What's the deal with Elite/Solo hit points? / Simplifying Combat

[Mercurius]

This is a two-part post because they are related subjects with a lot of overlap.

First, Hit Points. I get it: An Elite monster is supposed to be able to stand up to three PCs of the same level, a Solo against five PCs (or something like that; I'm too lazy to go look it up). But the inflated hit points just seem...artificial, and so extremely gamist that anyone with a simulationist bone in their astral body will cringe in horror (Don't get me wrong, I'll all for the holy tenet of Game Balance, but think it has to be, ah, balanced with other factors, such as a sense of internal consistency, narrative potency, etc).

For example: I'm running Scions of Punjar and there is an 8th level Elite human rogue (Oskar), owner of a pawnshop and somewhat wormy and cowardly, but happens to have 172 HP--about as much as a 20th level fighter (!). Why would a pawnshop owner with 172 HP have anything to fear? And, more importantly, how does that make any kind of sense? What happened to verisimilitude? And what happened to just making NPCs NPCs and not in the Monster type paradigm? Why can't he be an 8th-level rogue with appropriate HP, which for him would be 61 (level 8 rogue = 12 base + (7 lvls x 5) + 14 CON)? (And where did the number "172" come from, anyways? On page 185 of the DMG it says that Elites have twice the normal HP, including the CON score, which would give Oskar only 122...typo?). So why make Oskar a Monster at all? Why not just make him, as a leveled human, an NPC with 61 HP? Is this a flaw in the system or bad adventure writing or just me?

And it isn't always just the Elites and Solos; in the same adventure, which is for PCs level 4-6, there is a scene where a horde (29) skeletons and zombies attack the PCs; 8 of them are minions with 1 HP, one is a boneshard with 78 HP, but twenty of them have 40 or 46 HP, meaning they cannot be killed with a single attack, even with a rogue sneak attack. How is that a manageable combat? Now I must admit that the party was all 3rd level with one 4th level character, but still...even if they had all been 4th level that would have been a ton of HP they would have to dole out. I ended up reducing the skeleton and zombie HP by half, sometimes a third--I decided to go for dramatic effect so that when the swordmage did solid damage (I think 13 HP) to a bunch of them with Flame Cyclone, he killed those he damaged; the same with the wizard and Shock Sphere (which I think was about 15 HP).

It just seems anticlimactic for the wizard to cast Shock Sphere, roll to hit 11 times and hit 8 of them, then only do about a third total damage to a bunch of skeletons and zombies (And yes, I'm one of those folks that think the wizard is underpowered, even with the nice burst spells). To put it another way, why does your garden variety skeleton have as much HP (46) as a 3rd level fighter?

Which seguys into the second topic, how to simplify combat. Overall, even after about eight sessions played, I'm finding 4E combat to be clunky and overly time-consuming. I'm thinking of ways to simplify it; the problems seem to be mainly three-fold:

1. Overly high HP totals for monsters,
2. Confusing powers leading to many players having to look up and discuss their power during their turn, and
3. Tons of tactical exceptions that are impossible to keep track of but seem to exist in almost any situation.

The easy solutions that come to mind are:

1. Reducing most monster HP by 50-75%; look at Elites and Solos on a case-by-case basis, but many will get cuts (e.g. Oskar above and other NPCs).
2. Make sure players have their power ready and are responsible for knowing what it does; if they don't they either have to pick something that they do or they lose their turn (kind of harsh, though).
3. Ignore all the exceptions, unless they are easy and glaringly obvious, and just roll dice. DM's discretion trumps all.

Now while like the idea of Powers and think the Power Sources are elegant and a conceptual improvement to the game from previous editions, I'm not really liking how they work in practice. I'm toying with the idea of scrapping powers (but not power sources) and designing some kind of guidelines for a freeform power/action system where the PCs narratively make up what they want to do on the spot and I assign a target number and any possible combat modifiers....but that's another discussion.

Thoughts?

 

[hong]

First, Hit Points. I get it: An Elite monster is supposed to be able to stand up to three PCs of the same level, a Solo against five PCs (or something like that; I'm too lazy to go look it up). But the inflated hit points just seem...artificial, and so extremely gamist that anyone with a simulationist bone in their astral body will cringe in horror (Don't get me wrong, I'll all for the holy tenet of Game Balance, but think it has to be, ah, balanced with other factors, such as a sense of internal consistency, narrative potency, etc).

The solution is to recalibrate your definition of simulationist from the rgfa model to the F*rgite GNS meaning of the term. The idea is that you're simulating the reality of an action movie or pulp novel, rather than an alternate fantasy world.

You're probably doing something like this already. If you ever use terms like "BBEG", "mook" or "climactic encounter", that's action movie reality speaking. This just makes it all consistent.

 

[Mercurius]

Yeah, I get that but it still seems to hit a snag in situations like the example I gave of Oskar, the 8th level human rogue with 172 HP. The Elite/Solo HP boosts make more sense to me when we're talking about supernatural or large+ creatures.

 

[hong]

Again, remember the philosophy behind 4E: stats are there to support interaction with the players. This dovetails nicely with the movie-sim paradigm, in that the mechanics represent stage props or special effects.

Using this philosophy, the hit points would be there because Oskar is supposed to be a significant character in the narrative. He's a tough guy, who can hold his own against a group of PCs. The hit points don't have anything to do with how he survives day-to-day, because day-to-day stuff doesn't concern the PCs. If the PCs aren't around, then he survives the way you, the DM, want him to survive.

And hey, at least he's just a rogue. IIRC in the 3.0 FRCS, there's a 17th level wizard tending a stall in Waterdeep....

What's this guy Oskar supposed to be doing anyway? Is he someone who might reasonably be expected to come into conflict with the PCs? It's possible they've just applied the rogue template from the DMG, which results in an elite, without thinking through what the guy is actually meant to do.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yeah, I get that but it still seems to hit a snag in situations like the example I gave of Oskar, the 8th level human rogue with 172 HP. The Elite/Solo HP boosts make more sense to me when we're talking about supernatural or large+ creatures.

Consider this: If he was a PC, he had around 6 to 12 Healing Surges, and a friend that would allow him to trigger approximately two to four of them.

PCs have a lot more hit points than it might seem at first. But they can't access them as easy as the NPC.

 

[hong]

There is some amount of disconnect between the concepts of a badass NPC and a snivelling coward, though. You could just ignore the latter bit and assume this guy knows how to handle himself, and that's how he survives in the rough end of town.

 

[Stalker0]

I ran an 14th level npc cleric against an 11th level paladin just recently, with the paladin just squeaking ahead. It came down to the paladin did more damage with big dailies, a few crits and slightly less 1 rolling than the cleric (there were a lot of 1's rolled on both sides!).

Basically, it comes down to PCs have access to more powers than NPCs, and so are actually throwing around better effects and damage, at least for a period of time. The PCs can also activate secondary hps more often. Now you could have the balance be that the npc cleric has lower hp and more damage, but that increases the risk that the player get blown away with lucky rolls. Some love that, others hate it, regardless, its the route 4e has chosen.

I have one player that hates the distinction, he feels npcs are "better" than PCs... other players just don't care.

Getting back to the elite/solo argument, I personally think elites are fine, though solos have too many hitpoints. But a 50% reduction is not called for, even a 15% reduction can have dramatic results.

Remember that a parties damage output tends to be extremely high at the beginning of a combat, with action points and big powers. I have seen them strip off 50% of a solos hitpoints in just a few rounds. However, they can't keep that up...which leads to the "grind" people mention. If you take off just the last 10-15% of the monsters hp, you lose the rounds that the players grind with at wills but maintain the monster's ability to take the pain long enough to be a threat.

 

[Jack99]

Yeah, I get that but it still seems to hit a snag in situations like the example I gave of Oskar, the 8th level human rogue with 172 HP. The Elite/Solo HP boosts make more sense to me when we're talking about supernatural or large+ creatures.

He should never have been elite imo - at the most a regular level 8 "monster". Also the hitpoints are indeed wrong. When that is said, I personally feel the elite template works just fine for humanoid bad-asses/BBEG's. Solo's work best for the supernatural/large+ creatures that you mentioned, but can occassionally work for a humanoid. I ain't a fan of using them as such though.

 

[Lab_Monkey]

Nevermind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

He should never have been elite imo - at the most a regular level 8 "monster". Also the hitpoints are indeed wrong. When that is said, I personally feel the elite template works just fine for humanoid bad-asses/BBEG's. Solo's work best for the supernatural/large+ creatures that you mentioned, but can occassionally work for a humanoid. I ain't a fan of using them as such though.

Solos really aren't something that should be thrown around all that much. The whole concept is that they are only the really top dog boss type monsters. The example the OP used is precisely where a Solo should NOT be used. I'm sure the logic in the module writer's head was something like "the pawnshop is an encounter in an 8th level module. I have to make it a balanced encounter. There is one opponent, so he must be an 8th level solo." It is just crappy module design, unless his being tough has some specific story purpose. OTOH the DM doesn't have to worry about it, the NPC can act like a cowardly wimp. Nobody needs to know on paper he has a large HP total.

Solo and Elite design, and related NPC design IS an art form. Unfortunately, while the DMG did manage to provide a decent monster design framework, they muddied the waters by then also providing a confusion of ways to design NPCs, and on top of it failing to really adequately clarify what those different mechanisms were meant for.

Normal people type NPCs basically shouldn't be designed according to any rules except DM convenience and story requirements. If they aren't intended to be anything but personalities then they shouldn't even have stat blocks, just relevant net adjusted skill check modifiers and RP info. They don't even have levels per-se. If the DM wants to make it hard to put one over on the pawnshop owner, all he has to do is give him a Perception check mod of +18 (or whatever it needs to be).

For NPCs that are the opposite, purely the enemy and will be fought in combat, they are just monsters. If needed they can be elites or solos, but they do not have to be. Just find or make up an appropriate stat block and call it a whatever. Thats the beauty of 4e. If you make it up from whole cloth then its a Level N monster and Chapter 10 DMG tells you what stats to give it, approximately. IF you want it to be an important NPC, then you may want to use a class template, which specifies that the monster will be elite.

The THIRD way to do it is to use the NPC generation system, also in chapter 10. THAT system is only intended for constructing NPCs that are allies of the party. Ones that might fight along side them. It has the advantage over the monster system in that it lets the NPC play by the same rules as the PCs pretty much, so they won't ask questions like "why doesn't that guy retrain his power to blabbity blah" or other awkward questions like that. It puts his hit points etc on the same scale as the players so he works well inside their team. It really should not, in general, be used for NPCs that are not actively going to operate on the side of the PCs.

Remember, 4e's rules mechanics for PCs and monsters are really RADICALLY different. The basics of how combat works are the same of course, but nothing else is. PCs have low hit points, high damage, lots of healing, and complicated powers that reward close teamwork. Monsters have high hit points, low damage, no healing, and simple powers that a DM can manage easily. Try an experiment. Have a few people take some humanoid monsters (orcs would work pretty well, or hobgoblins) and run through a dungeon with them. You will soon see why things are the way they are.

As for the skeleton encounter. I don't see how that could be a balanced encounter really. A regular skeleton is a level 3 soldier. 9 of them ALONE is a level 6 encounter, not counting anything else. Also soldier role monsters are supposed to be the tough defensive type monsters. Anyone that designed an encounter that was basically almost all soldiers didn't read the encounter design guidelines very closely. I would never make an encounter like that and so you really shouldn't blame the rules system for it. Try finding some well designed encounters to use, or make some yourself