Do you increase monster hit points?

Tobold · Jun 16, 2018

As a DM I have two groups. None of the players are extreme min-maxers, but their characters are all reasonably optimized: They have an 18 in their main stat at level 5, they took a race that gives a bonus to their main stat, they selected spells and weapons that do good damage, they try to have a reasonable armor class. Result: When I play encounters from published WotC adventures, the fights are often extremely short, and the monsters go down very fast. Generally the players have higher attack bonuses and armor class than their opponents in a supposedly "hard" encounter. At level 5 the players have to hit bonuses of between +7 and +9, but the monsters they meet often have armor classes of 15 or less, so hits are far more common than misses. In the other direction the monsters frequently need to roll higher than 10 to hit the group tank. And the players also deal more damage than most monsters they encounter. As I don't fudge dice, monsters can easily die before actually landing a hit. As the players know to concentrate fire on spellcasters, those usually go down having cast just a spell or two from their arsenal.

So I was wondering what hit points you choose for monsters. For example an CR 5 Barlgura demon with 68 (8d10 + 24) hit points. Do you use 68 hit points? Do you roll hit points, which on average should be the same? Or do you take maximum hit points, 8 x 10 + 24 = 104 in this case? Or do you just add more monsters to the encounters, compared to what is written in the adventures? My groups are 5 players, which might be on the large side and a big part of the problem, the encounters might be optimized for 4 or less characters.

Sorcerers Apprentice · Jun 16, 2018

I often give extra HP to "boss" monsters, so that they don't anticlimactically go down in the first round. Mooks get standard HP or sometimes even reduced HP. If I want a tougher fight I'll add more enemies instead.

ad_hoc · Jun 16, 2018

Nope, I find monsters have a lot of HP already.

1. How many players do you have?
2. How many encounters do you have per long rest?

For me:

1. 4 players
2. 4-8 encounters

(Most chapters I have played in published adventures are designed to have 6-8 encounters per long rest. Do you deviate from that?)

Sunseeker · Jun 16, 2018

I generally add monsters rather than up HP. Higher HPs can turn fights into slogs. More monsters makes fights more deadly, without the slog.

iserith · Jun 16, 2018

I will add hit points to set a particular monster apart from others of its kind, but generally if I want to increase the difficulty of a challenge, I'm going to add more monsters or terrain that benefits the existing monsters in some way. Technically, if you add terrain or other features of the environment that could benefit (or hinder) the monsters or the PCs, should they choose to interact with it, the difficulty of the challenge according to the DMG guidelines remains the same. Assuming that matters to you, that is.

TallIan · Jun 16, 2018

I would agree that adding extra monsters is better than adding HP. The ablative nature of HP means that as a player hacks his way through them, he’ll see little progress. OTOH watching enemies fall is satisfying. You could also add feats to monsters to give them a bit more oomph.

Adding more monsters also makes makes things more deadly monsters as you are adding extra HP, actions, spells and special abilities.

That being said I will usually up a boss monster’s HP and create mini bosses in smaller encounters by multi classing a level or two of something appropriate (eg a level of fighter onto an orc to create a patrol leader).

IMO allowing feats and multi classing for players, leaves monsters trailing by quite a way and the fixes above make on the fly adjustments really easy.

EDIT: Forgot this bit.
Most of he published adventures assume 4 PCs. So if you have 5 it’s a good idea to add 25% more to an encounter. If there were 4 monsters now have 5. If the boss had 50 HP now he has 63...

Oofta · Jun 16, 2018

I don't just increase or max out HP for existing monsters. Like others, I'll add more monsters first.

I do customize monsters on a pretty regular basis, so the orc leader may have an extra couple of levels and have higher CR and as a result have more HP. If I'm not outright adding levels, I may add to their to-hit and damage so they're a bigger threat. Sometimes I'll give them pack attack or a blessing of the dark gods and add +2 to attacks and saves.

I find it more fun to threaten PCs by hitting harder and more often than to set up a slug fest.

Satyrn · Jun 16, 2018

I'm kinda always adjusting monster hit points right now because nearly everything I'm throwing at the PCs is a custom monster. I'm adjusting for "did that feel right for the monster" though, rather than considering how challenging it was for the party (although either way ought to come to essentially the same result).

I'm trying to embrace the idea of a 12-encounter work day with parts of my megadungeon, so I'm looking for a decent portion of the encounters to be 1-2 round fights - with the idea that if they last any longer reinforcements will be coming . . . which rather fits the suggestion of including more monsters that every one is giving, I'm just sometimes doing it through more encounters. That does kinda require that you consider short fights a good thing, though, and since that's the issue you're looking to fix, my way won't work for you.

But still. Maybe try embracing the short fights?