Half hit points, double damage for Monsters?

[crash_beedo]

Has anyone tried using a house rule like this to shorten the duration of 4E combats, but keep up the same level of threat?

My largish PC group (6) still takes a long time at the table, we're only averaging about two encounters per night and not enough time for exploration and other activities... I'm considering the house rule. Curious to here if anyone else has tried it.

 

[NMcCoy]

I've done half HP with normal damage (I think double damage would get too swingy) and one or two extra monsters and it's worked pretty well.

 

[the Jester]

I've given this a lot of thought, but haven't tried it out yet.

 

[Tuft]

See this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/250441-my-grind-fix-half-hp-2-3-xp.html

 

[Saeviomagy]

From levels 1-5, I can see that drastically increasing the PC mortality rate, and heavily changing the swingyness of battle. Playing a striker, it's often possible for me to bloody a foe on the first round of combat (which would mean a kill straight out of the gate), and vice versa: to be bloodied from healthy in a slightly unlucky round.

Additionally it heavily increases the bias of the game towards raw damage dealing : effectively every +1 damage you can gain becomes +2.

 

[Markn]

We currently use monsters with 20% less HP and a bonus to damage equal to half their level.

I am pretty sure that once we get into the upper paragon tier/lower epic tier that it may be too much damage but we are currently on 9th level and it has worked well to this point.

I can assure you that double damage will be very swingy and IMHO is too much. You will have a lot of PC deaths.

 

[NorthSaber]

Our group maximizes all damage done by both enemies and PCs, and so far we've been pretty happy how it works! Fights are faster and the abilities always feel fairly powerful when they hit.

The only problem I foresee is with the Shaman's Spirit Companion - enemy attacks will more often "pop" the spirit, which may reduce it's usefulness.