When I was a kid, we just added the HP bonus once. Thus, 3HD +1 would be 3d8+1.
I feel like this is the way the rules intended it but at the same time it feels kind of stupid to me lol. Like, what’s the point?
What I mean is - the likelihood that 1 extra hp will matter is very low. But 3 hp (or 4, or 5 etc.) is the difference between surviving a hit from a longsword or not.
I dunno - it’s not important at the end ofc the day, but dang, Old D&D - why you so nebulous all the time lol
I think you are right, but back then lots of d4 for their HD magic-users would beg to differ about the importance of one extra HP. For monsters, most modules literally rolled the HP for each individual, though I think some of the modern OSR variants still do this. Sometimes the BBE would be shockingly weak thanks to RNG. The 5e practice of taking the mean of all the HD for monsters or PCs was unknown.