D&D 5E Max HP?

[billd91]

One thing I observed after running a game from 5th level all the way to 12th level was that fights are, truly, quick and decisive. It takes real effort to make an impactful, setpiece climactic encounter. My final fight ended up lasting only 7 rounds and it had some positioning issues and was against a high level mythic.

Did the players enjoy themselves? Were they bored? Why would a quick and decisive fight not be impactful?

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Having played a campaign through 20th level, I feel that monsters are undertuned. In some cases they need more hit points, in nearly every case they need to do more damage.

I've started tweaking monsters in ways inspired by 4E, such as:

• Solos get 4x the number of hit points.
• Elites get 2x hit points.
• Some monsters get 1/2 to 1/4 the number of hit points if I want a lot creatures on the battlefield.
• Monster standard damage is increased by a multiplier equal to the PC's tier. So a troll fighting 7th level PCs does 2x the damage listed in its stat block.
• More types of legendary actions, such as legendary attacks (automatic hits) or legendary spellcasting (automatic failure on PC saving throws to resist spell effects).
• Etc.

 

[Xeviat]

A question for you: How is it a problem that a fight only lasts 7 rounds ? Quick and decisive fights are good, right ? Who likes fights that drag over hours and hours, just for dragging out the issue ?

That being said, yes, mythic monsters are the option of choice for me too for bosses, they make sense, they have implications story-wide and they reflect exactly the kind of drama expected from big battle scenes of movies and books.

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It was the final fight of a 3 year campaign, against an aspect of a goddess, and it lasted 42 seconds game time. I had to build her an an over leveled mythic purposefully leaned on the defensive side so that she could survive long enough to feel threatening without being able to liquify everyone with one breath weapon.

I already was having most in game days be 2 to 4 hard to deadly encounters, with a short rest after most encounters, allowing for much better pacing and challenge than 6-8 medium encounters. Still, PCs can punch way above their weight class when they let loose.

Another thing I reconfirmed over the course of the campaign, with a Battlemaster Fighter, Eldritch Knight Fighter, Mastermind Rogue, Fey Warlock, and a Nature Cleric is that full casters slow the game down. The cleric player's turns took so much longer than everyone else's (but mine, but spellcasting enemies slowed me down more than anything else).

 

[Xeviat]

Did the players enjoy themselves? Were they bored? Why would a quick and decisive fight not be impactful?

There were a quite a few boss fights where they took out the enemy much faster than expected, like in 1 to 1.5 rounds. They definitely changed the mood of what I was going for.

Sometimes we focus 100% on player engagement, but we should remember that the DM is a player too and the DM needs to be having fun. Designing an encounter that should be easy or hard that proves to be exactly the opposite makes the game harder to have fun with for the DM at times.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Increasing HP to drag out the battle won't make the battle more interesting, though I'm a HUGE fan of leaders of monsters having more than the average HP to reflect their status.

Rather, toss in complications for battles that should be epic and matter. Reinforcements, temporary retreat of a foe to heal, enemy hit and run tactics, terrain changes, PCs need to rush to another area temporarily, magic chaos that changes parameters of the battle, and epic bosses that have triggered tier abilities (e.g. action-oriented monsters per Colville, or "bloodied" features kick in at a certain % of HP, and so on), are all things that can extend the length of a battle yet make it more interesting than shaving away extra hit points.

That all said, I recently ran a 10-round D&D "boss" battle with 5th level characters. It took a LONG time, over an hour, even with my time-saving style of play. I tried to keep it interesting as the battle parameters constantly changed, and the "boss" changed abilities as his HP decreased. I just wouldn't want to do it all the time!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

IMO, all legendary monsters should have the ability to spend a LA to use a reaction even if they already have this round, have 1 more LA than they do now, and have a couple/few strong "don't die" buttons as reactions.

 

[ad_hoc]

Combats are designed to last 2-4 rounds in 5e so that's the baseline you're working with. 7 rounds is a long combat.

So sure, if you don't like that you can just pump up the numbers. You're going to want to increase legendary saves as well and possibly even give some monsters 1 legendary save when they had none before.

If HP are increased then that is nerfing damage so alternative ways of taking monsters out becomes preferable.

There are multiple monsters now in 5e that have multiple forms. Have you seen the one in the Guide to Ravenloft? That is another route to take.

 

[robus]

I’ve definitely turned to boosting HP to give my monsters stating power. I often found they could dish it out but couldn’t take it meaning the battles ended up underwhelming. I started fudging HP but eventually switched to just max HP.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It was the final fight of a 3 year campaign, against an aspect of a goddess, and it lasted 42 seconds game time.

Yeah, but that 42 seconds is a completely made up and arbitrary number. The game says a round is 6 seconds long not because the designers actually tried to calculate the time needed to do any of the stuff a character might do, but because it was an easy math choice-- 6 second rounds means 10 rounds per minute. So there is no reason to believe you final combat was actually just 42 seconds long.

After all,, any one of us could just say "Each round is 10 seconds" or "Each round is 30 seconds " or even go back to the original AD&D full minute round and it wouldn't change anything in our combats, other than our fictional "fight duration" after the fact.

So the real question is whether the fight felt good at the table at 7 rounds? If the table length felt epic, then you can just make up whatever in-world duration you want to make the in-game feel just as epic.

 

[HammerMan]

I think monsters are undertuned in 5E. By quite a lot. Max PC hit points would only make the problems of the edition worse.

Monsters should have more hit points, more actions, and do more damage. Across the board. Legendary and Mythic monsters help, but only a little. But even they are undertuned. And the problem only gets worse as you level.

yup, a big thing I hope they address in 5.5

monster (especially ones meant to be solo) need better action economy, and more staying power. Mythic and Legendary are great but also hard to really use in 'normal' encounters. I don't want my 8th level party to face off against 1 legendary, mythic or BOTH legendary and mythic creature every adventure.