Hit Points--A study of humanoids.

[Rachel]

I'm not entirely sure what you're comparing. Is it:

A) Humanoid monsters to non-humanoid monsters, or
B) Humanoid monsters to humanoid PCs, or
C) Some other thing?

I think you're talking about B, but I'm not completely clear on it.


Cheers,
Roger

Yes B), and I am confident my example was both clear and concise. I took great pains to make it so. Sorry you didn't grasp it.

Would still like to hear your thoughts on the post.

 

[Rachel]

Declarations of flaws, nerfing, and the inherent dangers of boredom associated with running things by the book aside, creatures have more hitpoints and PCs deal less damage than they used to because this is a different game. My score in a pinball game is going to be higher than when I play D&D too, that doesn't mean that there's a problem.

I almost didn't say anything, but I feel I must.

Your response was aimed @Alisair, and perhaps you didn't intend it, but it came out snarky and belligerent. Unnescessarily so. It also didn't really address or advance the posted topic.

I won't lecture, but please try to be a bit more constructive. Thanx.

 

[Nytmare]

So you're playing the game to take damage and burn healing surges just so you can be equal? How about being equal from the start w/o having to get beat up first??

The problem you end up running into is a balance point that 4e tried to design around.

Pretend that you give everyone the same damage and hitpoints. Now, when they finish a fight, the players can't go on because they've run out of resources.

Solution, give them the ability to heal.

Problem: Unchecked healing means that players have infinite hit points.

Solution: Put limits on how often you can regain hit points. In other words, healing surges.

Problem: Combat is not interesting because player characters are now too powerful because they can heal.

Solution: Make monsters tougher.

 

[Rachel]

One of the major flaws of 4E is monster hit point inflation. Compared to earlier editions 4E monsters have at least +50% more hp.

Another major flaw is the nerfed damage output of PCs compared both to monster hp inflation and earlier editions. A 4E PC only have these damage enhancers: Increase in primary ability score, enhancement bonus from magic items, a few feats, some boost from a Leader. A 3E PC also had extra dice from elemental damage enchantments on magic weapons, ability score boosters and more attacks per round.

If you go by RAW then combat encounters will last longer be harder as you level up. At the low end of the Heroic tier combat will be fast, furious and fun and done within one hour depending on the encounter composition. When you reach the Paragon tier average to hard encounters will always devolve into drawn-out, boring grindfests that may last two or more hours.

The easy houserule fix is to give PCs Expertise feats as bonus feats and either add the ½ level bonus to the damage of both PCs and monsters or reduce monster hp by 50%.

If you prefer to run your game by RAW without any house rules then you have to, as the DM, to carefully manage each encounter, keep them small and never above the party level.

Thanks Alisair! You truly seem to "get" my post. Also, while I don't think you can do a *blanket* %50 hit point reduction across-the-board for humanoid monsters, the whole point of this topic is that, as you have advised, I do think you should reduce HPs on them. It may vary from humanoid monster to monster, though.

Also, I don't think 2hr. grindfests should ever be considered fun, and as a DM or player one should do what they can to avoid those. If it's by clever house rule, so be it!

Thanks again for the response!

 

[Rachel]

The problem you end up running into is a balance point that 4e tried to design around.

Pretend that you give everyone the same damage and hitpoints. Now, when they finish a fight, the players can't go on because they've run out of resources.

Solution, give them the ability to heal.

Problem: Unchecked healing means that players have infinite hit points.

Solution: Put limits on how often you can regain hit points. In other words, healing surges.

Problem: Combat is not interesting because player characters are now too powerful because they can heal.

Solution: Make monsters tougher.

Thanks for taking the time to respond (and quickly!).

What you have described has to be *dead-on* what designing this game must have been like. The developers had it tough! Still, they have done the best they could to balance things, and I accept that wholly. However, that isnt my concern. My only concern is how to tweak what they've done to make the game more playable and fun. Believe me I don't want to redesign it, only improve on it's already strong foundation.

 

[Roger]

Alright. So here's the deal on monster hitpoints, from the DMG pg 184:

Skirmisher: 8 + Con + (level * 8)
Brute: 10 + Con + (level * 10)
Soldier: 8 + Con + (level * 8)
Lurker: 6 + Con + (level * 6)
Controller: 8 + Con + (level * 8)
Artillery: 6 + Con + (level * 6)

And the deal on PC hitpoints, from the PHB:

Fighter, Paladin: 9 + Con + (level * 6)
Ranger, Rogue: 7 + Con + (level * 5)
Wizard: 6 + Con + (level * 4)
(etc)

So, yes, monsters have more hitpoints than PCs.

In terms of the specific example of a 9th-level gnome fighter versus an 8th-level-Elite Orc Chieftain:

Orc Defenses: AC 22; Fortitude 22, Reflex 19, Will 21
Orc Attack: +11 vs. AC; 1d12 + 5 damage (crit 1d12 + 17)

Then I went into Character Builder and used Auto-Build to make a gnome fighter:

Gnome defenses: AC 23; Fort 23, Ref 17, Will 19
Gnome Attacks:
At-Will: +18 vs AC; 1d6+3
Encounters:
(x2) +14 vs AC; 2d6+6
+16 vs AC; 1d6+8
Dailies:
(x2) +14 vs AC; 2d6+6
+14 vs AC; 2d6+6 + ongoing 5


So the orc is hitting 45% of the time for 11.5 average(ish) damage.

The gnome is hitting anywhere from 85% to 65% of the time, with damage anywhere from 6.5 to 13.


The gnome is going to want some help. The morale of the story: don't take on elites near your own level all by yourself.

The Orc Chieftain, as a level 8 elite, is 700 XP, equivalent to a level 12 standard monster. Probably not the sort of threat that anyone wants to solo very often.


It's certainly feasible to dial down the hitpoints on humanoid monsters if you wish; houserules making things easier on the PCs usually don't have catastrophic results.

Let us know how that works out for you in your campaign.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[cattoy]

D&D 4e made a conscious effort to decrease the amount of number crunching by the DM.

As a result humanoid monsters eventually have many more HP than their PC equivalents. But then again, they do not have dailies, encounter powers or (most of the time) magic items with their own triggered powers or dailies or properties.

It is almost unheard of to have a 6th level PC of any sort wandering around without any magic items. It is entirely commonplace for the humanoid monsters they fight to have no magic items.

 

[Rachel]

Okay before I get to a response for Roger, let me jump in here real fast!

As a result humanoid monsters eventually have many more HP than their PC equivalents. But then again, they do not have dailies, encounter powers or (most of the time) magic items with their own triggered powers or dailies or properties.

Actually, many humanoid monsters have the equivalent of Encounter/Daily powers (even if they aren't called that). And it's plenty reasonable to see humanoids that aren't the PCs with magic items of their own that they've managed to acquire.

It is almost unheard of to have a 6th level PC of any sort wandering around without any magic items. It is entirely commonplace for the humanoid monsters they fight to have no magic items.

Agree that in most games PCs will probably have magic items but bear in mind it depends on the frequency of magic items in the game world you use. Some game worlds, magic items are a much more rare and wondrous thing (not the default setting for D&D, but some like this approach).
And again, whether the humanoid monsters in your world have gotten their hands on magic items is a matter of personal choice, but imho it's expected that they will have in my world. Are the PCs the only ones who would see the value in magic items and covet them? I think not. Enemy humanoids will have the odd magic item, and some may even have many (spellcaster humanoids just love'em!).

 

[Amaroq]

I took pains to show that Myria's companions are *not* in the equation (for all the reasons stated in my post). So the surges sent her way from companions are intentionally not factored. Again, the idea is to look at what Myria can do by herself assuming her allies are otherwise engaged or down.

I think discounting the surges sent her way by her companions does a disservice to the game designers.

To quote the assumptions in your post -

"It is assumed that both will have teammates assisting them and factoring what help they may or not be is beyond the scope of this theory."

"Assuming their are 5 PCs, it is even odds numerically. Again, Myria is likely to be facing one of these Berserker's dead-on."

Both of those assumptions fly in the face of my personal experience at the gaming table - and I play a fighter! - which has been that no matter what else is going on, the party's leader almost always deals out hit points. She has standard actions which do an attack, and heal one person for surge-value, and another for bonus points. She also has minor actions which deal out a healing surge to an ally.

Monsters' allies, on the other hand, rarely get beyond helping gift Combat Advantage or a similar +2 (aid another, etc), and almost never grant their allies a quantity of hit points equivalent to a healing surge at that level.

Even granting the assumption "Myria is entirely on her own, facing a creature 1-on-1 as a level-appropriate encounter for a Lvl 4 PC" ..

Myria should still have several other possibilities to increase her effective hit point total. The Invigorating keyword, for example: Crushing Surge as an At-Will should be giving her about +3 HP per hit. The L4 magic item "Cloak of the Walking Wounded", giving her two surges in combat instead of one. The Level 2 utility powers "Unstoppable" (say, +2d6+3) or "Boundless Endurance" (regen +5).

If she's going it alone, by Level 4 she's probably used feats to strengthen her ability to go it alone, such as "Improved Vigor" for +1 temp HP on Invigorating, "Student of Battle" for access to the Warlord's Inspiring Word.

She's also likely to have picked up a Healing Potion or two on her way to fourth level.

(My fighter, at L4, had the Cloak, Crushing Surge, and Student of Battle, mentioned above, even though he was part of a larger party.)

So you're playing the game to take damage and burn healing surges just so you can be equal? How about being equal from the start w/o having to get beat up first??

Rather. As noted by one of your other respondents, PC's net hit points is much larger when you take into account the hit points granted through all of their healing surges - the designers just needed to start the PC's with a lower short-term hit point value so that they would feel an actual danger of dying during combat.

"An elite counts as two creatures" is 100% abstraction. It doesn't count as two creatures *in the reality of combat*. It is a single creature standing there ticked off. Likewise, Myria is only a single creature. Why would I "give her a clone"? Also pure abstraction. Whatever you say, there is still only one Myria there on the battlefield. So, in reality, I add 2 second winds for +44 which would make the HP comparison between our heroic gnome and the orc baddie 216-132.

Here I disagree with you. One Elite equals two PCs of the same level, and one Solo equals four PCs of the same level. This is explicitly clear from the Encounter creation guidelines in the DMG and the experience guidelines for same.

If Myria is expected to take on an Elite of her level as a solo encounter, the DM has selected an encounter of Level + 4 for her - which may be do-able for an optimized party, but is well outside of the DMG's recommendations for encounters (Level - 1 to Level + 2).

In practice, I find its been, "Hey fighter, go tie up the elite as best as you can while we deal with the rest of this rabble .." with the result that the fighter battles until bloodied, second winds himself, and then starts getting support from leaders and other characters as they come back from their sub-missions on the battlefield.

(In fact, in actual play, I think Elites get the short end of the stick: they are two creatures' worth of hit points but only one creatures' worth of actions; a party of four PC's should run circles around the level-appropriate encounter of two Elite monsters of their level.)

From all of that, I conclude that the assumption "humanoid player characters should have equivalent hit points to humanoid monsters" to be incorrect.

My conclusion seems to be borne out by the DMG's section on NPCs (p182), as NPCs with classes are created by adding templates which include massive amounts of hit points to existing creatures, basically turning a normal creature into an Elite .. so that a Level 8 gnome fighter constructed as an NPC would have vastly different hit points from a level 8 gnome fighter constructed as a PC.

 

[Rachel]

@ROGER:

Thanks for the great analysis! I don't have access to the Character Builder.
Also, I hadn't begun to factor in all the possible stats that would go into a battle between my gnome and the orcs, simply the hit points involved. Your calculations shed some light on the subject, that's for sure.

Naturally, you wouldn't want to take on that sort of Elite threat "solo" very often, as you said. But, I was thinking in terms of what would be the feasibility of doing so, because the gulf in hit points really made me wonder if a chance at doing so was even a possibility *at all*. And this could actually come into play. Examples:

1) Let's say a "duel" situation has been initiated, where both parties have agreed to send out their "champion" to fight each other, winner take all (w/e is being contested).

-OR-

2) Myria and the Orc Chieftain are the only one's left standing, this is for all the marbles, and the orc baddie is not backing down.

Such things could happen, and I couldn't help but feel PCs were "behind the eightball" in such circumstances. Lowering hp's a bit seemed like a good solution, but now I am looking at other things like healing surges, more magic items on the PC, and more PC powers that could also be a huge factor in "leveling the playing field". ;p