Hit Points at half?

[eriktheguy]

One thing I will add for half HP monsters, you probably want to improve the recharge chance of any recharge abilities by 1. A recharge 5-6 ability on a monster that only lives for 2-3 rounds may as well be an encounter ability.

 

[ravenheart]

I don't think the 50% is a bad option. Also apply the scaling to potions and self damaging effects though.
Alternatively, you could try a coup-de-gras style 'one-hit-kill' system to make your strikers feel awesome with their dailies.
If you take your bloodied value in damage in one hit, you are reduced to zero hit points.
This would probably mostly happen to mooks, and not to PCs. If it does, you could always give them a save to avoid going down.

Why not make it the default for coup de grace then? I've been aching to remove helpless as a condition as it serves such a limited function. Come to think of it, helpless also grants combat advantage, and that got me thinking - what if you only needed combat advantage for a coup de grace? Hear me out.

First, this would appear to radically increase the amount of coup de grace's made, so some alterations to that mechanic is needed. A coup de grace is technically a called shot or well-placed strike, which could warrant an attack penalty for landing, so what about a -2 penalty to the attack roll? Hell, you could allow a ranged coup de grace at an increased penalty to compensate for easily avoiding opportunity attacks (-5 perhaps).

Second, auto-critting when you are flanking seems abusable, so what if it would simply deal double damage on a hit (keeping the 'slaying the target outright' mechanism). Makes it more usable for monsters as well.

I do like the idea of a save though, maybe reducing the target to 1 hp on a save (becoming minions, effectively)? And giving the PCs a slim chance of recovery even if they fail (reducing them to negative healing surge value instead of bloodied).

Finally, such intent focus on a single target means taking your eyes of your other adversaries, so it would provoke opportunity attacks from adjacent enemies.

Here's a formatted version of my idea:

COUP DE GRACE: STANDARD ACTION

Target Must Grant Combat Advantage: You can deliver a coup de grace against an enemy that is granting you combat advantage. Use any attack power you could normally use against the enemy, including a basic attack.

Attack Penalty: You take a -2 penalty to the attack rolls of melee or close powers, or a -5 penalty to the attack rolls of ranged or area powers.

Hit: You deal double damage, including any extra damage you would deal because of a critical hit.

Provokes Opportunity Attacks: You provoke opportunity attacks from adjacent enemies when making a coup de grace.

Slaying the Target Outright: If you deal damage greater than or equal to the target’s bloodied value, the target makes a saving throw with a -5 penalty. If it succeeds it is reduced to 1 hit point. If it fails, the target is reduced to negative hit points equal to its healing surge value.

Summing up: By making coup de grace a more available, albeit risky, option it makes fights more deadly and gives characters, especially strikers (and prominently rogues), the ability to possibly take out standard enemies in a single turn. This is of course, equally available to monsters so PC's shouldn't be overpowered in comparison.

Is this feasible? Or just fiddly?

 

[eriktheguy]

@ Ravenheart
I think the idea of throwing out double damage for combat advantage has many more balance implications than you see at first. It's essentially the same as the 'half HP' idea, but much easier to do for certain builds. A rogue with lots of shifts is going to have their damage output effectively doubled, while a less mobile class is not.
Ranged classes also get screwed over (I'm assuming you will allow these double-damage with combat advantage attacks at any range), because they cannot flank and because ranged advantage now becomes a required tax.

For the record I agree with your point about the redundancy of some conditions, but conditions such as 'unconscious' and 'helpless' are so rare that I don't bother to house rule them. Houserules involve making sure the players know about them ahead of time, which is a lot of work for a condition our part sees about once/tier.

 

[S'mon]

I've had reasonable results with 50% hp (& 2/3 XP) monsters, but I also think you get a good result by designing monster groups with (2-4) minions replacing standards, standards replacing elites, and elites replacing solos. So a typical encounter might be 8-12 minions & 2-3 standard monsters, with the occasional elite BBEG.

It's probably worth converting some of the official elite monsters to standards (easy to do), and standards to minions, likewise.

I'm also looking at giving minions hp =CON, both so they have some staying power and for world-sim purposes.

 

[Arlough]

I had similar problems in my group from a couple of people who had come over from 3.x edition. It has more to do with the premise of each edition, with 3.x being based around "guitar heroes" and 4th being based around "rock band" (stay with me, it makes sense).

In 3.x, you were a bunch of people fighting in the same place. Every character was built for individual glory. Basically, you were a band of 4 lead guitars, all simultaneously trying to be the star.

In 4th, you are all part of a group, each with a role to play. Each character is built to add that function to a group that, together, is a star unit. Basically, you have a band that functions so long as everybody is trying to make everybody else work well.

So, in 4th, if your striker wants to take down someone in a single hit, then s/he needs to work with the rest of the party to get the setup and bonuses to make it all happen, with the defender occupying the enemy, the leader buffing the striker, another striker taking the monster down a notch, and/or a controller debuffing the enemy, so the "assassin" striker can use his/her most powerful attack with certainty that it will land and great bonuses to the damage dealt.

Of course, forcing a playstyle on the players is not nessasarily fun for the DM or the players. So as an alternative, I'll go with what some others have suggested.

Consider using Elite Minions...

I started using Tougher Minions, Elite Minions, or what I call Minionized Monsters a while back, with great success.

I basically take a monster, give it vulnerable=bloodied value once per turn to any attack, and give it 1/3 the XP value. Also, it is indistinguishable from the non-minionized monsters in the battle.
If you manage to deal damage to it equal to it's bloodied value, then it dies because of the vulnerability. Then, I describe the amazing actions the players are taking that is causing this kind of damage. It makes the strikers in the group happy that they can occasionally one-hit a monster, and it allows for much tenser situations as they players face down what looks to be a L+4 or L+5 challenge.

 

[Noctos]

Ok let me first say that i'm an old DM from the 2nd edition era. i have been reading and anilizing then idea's and thoughts/issues on 4th edition. (hoping to gain a better grasp before investing init.)

in my old worlds reducing the enemies hit points was never even a idea i had. in the old editions i was always uping hp. to allow the creatures a chance to fight the pc's. Have the creators increased enemy hitpoints so that it actually challangeing? keep it. if your pc's are unable to do any instant kills or actually brutally beat an enemy down. try handing out more magical goodness.

how ever as a dm you can do anything you want. hell give the creatures 1 hitpoint if it's what you need to. personally i would rather pass out more stuff to the players than reduce monster strenght.

 

[eriktheguy]

Ok let me first say that i'm an old DM from the 2nd edition era. i have been reading and anilizing then idea's and thoughts/issues on 4th edition. (hoping to gain a better grasp before investing init.)

in my old worlds reducing the enemies hit points was never even a idea i had. in the old editions i was always uping hp. to allow the creatures a chance to fight the pc's. Have the creators increased enemy hitpoints so that it actually challangeing? keep it. if your pc's are unable to do any instant kills or actually brutally beat an enemy down. try handing out more magical goodness.

how ever as a dm you can do anything you want. hell give the creatures 1 hitpoint if it's what you need to. personally i would rather pass out more stuff to the players than reduce monster strenght.

I would also up monster HP in older editions. Most party-level-CR monsters would die in the 2nd round of the fight if I didn't. Basically anything that wasn't a dragon or similarly tanky monster needed it. And I won't start to talk about disparity of monsters with the same CR.

But in 4e the issue is that after players run out of encounter and daily powers, the monsters are still alive. The players whack at them with at-wills for a few more rounds, and it becomes a grindfest. Many threads around here detail it more closely.

Monster manual 3 was a vast improvement over the first two, monsters deal more damage and have less HP. For many groups this is fine. Others reduce HP to 75% or even 50%.

 

[TarionzCousin]

All monsters have 1 hit point and do 10,000 damage when they hit.

Fastest. Combat. Evar.