One Way to Reduce HP Bloat

[Rhenny]

You can still have crits or something similar. I could live with fixed base damage and a rolled crit bonus.

I like this. I may use it in my 4e games right now. All hits do avg. damage. Crits do additional 1d10 with the 10 exploding so if a "10" is rolled, roll again and add it.

I really like the idea of making a critical hit something special.

For 5e, I agree with everyone who would limit hp increase. I also think 1st level characters should have less to begin than 4e. If there will be self healing and the ability for others in the party to heal fallen comrades, I'd like combat to be a little more swingy and dangerous.

 

[Doug McCrae]

How about:

1) Hit points are static, they represent physical wounds only.
2) Higher level characters get fate/hero/action points, to represent their ability not to die and perform great deeds.

Problem with that is, ofc, it's not D&D.

 

[keterys]

HP are almost entirely a function of damage dealt and rounds of life expected.

If 1st level characters can do 1d12+6 damage (expected at-will damage for an 18 str character in 3e or 4e... and pretty close in 1e/2e for a fighter)... and pretty often can burst up for more damage than that (1e/2e spec extra attacks, 3e rage / feats, 4e striker features & enc/day powers), but let's ignore that for a moment...

Single character damage = 12.5
Group damage = 50-75
At-Will, not using any extra boosts.

That's at _1st level_.

The Tarrasque can't have less than 100 hp in that paradigm. It probably can't have less than 400, and frankly 1000 is probably more sane.

Ie, your 1st level group does 50-75... your 20th level group probably does at least 150-200 (3 attacks per round, various damage bonuses - in 3e each character probably does that 150-200, in 4e the group probably does about 400 at that level). If you want the Tarrasque to live 5 rounds...

Kinda hurts the brain, doesn't it?

 

[eamon]

Single character damage = 12.5
Group damage = 50-75
At-Will, not using any extra boosts.

That's at _1st level_.

The Tarrasque can't have less than 100 hp in that paradigm. It probably can't have less than 400, and frankly 1000 is probably more sane.

Yeah. So to reduce hitpoints, you'd need to reduce the damage dealt per hit, and/or the expected combat duration. I think both could do with a little reduction. And of course, you're not expected to hit every attack or even that you can actually bring all PC's fully to bear every round, so there's some mitigation there anyhow. Futher, before 4e an 18 was somewhat unusual and in 4e there's no 1.5 str modifier, so a +6 at first level is a little optimistic on average (though certainly achievable).

Some form of damage resistance or negation might also help provide resilience.

I think the really unnecessary bit is the high static modifier. It's just not necessary to roll 1d12+6 - either 1d12 or just 6 would play better (faster, and with rolls that either matter or are omitted). You could even go as extreme as RangerWickett's idea and use very low fixed damage, but that's probably a little too much for D&D.

Let's assume D&D want's to at least support damage dice up to 1d12 at first level, for histories sake. If we use damage dice only on crits, and a crit shouldn't do more than x4 damage at best, then we could get away with a static 4 damage for each attack. Assuming some form of damage mitigation and some misses, a 1st level DPR might be 2. Under these assumptions, a 1st level standard creature or PC might well have 10 hitpoints - focussed fire could bring it down in a round (as might a crit with a lucky damage roll), but on average you'd need 5 rounds.

At higher levels, creatures could have some damage resistance to reduce the need for inflated hit point counts whilst retaining the advantage of higher level creatures over lower level creatures. If an end-game (high-epic) PC deals 20 damage vs. a tarrasque with resist 10 damage, then a DPR of around 7 might be reasonable. With some regeneration, I'd say a combat duration of 5 rounds or might well be achievable even with just 100 hitpoints.

It's probably a little optimistic; there will be some extra inflation going on, but I'd rather have an aggressive target like a 100 hitpoints and miss a little than a target of 1000 hitpoints and end up with monsters edging towards 2000.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Hit point bloat, and indeed all other forms of bloat - damage, to-hit, armor class - does serve a useful function in promoting the old school sandbox play. It makes the players' decisions regarding which areas to explore and which battles to fight very important. If a level 10 monster isn't that different from a level 1 monster, then this aspect of play doesn't matter much.

OD&D wasn't like this because PCs had few hit points and died at zero, leading to a big gulf in power between low level and high level PCs, and the same was true for monsters. Decisions about which dungeon level to explore - how low could you go! - were important.

 

[Doug McCrae]

At higher levels, creatures could have some damage resistance to reduce the need for inflated hit point counts whilst retaining the advantage of higher level creatures over lower level creatures. If an end-game (high-epic) PC deals 20 damage vs. a tarrasque with resist 10 damage, then a DPR of around 7 might be reasonable. With some regeneration, I'd say a combat duration of 5 rounds or might well be achievable even with just 100 hitpoints.

Wouldn't it be simpler for the GM to give the monster a lot of hit points? Applying damage resistance and regeneration is more arithmetic work.

 

[Rhenny]

Wouldn't it be simpler for the GM to give the monster a lot of hit points? Applying damage resistance and regeneration is more arithmetic work.

It may just come down to more hp for fearsome monsters, or really high AC. Really high AC may make combat less exciting because PCs attacks will miss more often. At least with higher hp and normal to lower AC it will feel like the creature is getting hurt.

 

[CM]

It may just come down to more hp for fearsome monsters, or really high AC. Really high AC may make combat less exciting because PCs attacks will miss more often. At least with higher hp and normal to lower AC it will feel like the creature is getting hurt.

DR also hurts the classes which make multiple, weaker attacks (traditionally rogues) more than classes which make single, powerful attacks (barbarians). No telling if this will still be relevant yet in 5e, though.

 

[BobTheNob]

DR also hurts the classes which make multiple, weaker attacks (traditionally rogues) more than classes which make single, powerful attacks (barbarians). No telling if this will still be relevant yet in 5e, though.

Thats very true, it does. My experience from past editions has been that the biggest damage outputters have always been the multiple attackers, be they because if stacked bonus's or crit fishing.

I have actually considered DR as a part of core rules a solution to multiple attack dominance.

 

[eamon]

Wouldn't it be simpler for the GM to give the monster a lot of hit points? Applying damage resistance and regeneration is more arithmetic work.

I doubt it - if you're dealing with small numbers this kind of arithmetic goes very quickly, particularly if you're dealing with fixed numbers - you're not actually subtracting resist 4 (say) every hit, you're just remembering that 9-4 is 5. Small numbers make things faster.

Not to mention of course that not everything is the Tarrasque - and the Tarrasque has had damage resistance in both 4e and 3e anyhow so we might as well use it to keep total numbers small to make damage addition go smoothly.