D&D 5E D&D Should Have Less HP Bloat

After a certain point, I've found both that 1) fights start to drag and 2) even considering rpg tropes, it starts to be hard to take some things seriously.

HP bloat should be reduced in D&D.

High level monsters become big bags of hitpoints. This slows down combat and the flow of play a lot.

PCs starts to become bags of HP (and resistances) too. I've found that this influences playstyle in such a way that players see brute force and combat as a reliable way to solve problems.

(Obviously, yes, D&D has combat, but I'm inclined to believe that facing something like an elder dragon should involve some amount of strategy beyond just charging ahead and swinging.)

I believe these problems can be solved by deflating many of the numbers involved with the game.

Side note: I also believe this could change encounter design in such a way that having large battles with a lot of moving pieces could be cool and fun rather than grinding to a slog.

Argyle King said:

After a certain point, I've found both that 1) fights start to drag and 2) even considering rpg tropes, it starts to be hard to take some things seriously.

HP bloat should be reduced in D&D.

High level monsters become big bags of hitpoints. This slows down combat and the flow of play a lot.

PCs starts to become bags of HP (and resistances) too. I've found that this influences playstyle in such a way that players see brute force and combat as a reliable way to solve problems.

(Obviously, yes, D&D has combat, but I'm inclined to believe that facing something like an elder dragon should involve some amount of strategy beyond just charging ahead and swinging.)

I believe these problems can be solved by deflating many of the numbers involved with the game.

Side note: I also believe this could change encounter design in such a way that having large battles with a lot of moving pieces could be cool and fun rather than grinding to a slog.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you might be looking for an OSR game. Hit points never get out of hand for anybody, and battles are much quicker as a result.

Ath-kethin said:

Sounds like you might be looking for an OSR game. Hit points never get out of hand for anybody, and battles are much quicker as a result.

Click to expand...

Perhaps
I like the adventure design from older editions much more. I've used a lot of old 1E and 2E adventures converted to other games.

I like the concepts in modern D&D; I simply find the implementation of them to be at odds with the game I want.

To give some context: despite being a game built much more around mythic fantasy and powerful PCs (and also having a lot of HP bloat,) I think that 4th Edition's ideas concerning encounter design were more interesting. Combat had moving parts; traps and terrain were dynamic and had some semblance of feeling like living pieces of an evolving battlefield; it was assumed that a group of pcs were fighting a group of monsters as a baseline assumption.

I had a lot of gripes about 4E's assumed playstyle and mechanics, but I could identify with the mental space from which encounter design was approached.

5E seems to have kept the HP bloat and numbers bloat of 4E, while also making a more-static game. In my view, the new edition "fixed" things by going in the wrong direction.

To tie this into my opening statement, I'll clarify my position that what I call "HP bloat" also changes the mentality behind how the rest of the game is designed and played. Defending a town from marauding goblins could (and I believe should) be an engaging story which could be the basis for an entire arc; I would much prefer that to the math-porn anime-ish approach combo of "OMG... how many rounds do I need to whack this bag of HP" & Super Sayan Leroy Jenkins rolling for initiative.

I can see HP slow at some point but there should be some gain. Maybe 10th level PCs gain half their roll and after 15th level you only get Con bonus. Problem is that most of my campaigns end shortly after 10th level. Not sure my group would want to limit HP starting at 5th level.

5e does have the level progression slow in these mid-levels to have more adventures in these levels without gaining more HP. They planned this to slowdown knowing that most campaigns ended after 9th level.

An alternative solution would be to provide more opportunities to add damage to attacks. Getting above something might add falling damage when you attack it, swinging from a rope might add damage based on your movement - just a couple of ideas after a moment's thought.

Another thought: let the fighter sacrifice his reaction and bonus action to add damage dice to one attack.

Another alternative is to use location damage for opponents and players.

This involves taking the total HP and dividing it amongst different parts of the head, chest, abdomen, arms and legs. So 10% chance to hit the head of a creature with 100HP means the head has 10hp. The location damage is determined by d%.

A problem is for low level characters it can create severe risk aversion. But, it can help create some interesting play for that mega dragon with 150hp being flawed by a lucky critical hit to the head with a +2 magical composite long bow!

There is a homebrew for something similar on dndwiki, but I think the rules I inherited came from 2e. Can’t be sure though.

(Worth considering for A5E?)

HP bloat is a intentional design choice for 5e. In earlier editions there were a number of different knobs to control how long a fight would last. Big differences in defenses went away with bounded accuracy. More granular damage resistance went away, likely for streamlining but we haven't heard specifics. In the end, the primary universal knob left is HPs.

Now, that doesn't mean the designers got it at the sweet spot for you. But it is intentional, and is also supposed to mimic how long combats would last if instead of more HPs they just got reduced by less due to more misses and less damage done. So the "bloat" is really just the same as it's always been, just expressed differently.

Catolias said:

Another alternative is to use location damage for opponents and players.

This involves taking the total HP and dividing it amongst different parts of the head, chest, abdomen, arms and legs. So 10% chance to hit the head of a creature with 100HP means the head has 10hp. The location damage is determined by d%.

A problem is for low level characters it can create severe risk aversion. But, it can help create some interesting play for that mega dragon with 150hp being flawed by a lucky critical hit to the head with a +2 magical composite long bow!

There is a homebrew for something similar on dndwiki, but I think the rules I inherited came from 2e. Can’t be sure though.

(Worth considering for A5E?)

Click to expand...

There were a bunch of games that tried that back in the day & I think rifts was one. For the most part the only games I recall it working well in were things like mechwarrior.

If your NPCs are “big bags of hps that don’t do anything”….. that’s not a game design issue.

tetrasodium said:

There were a bunch of games that tried that back in the day & I think rifts was one. For the most part the only games I recall it working well in were things like mechwarrior.

Click to expand...

yeah, it’s not perfect and the extra die role and remembering where you hit can be cumbersome, but it does avoid combat being a drudge