Halving Health and Doubling Damage

[Pour]

The most elegant solution for speeding up combat I've found was over on RPGnet by a guy named Ogre. All damage dealt to PCs and monsters is maxed when they're bloodied (though it still preserves the beauty of the nat 20 through the application of magic item bonus damage, which is also maxed). I've yet to try it, but I'm really looking forward to the experience.

Quicker, more deadly combats through more damage, less rolling, and certain altering of tactics, perhaps. Leaders keeping people above bloodied means a lot more, for one, and Strikers focusing on bloodying enemies really speaks to the role while secondary Strikers, Defenders, hell even Controllers utilize the max damage clause to finish the monsters off.

 

[the Jester]

I used "double damage, half hit points" for occasional monsters and it worked great- but that was before MM3 math. Now I suspect it would be pretty harsh.

I also tried "double damage, standard hit points" as an alternative elite formula for selected elite monsters; that worked too, but again, it was pre-MM3. Now I'd just stick with the MM3 formulae; a good quick-and-dirty shortcut for earlier monsters is to add 1/2 the creature's level to damage.

 

[Quickleaf]

I've been looking into ways to speed up encounters and there seems to be some talk about halving the health of NPC's so they go down quicker but doubling their damage so they're still lethal.
Has anyone used this method of making encounters shorter? If so, how well did it work?

I recently adopted something similar for the last 3 games and it has sped up encounters, but not as much as I thought it would. Here's what I do:

Minion types: 1/2 HP, Damage: 6 + 2 per 3 levels
Artillery, Controllers, Lurkers, Skirmishers, Soldiers: 1/3 HP, Damage: 8 + 1 per level
Huge/Gargantuan & Mobs: 1/2 HP, Damage 8 + 1 per level
Brutes: Double HP and damage by +25%
Elites:: As per MM III
Solos: As per MM III

I also replaced the resistance & insubstantial traits with more interesting abilities that don't slow down combat.

Before adopting these changes most of the fights I ran seemed to take 60-90 minutes. With them we shaved off maybe 10 minutes from fights without elites/solos. But then again I used more monsters; for example, I used 2-3 of my monsters in place of a standard monster.

I'm afraid it might reduce the encounter to a battle of initiative too much in that if the players go first they'll be able to take out at least 1 if not more mobs but if the mobs go first they might be able to take out a player.

Well, with what I do I use more monsters, so winning initiative doesn't seem to determine the outcome of the fight.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I halve all monster HP and I increased damage by about a third. I originally doubled damage, but I found it to be too deadly for my tastes. It shortened combats considerably.

This is based on MM3+ stats.

 

[sigfile]

I'm another voice in the "it's too swingy" chorus. Particularly at low heroic, it's a recipe for TPK. It also mucks about with healing - if critters are consistently hitting harder than someone's surge value, for example, Second Wind is a whole lot less useful.

I've been wanting to try a "average damage" approach. Basically, turn everyone offensively in to minions. Crits do max damage+ instead of average damage. You'd be amazed how much time gets lost at a table waiting for each person to add up damage, particularly with multiattackers.

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

Around late paragon and through Epic tier in my last campaign I adopted this formula for monster damage. But only to keep the challenge up, not due to combat length.
Normally, monsters deal an average of their level + 8 damage, with modifications for limited attacks, brutes, and multi-target attacks. Now, I'm using level + 8 for heroic tier monsters, level +16 for paragon tier monsters, and level +24 for epic monsters.