speeding up combat by halfing hit points

[Hawkwind]

At one of the seminars at gencon one of the designers, i forget who, suggested speeding up play by halfing the monsters hit points. As a 4e DM who only gets to run a game for one or two sessions a month with only 2 hours of quality play time in which we usually manage 2 or 3 encounters I am interested in any idea to speed on play so we can actually finish the campaign this decade.

I think the suggestion to cut hit points is a good one but it does make the encounters a bit easier so I was wondering about giving the monsters a bonus to hit and on their damage rolls say +1 to hit and +1 on each damage dice. What does the collected wisdom of enworld think?

 

[Majushi]

Or you could halve the PC hit points too.

That would make things interesting...

 

[Shabe]

Ramping up the to hit just means the AC gets thrown out of wack meaning players get hit more often. I'd rather up the damage of a monster by a dice size or +2 damage (+1 for minions), as players tend to feel a bit useless if they get hit all the time, but rarely do they complain about being wacked for an extra 2-3 damage.

 

[kilpatds]

At one of the seminars at gencon one of the designers, i forget who, suggested speeding up play by halfing the monsters hit points.

...

I think the suggestion to cut hit points is a good one but it does make the encounters a bit easier so I was wondering about giving the monsters a bonus to hit and on their damage rolls say +1 to hit and +1 on each damage dice.

My experience is that it's not quite enough. Giving them 2 levels might be better, but I think you also need to increase monster damage more than a few points to keep things interesting. (+1 to hit, +half lvl to damage might be in the right ballpark, or you might want to add +lvl to damage)

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=16465869&postcount=36

http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=16468023&postcount=42

 

[Klaus]

I was thinking something along these lines. Last Sunday we only had 2-1/2 hours to play, and that was enough only for the first dungeon area of KotS (4 2nd-level PCs vs. 2 goblin sharpshooters, 2 goblin warriors and 1 rat swarm). I might reduce hit points, maybe by a third instead of half.

 

[Stalker0]

I was thinking something along these lines. Last Sunday we only had 2-1/2 hours to play, and that was enough only for the first dungeon area of KotS (4 2nd-level PCs vs. 2 goblin sharpshooters, 2 goblin warriors and 1 rat swarm). I might reduce hit points, maybe by a third instead of half.

At 1st level you won't notice the difference as much, but once you get to about 4th or so taking off 1/3 of the hitpoints will have a very large impact, moreso than you might think.

The reason is once players get some encounter powers under their belt, they will start using them. And those tend to do more damage than the at-wills. The "slow" rounds are once the party is out of encounters, and maybe dailies, and are forced to fight with at-wills.

That means the last 1/3 of a monsters hitpoints are often times the longest lasting, because the big damage powers have been exhausted by that point. So if you take off 1/3 of the monster's hitpoints, that should be fewer rounds the party spends in "at-will time". I think you will notice a pretty significant effect when that happens.

 

[Grimstaff]

I've toyed with a version of this, calling it "Brutal 4E"

from http://necromancergames.yuku.com/topic/9833

"
Thought I'd share a houserule I tried out last week, 3 easy steps to make 4E combat faster, bloodier, and far more dangerous. I call it "Brutal 4E".

1. Reduce monster hp by 1/2.

2. Increase monster damage by 1hp/2lvs. (ie 4th level monster is +2 dmg w/all attacks)

3. All attacks (weapons, spells, etc) are "High Crit" (ie a greatsword does 10+1d10 on a crit instead of just 10 on a natural roll of 20 ). If a weapon is already "high crit", it does additional damage accordingly (ie a falchion does 8+4d4 on a 20 ).

We tried it out last weekend and it was a lot of fun.

Some observations:
1. PCs don't need their hp halved: the extra damage monsters do, plus deadlier crits, plus monsters have quicker access to their special "bloodied" abilities still wreaks havok on your hapless players.

2. Combat is really fast.

3. Powers, spells, etc are more potent, and thus more rewarding.

I don't know if this houserule is appropriate for every campaign, but if you like gritty, Conan-style bloodfests, this does a good job of it.

 

[Stalker0]

1. Reduce monster hp by 1/2.

2. Increase monster damage by 1hp/2lvs. (ie 4th level monster is +2 dmg w/all attacks)

3. All attacks (weapons, spells, etc) are "High Crit" (ie a greatsword does 10+1d10 on a crit instead of just 10 on a natural roll of 20 ). If a weapon is already "high crit", it does additional damage accordingly (ie a falchion does 8+4d4 on a 20 ).

Very interesting ideas! The only one I'm worried about is number 3 at very low levels. We don't want to return to the days when a lucky crit could vape a full hp character.

Overall, I think the trick is how much extra damage should monsters with half hitpoints do? I think the number will change for solos and elites as well. I think your suggestion of +1 dmg per 2 levels is a good start, ultimately we will have to see if that's too little extra damage or too much.

 

[Klaus]

Well, if you reduce a monster's life expectancy by "x", it stands to reason to increase his damage output by "x", so he deals the same amount of damage in half the time. Two examples:

Goblin Warrior (Lvl 1 Skirmisher): hp go from 29 to 14, Bloodied from 14 to 7. Damage is increased by 50% (1d8+2, if you roll 6, add another 3, for a total of 11).

Earth Giant (Lvl 13 Brute): hp go from 159 to 79, Bloodied from 79 to 39. Damage 1d10+5, increases by 50% (1d10+5, if you roll 10, add another 5, for a total of 20).

 

[Ismaul]

Or, instead of multiplying damage by 150%, you could augment the die size once and double the static damage.

So, the Goblin Warrior that did 1d8+2 does 1d10+4.
The Earth Giant that did 1d10+5 does 1d12+10.

The end result is about the same, but I find this simpler.
I'm going to test it this weekend in my game.