D&D 5E Double Monster Damage - Half Monster HP

[Blue]

I think you are mistaken about X Damage prevents 4Y Monster Damage.

To start consider a big solo monster. It has 200 hp normally. It does 30 damage a turn. If it normally lasts 4 turns then it will do 120 damage total. Consider if we halved its hp and doubled its damage. It would last 2 turns and do 60 a turn. That's 120 damage total.

If it lasts 4 turns (2 with half hp) turns that means we are doing 50 damage a turn to it.

Now consider the same monster split into 2 different monsters. Each has 100 hp and does 15 damage a turn.
It will take you 2 rounds to kill each monster. Round 1 you take 30 damage. Round 2 you take 30 damage. Round 3 You take 15 damage. Round 4 you take 15 damage. Total damage 90.

Now consider halving their hp and doubling their damage. Round 1 you take 60 damage. Round 2 you take 30 damage. That's 90 damage take.

So, I'm not seeing the same amount of damage causing 4 times the damage reduction by halving monster hp and doubling monster damage.

Because damage dealt doesn't always perfectly equal damage needed to kill a creature and because of whole goes first initiative, the number can't be anything but an estimation in practice. That doesn't change the theory behind it.

Let's reduce this to it's simplest form so I can show an example. But of course my example is contrived - I fully agree that it's an approximation in actual play.

2 HP creatures that do 2 damage. And the damage we're looking at doing is even so it always kills. (1 HP wouldn't be able to be divided in half.)

If in 1 round you do 10 HPs of damage, you kill 5 and that would have done 10 HPs of damage back in the same round.

Now let's take 1 HP creatures that does 4 HPs of damage.

In one round you do 10 HPs of damage. You kill 10 of them. They would have done 40 HPs back in the same round.

40 HP return damage vs. 10 HPs - that's the 4:1 I'm talking about.

 

[dco]

You are surprised and lose initiative, you are dead.

 

[Shiroiken]

I used this back in 4E to shorten the combats, but long, grinding combats really aren't common in 5E.

 

[Satyrn]

What do you think of this. -2 hp per hit dice. Increase damage dice in size by 2.

That probably gets you close enough to what you're aiming for, and is easy enough to adlib ingame. You might need to figure out what's larger than a d12, though. There are apparently d14s and d16s out there running wild.

But it's far more about what you think of it.

Personally, I wouldn't do any of this. I don't want a rule to systematically modify all monsters,nand I don't want to run a game where all the monsters are glass cannons. And I use that term fondly; I like including glass cannons. But I also want bags of hp. I want variety.

I'm just offering suggestions to help you get what you want.

 

[FrogReaver]

Because damage dealt doesn't always perfectly equal damage needed to kill a creature and because of whole goes first initiative, the number can't be anything but an estimation in practice. That doesn't change the theory behind it.

Let's reduce this to it's simplest form so I can show an example. But of course my example is contrived - I fully agree that it's an approximation in actual play.

2 HP creatures that do 2 damage. And the damage we're looking at doing is even so it always kills. (1 HP wouldn't be able to be divided in half.)

If in 1 round you do 10 HPs of damage, you kill 5 and that would have done 10 HPs of damage back in the same round.

Now let's take 1 HP creatures that does 4 HPs of damage.

In one round you do 10 HPs of damage. You kill 10 of them. They would have done 40 HPs back in the same round.

40 HP return damage vs. 10 HPs - that's the 4:1 I'm talking about.

So let's take your slightly oversimplified example and apply it to my over simplified example.

On turn one there are 10 creatures with 2 hp and 2 damage. They do 20 damage on turn 1. You will kill 5 of them (assuming your damage can be split however you want etc). Then they will do 10 damage on turn 2. Total damage = 30.

With my half-damage double hp. 10 creates 1 hp and 4 damage each. They do 40 damage on turn 1. You Kill them all on turn 1.

I guess technically the above would be with all the monsters going first in initiative.

So in this example doubling hp and halving damage actually causes you to take more damage which runs totally counter to what you are claiming.


Now let's look at the scenario I think that lines up more with what you are trying to say. You go first and the monsters all go last.

You kill half of them. There are 5 left to attack you on turn 1. They do 10 damage total. You kill the rest. You took 10 total damage.

(Half hp double damage) you kill them all on turn 1. You took 0 damage.

Depending on if you go first or the monsters go first there is only a 10 damage swing using your example in my system. It's not 4:1 its +X/-X depending on initiative.

 

[Blue]

So let's take your slightly oversimplified example and apply it to my over simplified example.

On turn one there are 10 creatures with 2 hp and 2 damage. They do 20 damage on turn 1. You will kill 5 of them (assuming your damage can be split however you want etc). Then they will do 10 damage on turn 2. Total damage = 30.

With my half-damage double hp. 10 creates 1 hp and 4 damage each. They do 40 damage on turn 1. You Kill them all on turn 1.

I guess technically the above would be with all the monsters going first in initiative.

So in this example doubling hp and halving damage actually causes you to take more damage which runs totally counter to what you are claiming.


Now let's look at the scenario I think that lines up more with what you are trying to say. You go first and the monsters all go last.

You kill half of them. There are 5 left to attack you on turn 1. They do 10 damage total. You kill the rest. You took 10 total damage.

(Half hp double damage) you kill them all on turn 1. You took 0 damage.

Depending on if you go first or the monsters go first there is only a 10 damage swing using your example in my system. It's not 4:1 its +X/-X depending on initiative.

I'm talking one round, you're talking multiple rounds. Different things. Multi round hides what we're looking it, it's not useful for the comparison.

Let me try. There are 100 billion 2 HP creatures ....
The amount of damage the ones not attacked do is very different, hides the tiny change we'd do with 10 HPs of damage.

The 4:1 is is only for those you could kill in one round. Period. There is no multiple rounds.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm talking one round, you're talking multiple rounds. Different things. Multi round hides what we're looking it, it's not useful for the comparison.

Let me try. There are 100 billion 2 HP creatures ....
The amount of damage the ones not attacked do is very different, hides the tiny change we'd do with 10 HPs of damage.

The 4:1 is is only for those you could kill in one round. Period. There is no multiple rounds.

Then the stat you keep trying to cite is meaningless to the game. We see this kind of stuff around here all the time. Someone comes up with a stat that maybe is true but that stat deceives us about what is going on in the game.

What is important in the game is the total amount of damage you are dealt in a fight. Those numbers aren't all that different between the 2 methods. 10 vs 0 if you go first 30 vs 40 if you go last.

You see, at the end of the fight it doesn't actually matter how much damage you prevent a round by killing stuff. What matters is how much damage you took in the fight.

In fact, a valid question is, why do you even care about the round by round damage or the round by round damage prevented when you can very easily calculate total fight damage?

 

[Blue]

Then the stat you keep trying to cite is meaningless to the game. We see this kind of stuff around here all the time. Someone comes up with a stat that maybe is true but that stat deceives us about what is going on in the game.

What is important in the game is the total amount of damage you are dealt in a fight. Those numbers aren't all that different between the 2 methods. 10 vs 0 if you go first 30 vs 40 if you go last.

You see, at the end of the fight it doesn't actually matter how much damage you prevent a round by killing stuff. What matters is how much damage you took in the fight.

In fact, a valid question is, why do you even care about the round by round damage or the round by round damage prevented when you can very easily calculate total fight damage?

Woo, we've gotten beyond the fact that the 4:1 ratio is correct. Now we're onto the more interesting question of is it useful.

It's a slice of life - talking about the damage that /the creatures you can kill in the round/ will do, it says how much damage those creatures are doing.

Talking about multiple rounds requires another dimension - how many creatures there are for how many rounds it will take to dispatch them all. Without that, it's impossible to calculate.

It's like speed vs. acceleration. While acceleration AND time will give you speed, that doesn't mean that acceleration by itself is meaningless. It's still a useful thing to know how fast your car will accelerate from stopped compared to another car.

EDIT: As a matter of fact, given JUST that we know double the damage and half the HPs, we CAN'T generalize for a full combat. You can add information to make up examples, but with the information you have not only is it not "easy" to calculate the total fight damage, it's IMPOSSIBLE with the information we have. And when you make up information you are at best saying "combats similar to X will run like this". A claim looking at just the information we have, even if it needs to reduce the scope of what it's examining because of a limit of that information, is much more meaningful then a random example adding other data at looking at the whole picture.

 

[FrogReaver]

Woo, we've gotten beyond the fact that the 4:1 ratio is correct. Now we're onto the more interesting question of is it useful.

It's a slice of life - talking about the damage that /the creatures you can kill in the round/ will do, it says how much damage those creatures are doing.

Talking about multiple rounds requires another dimension - how many creatures there are for how many rounds it will take to dispatch them all. Without that, it's impossible to calculate.

It's like speed vs. acceleration. While acceleration AND time will give you speed, that doesn't mean that acceleration by itself is meaningless. It's still a useful thing to know how fast your car will accelerate from stopped compared to another car.

You keep on trying to focus on just the next round but you are ignoring the fact that the total number of rounds has been halved. That has to be factored in somewhere and you are completely ignoring it.

 

[Blue]

Not worth it.