Variable HP for monsters

[jadrax]

With hit point thresholds for spells like sleep, I don't think the cases in which rolling monster hit points will add more variety will be that niche. As it stands, dropping a sleep on a group of fresh orcs will just make them all drowsy. With random monster hit points there is a chance that some of them will need to save or fall unconscious.

I had not really realised that, and your right. Hit Point values are a lot more important then it used to be. I may have to think about this.

 

[Obryn]

If it increases my prep time substantially, or makes running the game more difficult, odds are I won't care for it.

If I have 30 kobolds, I'd really rather not track their HP closely. Giving them static HP is one way to make my job easier.

At the other end of the scale, once you get up to 6 or so monster HD, there'll be a substantial central tendency anyways. At 10+, you really might as well take the average...

-O

 

[Li Shenron]

I like having monsters who are not all identical.

In 3ed you could always choose to either roll HP or take the average, both were provided in the monsters stats, it's not a significant design work required to do that. With both numbers given, the DM can easily choose depending on her preference.

I would have also liked monsters with varying ability scores, but unfortunately that is much more complicated to do in 3ed, you'd have to recalculate too many things!

With hit point thresholds for spells like sleep, I don't think the cases in which rolling monster hit points will add more variety will be that niche. As it stands, dropping a sleep on a group of fresh orcs will just make them all drowsy. With random monster hit points there is a chance that some of them will need to save or fall unconscious.

I would actually prefer that.

 

[IronWolf]

If it increases my prep time substantially, or makes running the game more difficult, odds are I won't care for it.

If I have 30 kobolds, I'd really rather not track their HP closely. Giving them static HP is one way to make my job easier.

This is one of those areas where it is really easy to accommodate both lines of thought. Just list the line like I suggested earlier:

hp 15 (2d10+4)

And both camps can be happy. The low prep (and we are all low prep at some point, right? ) has a static number to use, no rolling needed. For days we have more time, we have the HD to roll or calculate a percentage of to give a bit of variety in the hit points.

 

[The Red King]

I too would like to see the hit dice. Sometimes you want to roll up a bunch of monsters. They arent all clones, right?

Especially when your players start counting the damage done to find the best ways to kill them.

 

[Janaxstrus]

I often do this anyway.

They definitely shouldn't use the avg if people want so much to have max hps. All monsters should also use max. Which, imo, leads to uneccessary bloating of damage, hps etc etc again.