The Issue of Hit Point Inflation and Related Materia

I see hit point inflation (and I'm doing something now I should have done a long time ago, I'm gonna do away with hit points in my game) as turning battles into grinding bar-room brawls instead of intense, dangerous, lethal, combat encounters.

I've got no interest in fighters who win combats through no better, more efficient, or more clever means than by slow attrition because that is the way a system is designed to promote the idea of combat.

Combatants should be efficient and effective killers, not brawlers, (especially fighters, in any other situation professional combatants are trained and practice to kill, not to "attrit away hit points") and monsters should be dangerous and highly lethal, not fat piñatas that it takes an hour to break open.

When I opened up the 4E Monster Manual and saw Orcus had 1,525 hit points, and that a Blue Dragon had 1,290 hit points I said to myself, "hell, these aren't creatures, or even beings, these are BOLOs and M1 Abrams."

If I wanted to fight a supercarrier or an imaginary walking tank with a thin sliver of something I hold in my hand I'll do it with Jedi mind powers and a lightsabre. At least I'd have some kind of cartoony chance of success.

But if I've got to put down a Demon with 1,525 hit points by no better method than hit point attrition (no matter the actual method of attrition) then as far as I'm concerned hit points have run their course of usefulness.

The way I understand it (and I could easily be wrong) is that editions kept escalating; previous damage was too high, so now monsters have more HP. And that prompts power creep so PCs can more quickly dispatch monsters as the various supplements get combined into things never anticipated by the creators. I know that in all previous campaigns I've played the PCs always ended up as glass ninjas, capable of defeating horrid monsters but not capable of surviving counterattacks on the same scale.

4e broke with this tradition, like it did with many others, and did the math from scratch. HP at first level was increased to give everybody time to learn to play and from there on both HP and damage increase steadily and more or less equally (although I recall I've already seen an epic rogue build that can pulverize just about any non-solo in a single round, who knows what the future brings).

Now moving from 3ed to 4th did feel like a major inflation particularly at low levels, but that has seemed to slow down a bit as we climbed through the heroic tier.

Click to expand...

Quite so.

1st level Goblin Warrior (level 1 skirmisher) 29 HP

10th level Wyvern (level 10 skirmisher) 106 HP

20th level Rimefire Griffin (Level 20 Skirmisher) 186

So the 10th level monster has about 3X the HP of the 1st level monster, and the 20th level version has less than double the amount of the 10th level beast. The big jump in HP's is largely frontloaded, which can make low levels feel odd until you get used to it.

scrubkai said:

I don't know...
All of our 1E monsters had HP= HD*8.
So going to 3rd edition was actually a nice step down in HP...

Now moving from 3ed to 4th did feel like a major inflation particularly at low levels, but that has seemed to slow down a bit as we climbed through the heroic tier.

Click to expand...

d8 hd for monsters was the standard in 1E. 3E had some monsters with less but the big guys (giants, dragons) had even more.

4E seems to have a lot more front loaded, but its on a totally different scale. For comparison a 1E ancient red dragon might have 88 hp, and in 4E a small (4th level) black dragon has over 300.

Irda Ranger said:

I like it.

Simple arithmetic is still simple. I can do it in my head, so I'm not "suffering" anything for having more HP and damage.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I don't understand when people say things like "higher numbers is more number crunching". I don't consider having to add or subtract bigger numbers more often "crunching". Or having to do it more times in a single combat.

And there are benefits:

1) More predictable combat (for the DM). It's more grindy than 3E but also less swingy. There's a tradeoff between those two variables (and no Door #3), so I guess I just subjectively prefer being able to easily gauge how tough a given fight will be. That fight with 1e Lloth could end up a cake walk by either side depending on how the dice roll, while a 4e fight with Lloth is much more a know quantity.

1.b) This does not mean fights are more predictable for PCs. He could be a Minion. He could be an Elite Brute Leader.

2) Feats, items, powers, etc. can add +1 here, +2 there without screwing everything up. You can have some flavor and a shtick without being over-poweringly awesome with your preferred weapon and nerfy with anything else. Instead you're "better than decent" with your preferred weapon and "respectably competent" with everything else. That's a Good Thing (TM) when you need to improvise a weapon or use a particular silver sword.

Click to expand...

Precisely. In response to number one, I think someone said something like (paraphrasing) "leaving it to the DM's description to give players an idea of how challenging a monster would be"... good! I mean, I don't really consider that more work for the DM, I just kind thought that was what I was supposed to be doing.

#2 is more straight to the point. If the numbers were slimmer, a +1 bonus then takes on a whole new meaning. With less room for bonuses and increases, we leave less opportunity for player options. The current range of feats sometimes offer only +1 and +2 bonuses, so scaling them down would be a rediculous prospect. The only thing you can do is cut down the number of feats of give players less of them.

The scaled up numbers have allowed for a huge range of slight adjustments. Many people don't like the current state of feats, but I love it. Because you have 18 of them by the time you're level 30. Even if they're not as powerful or significant, the increased amount of slight adjustments allows me to have a more unique character.

It's really more about preference. Do you prefer that old style of dangerous, seat-of-your-pants adventuring? Or are you into the more tactical, new style a game like 4th Edition offers.

Jack7 said:

I see hit point inflation (and I'm doing something now I should have done a long time ago, I'm gonna do away with hit points in my game) as turning battles into grinding bar-room brawls instead of intense, dangerous, lethal, combat encounters.

I've got no interest in fighters who win combats through no better, more efficient, or more clever means than by slow attrition because that is the way a system is designed to promote the idea of combat.

Combatants should be efficient and effective killers, not brawlers, (especially fighters, in any other situation professional combatants are trained and practice to kill, not to "attrit away hit points") and monsters should be dangerous and highly lethal, not fat piñatas that it takes an hour to break open.

When I opened up the 4E Monster Manual and saw Orcus had 1,525 hit points, and that a Blue Dragon had 1,290 hit points I said to myself, "hell, these aren't creatures, or even beings, these are BOLOs and M1 Abrams."

If I wanted to fight a supercarrier or an imaginary walking tank with a thin sliver of something I hold in my hand I'll do it with Jedi mind powers and a lightsabre. At least I'd have some kind of cartoony chance of success.

But if I've got to put down a Demon with 1,525 hit points by no better method than hit point attrition (no matter the actual method of attrition) then as far as I'm concerned hit points have run their course of usefulness.

Click to expand...

Yeah, hit point totals like that make me want to not use hp either.

Any ideas on a replacement? Active defenses? Maybe we should fork this to another thread.

Spatula said:

Whereas in 1e you can take on groups of dragons with no problem (not to mention the player-favorite of finding a dragon asleep, killing the helpless beast, and getting the XP & GP for no effort)

Click to expand...

You must be kidding! In 1e it was strike-to-subdue all the way, baby! The rules for subdueing dragons were, shall we say, well tested

Spatula said:

3e boosted hit points across the board, for monsters and players, but player damage is also a LOT higher.

Click to expand...

Sorry to quote you again, but the comment about player damage is true for all classes except wizards, whose damage remains about the same, perhaps lower. Metamagic feats and 3.0e haste allowed wizards to keep up in the damage causing stakes, but in 3.5 they didn't have a chance to match up with the damage caused by fighter or flanking rogue full attacks (and that is before energy resistance is brought into play)

Cheers

Jack7 said:

I've got no interest in fighters who win combats through no better, more efficient, or more clever means than by slow attrition because that is the way a system is designed to promote the idea of combat.

Click to expand...

What do you mean?

I can see a couple of readings: that tactics don't matter, it's just hit hit hit is he dead yet? hit hit hit oh good I win.

Or maybe you're saying that you don't want HP to be what ends a fight. I don't know what other methods you're thinking of, though.

You're all forgetting the biggest reason why the hit points have gotten so high. The character's LEVELS have gotten high. The higher your level, the more hit points and damage you do.

* 4E you go to level 30
* 3E you went to level 20
* 1E you were *lucky* if you got to level 15, and most races besides human didn't even let you go that high (as well as a couple classes like the druid and assassin that topped you out as well).

So of course the highest level monster will have staggering numbers of hit points. It's common sense. So if you want to try and make parallels between 4E and 1E... end your skim through the Monster Manual at EL15.

Now granted, even then there is a disparate number of hit points between a Level 15 4E monster and 1E monster... but that's also because in 1E you stopped earning full HP after level 9. You got 1 to 3 HP per level and that's it. But the question you need to ask yourself is if that's really fun? Do you really want to cut down your 4E hit points once you reach paragon tier to a single HP per level (if you're a wizard)? If that single HP is better than so-called "grinding"... then great, more power to you! But I'm pretty sure the designers wanted leveling to actually have meaning. Which 1 to 3 HPs once you hit 10th level most certainly does not.