D&D 5E Does Anybody Think Monsters Have Far Too Much HP?

[Falling Icicle]

A CR8 Hydra may have 172 hp, and that sounds like a ton, but a typical 8th level fighter can deal 19 avg. damage per round if he hits with both attacks. A 5 person party doing that kind of damage could drop that hydra in as little as 2 rounds. Even if they miss with half of their attacks, they could kill it in 4 rounds. That's not even counting things like action surge and 4th level spells.

 

[Jer]

The cr of 5e and 3e aren't comparable. Regarding the HP scaling, it's how 5e separates the levels. 3e used ac and attack bonus to a much larger degree

This. The increase in hit points is because AC isn't being scaled by Challenge Rating, so monsters are going to get hit more often in combat.

As an example look at the Ogre (I'd use the Roper but it isn't in the Basic DM booklet and the Ogre is). In 3e the Ogre was CR 3, had AC 16 and had 29 hp (4d8+11). In 5e the Ogre is CR 2, has AC 11 and 59 hp (7d10 + 21) - more than twice the hit points its 3e counterpart had. But. With an AC of 11 even a 1st level wizard of average strength using a sword is going to hit it about half the time - a 1st level fighter of high strength is going to hit it more like 75-80% of the time. Throw in some spells and some other PCs and the Ogre has to be able to absorb a lot of damage if you expect it to be around for a 3-5 round fight.

The scaling of the monster has moved away from "how hard is it to hit" and toward "how much abuse can it soak up and ignore while it wails on the PCs". 3e and 4e balanced monster difficulty using both increased AC and increased hit points, 5e is mainly using just increased hit points.

 

[Wolfskin]

I used to think monsters had far too much HP until I got to run 5e. Even low level characters can deal a surprising amount of damage, so after my players cleared their first dungeon before breakfast I can say: monsters may not have enough HP for these guys