D&D General Hit Points. Did 3.0 Or 3.5 Get it Right?

[Zardnaar]

3.5 hitpoints were problematic. Or rather spells did not deal enough damage to warrant using them. A 5d6 fireball at level 5 was lousy. Better cast a save or suck spell until it sticks.

3.0 actually was a bit better in that regard but not a lot.

3.x suffered from a big misunderstanding. Especially 3.5 that embrace bugs as features:

3.0 was most probably built under the premise, that AC does not scale that much over 20 levels. So fighters would start getting close to automatic hits after a few levels with their first attacks and still a good chance with their second. Someone with 3/4 bab like the monk would also hit well enough soon.

Because this was not explained well and coming from AD&D, where not being hit was often mandatory (prpbably we played that wrong too), DMs, me included, tried to increase enemy AC too much. In this process, fighters started to feel useless, their second attack not having a chance to hit. And thus HP felt a bit too high to get through. So fallback to save or suck and caster dominance.

Kind of a start. I will point out a 3.5 fireball is comparatively better tha a 5E one except maybe lvl 5.

In 3E, an efficient (not optimized - just efficient) 3E game, we'd often see monsters that the DM spent quite a bit of time assembling go down before they did anything. They might as well have been a potato. I recall one battle with a Frost Giant Jarl and its mount, a Frost Drake (a dragon without the smarts) that took me an hour to craft - but that the PCs killed before either could act.

This is bad design.

If anything is commonly rendered irrelevant in actual play, it is problematic. Other than fodder, a monster should survive to the end of the first round in D&D for it to have some relevancy. There may be the occasional exception to the rule (high damage crit), but it is bad design to have monsters that are easy to fell in

Let's say that a 2nd level party of 5 PCs encounters 2 ogres. This is a 'hard' encounter by the books. Those slow moving ogres will other go after 4 or 5 PCs have activated. If the PCs focus fire, you can often get 10 to 15 damage per PC on these monsters. If the ogres have less than 30 hps, there is a real high chance that one, or both, of these theoretically significant threats, will fall down before they do anything in combat.

In 3E, they had 26 hps. In 5E they have 59.

Which is a better game experience?

The party rolls for initiative. The barbarian rages and deals 2d6+5 damage. The rogue then goes and delivers 2d6+3 with the main hand sneak attack and 1d6 with the off hand. The ranger deals 1d8+1d6 (Hunter's mark) +3 with their bow. Then the warlock blasts away for 1d10+1d6+3 with their Eldritch blast. At this point the monsters have taken 1d10+1d8+6d6+14 damage - or about 45 damage. That is one ogre down and the second nearly down as well. If the fifth PC gets to go, the 52 hps of both ogres may be gone before they do anything! In 5E, you'll probably still have both up and doing something in that combat. In the 3E model, the ogres could be ogres, deinonychus, or black bears - it wouldn't matter. The difference between them would be trivial. In 5E, it matters as they're going to get to act.

5E was designed with intent and knowledge based upon the prior editions. As with most of the decisions they made for it, they improved the situation with their design.

And if you lowered the damage using 3.5 hit points or upped the ogres defenses?

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

Let's say that a 2nd level party of 5 PCs encounters 2 ogres. This is a 'hard' encounter by the books. Those slow moving ogres will other go after 4 or 5 PCs have activated. If the PCs focus fire, you can often get 10 to 15 damage per PC on these monsters. If the ogres have less than 30 hps, there is a real high chance that one, or both, of these theoretically significant threats, will fall down before they do anything in combat.

In 3E, they had 26 hps. In 5E they have 59.

Which is a better game experience?

The party rolls for initiative. The barbarian rages and deals 2d6+5 damage. The rogue then goes and delivers 2d6+3 with the main hand sneak attack and 1d6 with the off hand. The ranger deals 1d8+1d6 (Hunter's mark) +3 with their bow. Then the warlock blasts away for 1d10+1d6+3 with their Eldritch blast. At this point the monsters have taken 1d10+1d8+6d6+14 damage - or about 45 damage. That is one ogre down and the second nearly down as well. If the fifth PC gets to go, the 52 hps of both ogres may be gone before they do anything! In 5E, you'll probably still have both up and doing something in that combat. In the 3E model, the ogres could be ogres, deinonychus, or black bears - it wouldn't matter. The difference between them would be trivial. In 5E, it matters as they're going to get to act.

5E was designed with intent and knowledge based upon the prior editions. As with most of the decisions they made for it, they improved the situation with their design.

The Ogre is one of the litmus tests I am going to use to judge the success of monster design in the revised books.

1. The Ogre is currently a boring sack of HP (with the Hill Giant just being a higher CR of that same theme). They need something interesting to make them dangerous and interesting while also feeling like you're dealing with an actual dumb, strong Ogre.
2. One problem is that due to their low AC and low intelligence, that they often get killed so quickly that they are barely a speed bump. The fact that they also only have a single attack per round that does average damage is not very scary for a group of PCs with decent damage mitigation. However, if you give them multi-attack or increase their accuracy and damage, no melee tank wants to be embarrassed by getting their butt handed to them by a stupid Ogre.

I'm curious where the designers want the ogre's effectiveness to live, narratively.

 

[jgsugden]

...And if you lowered the damage using 3.5 hit points or upped the ogres defenses?

If you change everything proportionally, then reducing the amount merely serves to lessen your control by reducing the precision of your numbers. For example, dealing 2 damage to a creature with 5 hps has similarities to dealing 20 damage to a creature with 50 hps ... but you take away the level of precision that allows the higher damage scenarios to deal 15, 17, 22, or 25 damage.

And upping the defenses of the ogre is not a discussion of the hit points. The entire attack bonus systems of 3E and 5E are fundamentally different. If you want to talk about hp design, stick to it and don't stray into the entire design of 3E vs 5E combat ... or else this thread will be a mess of different topics.

Build some 2nd level and 5th level 3E PCs and simulate some battles versus orcs, ogres and hill giants. Then do the same in 5E. Compare the experiences. The 5E combats last longer and give greater definition to the monsters - and the design of the hps plays a big role in that equation. They knew what they were doing in 5E when they built the monsters the way they did. The design was well thought out, intentional and beneficial to the edition.

The problems of the 3E design get worse when you introduce highly optimized PCs. That edition made such optimization easy and ridiculously powerful. You can go back through the ancient optimization threads here on Enworld to see how the expected DPR of optimized builds compared to the hit points of the monsters they were expected to face at a given level.

 

[Ancalagon]

I thought this was going to be about a different aspect of hitpoints - natural healing.

If memory serves, natural healing in previous editions was painfully slow - one-2 hp/day kinda thing. In 3.X, (again, if memory serves), natural healing was 1 hp/level (all these numbers could be altered somewhat by rest, receiving competent medical aid etc).

As far as monster hp, I think it's been recognized that there is a bit too much HP in 5e for monsters, so some tweaking might help?

 

[jgsugden]

The Ogre is one of the litmus tests I am going to use to judge the success of monster design in the revised books.
...
I'm curious where the designers want the ogre's effectiveness to live, narratively.

Interestingly, I think that being a big sack of hps with low AC and high damage in a humanoid form is kind of the epitome of an ogre. I get where you're going, and I agree that monsters generally need to have something that makes them stand out ... but sometimes you just need the base model, not the specialized version.

 

[ezo]

Actually, d20 Star Wars got it right.

 

[Zardnaar]

Actually, d20 Star Wars got it right.

I played a lot of SWSE and thats a bold claim.

 

[Staffan]

I think Pathfinder 2e gets hp right, along with most other elements of monster design. Instead of trying to get to desired numbers via various formulae (number and type of HD + various bonuses). they just have a table that specifies how many hit points a level N creature should have, with a small range in a handful of categories. So a 5th level creature should have 72-78 hp, or 91-97 if it's especially durable or 53-59 if it's particularly soft (note: PF2 hp are generally quite a big higher than D&D hp). There are some additional guidelines on how to modify hp if the monster has regeneration, fast healing, weaknesses, and/or resistances/immunities.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Hit points stopped mattering on monsters around the level the casters could turn them off with a spell.

Why did 3x monsters have 'bloat'? It's so they might be around after the three to twenty guaranteed rounds of being held, paralyzed, suggested, slept, debuffed to nothing, polymorphed, dominated, or sealed in [insert element].

I've got a bard in PF1 right now that just hit level 10 and the idea of something trying to have HP at me is adorable.

 

[Blue]

Well with 5E coming to a close this year (long live 5.25 or 5.5) in hindsight I think the hit point bloat was a mistake. 4E also did it.

Playing OSR games again some critters might have to few eg dragons are glass cannons.

This kind of leaves 3.0 and 3.5. 3.0 essentially took 2E monsters and added ability scores while 3.5 and Pathfinder tweaked them.

3.X had other problems and the hit points may not have been enough for those editions relative to damage dealt. 3.X bounded accuracy a'la 5E or SWSE well that's interesting as an engine.

Spoilers./context Conceptually looking at a 5E engine/monster designs but tweaked to wind back the hp bloat.

HP bloat is because they walled away other changes to survivability by locking defenses into a narrow range, thus making HP the only unfettered knob to adjust.

Having played 3.0 and 3.5 extensively, the bounded accuracy move was the correct one. With the range of attack in 3.x, some PCs literally couldn't hit or couldn't miss certain foes outside the special property of 20s and 1s.

So 3.x style variable defenses isn't the right solution. If HP bloat also isn't the right solution, which I'm fine acknowledging, then you need to come up with a new knob to adjust for survivability.