I'll take a stab at it, but I'm probably wrong.

We just had some problems framing up a hip roof - and not just an entry way hip, but the whole house. The framer (who is not an architect) did his regular hip framing, and assumed all the angles and hips were typical to his prior experience. And he was wrong, because our architect had drawn up something more complicated. Maybe your architect knows that asking a framing carpenter to do something like option B will invite trouble.

I look forward to someone answering who can show the math, LOL!

A short ridge on your hip would really look better than your irregular half-pyramid proposal. IMHO, such a roof would be dreadfully awful. Have you considered a metal soldered-seam nearly flat hip roof with a neat little balustrade around it?
It would still be uneven pitch, but it would be so low (1/12 pitch) the railing/balusters would hide it. And that style would be very much in keeping with the Queen Anne thing you have going there.
Casey

When the slopes of a hipped roof are different, the eave overhangs and drips/gutters are different and create an odd condition at the corners that require a good framer to resolve. Most architects don't want to have to trust the skill of the carpenter or draw fussy details that are not likely to be used (or paid for). It's easier to make up silly stories about how architects work.

I agree that the taller hip with a short ridge to allow equal slopes is better as long as it still allows the view you want. My advice is to find a compromise scheme rather than use either of the two proposals.

Thanks for the input!

macv, thanks for the knowledge about the framing. That's a technical answer I can wrap my scientific brain around. :-) And karen_belle's experience seems to illustrate the difficulty.

Casey, thanks for that suggestion. I'm having trouble imagining what you describe. Where does the short ridge go? Do you mean more like a flat rectangle, like the side porch on the right in the first photo?

Or more like the typical hip roof sits on an entire house, but the 'house' would be just this back ell?

Thanks!
Lee

macv, there's no need for the soffits to be unequal, provided the carpenter knows what he's doing.
Not being terribly bright myself, I always mock up a temporary sub-facia om blocking and work back from it. I stretch a masons line for the hip, and can get accurate enough measurements to get the hip rafter in a try or two. I did this hip a few years ago where the pitch on the 14' run was 4/12, and the adjoining 7' run was almost 8/12. It was kind of a framer's dream, because the corner was not 90* it was 95*! Sweet framing job.
Casey

The only way to align the rafter tails is to lower the top plate of the wall carrying the lower sloped rafters which seems simple until you try to layout the hip rafter. Like I said, maybe the architect doesn't trust the skill of the carpenter.

Would too much of the view be blocked by a conventional equal pitch hip?
Consider where you would actually have to stand for the higher ridge to be an issue with the sight line.

Hi macv, thanks for the example.

By "equal pitch", does that mean the slope of the diagonal in your example is at a 45 deg. angle?

I'm just trying to understand if I'm reading the example correctly. To my untrained eye, it looks like it's the architect's Option B, but at the existing height where the ridge line is currently. Is my understanding correct?

I do think that will give me what I desire "view"-wise. When it's daytime tomorrow, I'll take some digital pics of the view out the 2nd story window so you can see what I mean.

Thanks again for the great input!
Lee