Preliminary idea: Humanoid monster Hit Point-shaving.

[eriktheguy]

Fan raises a good point. Your ruling will help to reduce humanoid HP at higher levels but not so much at lower levels.
How about taking away 5 additional hitpoints
Level 1 kobold goes from 27 to 20
Level 30 whatever goes from 270 to 235
That would work for solos or elites as well. You can just use 7 for elite, 10 for solo to fit your pattern.


I find myself using a lot of minions when it comes to humanoids, to emphasize their squishiness.

 

[Dire Human]

Are you going to do something to make it up to humanoids? Because otherwise the blanket result of this change is:

humanoids become slightly easier to kill compared with other monsters of the same XP budget.

Actually, I think that's what's bringing on the change. If the DM is roleplaying humanoids as the intelligent creatures that they are, then they would tend not to:

• Break a Defender's mark
• Provoke opportunity attacks
• Attack only the closest target
• Ignore wounded or weaker players

Essentially, non-humanoids should be tougher than humanoids because they're dumb. The extra damage that non-humanoids take by being tactical dunderheads is reflected by humanoids having less starting health.

Also, it would make fights go faster, which is never a bad thing.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Essentially, non-humanoids should be tougher than humanoids because they're dumb. The extra damage that non-humanoids take by being tactical dunderheads is reflected by humanoids having less starting health.

Dragons. Beholders. etc.

 

[eriktheguy]

Dragons. Beholders. etc.

You didn't hear the silent BOCTAOE at the end of his senteces...
Urban Dictionary: boctaoe

 

[Dire Human]

Dragons. Beholders. etc.

You didn't hear the silent BOCTAOE at the end of his senteces...
Urban Dictionary: boctaoe

Which is, of course, why these enemies are so feared. Intelligent non-humanoids with spell-like abilities have always been some of the most dangerous monsters in DnD.

 

[Rachel]

Lots of great feedback, thnx guys.

 

[Rachel]

As it stands, at low levels your change is virtually imperceptible (no one will notice a kobold's hp change from 27 to 25) whereas at high levels humanoids become the easy mode monster every party hopes to face (a level 30 with 270 hp is reduced to 210, losing almost 1/4 of it's hp and making that creature noticeably squishier). At the very least, assuming you use xp, you might want to reduce the humanoids' xp values by an amount proportional to the hp lost (once that loss becomes noticeable).

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/250441-my-grind-fix-half-hp-2-3-xp.html

Alot of Elites/Solos even if they went from 270 to 210, they are still quite capable and not nescessarily easy-mode. They have alot of power advantages to help themselves. At-a-glance, I'm guessing that the 60hp reduction above is just perfect for me, personally. I don't mind abstracting hp to an extent, but with humanoids I still feel a humanoid can only be so tough and have so many hp. They make up for less hp (than say, magical beasts) by having greater numbers (2/3 xp reduction is fine with the increase), tactics, and equipment, in my mind.

P.S.: Easy mode monster every party hopes to face? Not my group. Noone I play with is looking for push-overs and an easy walkthrough. Maybe your group is different, but I challenge your assertion people want their games to be "easy mode".

From a poster from Starfoxs's thread (AbdulAlhazred, page 1):

Also I kind of think the major problem is with Soldier role monsters and Elite/Solo monsters. I recommend reducing the hit points of Soldiers by 25%-30%, they are almost always grindy unless the monster is 2-3 levels below the party.

There may be a solution in the monster's role type, like perhaps certain roles should have less or more shaving. But I like the simplicity of my current idea.

 

[eriktheguy]

Alot of Elites/Solos even if they went from 270 to 210, they are still quite capable and not nescessarily easy-mode.

This

I don't mind abstracting hp to an extent,

I see we got to you

but with humanoids I still feel a humanoid can only be so tough and have so many hp. They make up for less hp (than say, magical beasts) by having greater numbers (2/3 xp reduction is fine with the increase), tactics, and equipment, in my mind.

Seems to be the general consensus in this thread

There may be a solution in the monster's role type, like perhaps certain roles should have less or more shaving. But I like the simplicity of my current idea.

I don't use soldiers. When I want a 'heavily armored soldier' I use a brute, as its HP goes down I describe its armor as falling off. Players don't like hitting 2/5 attacks and killing in 2 hits, they like hitting 4/5 attacks and killing in 4 hits.

Anyways, I think the thread suggestion overall is good. As long as a DM keeps in mind that a humanoid is intelligent and should be played smarter than the average bugbear, there shouldn't be any balance issues. Monsters do things like ignore marks, draw OAs etc. And of course beholders and dragons are obvious exceptions.
And as a DM I sometimes need my players to remind me that I am giving the monsters too much credit when I have them using sophisticated tactics and making inteligent combat decisions.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Alot of Elites/Solos even if they went from 270 to 210, they are still quite capable and not nescessarily easy-mode. They have alot of power advantages to help themselves. At-a-glance, I'm guessing that the 60hp reduction above is just perfect for me, personally. I don't mind abstracting hp to an extent, but with humanoids I still feel a humanoid can only be so tough and have so many hp. They make up for less hp (than say, magical beasts) by having greater numbers (2/3 xp reduction is fine with the increase), tactics, and equipment, in my mind.

The 60 hp reduction is for standard monsters, not elites or solos. Elites lose 90 hp while solos lose 120 by level 30 (though in both cases it's a smaller overall percentage than for standards).

Based on your hp reduction for standards, I'd recommend reducing humanoid xp to 3/4. I'd also recommend erik's idea of removing an extra 5 hp, as it largely standardizes the reduction across levels (around 25%).

P.S.: Easy mode monster every party hopes to face? Not my group. Noone I play with is looking for push-overs and an easy walkthrough. Maybe your group is different, but I challenge your assertion people want their games to be "easy mode".

I suppose the "every party hopes to face" part was a bit hyperbolic of me, but nonetheless I was recommending an xp reduction to go along with the hp reduction for humanoids. Playing humanoids smarter can only go so far. 4e is a very tactical game, and if you run non-humanoids as dumb, then those will be easier than intended as well. Obviously, there are ways to compensate for this (such as adding more monsters without increasing the xp value of the battle) but it is something to be aware of.

 

[Amaroq]

I've been mulling this one over, and I think I agree with Fan most of the way. I don't think reducing HP as you're describing is going to break the game. However, I'm not quite certain we're going far enough to "buff up" the humanoid monster in compensation.

More damage is good. What about "do an extra 1[W] die of damage when bloodied."? That might help address "grind" by making it feel like the stakes go up when the bad guys' chips are all on the table.

More numbers gets dangerous: an unlucky party can get overwhelmed quickly with bad dice luck, too much Combat Advantage against them, etc .. but maybe humanoids are more likely to capture than TPK so that's not an issue.

It places more emphasis on powers which hit a number of guys for relatively weaker damage than hitting one guy for strong damage, but I think that's what you want. It does encourage use of Controllers and area-Strikers more than Defenders and single-target Strikers; again, that may be what you want.

But I'm wondering if what you really want, Rachel, are two-hit minions, minions with resistance, etc ... reducing the number of non-leader humanoid bad guys entirely, and leaving you with a typical fight including one or two Brute (easy to hit, high HP) bodyguard/lieutenant types, one difficult boss, and a number of low-HP-but-not-quite-one-shot-wonder bad guys.

Having faced that as a player, I have to say I really like the way it "feels": somebody has to square off against the boss to keep him from running rampant on the squishies, and whoever squares off against the boss feels like they got an epic battle with a legendary villain .. while the rest of the group gets a lot more satisfaction from killing two-hit minions than one-hit minions. I'm not really sure why that is, but it is.

Not saying the "reduce HP is the wrong way to go"; as we've seen, there are plenty of versions out there (1/2 HP, 2/3 XP; 1/2 HP, x2 dam; etc) where people are running that, and there's no reason you can't just slap one of those templates onto humanoids and leave it at that ... I'm just wondering if your goal is "making it feel like a sword blow that 'hits' really connects hard," rather than explicitly "hey, humanoids have too many HP", and if that's the case, an "encounter design" solves the same issue as well as or better than "mod all humanoids".

In fact, maybe its an "apply as desired" attribute, e.g., treat each humanoid race differently. Goblin leaders, Kobold chieftans, etc? Fewer hit points, fine. 7' tall gnolls? Leave 'em as is. Orcs, maybe some tribes are smaller than others.

Just chewing on it .. I'm sure this is going to be a problem in my campaign when we hit paragon + levels, so I'm still toying with "how do I want to solve it" myself.