My Grind Fix: Half hp, 2/3 Xp

[Garthanos]

The only concern I would have is its more demanding on the DM (more monsters, more administration).
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Well my idea is making liberal use of minions... and if things feel grindy.. let some minions wisely do an escape attempt if players insist they must chase them down, mayhaps the players like grindiness on the otherhand Minions make every attack result something dramatic instead of an "almost." which is for me a real grind. ;-), I know I am probably misunderstanding the use of the term and will be corrected for it.

 

[Starfox]

Update: we have been playing with this rule for a few sessions now, and so far it worked well. We are running a conversion of The Skinsaw Murders by Paizo.

The first fight run like this was against one elite (that started in the PCs room) and a LOT of minions outside trying to get in. Defeating the elite ended the treat of the minions. In this case, I should probably have used a Solo - the elite simply wasn't tough enough to make this a challenging fight. On the other hand, it was quick and established the mood, which is usually good in my book. (This encounter is a noncombat encounter in the scenario as written).

The second fight was at a farm overrun by ghouls. In this case, massive numbers of ghouls. Due to a slight misreading of the rules, this was very close to a total party kill, but a very tense and exiting fight. The level of the encounter was impressively high, but mollified a little because the ghouls came in waves. Individual ghouls were weak, but their stacking conditions made them very scary.

This led on to another fight against a smaller number of more powerful ghouls at the farmhouse itself, which proved to be pretty much a wipeput because the players got the initiative and were able to maintain momentum, killing ghouls more or less one-by-one.

Play then proceeded to the main haunted house, where we had an interesting running fight through the whole building. The PCs were trying to follow a revenant moving through the house, defeating or sneaking by any monsters she passed on the way. This worked, if only barely, and it would absolutely not have worked using original rules.

Then we had a boss fight. Because of said reveant attacking the boss and doing massive amounts of damage, the main villain was easy. Because some of the monsters from the last encounter were still around and chasing the players, it was still an interesting encounter.

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Overall, the effect is much as I anticipated it; area attack are more important, fights are shorter and deadlier. So far, I like it.

 

[PeelSeel2]

I sometimes split a monster into 4, quartering it's HP. I generally give 1/2 xp for these 'mooks'. I hardly ever use minions. Last encounter I made a pool of 'encounter damage' and 'daily damage' pools my monsters had access to. For a small encounter I go with 4 encounter, 2 daily. The encounters allow the monster to do 2w damage and the daily 3w damage. These are declared before the attack roll for the monsters and used regardless of hit. The whole thing works well in my campaign.

 

[Starfox]

PeelSeel, you mean you give 1/2 xp for each of the 4 parts? That makes sense. Giving half xp for the 4 would not be fair.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Some other ideas that seem to work as well: Give the monsters a bonus to-hit. Generally since you have monsters in a fairly narrow range of levels within a single encounter I've just done this as a fixed "all the hobbos in this encounter get +3 to-hit".

Now at first glance this would seem to be a poor solution, as I'm sure you're thinking. However if you examine things at a deeper level it actually turns out to be a simpler version of essentially the same solution as reducing monster hit points and XP, except it also generally reduces their defenses as well a bit. Why is this? Because you will now use somewhat lower level monsters to challenge the party. Where in the standard system an N+ level monster might be required in order to be a credible threat, now you can use an N level monster instead, which has lower defenses and less hit points, and happens to also be worth less XP. Normally using these lower level monsters doesn't really work because they just cannot hit the party. No amount of weak monsters will generally really threaten a party because they simply cannot get past the party defenses well enough to do much damage.

Also I kind of think the major problem is with Soldier role monsters and Elite/Solo monsters. I recommend reducing the hit points of Soldiers by 25%-30%, they are almost always grindy unless the monster is 2-3 levels below the party. Boosting the N-2 or N-3 to-hit though is like I say the opposite path to the same cure for these guys. It works with Elites pretty well too. Instead of the BBEG being an N+3 level monster, make it an N level monster and give it +3 to-hit. With lesser hit points vs its offense things will go faster, usually.

Finally of course is the most basic solution of all, just design encounters with few soldiers and lots of N-1 or so skirmishers and brutes. Lurkers I think shouldn't be weaker, but the to-hit bonus works with them too, they land their nasty little surprise, and then they die, like a good little monster, contributing to the FUD of the encounter in the process. Artillery usually aren't a big problem since they're not usually all that hard to kill anyway, and there are few artillery monsters that would stick around after the rest of their pals are slain anyhow.

 

[PeelSeel2]

PeelSeel, you mean you give 1/2 xp for each of the 4 parts?

Correct

 

[Starfox]

It seems to me that your (PeelSteel's) minions and my "ordinaries" are pretty close. Your have 1/4 hp and 1/2 xp, mine have 1/2 hp and 2/3 xp. Similar solutions to the same problem.

I did another fight tonight; a balanced encounter on the normal scale that just happened to have 12 minions attending (and another 12 on their way). It worked pretty nice. I had an elite, and he had just the right amount of staying power IMO. I am starting to feel good about this option.

 

[PeelSeel2]

It has worked well for our group. Less grindy.

 

[Nikosandros]

Someone just pointed out this thread and I'm rather intrigued by this idea. My gaming sessions are rather short, so that shorter combats would definitely be a good thing. How do you handle minions? Do you cut down their XP value as well?

 

[Sigurd13]

Not to rain on anyone's parade but isn't the same effect achieved if you just use more lower level monsters and add a flat bonus to their stat block?

I mean, at level 10 a standard is worth 500xp, so for a party of 4 that's 2k xp for a 10th level encounter. For about the same xp price you can have 5 level 9 monsters and 6 level 8 monsters. And for a little more xp (making it *slightly* more expensive than a 10th level encounter) you can have 7 level 7 monsters. (Rule of thumb: -1 level, add one standard monster)

Obviously you could just raise the encounter level by one and add more monsters that way too. A level 11 encounter could have five level 10 monsters, six level 9s, or seven level 8s.

The only real difference between the levels (if you ignore hp) are the attack mods and defenses, which are adjusted at a rate of +1/level (according to the DMG, pg. 174)... and so long as the monsters don't fall between tiers, damage should be pretty similar.

So wouldn't it just be easier to lower monster levels while tweaking their stats by a few points?