D&D (2024) Jumping ahead: Bring back Bloodied for monsters

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This past year has seen multiple third party books either published or crowdfunded to make monsters more interesting. Since WotC seems to be dipping its toe into bringing back more of 4E design, I'd like to see some monsters who hit 50% health automatically have an attack or ability trigger. (Essentially a legendary action for non-legendary creatures.)

This probably wouldn't be appropriate for regular old bandits or guards, but if many dinosaurs suddenly had a tail sweep that hit everyone behind them in a cone for significant damage and knocked them back, they'd be a lot more interesting. Myconoid leaders could have an explosion of spores pour out of them. Harpy leaders could scream in pain and outrage, frightening and damaging all of their opponents who could hear them.

If this is mostly applied to leader or solo monster types, it doesn't significantly add to the complication of running combat for the DM, while instantly making combat feel much more dynamic and a little more dangerous.

Thoughts?

 

[Charlaquin]

Heck, bring it back for PCs too! It doesn’t have to do anything on its own (just like it didn’t do anything on its own in 4e), simply having it as a state a creature can be in gives you a hook to hang other mechanics on.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Bloodied is something I kept, if only to inform players. I usually don't mention how many HP an enemy has, but I concede that character, in-universe, have a lot more information on whether a foe "looks wounded" or not. So I freely inform then when creature are at half-HP. Informing them with a spore attack would improve the situation ;-)

 

[delericho]

I also kept Bloodied around, and would be in favour of it being used as the OP describes.

 

[Blue]

5e went a bit too far in the "natural language, no keywords" direction for my tastes, leaving behind some interesting tools. Bloodied, and abilities that trigger when it occurs, or are only unlocked with/without the condition are interesting and help keep things dynamic.

 

[Lanefan]

I'd like it if only as a small first step toward a wound-vitality or body-fatigue hit points system.

 

[the Jester]

Yeah, a lot of my own conversions or homebrewed monsters have reactions that trigger when bloodied (or similar things).

 

[HammerMan]

Bloodied is something I kept, if only to inform players. I usually don't mention how many HP an enemy has, but I concede that character, in-universe, have a lot more information on whether a foe "looks wounded" or not. So I freely inform then when creature are at half-HP.

We kept bloodied as information. One DM has homebrew some monsters that get advantage either against bloodied enemies or when they are bloodied.

I think having it back as a condition would do nothing but improve the game.

 

[Stalker0]

Looking at the houserules thread on enworld, bloodied is a pretty common houserule. If nothing else, its a great rule to help keep track of the pace of killing monsters. But its great to add in to various monsters to give them cool abilities and such.

 

[Raith5]

I love it for monsters as the OP describes but it also provides an interesting design space for PCs both for a reaction and as a condition - especially for martial types. For instance surely there could be some benefits for bloodied barbarians?

(Id rather see martials boosted rather casters nerfed by getting rid of crits for them).