+50% Damage / -50% Hit Points

[Nebulous]

To speed up 4e combat and make it a little more dynamic i had considered this houserule. All monsters, all types start with half their hit points, but all attacks do +50% of their maximum damage. Has anyone else tried this, and how does it work? It seemed like the easiest way to eyeball a statblock and adjust on the fly.

 

[keterys]

Would you be rolling damage at all? Ie, are you doing 50% * Max Damage (1d8+6 turns into 21 damage) or just +50% damage (7-14 rolled turns into 10-21 damage)? If the latter it's technically an advantage for the PCs since you'll only expect things to do _maybe_ 3/4 the damage they used to before dying - though focus fire may take out PCs fast enough it all works out.

That's sounding a little too extreme of a change to me - very rocket taggish, but if that's what works for your game, roll with it. I've found that -1/4 hp is plenty to take off when I want something to die more quickly...

 

[Nebulous]

Well for instance, if a monster did 1d12 + 8 normally, it would now do 1d12 + 18. Which might just be too much. I read else where DMs reduced HP by 25% and increased damage by 1/2 level, which sounds good too. I was just thinking about options to make fights go faster, they can tend to drag.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I'm using 3/4 hps and +1/2 level in damage and that's about as far as I am willing to take it. I tried this at level 8 and levels 13 through 15 and it works fine. It speeds up the battles and makes me, as a DM, feel tough again with monsters dishing out scary damage. It takes the big fluffy boxing gloves off of the pit fiend.

50% hitpoints would be too low. My wife's ranger can do half their hitpoints in two shots sometimes. It means a lot of creatures would die faster than they could hit.

The math is a lot simpler with 50% hitpoints, though, but my experience is they die just too quickly.

 

[the Jester]

I've done a couple experiments with double damage/half hit points, especially for solos and elites. It worked well, but then, I have a leader-heavy party, so that might affect the way it played out.