This....thing...is....AWESOME!
Without it coming across as petty, metagaming or cheating?
Without it coming across as petty, metagaming or cheating?
To be clear I am an advocate for more HP, because I like certain monsters to have lots of HP (heck I have 2 threads of beefed up monsters in this forum), and I am a lazy DM sometimes. However, with the group I am DMing at the moment it would be overkill. They are actually challenged by the MM monsters as is. If I throw monsters with 2x the HP at them I would have TPKs all over the place. That is the difficult thing, the same monster can be easy for one party and a TPK for another. There is just a huge range of possibilities with PCs (and DMs) that the outcomes can very wildly.
Now, I don't know which group is more common, but I'm guessing WotC does.
I do think that hps should have been one of those "dials" that they were talking about in the playtest,
They already are on a dial; any monster can have anywhere between its minimum and maximum HP. This thing can have anything from 84 to 216 without having to alter its stat block.
I do think that hps should have been one of those "dials" that they were talking about in the playtest, possibly via templates (to avoid the "it's too much like 4e" complaint where the monster gets more powerful just because it is fighting 8 PCs with 24 magic items) --something like horde breaker--add 100 hps to a large-size giant* who can do horde breakers stuff (sorry I haven't seen one in a while so I forgot the specifics of what they do) to PCs for X estimated damage (consult DMG p for new CR) or Helllinked Wyrm--add 500 hps to an ancient dragon, plus breath weapon adds X psychic damage on a hit and targets are stunned for 1 round (half on a miss with no stun) as the PC's are subjected to visions of the 9 Hells (consult DMG p. for new CR).
* There would be a different horde breaker for huge giants.....or maybe elemental titan that makes the gargantuan (among other things).
Edit: one more thought. I know that the whole minions vs. regular monsters thing is controversial, but there are a fair amount of monsters across the CR-range that could have been standard (just like the in MM) for summoned or part of a group vs. having a champion version (and not just things like orcs). Not optimized groups need never encounter champions and heavily optimized groups need never encounter a standard (at least solo).
HahYeah, except pretty much everything in 5E is a "lurker"
That's what irks me the most.Plus it's not like I'm magically smarter than 5 of my friends combined after I've been mentally drained from running all night just because the monster has a 20 in it's Int stat block.