The topic of HP gain per level

Hello everyone,

I noticed that on the server NWN:EE is still rolling HP, but you have the chance to reroll at the "confirm" button in exchange for having to redo your entire level, including skill points.

I argue that the status quo is indefensibly bad from a game design perspective, but I am on the fence on what the optimal solution is.

I cannot say what the intent of the HP rolling is, but here is the result:

• Players have the option to spend a lot of time rerolling each level to get maximum HP values. This time is not interactive, not enjoyable, and random, making it very frustrating.
  
• Not wasting that time means consciously accepting a "bad" choice, which feels bad man.
  
• If you decide you want to be as close to PnP as possible and just accept the rolls, you have to accept that other players will not do this, and will have a distinct PvP advantage against your character. Thus there is heavy pressure to bite the bullet and reroll every time.
  

That sucks.

The question is what solution is most appropriate?

The object of HP is to balance the classes against each other and against encounters. NWN is based on D&D, and D&D balances on average hp rolled, rounded up. So a druid with 10 con gets 5 hp a level (average roll for 1d8 is 4.5, rounded to 5.)

The question I have is, is NWN balanced the same way?

If so, perhaps to maintain balanced encounters (CR 5 should be an appropriate monster for four level 5 PCs) it may be important to give everyone the average.

The same issue remains when balancing between classes.

With 10 con, a barbarian would get 7 hp a level. That is only 2 hp more than the druid. If we get maximum values, the difference between hp becomes 4, instead of 2. That gives the barbarian quite the buff over 40 levels.

It seems to me, then, that a good solution would be to manually set everyone's level-up HP to average HP dice + con.

It could be argued though that barbarians and such high HP dice classes are weaker than spellcasters and need the HP bump. Also, in NWN we fight waaaaaay more monsters than PnP D&D. In a D&D play session, it takes 2-4 hours to have an encounter and kill maybe 5 or 6 monsters. In NWN, we kill that many in 5 minutes. Thus encounters balanced for PnP are perhaps too difficult for NWN, and therefore all characters need a slight buff. (Note that spellcasters have already received a buff for this: they can rest to get spells FAR more frequently than in PnP.)

What does everyone else think? Do you agree that the current state of things is bad? Should we adjust HP to be average, or max? Or leave it as an option?