Speeding up combat: have you tried to halve hit points?

[Skyscraper]

Break from the 5E discussion.

In looking to speed up 4E combat, we're considering to halve all creature and monster hit points. Have you tried this? Either yes or no, what do you think about the idea?

If we were to go ahead, what specific problems do you foresee?

For example, I assume creatures would be bloodied at half their new hit point value, so that they'd be bloodied half the time like they are now. But what about healing surges: should they be kept at their unchanged value, thus becoming equal to half the new hit point value?

Thanks for thoughts and input.

 

[Quickleaf]

I cut standard monster HP by half and in rare cases even by 2/3rds. I left elite and solo HP unchanged. I absolutely cut out all monster healing.

Those changes did speed up combat, though the real time-savers IME have been encouter design and meta game (eg. group habits).

If you're proposing halving PC hit points, maybe others can comment, but my gut reaction is your game would either feel gritty or you'd exacerbate the PC ping-pong-dying-not dying effect.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Can't comment on adjusted PC hit points, but I have reduced monster hit points. And my players didn't like it. I'm the only one in my group who thinks combat is just a little too slow.

 

[the Jester]

For example, I assume creatures would be bloodied at half their new hit point value, so that they'd be bloodied half the time like they are now. But what about healing surges: should they be kept at their unchanged value, thus becoming equal to half the new hit point value?

A healing surge should always be worth 1/4 max hps IMHO.

Although I'd much prefer to toss 'em entirely.

 

[Skyscraper]

Thanks for comments so far.

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] and @ tequila sunrise : you didn't cut PC hit points? Didn't the PCs have one heck of an advantage in battle?

[MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION]: with the monsters still doing regular damage, wouldn't cutting the healing surge value reduce suvivability significantly? (Of course, cutting HPs will reduce survivability, but cutting healing surge values would increase that, wouldn't it?)

 

[jcayer]

In my level 1-30 campaign that recently finished, about halfway through, I started halving monster HP, but doubling damage.
I did give my players fair warning and in the end, it was an improvement. The higher damage output made combat much more exciting. And I was not above fudging HP up or down during combat to keep the pressure on or finish a battle faster.

 

[the Jester]

[MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION]: with the monsters still doing regular damage, wouldn't cutting the healing surge value reduce suvivability significantly? (Of course, cutting HPs will reduce survivability, but cutting healing surge values would increase that, wouldn't it?)

Isn't the whole point to speed up combat?

I don't do the half-hit-points thing myself, but given how many mid-level leader powers include "spend 2 healing surges", halving hit points and leaving the surge value unchanged makes all of these powers "go from 1 hp from - bloodied (dead) to full hps in one minor action!"

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks for comments so far.

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] and @ tequila sunrise : you didn't cut PC hit points? Didn't the PCs have one heck of an advantage in battle?

When they're up against just standard monsters and the objective is "kill all monsters" then yes the PCs would have an advantage.

However that's a pretty rare scenario in my games.

Also I routinely run the party through encounters 2-3 levels above them, use waves of monsters, hazards & dangerous terrain, nasty tactics, and creative combat goals.

I use AngryDM's 3-phase bosses and I always tweak solos & usually eltes to make them more dangerous.

I use minions with HP roughly equal to 1/4 or 1/5 a standard monster, and often give them a strength in numbers trait/power, so groups of minions can be pretty scary.

Finally I got rid of monster healing, weakened, and insubstantial; I replace these with unique abilities based on monster type as needed.

All of that added up makes fights maybe a bit more dangerous than core 4e, and definitely a heck of a lot more interesting.

 

[Ryujin]

Hell, if I cut monster hits by 50% then the party's Ranger and Thief might start one-shotting them.

 

[Skyscraper]

[MENTION=27897]Ryujin[/MENTION]: yeah, that's what I'm concerned about. Likewise, I'm afraid that brute monsters would one-shot some of my players. (I'm thinking of removing crits from monsters.)

The thing is, 4E for us is a good game, but really we've never been able to manage fights in a sensible timeframe. By never, I mean that we've been playing it from the start and we're still at the 2-hour fight for normal fights and 3 hours for long ones. This eats too much time into battle for my taste. I've read dozens of threads on speeding up combat, nothing improves the timeframe significantly. We have one player that handles initiative, we roll damage dice at the same time as we roll attack dice, I cut down on usage of soldiers and solos, I have the enemies surrender or flee when it's apparent they'll loose, and recently, I even ended up preparing shortened PC sheets for my players in a short (few-sessions long) paragon tier adventure that look like monster stats (with powers having double or triple uses instead of having multiple different powers) to cut down on the PC sheet reading time, but even that wasn't enough. All that to no avail, although the battles are slightly (say, 5-20%) shorter, they're still way too long. We do include a bit of roleplay pretty much at each creature's turn, but asking us to do away with that is too much. I don't think we go overboard there, however.

Anyway. Thanks for everyone's comments so far. Hopefully more people will chime in, especially those that have tried this. The comments so far surprise me as I was not expecting the suggestion of halving monster HP but keep player HP as is. To me, this would have meant increasing the number of opponents to keep the fights balanced, which would have defeated the purpose. Now it seems some people do that however.