Straight up (aka take 18 or more damage on 4d6): 15.90%
% Fall Unconscious (10-17 damage): 74.35%
- Unconscious but Stable: .7435 * .576 = .428 = 42.8%
- Unconscious and bleed out: .7435 * .424 = .315 = 31.5%
Total % Death Chance: %Death + %Unconscious and Bleed out = 47.4%
That is the closest to the 50% number we can get. At 8 hp, the death chance is way too high (59.4%).
So I expect everyone to take this number as gospel and now go update all of your adventures so that all normal humans have 9 hp. The math has spoken!

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