D&D General Hit Points. Did 3.0 Or 3.5 Get it Right?

[Micah Sweet]

You know, I never thought about it but this is precisely the case. Monsters have a lot of HP in 5E mainly because a lot of effects have to be save or suck. Otherwise, the only other possible effects are damage or free form fiction-world manipulation (which WotC is allergic too). If a minotaur gets stunned against a party of four and they focus fire, it's almost assuredly dead or about to die before the end of the second round. Thanks for the insight!

Another solution presents itself: not have a lot of the effects be save or suck. Give everybody some teeth!

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's mostly healing word.

Magical healing rates very similar to 3.5 outside a few spells.

I definitely agree on the garbage fire of a spell that is healing word.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Here lately in 5E as a player, I feel like I'm armed with a wiffle bat.

Most frustratingly, in our latest adventure it was a stealth mission and we botched group sneaking past a guard. With the way 5E hit points are set up there was no way to dispense with the (CR appropriate) guard before he could raise the alarm - our attempt to use an upped-level sleep spell (at 3rd level) failed miserably and even the rogue assassin's surprise sneak attack couldn't take him down in one shot.

At times, the games focus on "epic combat, all the time, every time" grinds my gears and plays against a good story moment.

Yeah. Apparently you're supposed to handle these situations narratively, which turns it into a different game IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For some situations the 4e minion rules would work really well narratively.

But again, different game. And even then, 5e doesn't exactly tell you that.

 

[Celebrim]

D&D is inconsistent with it's lore and stats.

What is the human guard or orc warrior stat block?

A guard or orc who never fought more than a commoner?
A guard or orc who is a member of a skirmish between orcs and guards?
A guard or orc who is a veteran of many battles between orcs and guards?

Well that guard whose job is to stand in from of a door for hours should be a <10 HP mook whose purpose is to call others, not fight.

One of the first things a DM should do before running a sandbox campaign is to decide on their demographics of their world and answer those sorts of questions.

In my game worlds the typical stat block of a goblin or hobgoblin represents the equivalent of a human commoner. They are typical members of their species and have the typical martial skills of a member of their species. But they are far from the only thing out there. Depending on how close you get to the center of goblin power, there are whole units of goblins that are 3rd or 4th level fighters - goblin "heroes" of renown among their own race. Twenty goblin can go from being a pushover for a 6th level party to something truly terrifying depending on where in the world you are at and who you are dealing with. Are you dealing with random hunter gatherers living in human lands, or a clan raiding party, or a goblin king's highly trained standing army. And that's not even getting into the fact that goblin merchants are their adventuring class and as such it's like encountering an NPC party. And likewise a goblin guard of a typical small tribe that has invaded human lands is probably 1HD, whereas the goblin bodyguard standing around guarding the lair of a of a major goblin king is probably a 4HD fighter.

The reason this is important is invariably you are going to find yourself dealing with encounters on the fly and asking questions like - what should a normal town guard be like? What are the stats of a normal pirate?

 

[Voadam]

But again, different game. And even then, 5e doesn't exactly tell you that.

4e minion, elite, solo rules concepts are real easy to adapt into other editions of D&D.

I did/do it a lot in 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, and 5e.

Minions - change monster hp to 1 and take out fiddly parts as desired so they are easy to run glass cannons that are still a threat if ignored.

In 3e an orc guard/horde with a +4 to hit is not going to be much of a threat factor to a warrior with a 25+ AC. A CR appropriate bunch of levelled orcs turned into minions will be an issue by actually threatening hits before being taken out instead of just taking up space on the board and procedurally wiffing.

Elite - double attacks and double hp. Maybe give a bonus on resisting suck conditions. Tough stand out leaders/combatants count as two regular opponents, less subject to area of effect spells than two actual opponents but more subject to individual effects.

Solos - turn single attacks into area ones, multiply hp by party size or x4. Give a reaction type of thing and resistance to suck conditions. Turns a normal monster into a challenge for the whole party that a group of monsters would be.

I believe Trailblazer had some advice for doing so in 3.5.

 

[Celebrim]

Fireball is a A tier spell.... for what it's used for.
Fireball was best when DM threw 8-20 enemies at you.
But DMs stopped doing that in ordered to run easier combat or trickier monsters.
THAT is why Save or Suck spells got popular. A single target save or suck spell is when facing one foe or a boss with a handful of chumps.

But if 8 guys come at you in 4 directions, most SoS spells suck.

But running 8 guys coming at 4 directions with each side having a environmental hazard or special equipment takes a big drain on the brain.

Batman Wizards and CODzillas resulted because players could rely on DMs running smaller sets of tactics because some tactics are harder to run.

It occurs to me reading this post that while a portion of why I didn't have the normal problems you hear about with 3.X D&D because I nerfed casters with house rules, the other reason that I didn't have the same issues is that I ran 3.X as entirely an extension of my 1e AD&D campaign and so 8-20 enemies thrown at you in waves or from different directions was entirely the norm. The PC's regularly had to deal with 20+ sahuagin, pirates, beserkers, or zombies as foes. My standard encounter design was often 1-2 foes per PC, so encounters of 6-12 were normal - whether ghouls or hellhounds or perytons or fire drakes or velociraptors. Even "boss" monsters were often accompanied by 2-6 "minions" to provide a meat shield, or else where carefully homebrewed to deal with the action economy in some fashion. Save or suck wasn't just mechanically nerfed in my game but was tactically not a hammer you could use to solve every combat.

 

[Celebrim]

4e minion, elite, solo rules concepts are real easy to adapt into other editions of D&D.

I did/do it a lot in 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, and 5e.

Minions - change monster hp to 1 and take out fiddly parts as desired so they are easy to run glass cannons that are still a threat if ignored.

I3 Pyramid by Tracy Hickman is the first example of this concept I can recall in published D&D. He has a large group of 5HD monsters where most of them have less than 5 hit points, so they are all glass cannons by design.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of this approach and while I know what Tracy was going for in his design I don't find it necessary given the larger toolbox available today.

I do think that 4e encouraged a reevaluation of monster design that was long overdo and which paralleled my discussion of why 1e D&D monster design was bad, and why 3e D&D over relied on backwards compatibility with earlier editions and this resulted in porting problems from early editions such as big single monsters were too easy to focus fire on and burn down without being an interesting encounter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

4e minion, elite, solo rules concepts are real easy to adapt into other editions of D&D.

Sure, provided that you're comfortable with utilizing such blatantly narrative concepts in your D&D.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Sure, provided that you're comfortable with utilizing such blatantly narrative concepts in your D&D.

Once I've accepted the narrative concepts of classes, levels, and hit points the rest is easy.