Hit Points--A study of humanoids.
- Thread starter Rachel
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Starfox
Hero
4E is a different beast. Players are expected to syngergize, monsters are expected no to (or at least to a lesser degree). In general, a 1 on 1 fight is harder than a 5 on 5 fight. At least' that's how its supposed to work. Not sure if it really does.
As an aside: Is it more ok for a non-humanoid, non-boss monster to have this many hp?
As an aside: Is it more ok for a non-humanoid, non-boss monster to have this many hp?
You're welcome!
Trying to read between the lines, it feels like you're focused on this because you really want to DM a one-on-one situation.
If you want some practical advice, I've DM'ed exactly that - and ironically, as orc-vs-ranger.
The first thing to consider is, "What is the rest of the party doing during this fight?", because, honestly, the one-on-one fight is going to feel appropriately epic to the player involved and to the DM, but the rest of the party may feel a little let down.
The second thing to consider is, "Do you want the player to be able to win without help?"
For me, the answer to the second was "no": the orc didn't want to pick a fair fight, so he wound up picking on somebody exhausted (2 surges remaining) and weaker than himself, playing to his "honor" by "challenging" him.
So the answer to the first became "they better do something" - so, for example, I had each of them roll Initiative when the single-combat began, and creatively tell me what they were doing. Somebody made an Insight check fairly early on, and got the information "Ashtuk does seem to intend this to be an honest one-on-one combat, but you can also tell that it isn't a fair fight: you don't think the ranger has a chance."
We wound up with the paladin shifting to strategically position herself, the bard creating a distraction so that she could try to heal the ranger (with stealth and/or thievery checks required to pull it off without tipping her hand), and the wizard trying to take advantage of the distraction to hide herself in the surrounding foliage.
That lasted a couple rounds, but when the bard failed a stealth check, it degenerated into a melee free-for-all as the orc's friends jumped in .. oddly, one which circled around the two combatants without anybody ever jumping in on them.
For that, the "challenging" orc was an Elite of Level+1, and the ranger seriously had no chance one-on-one ... but wound up winning without any of the other PC's intervening beyond a couple of things - two healing surges, getting adjacent for a combat advantage +2, and the paladin's "mark" causing a -2 to hit and some radiant damage when the Elite ignored it.
The rest of the encounter totaled about a Level+1 encounter, which led to the other three PC's easily being able to handle the minions and soldiers which had accompanied the Elite.
Had the answers been "Nothing" and "Yes", I'd have had to develop the encounter completely differently. The opponent would probably have been a non-elite of Level, possibly "gifted" an action point or a healing surge power to keep the PC's guessing about his true strength.
I think there were three keys, though, for running it successfully:
1. There's a lot of trust between players and DMs in the group; I could toss out a single combat challenge and know that the players would embrace it and make it more epic than it had been when I imagined it .. the players had enough trust to toss out some non-combat actions with their first-round initiatives, leading to Perception checks, Insight checks, etc, which let them realize that the ranger was in trouble .. and they read from my Insight description that it wasn't "supposed" to be a one-on-one fight.
2. I do hand-design my major villains; I may use printed monsters almost verbatim for soldiers, minions, etc, but even then I think them through and make minor adjustments to suit the situation, encounter, flavor, etc. For this encounter, I'd hand-built Ashtuk from the ground up, but he was basically an orc skirmisher with the Ranger template over the top, and hit points adjusted based on point 3:
3. Because of that, I try to play-test key encounters ahead of time to ensure that they are balanced. For example, I'd tried Ashtuk as a level-equivalent Elite first, but found him a little too "easy" if the party didn't help the ranger out.
Hope that helps ... if not, mind sharing with us what your goal is?
How did you come to be thinking about this?
Trying to read between the lines, it feels like you're focused on this because you really want to DM a one-on-one situation.
If you want some practical advice, I've DM'ed exactly that - and ironically, as orc-vs-ranger.
The first thing to consider is, "What is the rest of the party doing during this fight?", because, honestly, the one-on-one fight is going to feel appropriately epic to the player involved and to the DM, but the rest of the party may feel a little let down.
The second thing to consider is, "Do you want the player to be able to win without help?"
For me, the answer to the second was "no": the orc didn't want to pick a fair fight, so he wound up picking on somebody exhausted (2 surges remaining) and weaker than himself, playing to his "honor" by "challenging" him.
So the answer to the first became "they better do something" - so, for example, I had each of them roll Initiative when the single-combat began, and creatively tell me what they were doing. Somebody made an Insight check fairly early on, and got the information "Ashtuk does seem to intend this to be an honest one-on-one combat, but you can also tell that it isn't a fair fight: you don't think the ranger has a chance."
We wound up with the paladin shifting to strategically position herself, the bard creating a distraction so that she could try to heal the ranger (with stealth and/or thievery checks required to pull it off without tipping her hand), and the wizard trying to take advantage of the distraction to hide herself in the surrounding foliage.
That lasted a couple rounds, but when the bard failed a stealth check, it degenerated into a melee free-for-all as the orc's friends jumped in .. oddly, one which circled around the two combatants without anybody ever jumping in on them.
For that, the "challenging" orc was an Elite of Level+1, and the ranger seriously had no chance one-on-one ... but wound up winning without any of the other PC's intervening beyond a couple of things - two healing surges, getting adjacent for a combat advantage +2, and the paladin's "mark" causing a -2 to hit and some radiant damage when the Elite ignored it.
The rest of the encounter totaled about a Level+1 encounter, which led to the other three PC's easily being able to handle the minions and soldiers which had accompanied the Elite.
Had the answers been "Nothing" and "Yes", I'd have had to develop the encounter completely differently. The opponent would probably have been a non-elite of Level, possibly "gifted" an action point or a healing surge power to keep the PC's guessing about his true strength.
I think there were three keys, though, for running it successfully:
1. There's a lot of trust between players and DMs in the group; I could toss out a single combat challenge and know that the players would embrace it and make it more epic than it had been when I imagined it .. the players had enough trust to toss out some non-combat actions with their first-round initiatives, leading to Perception checks, Insight checks, etc, which let them realize that the ranger was in trouble .. and they read from my Insight description that it wasn't "supposed" to be a one-on-one fight.
2. I do hand-design my major villains; I may use printed monsters almost verbatim for soldiers, minions, etc, but even then I think them through and make minor adjustments to suit the situation, encounter, flavor, etc. For this encounter, I'd hand-built Ashtuk from the ground up, but he was basically an orc skirmisher with the Ranger template over the top, and hit points adjusted based on point 3:
3. Because of that, I try to play-test key encounters ahead of time to ensure that they are balanced. For example, I'd tried Ashtuk as a level-equivalent Elite first, but found him a little too "easy" if the party didn't help the ranger out.
Hope that helps ... if not, mind sharing with us what your goal is?
How did you come to be thinking about this?
Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
HP in and of themselves defy logic.
I do agree that 4e monsters have too many hp and deal too little damage, but that problem is in no way limited to humanoids.
I hate to single you out, but as I understand it, this effect was basically errata'd. From what I can tell it's new, as of January.
As its currently written. regarding temporary hitpoints (PH,294):
Don’t Add Together: If you get temporary hit points from different sources, use the higher valueas your temporary hit point total instead of adding the values together.
The changes in the errata state:
Don’t Add Together: If you get temporary hit points and already have some, use the higher valueas your temporary hit point total instead of adding the values together.
Now, I'm not a 100% rules expert, but as I understand it, the effect of Crushing Surge doesn't stack on itself.
Sorry for being all rules-y on you. I play a fighter myself, and was disappointed when I read this. :-(
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
That they don't stack isn't crucial - there is no need to use them (usually) if you still have temporary hit points.
Yeah, I know - but if we're looking at a one-on-one fight, the fact that the THP don't stack only comes into play when the monster misses .. so the fighter still winds up ahead.
Rachel
First Post
So many great responses! Thank you to everyone for that!
But please allow me to "reset" the topic a bit.
This whole idea that humanoids in the MM have too many hit points came to me as I thought about how fragile humanoids are in relation to other things. I don't want to get too simulationist, but IRL people can die from a prick to the wrong place, or drown in a spoonful of water. Humans are weak! So I guess it doesn't make sense to me to see humanoids with hundreds and hundreds of hit points. That's a lot of hits they can take! Then I noticed that PCs had substantially less HPs than even humanoid monsters. That only confounded the problem, in my eyes. Okay so if an orc or other *squishy* bodied humanoid like an illithid had so many HP, at least the PCs should have similar. True monsters, such as demons and magical beasts, in my mind make perfect sense having gobs of HP; they don't trigger the same WTH? kind of response.
So I set out to sort of envision what it would be like to pit a fighter vs. an orc (particularly the Chieftain) one-one-one as a study to see how she would fare.
The point was never to say her allied PCs might not help out, or that the orc's henchman might not either. The point was to say *what if neither the fighter nor the orc's allies chose to or we able to help*. A true one-on-one. This is relevenat b/c that could happen...it could be a one-on-one (which looked to me like it would drastically favor the orc). In a follow-up response, I listed 2 cases (a duel being one of them) where no allied help comes into play.
Ultimately, a humanoid can only be so tough. A humanoid with 300+ hit points can takes dozens of hits potentially. A demon, a large magical beast, I can see it, but not a humanoid. Most humanoids are *squishy*. Some humanoids (those intended to be extra-tough) may also make sense with gobs of HP (like elemental-themed ones). But an orc? There is no orc that's going to be *that* tough. Period.
As another point, I added at the end of my original post that the way to make orcs tougher is not to stack on insane amounts of HP, but to do other things such as giving them tactics, better gear, more of a damage punch, overwhelming odds, etc..
Hopefully this clarifies some things and brings us back to square one.
But please allow me to "reset" the topic a bit.
This whole idea that humanoids in the MM have too many hit points came to me as I thought about how fragile humanoids are in relation to other things. I don't want to get too simulationist, but IRL people can die from a prick to the wrong place, or drown in a spoonful of water. Humans are weak! So I guess it doesn't make sense to me to see humanoids with hundreds and hundreds of hit points. That's a lot of hits they can take! Then I noticed that PCs had substantially less HPs than even humanoid monsters. That only confounded the problem, in my eyes. Okay so if an orc or other *squishy* bodied humanoid like an illithid had so many HP, at least the PCs should have similar. True monsters, such as demons and magical beasts, in my mind make perfect sense having gobs of HP; they don't trigger the same WTH? kind of response.
So I set out to sort of envision what it would be like to pit a fighter vs. an orc (particularly the Chieftain) one-one-one as a study to see how she would fare.
The point was never to say her allied PCs might not help out, or that the orc's henchman might not either. The point was to say *what if neither the fighter nor the orc's allies chose to or we able to help*. A true one-on-one. This is relevenat b/c that could happen...it could be a one-on-one (which looked to me like it would drastically favor the orc). In a follow-up response, I listed 2 cases (a duel being one of them) where no allied help comes into play.
Ultimately, a humanoid can only be so tough. A humanoid with 300+ hit points can takes dozens of hits potentially. A demon, a large magical beast, I can see it, but not a humanoid. Most humanoids are *squishy*. Some humanoids (those intended to be extra-tough) may also make sense with gobs of HP (like elemental-themed ones). But an orc? There is no orc that's going to be *that* tough. Period.
As another point, I added at the end of my original post that the way to make orcs tougher is not to stack on insane amounts of HP, but to do other things such as giving them tactics, better gear, more of a damage punch, overwhelming odds, etc..
Hopefully this clarifies some things and brings us back to square one.
Nytmare
David Jose
The other problems with this point of view are that, first, 4th Ed is built on the idea that the characters you are going to be playing are automatically not the people who die from getting pricked in the wrong place, or who drown in a spoonful of water.
Second, hit points are not (some would argue no longer) representative of how many times you can be stabbed. They also represent how many times you can be battered, bruised, luckily missed, and demoralized.
Second, hit points are not (some would argue no longer) representative of how many times you can be stabbed. They also represent how many times you can be battered, bruised, luckily missed, and demoralized.
Rachel
First Post
"stabbed, battered, bruised"---semantics, all the same thing just different forms.....
"luckily missed"---has nothing to do with hit points (AC is hit/miss, hit points are when you are hit)
"demoralized"---definately has zero to do with hit points (which track damage...demoralized would be status conditions or optional battle modifiers based on morale).
Not sure why you pick on me so much Nytmare...starting to think you don't like me!
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