(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
When I started my campaign, the battles went pretty quickly, as monster hit points are actually relatively low at 1st-level. (Yes, PCs can't kill them in one round, but I didn't want battles that were so fast you couldn't show off your sense of tactics.) My game is just reaching 11th-level, and combat is slowing down. While there's issues with increasing character complexity, monster hit points scale faster than PC damage.
I created a new scale for determining proper monster hit points for my game. I didn't want to rely on a simplistic solution like simply cutting monster hit points in half. I wanted a typical monster to die in four hits when attacked by a defender or leader (fewer if hit by a striker and more if hit by a controller, of course). I found that this ratio worked quite well at level 1, so I used that as "the base". In 4e, the typical monster gets 8 hit points per level. In order to keep the kill ratio the same over levels, a PC would need to deal an average of +2 damage per hit each level, which doesn't keep up, except for some strikers.
The current scale used companion math to determine hit points. Companions deal a flat +1 damage per 2 levels (+0.5 per level), so a monster would need +2 hit points per level to keep up, much less than +8. I built my scale on this foundation, giving standard monsters +2 hp per level (beyond their 1st-level hit point scores), +1.5 if they used to get 6 per level and +2.5 if they used to get 10. However, this probably isn't enough. Even companions get ability score bonuses, after all. I'm considering doubling the extra hit points (so +4 per level for a standard), but I want to ask the community what they think of this first.
I created a new scale for determining proper monster hit points for my game. I didn't want to rely on a simplistic solution like simply cutting monster hit points in half. I wanted a typical monster to die in four hits when attacked by a defender or leader (fewer if hit by a striker and more if hit by a controller, of course). I found that this ratio worked quite well at level 1, so I used that as "the base". In 4e, the typical monster gets 8 hit points per level. In order to keep the kill ratio the same over levels, a PC would need to deal an average of +2 damage per hit each level, which doesn't keep up, except for some strikers.
The current scale used companion math to determine hit points. Companions deal a flat +1 damage per 2 levels (+0.5 per level), so a monster would need +2 hit points per level to keep up, much less than +8. I built my scale on this foundation, giving standard monsters +2 hp per level (beyond their 1st-level hit point scores), +1.5 if they used to get 6 per level and +2.5 if they used to get 10. However, this probably isn't enough. Even companions get ability score bonuses, after all. I'm considering doubling the extra hit points (so +4 per level for a standard), but I want to ask the community what they think of this first.