Unnerfing monsters?

[ScottS]

I haven't been able to find any of the old threads I've seen about increasing monster damage to make combats less boring/grindy. I'm either looking for a pointer or link to a relevant thread, or else just a numerical ratio (x2 damage or whatever), plus whatever other tweaks people felt had to be made to make the idea work (e.g. did you need to also change att bonus or defenses, give leaders more 'healing words', etc.). Thanks in advance.

 

[Aramax]

The simple ratio is 1/2 hp=2x damage

 

[Markn]

Some people find Aramax suggestion a bit too extreme.

I currently used 75% HP and +1/2 level bonus to monster damage.

Either method works, just suit to taste. Either way, these are the 2 most common methods out there.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Another alternative is to give the monsters +2 to hit and -2 to all defences. Should be roughly equal to +20% damage -20% hp.

 

[keterys]

Only problem there is you can frustrate your players with status effects and make certain creatures too status effect prone.

Also may make minions even easier to blast away without effect.

 

[Elric]

To quote myself from an earlier thread:

The problem with 3/4 HP, +1/2 damage per level is that it isn't going to work well at low or high levels. At level 2, for example, monsters lose 1/4 of their HP for a +1 damage bonus. At level 30, monsters lose 1/4 of their HP but do well over half again as much damage (normal damage expression is around 24, so this is over +60% as much damage).

If you are giving monsters 3/4 of their normal hit points, it would make sense for monsters to do about 4/3 normal damage,

In general, +1/3 to damage over the DMG’s normal damage expression guidelines would be approximately Bonus Damage= 2+ Level/5. At high levels, +1/2 level in damage rapidly outstrips this formula (+8 damage at level 30 by the formula).

Brutes, who use the high damage table, should get roughly Bonus Damage=3+Level/5 instead, since their base numbers are higher (or maybe more; their base numbers seem a little low).

 

[keterys]

Given that I think damage at levels 1-4 is mostly pretty decent and less and less scary at higher and higher levels I'm not sure that it's entirely necessary to bow to accuracy there.

I'd also just end up tempted to do it by tier at like 2/4/6 instead of 2+Lvl/5.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Another approach I've seen suggested on these boards (and that has been successful for me, though I use it selectively) is to reduce monster hp by 1/3, but add one extra monster (with reduced hp) for every two monsters with reduced hp (in other words, reduce their xp value by 1/3 as well).

You end up with higher damage at the beginning of the fight (150%), but the damage falls off more rapidly because the enemies die quickly.

 

[Blackbrrd]

The problem with more enemies is that especially Invokers (who's damage can scale with the number of monsters), wizards and other controllers gain in power relatively to the strikers.

In my current campaign I have a party that had up to 7 players. Increasing the number of mobs made combat go slow and changed the balance of the game quite a lot. I ended up making one monster elite for each additional PC over 5. It might work better if you are in an outdoor environment with lots of ranged mobs.

 

[keterys]

I'm totally okay with improving AoE, myself.