At level one, can you really never recover hit dice?

Question

I was reading a review of 5e game play here from our RSS Feed. And in it he makes an observation about a strange rule:

Weird rule thing. You recover half your level in hit dice during a long rest, which means level 1 characters never recover hit dice.

That didn't make sense to me, and so I double checked the long rest rule and it reads:

At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost it points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them. For example, if a character has eight Hit Dice, he or she can regain four spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest.

And of course the rules state that in general you always round down.

Am I missing something? Is there a good explanation for why at first level you can't recover hitdice?

Answer 1

A few folks have mentioned to me that Mike Mearls has stated elsewhere that it's an oversight in the text, and the intent is that a level 1 character should recover 1 hit die. Seems likely errata-fodder.

@MrMattFree : Hit dice question! Basic rules say you get half your HD back at a long rest but doesn't say round up. What does a 1st lvl do?

@mikemearls : should be minimum 1.

The rules for long rests were later updated to say that the minimum is 1 hit die.

The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die). (PBRv0.2 p.67, PHB5e p.186)