D&D 5E Would you change a monster's hit points mid-fight?

[nightspaladin]

Of course I do. I honestly think it is the DMs resposnibility to do so as the situation fits. This notion that once I've created a monster or encounter, it is set in stone is disconcerting to say the least. My job is to help faciliate the narrative and the enjoyment of my players and me. Letting a monster TPK the party or be anti-climatic just because math errors happen is, in my opinion, a failure to do my job as a DM.

For that matter, I have fudged HP to allow a player to shine if they need to. Sometimes real life stuff creeps into game play, players are going through stuff, or they are down for whatever reason, or the game has just been unmericiful to the player this session. When it's appropriate, allowing them to get a killing blow at a crucial point, by on the fly adjusting HP of a monster, is huge. It lets them have their "badass moment" and helps raise the enjoyment for them. I'd consider that a part of DMing as well.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Here's the thing. You deciding the monsters are standing on a rug to pull and alerting the player without them asking is just as "fudgy" as just making the fight easier mechanically.

Though I like the creative city of it.

Yes, it is. He's on your side of the "fudging" fence, he just does it in a different way. I wouldn't do that kind of fudging either.

Here's an anecdote from the no-fudging side:

Mid-level PCs (2-8th level) previously got their clock cleaned by a Death Slaad and lost some equipment. Necromancer PC decides to go back on his own to get his gear back, with an army of undead that he raised from a bunch of crucified goblins and such in a haunted castle nearby (long story). There are two players with no PCs in-scene so I assign them to play the Death Slaad and his army of Enkidu, respectively. The battle goes well for the necromancer; he's forted up in a tower and the Enkidus and Death Slaad are trying to get into, but he lands a lucky Bestow Curse (Wis-based stunning) on the Death Slaad just as the Death Slaad turns himself invisible while entering the now-breached tower door. All the undead in the tower swarm the Slaad, who is now invisible and very difficult to damage, as the Enkidu swarm into the tower as well. The Death Slaad fails his saves for three rounds in a row, which (combined with Chill Touch suppressing regeneration) is enough to reduce the Slaad to a handful of HP, I think 2. At this point, the Slaad makes his save and gets an action, which will be "Plane Shift away from this deadly place!" I should mention that the Slaad is now wearing the PC's Robe of the Neutral Archmagi which he is desperate to get back.

So everyone declares actions... it turns out that 4 of the undead hit the Slaad, any one of which will kill him... but the Slaad rolls well on initiative, and only 1 of those undead is going to be fast enough to tag him before he Plane Shifts away... but there are Enkidu attacking the skeletons as well, and some of them are going to take out some of the skeletons this turn, so those Enkidu need to roll initiative as well, just as soon as the necromancer player declares which of "his" skeletons was the fast one that is actually going to take down the Slaad this turn. Necro player was really, really nervous knowing that everything was riding on this one decision.

To make a long story short, once all the rolls were made, it turned out that the hero skeleton wasn't even hit by any of the Enkidu that turn, so he killed the Death Slaad in time to prevent it from teleporting away. The Death Slaad turned back into Slaad form (he'd been impersonating an Enkidu Ensi), the morale of the Enkidu broke when they saw their leader turn into a giant, dead toad, and the combat was over. Lots of drama riding on that roll there, and zero fudging involved[1]--I wasn't even playing the Slaad, I was just refereeing! Everything really did hinge on that one skeleton's fate at the end.

My point: anecdotes don't prove anything. You can have memorable moments no matter which style you choose. IMO they are more memorable when they are provably genuine, but YMMV obviously.

[1] Except to whatever extent the players themselves might have been underplaying the Enkidus and Slaads, which by definition they must be okay with. I think the Enkidus might have been deliberately underplayed a little (player didn't want to hammer the necromancer too badly, focused on the undead), but given that they have an Int of 7 I am okay with a little tactical stupidity from them.

 

[JWO]

Metagaming is bad for PCs, because the PCs don't have access to that knowledge. Metagaming is fine for players. If a player says, "Hey, I'm going to cast Hypnotic Pattern at these undead, but I already know it will be useless because my last character discovered that undead are immune to enchantments, so let's not even roll the dice, I'll just scratch off my spell slot and let's move on," that's metagaming but it's not in any way bad.

Consequently, if the player is aware that all the other ogres took 60+ HP before dying, and those last two ogres died just from getting hit with 25 HP of critical damage, it may spoil the player's enjoyment (or not) but either way the PC isn't involved in the metagaming.

TLDR; players having feelings and opinions is part of the metagame, but is also perfectly valid.

I don't really want to play with players who can't deal with the fact that some ogres are weaker than others (or that some ogres' mothers are weaker than other ogres' mothers).

 

[travathian]

Consequently, if the player is aware that all the other ogres took 60+ HP before dying, and those last two ogres died just from getting hit with 25 HP of critical damage, it may spoil the player's enjoyment (or not) but either way the PC isn't involved in the metagaming.

Frankly, if you are so involved in the numbers of the game that you are keeping track of every enemy's HPs and every DC you have to roll for, I have to wonder why you aren't just playing a tabletop wargame?

Have a beer, chill out, enjoy the game. All that metagaming is ruining your fun. And yes, tracking enemy HPs is metagaming. Your character has no freakin clue how much damage they do numerically with their weapon, nor do they know how many HPs a target has. Even more so, you have no idea how much damage your allies are doing. So why would YOU as the player bother tracking these things? You wracking your brain tracking every little detail just to find out when the DM fudges a roll is hilarious. And kinda sad.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Frankly, if you are so involved in the numbers of the game that you are keeping track of every enemy's HPs and every DC you have to roll for, I have to wonder why you aren't just playing a tabletop wargame?

Have a beer, chill out, enjoy the game. All that metagaming is ruining your fun. And yes, tracking enemy HPs is metagaming. Your character has no freakin clue how much damage they do numerically with their weapon, nor do they know how many HPs a target has. Even more so, you have no idea how much damage your allies are doing. So why would YOU as the player bother tracking these things? You wracking your brain tracking every little detail just to find out when the DM fudges a roll is hilarious. And kinda sad.

If you're going to make this personal: things that apparently require you to wrack your brain are obvious to me. I might not notice a 45/60 differential but I will surely notice a 25/60. I notice numbers the way other people notice faces (and vice versa--I'm terrible with faces). Sorry if that offends you, but at least we're not in the same game, hey?

As a tangent: if your PCs don't size up and keep track of enemy threats, they're amateurs. Maybe the metagame plot will keep them alive anyway, but PCs actually have a much better motivation than players do to notice which foes go down too easily. After all, they could be faking it.

Hmmmm, now I need to use that on my players. Next morale failure, I'll have the other side fall down and play dead instead of retreating. Let's see if the PCs cut their throats or take them prisoner or don't even notice.

 

[Jacob Marley]

A little late to the party, but...

No, I don't adjust monster hit points during combat (unless it is from damage taken or healed ). I also don't use a screen, I roll my dice in the open, and my stat blocks are in plain view of my players. I don't worry about my players metagaming. I embrace the variance of the die, and appreciate the times it deviates wildly from the average. In my experience, these times are when the most interesting narratives emerge. YMMV

 

[aramis erak]

Knowing a monster's hit points isn't something that the players should know about. Even if they've slavishly learned every detail of the Monster Manual, that's something the DM should be able to switch up anyway. Using the knowledge they've gained from the Monster Manual is metagame thinking.

I do believe that most of the numbers in the books are pretty arbitrary. Of course, there's an internal logic that they follow for the most part so in that sense they're not 100% arbitrary but they're still just numbers that game designers have used to represent the fictional parameters of a fictional world. If the DM wants to change one of those numbers to make the game 'better' (whatever that might mean), then I don't see that as a problem.

Keep in mind: the HD listed in the PHB and MM critter stats are derived from the listed HP & Con, rather than HD & Con determining HP. This is different from prior editions.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Hmmmm, now I need to use that on my players. Next morale failure, I'll have the other side fall down and play dead instead of retreating. Let's see if the PCs cut their throats or take them prisoner or don't even notice.

Ah yes. The coup de grace.
Giving the act of butchering a defenceless foe a poncey French name to save the LG paladin's blushes since time immemorial.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Ah yes. The coup de grace.
Giving the act of butchering a defenceless foe a poncey French name to save the LG paladin's blushes since time immemorial.

I know, I'm evil. I also like giving the PCs access to cool magical gear which, it is made very clear, they don't own. Loaned quest items, or magical loot taken from dead enemies which is clearly originally the property of an innocent third party (in one case the PC blundered into the third party while using the gear, and the gear was recognized). I don't stop them from things like stealing from innocents, but there may be repercussions some day. Or not. That uncertainty is what makes it a moral dilemma.

 

[Derren]

If you change monster HP on the fly you can also abolish HP altogether and just let them die when you think the players had enough "fun" playing whack-a-mole with the punching bags.