D&D 5E Would you change a monster's hit points mid-fight?

Elf Witch said:

Because I am a masochist is that the answer you are looking for? I mean really are you going to claim that you have never found an encounter, or combat boring? if you haven't then bless you and consider yourself lucky.

I think many of us have had an encounter that was not really supposed to be that important and you end up with the monsters almost dead and the PCs hardly hurt but the dice rolls start sucking and the players keep missing and so do the monsters and you can see the players enjoyment just going out the window as the encounter drags on and on. In a case like that it is just easier to say when they finally hit that killed him.

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No, the answer I am looking for is the answer to the question I posed.

edit: There are obviously many reasons why you'd want to do this (play a system that generates results that bore you out of your mind), but I'm curious. I would like to know what your reasons are.

emdw45 said:

No. It's contrary to sandboxing.

Edit: in case of Monster of Valuable Plot, I probably still wouldn't keep the monster alive because it is contrary to sandboxing, but if I wanted to do so for some reason I would award my players a karma point, congratulate them for beating him so badly that the Fates intervened to keep him alive, and proceed from there. Players can use karma points to rewind TPKs ("it was a dream of warning") and make other retcons to the story, like "I guess I had a backup spellbook that I can still use now that my main spellbook got incinerated."

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I did that in OGL Conan - every time the GM screwed the PCs over by eg having them be shipwrecked, they would get a Fate Point. Worked great there, I'd be hesitant to do it in most versions of D&D but I could maybe see it in 5e - every time the GM/Fate intervenes to screw over the PCs, give them Inspiration.

Elf Witch said:

Because I am a masochist is that the answer you are looking for? I mean really are you going to claim that you have never found an encounter, or combat boring? if you haven't then bless you and consider yourself lucky.

I think many of us have had an encounter that was not really supposed to be that important and you end up with the monsters almost dead and the PCs hardly hurt but the dice rolls start sucking and the players keep missing and so do the monsters and you can see the players enjoyment just going out the window as the encounter drags on and on. In a case like that it is just easier to say when they finally hit that killed him.

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I think there is a large difference between very occasionally having this problem where you need to change things (whether numerically fudging numbers or narratively) and having to do it on a frequent basis. If this happens a lot, it means the DM is having issues using the (encounter building) rules to create desired scenarios. This may be due to lack of experience or bad judgement calls on the DM's behalf, or it could be a problem with the rules themselves. For example, the scenario you just provided could be avoided using something like 13th Age's escalation die to add a bonus to all rolls each round, or having a "lucky" ability or Action Points to allow rerolls or bonuses on misses... Which reminds me I need to reread the Inspiration and variant rules regarding that again.

Elf Witch said:

Right because the opportunity to make a shot like that from the furthest range increment with one arrow left and then roll a crit and then roll max damage, oh and the DM had a house rule that if you rolled a natural 20 to confirm a crit you got to add an extra D6 of damage to the roll, is going to happen all that often.

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What I don't get is how a brooch of shielding stopped your arrow crit - don't they just stop magic
missiles?

Even if the Elf had had anti-arrow magic, in that situation good GMing would have been to rule that the hand of the gods steered your arrow and it went through his sorcerous defences. It's common though just to stick to RAW, either due to tiredness and other causes of mediocre GMing, or because the GMing is running a hardcore Gamist game. But breaking the rules to negate your achievement would be terrible GMing, even if done by mistake.

I've fudged HP both upward and downward in Lost Mines of Phandelver:

1. Once or twice, the last goblin/bugbear/ghoul standing was reduced to 1-2 hit points, so I just declared him dead rather than go through another round of boring attack rolls and misses.

2. The party got the jump on The Black Spider and had some lucky attack rolls and I forgot about one of his important abilities that would have saved his life. So I increased his hit points by 2, leaving him at 1 HP, which let him live long enough to pull out his bag of tricks and be an interesting foe instead of a boring speedbump.

I only did that because I screwed up the NPC's abilities; not to rob the players of their victory. For example, when the group got the drop on Glasstaff, they killed him before he even knew they were there, so I let it stand.

Jester Canuck said:

As the title asks: it's the middle of an encounter, would you change a monster's hit points?

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Generally not, but there is the rare occasion...

This might be during a boss fight where the PCs roll well and it looks like the big bad is going to die before taking a turn.

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This actually happened in my "Shackled City" campaign - one NPC launched his sudden but inevitable betrayal, only to lose initiative to the dwarven paladin. One max-power-attack critical hit later, and he was dead - and would have been even if he'd had three times as many hit points!

That was actually one of the highlights of the campaign - we talked about that incident for years after, right up until the group split up.

So, no, I won't change a monster's hit points for this reason.

Or perhaps a tense fight where the party is toeing on a TPK.

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Again, I won't change a monster's hit points here, either. A lot of the fun lies in not knowing the outcome, so why would I change it?

Or maybe during a long fight that looks like it might drag.

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But this is the scenario where I would change the monster's hit points - a lesson hard learned after the last time I didn't:

It was the 4e "Tomb of Horrors", which has an initial scene-setting fight that I foolishly thought would be a quick, throwaway incident to let the players know that "something's not right here".

Unfortunately, the players hadn't yet optimised their tactics, and they also conspired to miss with just about every Encounter and Daily power they used. My dice rolling was equally shocking, which meant that the fight just went on... and on... and on. There wasn't any tension, it was just a matter of whittling away at the hundreds of hit points possessed by those monsters, a few each turn.

My "quick, throwaway incident" turned out to be two and a half hours out of a three hour session, and was also the last time I ran 4e.

In hindsight, my big mistake is fairly obvious: as soon as it was apparent that the PCs were going to win, and especially as soon as people started to get bored, I should have had the bad guys drop in quick succession, the better to move on with the adventure.

iserith said:

I don't think it's hit points that cause grind though. Fudging them can end the scene which ends the grind, but it might be good to look at what the table is doing (players and DM both) that caused the grind in the first place and fix that going forward. I never have grinds in our games, even in the supposedly slow D&D 4e and thus never have to fudge to end the scene.

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I use morale checks. Failure on a morale check simply means that the NPCs must change their tactics and/or goals. It's a nice way to keep things fresh.

Aribar said:

I think there is a large difference between very occasionally having this problem where you need to change things (whether numerically fudging numbers or narratively) and having to do it on a frequent basis. If this happens a lot, it means the DM is having issues using the (encounter building) rules to create desired scenarios. This may be due to lack of experience or bad judgement calls on the DM's behalf, or it could be a problem with the rules themselves. For example, the scenario you just provided could be avoided using something like 13th Age's escalation die to add a bonus to all rolls each round, or having a "lucky" ability or Action Points to allow rerolls or bonuses on misses... Which reminds me I need to reread the Inspiration and variant rules regarding that again.

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This is a good point. If there's a perceived need to fudge in this manner, it should be a rare need. I expect that just about anyone can learn to design appropriate encounters quickly enough that this shouldn't be an ongoing issue. This plays into my preference in the matter. If there's only a rare issue with a too difficult or easy encounter, I would prefer to have the issue to damaging the integrity of the game with fudging. If it's a constant issue, constant fudging might be preferable to constant hassle, but I find neither tolerable. I this case it's time for a new DM or a new game.

The Human Target said:

You did a fine job articulating the idea.

Speaking of monster tactics- its another great way of nudging the outcome of a fight. What is everyone's stance on that? Is it acceptable to have a monster use bad tactics to say take it easy on the party because of fear or anger or bloodlust?

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This is another tool the DM can use to avoid a TPK. But it is more obvious to the players. I prefer adjusting HP as that is completely invisible, provided you only shave off hp, not lop it off.

Jester Canuck said:

As the title asks: it's the middle of an encounter, would you change a monster's hit points?

This might be during a boss fight where the PCs roll well and it looks like the big bad is going to die before taking a turn. Or maybe during a long fight that looks like it might drag. Or perhaps a tense fight where the party is toeing on a TPK.

Would you?

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Abso-frigging-lutely