Bashing bags of hitpoints

[Jester David]

Add abilities.

5e monsters are often simple because you might be runnng wth 3-10 of them. But you can always make them more interesting. Add some 5e class features or a few 4e monster powers.

 

[5ekyu]

I thought they were bad at lore revisions. Well, and having a bad model where you publish zero adventures and all your books are campaign settings and lore expansions.

...

Turns out White Wolf really only had that amazing lore and setting going for them, huh? I guess that explains all the LARPers.

Tbh... Full disclosure... Loved VtM 1st, WWTWTF 1st.. Tons of time running and playing... Loads of good stuff... but they could not math their way out of an open door... and gotta admit it really did not matter until they later tried to.

 

[Harzel]

So

I'm running the module "Gates of Firestorm Peak" which is converted from 2nd ed. Some of the monsters are converted in 5e already (gibbering mouther, trolls) and some are not (but thankfully, I found a decent 3rd party conversion on DMs guild). The thing I've noted while converting from 2nd ed is that there is a significant HP inflation in 5e, while the ACs tend to be worse -in some case much worse.

The party, in the damage dealing department, consists of a warlock (EB wih the Cha damage boost, Hex), a monk (order of the fist, spear +1), a cleric (knowledge) and a paladin (oath of the ancient, shield and board, viscious tulwar (a one handed only D8 weapon), all level 6. So there is not greater weapon twink build, but they can dish it out.

... and well, they feel like they are wailing on giant bag of hitpoints. They are almost always hitting, but the 5e versions of monsters have so much HP that it feels like it's taking forever. The paladin player loses patience, novaes with smithing, then he can't keep going because he's out of juice etc etc.

This was particularly noticeable in a fight vs 3 gibbering mouthers (AC 9, HP 67) and a living wall (HP 207 (!) AC 12). The living wall at least was interesting because it could cast spells at them. The gibbering mouther fight was just a chore.

Has anyone else noted this?

The gibbering mouthers have a lot of "controlish" powers - they modify terrain and their insane gibbering can momentarily confuse people. Now the DC of the will save is easy (10) - but there was *3* of them, so someone kept missing their save. The party decided to retreat, one got left behind, went back to save them, screw it let's kill them... the fight dragged.

The living wall had some control (a slow spell) but the party did amazing on their saves vs that (only an NPC who's mostly a non-combatant failed). I think they "enjoyed" it when they lined up and the wall blasted 3 of the 4 PCs with a lightning bolt though

The next fight won't be like this (it's one that is "foretold" and thus can be avoided) but the one after that (which can't be avoided if the PCs want to progress) is... vs another monster with tons of HP. (The Neh-thalggu , with 133 hp and AC 14 - ha they might miss a bit more then)

IMX, 200HP really should not take four 6th level PCs very long to burn through - 4 rounds, maybe 5 at most. How many rounds did the fights actually last?

Was it perhaps the case that the issue was not the number of HP, but the fact that the monsters had a feature that rendered some of the PCs inoperative?

By the way, it is arguable that the PCs should only need to save once regardless of the number of gibbering mouthers - multiple simultaneous instances of the same effect generally do not stack.

 

[Ancalagon]

IMX, 200HP really should not take four 6th level PCs very long to burn through - 4 rounds, maybe 5 at most. How many rounds did the fights actually last?

I don't remember for the gibbering mouthers, but the living wall was 5 rounds, but the players seemed frustrated by how much damage it was soaking.

By the way, it is arguable that the PCs should only need to save once regardless of the number of gibbering mouthers - multiple simultaneous instances of the same effect generally do not stack.

So... If instead of 3 gibbering mouthers, there were 3 evil wizards... if each cast fireball, you only take 8d6? If they all cast a mass hold person spell, you only save once?

You can't be "triple-confused", but it is harder to resist the effect of a spell if you're being battered by it multiple times no?

 

[AtomicPope]

Something I learned from running Star Wars RPGs: sometimes the PCs need to be invincible heroes. All too often DMs treat every combat as a life or death encounter. The problem with this approach is the players can't visualize or experience the growth of their characters. A cantrip is just as ineffective against an nigh invincible Orog when you're 1st Level as it is against a Storm Giant when you're 11th level. However, use those cantrips against regular Orcs when you're 11th level and you're blasting them to smithereens. Hacking and blasting an entire Orc warband is fun, it costs resources, and reminds us how much the players and their characters are grown together. They can look back and remember when a single Orc and some crazy dice rolls almost TPKed the party. Now they killed 40 Orcs like it was nothing, just a few scratches, saving an entire town.

These heroic encounters are perfect for plot threats:
1. Stop the Orcs from killing innocent villagers.
2. Stop the Cultists from summoning a Demon.
3. Evacuate NPCs from a warzone.

In each of these encounters the monsters are not a direct threat to the PCs. The monsters are a threat to the NPCs. To give the encounters weight they should threaten a part of the PCs' ingame history. For example, their favorite NPCs; the town they started their adventures in; or a combination. These acts of invincible heroism are a great lead to facing the real threat. They establish the PCs as the only heroes who can win this fight against the BBEG™. It's also a good time to play up the TV trope, "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!" Destroying the Orc Warband has brought the attention of the godlike Demon that lords over the Orc Empire. The fight just got deadly

 

[5ekyu]

I don't remember for the gibbering mouthers, but the living wall was 5 rounds, but the players seemed frustrated by how much damage it was soaking.



So... If instead of 3 gibbering mouthers, there were 3 evil wizards... if each cast fireball, you only take 8d6? If they all cast a mass hold person spell, you only save once?

You can't be "triple-confused", but it is harder to resist the effect of a spell if you're being battered by it multiple times no?

fireballs - as instantaneous effects they each apply fully and are never simultaneously affecting anyone.

Holds persons - The spells *are* treated independently and you can have to save vs each... but you will only be "affected" by one at a time while their durations overlap.

PHB Casting Spells.
"The effects of different spells add together while the durations of those spells overlap. The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine, however. Instead, the most potent effect — such as the highest bonus — from those castings applies while their durations overlap."

now, obviously any given table and players are different but in my group a five round combat against a single foe would raise not so much frustration and rancor as a growing sense of "holy cow this thing is tough" and might certainly be expressed as "its STILL up?!?!"

if the creature was just a "sack of hit points" it would be on me to make it seem more interesting - thru tactics, description or situational elements. Definitely as they whittled down the enemy, narrations would show changes in its appearance and demeanor and likely choices (assuming intelligent - and i simply put do not put non-intelligent adversaries that will eat up a lot of fight time - for the reason mentioned - why PLAN and DESIGN to spend a lot of fun-fight-time on the dull?)

Not a system problem - dull and frustrating fights can be put into a game and played out that way by a GM in any game... and they also can be avoided by the GMs too.

 

[dave2008]

Honestly, though, a middle road would probably have been preferable. If not for that thrice-cursed Bounded Accuracy, they could have had higher-level monsters that suffered from a much smaller increase of HP alongside a larger increase in AC.

Not sure who is cursing BA, but you can still have high(er) AC in 5e. It is a slider per the DMG. If you lower HP, for the same CR you can raise AC. Easy to tailor however you like.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Not sure who is cursing BA, but you can still have high(er) AC in 5e. It is a slider per the DMG. If you lower HP, for the same CR you can raise AC. Easy to tailor however you like.

Bounded Accuracy places a limit on how high AC can go, which is accounted for in the DMG formulas, and restricts the range of possibilities. I don't know that it's even possible for those formulas to create a monster than can be hit often enough by a party of moderate level, but which is not hit unreasonably often by a low-level party. After all, the accuracy of a PC might only change by ~5 points across the whole scope of twenty levels.

As with 3E, most of the problems with the game can be fixed by throwing out the Monster Manual and inventing your own creatures, but it's questionable as to whether you're even playing the same game at that point. The guidelines in the DMG are not terribly helpful on this point, because they're still organized around the concept of Bounded Accuracy making level nigh-irrelevant to accuracy.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hmmh. Bounded accuracy is a good thing. Sometimes I think having a steeper increase in acccuracy might have been ok. Maybe by 1/3 level instead of 1/4 levels. Maybe at 3 6 9 12 15 18. So you would go up from +2 to +8. Might have worked. Especially the accelerated increase at lower levels would have been something I'd prefer. Both for PCs as for monsters.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Hmmh. Bounded accuracy is a good thing.

Anyone who tells you that Bounded Accuracy is a good thing is trying to sell you something. In particular, they're trying to sell you on Bounded Accuracy.

Like most game mechanics, Bounded Accuracy is a trade-off. The trade-off for allowing low-level goblins to (almost) hit high-level PCs is that all monsters have wildly inflated Hit Points, such that you need to stab a giant hundreds of times before it dies. Whether you think that trade-off is worthwhile is going to depend mainly on how much you value allowing low-level goblins to threaten high-level PCs.