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

[Zardnaar]

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.

In my spellcasting overhaul I'm looking at redoing saving throws similar to AD&. At level 10 boss fights woukd make their saves 85-95% of the time assuming your spell didn't outright fail (25-75%).

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

Higher AC, better saves and old school saves returning.

Probably have legendary resistance as well on top of MR/SR.

Conceptually going back to 2E. 4E or 5E bounded accuracy.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Yeah see to me, the ogre should be scary. It shouldn’t be embarrassing to get pummeled by one.

I say let them use their smaller enemies to hit other smaller enemies. Not like a full giant could, wielding a heavy fighter like a mace, but still picking a medium or smaller character up and yeeting them 20 feet into one or more other characters.

And then make them fight like angry male gorillas the size of small pickup trucks.

 

[ezo]

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

No, not Saga Edition....

d20...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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

No. It is not. Fireball in 3.5 was a waste of yoir action mostly.

 

[Staffan]

In my spellcasting overhaul I'm looking at redoing saving throws similar to AD&. At level 10 boss fights woukd make their saves 85-95% of the time assuming your spell didn't outright fail (25-75%).

That sounds horrible. So my actions have a 5% chance of actually having an effect? No thanks, I'll go play WoW instead.

I think 13th Age has a pretty good way of handling crowd control/IWin spells: hp thresholds. Spells that take someone out of the fight will, after you succeed at hitting them (it uses a 4e-ish system where spells are considered attacks against Physical or Mental defense, so the attacker is the one who rolls instead of the defender) will check if the target is below X hp (depending on spell and what level you're casting it at) before having an effect. That way, you can't take out strong opponents with them without knocking them down a few pegs first.

 

[Celebrim]

No. It is not. Fireball in 3.5 was a waste of yoir action mostly.

I think people got a bit spoiled by 1e AD&D when fireball at any level was usually a win button and consequently often one of the few spells a M-U needed to the point it became a joke.

In 3.5 edition fireball was still ~18 damage to multiple targets which while it probably wouldn't clear a room of any foes that were a serious treat it still as an action probably outperformed any other character.

Granted, there are a lot of minor changes in my own game because of house rules but in years of play testing it never felt like direct damage was entirely unviable in in my 3.X game. We had a lot of shocking grasp, fireball, and shrapnel blasts (homebrew spell that does less damage than a fireball but which is effected by DR and not SR/fire resistance) utilized to good effect.

 

[Celebrim]

In my spellcasting overhaul I'm looking at redoing saving throws similar to AD&. At level 10 boss fights woukd make their saves 85-95% of the time assuming your spell didn't outright fail (25-75%).

I haven't worked the numbers exactly, but I did overhaul 3.X saving throw difficulty such that spell level didn't increase saving throw difficulty. It was just as easy (or hard) to save versus Charm Person as Fireball or Finger of Death.

This along with the related change of not having HD add to the DC of a saving throw worked REALLY well for restoring sanity to 3.Xe and especially as you started getting to level 10 or so. Without that change, there is a problem in 3.Xe where everything is increasingly reliant on magical immunities to effects - mind control, poison, death magic, hold person, etc. - in order to be effective, and it's one of the biggest problems non-casters face is that in order to be effective they are still reliant on Hero's Feast, Freedom of Movement, Death Ward, Mindblank, etc. or they can be taken out too easily. If you restore the AD&D expectation that at the same time the consequences of failure are getting worse, the chance of failure is being reduced you go a long way to restoring the trade off with 'Save or Suck' where yes, if it works, it might be a win button but at the same time it's not that likely to work and so you might just waste an action.

 

[Shardstone]

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.

You know, I never thought about it but this is precisely the case. Monsters have a lot of HP in 5E mainly because a lot of effects have to be save or suck. Otherwise, the only other possible effects are damage or free form fiction-world manipulation (which WotC is allergic too). If a minotaur gets stunned against a party of four and they focus fire, it's almost assuredly dead or about to die before the end of the second round. Thanks for the insight!

 

[Zardnaar]

That sounds horrible. So my actions have a 5% chance of actually having an effect? No thanks, I'll go play WoW instead.

I think 13th Age has a pretty good way of handling crowd control/IWin spells: hp thresholds. Spells that take someone out of the fight will, after you succeed at hitting them (it uses a 4e-ish system where spells are considered attacks against Physical or Mental defense, so the attacker is the one who rolls instead of the defender) will check if the target is below X hp (depending on spell and what level you're casting it at) before having an effect. That way, you can't take out strong opponents with them without knocking them down a few pegs first.

Makes things more tactical. Magic missile was a great spell once upon a time.

Haste a fighter or use spells tith no saves, debuff etc.