monster hit points...average?

[Scrivener of Doom]

I've been using average hit points for monsters since 1E (and in 1E if I gave a leader monster 8 hp her hd I would then recalculate his HD based on 4.5 hp per HD).

 

[N'raac]

What about giving the monsters the same percentage of maximum hit points that the PC's have? Not an approach I've used, but if the PC's always roll high, why can't the monsters? Probably have to back out that maximized roll at L1, but other than that, seems workable.

 

[JustinAlexander]

IMO, if you want to vary your monsters, varying ability scores and/or actual class levels and/or abilities is a better (if more complex and fiddly) way to do it.

Sure. But it's not like such adjustments are mutually exclusive with variable hit points.

I'd be interested to hear from the rollin' DM who describe hit points as intended*, how exactly do you describe one goblin as being 'wimpy' and another as 'tough' when they have comparable Str/Con? I mean what do hit points look like?

In general, hit points aren't the kind of thing that the character can easily "see" at the beginning of combat. Hit points work by affecting the type of wounds that a creature suffers: A 10 hp wound on an orc with 50 hp looks different than a 10 hp wound on an orc with 100 hp. So, insofar as description is concerned, it's emergent and doesn't exercise any skill set that you wouldn't already use with "all monsters of type X have the same hit points" (except that you're varying within the group instead of just between groups).

The primary benefit I see at the table from varying hit points, however, is not directly descriptive. By breaking up recognizable mechanical patterns, players end up focusing more on the game world instead of the mechanics modeling the game world.

In other words, if you roll for hit points you stop getting discussions like, "He dropped at 45 hp! So that means the other three trolls will also drop at 45 hp!" (It's not impossible to pull patterns out of the data, obviously. But generally the sample size is small enough that there's no discernible advantage to it.) IME, this isn't really a conscious choice by the players. It's, again, emergent behavior: If they can trivially recognize mechanical patterns, the brain will automatically yank 'em out and look at them. (It's what our brains are designed to do.) Obfuscate 'em just a little bit and people stop looking at them.

I talk about a non-mechanical example of this in Jaquaying the Dungeon (see "Minor Elevation Shifts").

What about giving the monsters the same percentage of maximum hit points that the PC's have? Not an approach I've used, but if the PC's always roll high, why can't the monsters? Probably have to back out that maximized roll at L1, but other than that, seems workable.

I think it's a question of whether your goal is to hyper-normalize the mechanical balance of any given encounter, or if you're looking for a naturalistic and emergent mechanical balance over the course of multiple encounters.

In other words, it comes back to the increasingly severe division between tactics-only players and strategy-and-tactics players in the hobby today.

 

[timASW]

Anything with class levels I use an online dice roller to roll for (doesnt take long to enter XdX+X into a roller) other stuff i usually just eyeball.

 

[Steely_Dan]

I usualy Max out the HP. helps give my encounters a challenge, unless they are facing already high HP, high CR encounters.

For main antagonists, deinitely, for me.