D&D 5E Does Anybody Think Monsters Have Far Too Much HP?

[Fishbone]

The hit point bloat from this edition and the one it most resembles, 3.5 edition, is rather incredible.
Bone devils went from 10d8+50 to 15d10+60 for instance. A 5E CR 8 Hydra has 172 HP!
Here are some HP values for CR 1 monsters...
4d10+4 (26)
5d8+5 (23)
6d8+12 (39)
7d8+7 (38)
5d10+10 (38)

These aren't even the highest. These are just some of the very first ones encountered in the Basic Guide.

Did you know that a Roper is CR 5 in 5E but has 14 more HP than the CR 12 Roper in 3.5?
That a Satyr has 31 HP at CR 1/2 but a 3.5 Satyr is 22 HP at CR 2?

Every single instance has across the board HP jacking.

 

[Uller]

Nope. In some of the playtest adventures I found myself boosting monster HP by about 33% just to keep fights interesting. Looking at the final versions of many of the monsters we played in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, I think it probably worked out about right.

 

[Blackbrrd]

The cr of 5e and 3e aren't comparable. Regarding the HP scaling, it's how 5e separates the levels. 3e used ac and attack bonus to a much larger degree

 

[Agamon]

The hit point bloat from this edition and the one it most resembles, 3.5 edition, is rather incredible.

Does this observation come from play or just reading?

Despite the number of hp, fights are a lot more snappy than they last couple of editions of the game, in my experience.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As a side effect of Bounded Accuracy, the primary scaling mechanism is via Hit Points and damage.

They've also changed the definition of CR between editions, though. Where 3.5 had CR that was supposed to approximate when you should encounter something, 5E has CR as a boundary beyond which something will instantly murder you (and instead uses an Experience budget for saying what you should encounter).

 

[jadrax]

Nope. In some of the playtest adventures I found myself boosting monster HP by about 33% just to keep fights interesting. Looking at the final versions of many of the monsters we played in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, I think it probably worked out about right.

I ended up assuming all monsters had rolled max possible hit points and the players still went through them like they were wet tissue paper. Really looking forward to their reaction when they meet an ogre they can't overpower in one round. ;o)

 

[Supersonic159]

I'm running with a group of 5 and another group of 3 and I'm finding that I need to buff some monsters to help the tension on same encounters =P

 

[Psikerlord#]

The hit point bloat from this edition and the one it most resembles, 3.5 edition, is rather incredible.
Bone devils went from 10d8+50 to 15d10+60 for instance. A 5E CR 8 Hydra has 172 HP!
Here are some HP values for CR 1 monsters...
4d10+4 (26)
5d8+5 (23)
6d8+12 (39)
7d8+7 (38)
5d10+10 (38)

These aren't even the highest. These are just some of the very first ones encountered in the Basic Guide.

Did you know that a Roper is CR 5 in 5E but has 14 more HP than the CR 12 Roper in 3.5?
That a Satyr has 31 HP at CR 1/2 but a 3.5 Satyr is 22 HP at CR 2?

Every single instance has across the board HP jacking.

Well CR 1 is supposed to be an average fight for a party of 4 x level 1 PCs. So that's one monster vs 4 guys. That hp pool isnt going to last long. I havent played with the new monsters yet, but I suspect I'll be using higher than average HP just to make it dangerous... (or in fact I simply prefer rolling hp, I like to see the occasional very low or high hp monster, just for a surprise).

 

[keterys]

The number of HP something has isn't terribly relevant; what you really want is the number of rounds it takes to drop something.

So far everything seems to drop quickly enough to characters dealing 2-3 dice of damage to them per round (ex: rogue 2d6+3, monk two attacks, fighter surge, cleric inflict 3d10, etc).

 

[Gothmog]

Nope, the HP amounts in the MM and Basic DM guidelines look about right. I've been running 5e through the whole playtest period with a home game and D&D Encounters, and up until recently, monsters have been seriously underpowered. Are the monsters now tough? Yes. Do they need to be? Absolutely. PCs in 5e can dish out a LOT of damage in a hurry, so monsters need to be a little scarier than they have been in past editions. In fact, most of the monsters I've seen previewed look seriously scary and dangerous- perfectly able to be a threat even to PCs several levels higher than their CR. And that is how it should be!