Halving Hitpoints

[Gears]

So I've been hearing alot about this 'halve the monsters' hitpoints' houserule that has apparently been floating around at Wizards. How many have given this a try, and how did it work out?

It seems like it would seriously weaken monsters...but I'd like to believe that it doesn't. The tedious 'hack the rest of the hp away' stage of combat is really my only complaint with 4E at this point. If this is a silver bullet that shortens combat without noticeably shifting combat results in the players' favor, it would make me a very happy camper indeed.

But I want to hear how it's worked in actual play. Surely those beefy hp totals exist for a reason? Or was this just something else akin to the DCs on the DMG pg. 42...a place where the game's math is simply a bit off without good reason?

 

[Stalker0]

I haven't had an experience with it. However, I can offer a few suggestions:

1) I wouldn't go with 1/2 the hitpoints, more like 3/4. The reason is the last 1/4 are actually the most difficult to take down, because usually by this point the players have only at wills remaining. The first 3/4 of the monsters hitpoints are often exposed to the big dailies and at-wills, so they go down quicker.

2) Most people suggesting halving hitpoints are also suggesting to increase the monsters damage along side it. That rebalances the monster and keeps the threat level high.

 

[tankschmidt]

We have a middle-of-the-road solution. We give PCs their constitution modifier in initial hit points instead of their constitution score. We also subtract a monster's constitution score from its hit points (2x constitution for elites, 4x for solos). The result is that low level heroes and monsters have close to half as many hit points, but the discrepancy fades as we level up. Minions are slightly more dangerous, and we like that as a side effect.

The idea was to eliminate those rounds at the end of an encounter, where you're just mopping up the soldiers and brutes. It's worked like a charm so far (we're level two now).

 

[Gears]

So no one else has been experimenting in this direction?

I'll give the thread this last bump in hopes of getting more responses....

 

[Fieari]

What I've done is make it so the players WIN at 1/2 HP, but not necessarily kill at that point. I am finding that monsters aren't dealing enough damage over time this way, so I'm going to be slowly increasing the damage until I find a good equilibrium.

I'm playing a PbP, and without decreasing HP, the battles simply last too long. Like, weeks too long. I want to get on with the plot!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I would suggest to keep the Healing Surge value at the original value (now the new bloodied value). Otherwise, healing can no longer compete with damage taken. PCs still take the same damage as before per round, but they can take less overall. The old healing surge values kept you alive (or didn't) because of their relation to damage taken per round.

Otherwise, I have no suggestions so far.

 

[The_Spider]

Anybody using this house rule want to comment on how its going so far? I imagine combat takes half the time but also increases the lethality of combat as well.

 

[PeelSeel2]

Here is what I do. For minions, I divide a standard monster by 4 for HP, for something with a little more staying power, I dived by three or two. For the Boss monster I keep them stock or beef them up a little more. Works great. PC's love the chance to wade through tons of monsters, but they also need that "crap this really hard battle"

 

[Anthony Jackson]

It seems like it would seriously weaken monsters...but I'd like to believe that it doesn't.

It most certainly weakens monsters. However, you can always halve PC hit points to make up for it.

 

[Rhenny]

Why not make it 1/2 HP across the board. PCs 1/2 hp and monsters 1/2 hp. This would be so easy to implement and it seams fair.

I'm sure this would scare many PCs/players, but if you like a gritty game where PCs should try to avoid combat whenever possible, I think it may play well. I'm going to try it.

With 1/2 HP all around, the PCs will definately have an advantage vs. smaller foes or foes that do not have healing surges. The value of a healing surge for a PC would double since they would be getting back the same amount as they would have gotten with full hps.