The 88 Hit Point Ogre in the Room

[mach1.9pants]

Heck a cleric with the laser death ray (searing light) will soon see the end of an ogre!

 

[MortalPlague]

I know that we're supposed to be concentrating on making sure the mechanics work, but I hope WotC backs away from this. I don't want monsters to be given huge gobs of hit points to "force" combats to be more epic. I've still yet to actually play this out, but I'll be severely disappointed if 2nd or 3rd level characters can dish out that much damage in a few rounds (say 4 to 5) in this edition.

My first group wound up fighting the ogre, and they took him down fairly handily. The ogre's AC isn't very good, so he winds up being easy to hit. He packs a whallop when he does hit, though. I had the goblin chief in the same encounter, and it wound up being pretty exciting.

 

[Walking Dad]

I've read through the playtest documents several times now in anticipating playing with my wife and kids.

...

Don't talk about it online. You just said you want to break the OTA, unless your wife and kids signed up, too.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I've read through the playtest documents several times now in anticipating playing with my wife and kids.

Reading through the Caves of Chaos, I started noticing the various cheiftains having large numbers of hit points. Then I hit the Ogre - and was floored. Go ahead, look at room E22.

I do not like this one bit. Most of the "common" monsters in the adventure have hit points fairly close to the original values in the module, until you start getting to the "set-piece battles". Then the hit points look awfully inflated.

I know that we're supposed to be concentrating on making sure the mechanics work, but I hope WotC backs away from this. I don't want monsters to be given huge gobs of hit points to "force" combats to be more epic. I've still yet to actually play this out, but I'll be severely disappointed if 2nd or 3rd level characters can dish out that much damage in a few rounds (say 4 to 5) in this edition.

I noticed this too but I'm reserving judgement until I see it play out. Did you see the damage of the dwarf fighter? 2d6+7 is hella nasty compared to what a B/X fighter could do. Per the basic rules 1d6+3 was maximum and thats if you had an 18 STR!! (perhaps a bit more using variable weapon damage but nowhere close to the playtest fighter)

I plan on keeping an eye out for signs of grind with higher HP monsters during our playtest. If the higher numbers slow things down then I will make it known. If not then they aren't really a problem.

 

[RangerWickett]

Bah, the NDA is more to cover WotC's butt than to actually prevent people from sharing the rules. They had to know people would run the games with friends and family.

Here's my logic for high-HP foes. You say, "Oh, it's an ogre. Sure he's tough, but he's just an ogre."

What if you said, "Oh, it's Drizzt. Sure he's tough, but he's just an elf"?

How do you model a high-level PC? You give him a lot of HP, and let him deal more damage. This is an ogre chieftain. He's obviously got to be tough enough to handle all takers, so I'm fine with him having 88 HP.

 

[Mercurius]

You hit the Ogre and were floored? What sort of immediate interrupt did it have?

 

[Hautamaki]

88 hp disappears awfully fast. Last time I ran caves of chaos I gave the ogre 100 hp, and threw 6 goblins in there to boot, and the PCs at 2nd level chewed through the battle in about 4 rounds, using some of their expendable powers. They got a couple lucky crits to be fair but sometimes that's gonna happen.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Do you think all ogres have 88 HP, or just ogres fighting as solo monsters?

 

[jshaft37]

Wait until you see the Minotaur and Troll!

 

[Kinak]

Do you think all ogres have 88 HP, or just ogres fighting as solo monsters?

They've mentioned the monster rules are still very much up in the air, so there's not an actual answer to this yet.

However, when you don't have AC and hit bonuses inflating every level, you don't really need to have separate versions of monsters at each level. In other words, an ogre that works as a solo at 2nd level could easily be an "elite" (half-encounter) by 5th and just one "standard" part of an encounter by 10th.

Since it's mostly HP and damage that seem to be scaling, monsters can drift far more naturally through those rolls. You wouldn't have to have a higher level non-solo version of the ogre just to hit the PCs.

Cheers!
Kinak