D&D 5E Would you change a monster's hit points mid-fight?

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

To me this is the kind of thinking that can hurt a game.

I will give you an example. I was playing in an Eberron game and the DM gave us all magical weapons or items at character creation mine was a bow that did extra damage to elves. For five levels and months of actual play time we never saw any elves where the bow could be used. I was patient even if I was slightly bummed and kind of wished I had a magic item that fit better in the game. But finally evil elves and me with one darn arrow left. The baddie was about to murder a hostage so I fired my bow at a range penalty and I rolled a 20 and then rolled another 20 and then rolled max damage it was a thing of beauty the table went wild until the DM tells us the bad guy show no effect to any of the damage and then proceeds to kill the hostage,

The DM then explained that he wrote the encounter with the bad guy wearing a brooch of shielding and even showed me his typed up notes that he didn't cheat. And technically he didn't cheat but that din't change the sour taste in my mouth over it. As a DM I have a lot of power to make the game fun for players and in case like this the player fun would outweigh any desire to 'not cheat".

I don't see any reason to prolong a combat that is dragging on and on and no one is having fun just because I wrote one number down for HP.

Now I won't change a big baddie just so he can go if the players take him down first then that is how I let it stand.

The DM most important job is to facilitate the fun at the table and that should always take precedence over the rules.

I was on the 'wouldn't change' side of the fence, but I've been won over after reading this.

 

[Shiroiken]

I have in the past, but I am very hesitant to do so now. In the case of a fight that won't end, I just cut it short, saying they won. If I need a bad guy to survive, but the players hit hard and strong, then I tend to let the dice fall where they may.

The only time I might fudge the HP now is when the enemy is close to 0 (either just over or just under) in order to give the fight more flavor (but I make sure to adjust the other way on a different enemy in the same fight to balance it out).

 

[Gnarl45]

Normally, I wouldn't. But I don't mind being honest with my players and tell them I screwed up when there's a TPK. When you tell your players it's your fault and you ed up, they don't mind rewinding to before you ed up.

 

[rosing-bull]

I do this with some frequency, for better or worse. Since I never roll for HP for monsters, instead using the average in their stat block, I justify it to myself as, "well, that orc had a few more hit points than normal," or, "that evil elf was kind of a wuss, relatively speaking." All possible if I had rolled the HP.

Actually, HP aren't something I pay a whole lot of attention to, and tend to use them more of a suggestion. If the battle is dragging and that enemy has done his part, I let him go down even if he's got a few hit points left. If the monster has a bad ass ability and the party will have killed him before he can use it, maybe I'll give him just one extra round to use it, just to make things more interesting.

I suppose I prefer narrative license over "let the dice fall where they may."

But in general I would never pull punches just to keep characters alive. I'm much more interested in ignoring rules so I can better test the characters. Which doesn't mean make the game hard, per se, but instead is more of a, "let's see how the characters respond to and handle having their backs against the wall." I want to test them as characters, not just as sacks of numbers and die rolls.

 

[iserith]

I'm surprised - do you feel that changing a monster's HP mid-encounter doesn't achieve the goals for play?

It's possible it might, but I don't need to do it to achieve the goals of play.

 

[pukunui]

As the title asks: it's the middle of an encounter, would you change a monster's hit points?

This might be during a boss fight where the PCs roll well and it looks like the big bad is going to die before taking a turn. Or maybe during a long fight that looks like it might drag. Or perhaps a tense fight where the party is toeing on a TPK.

Would you?

Yes. The hit points listed for monsters in the MM are just the averages. They don't all have to have that exact same number of hit points. Usually, if the PCs get within 1 or 2 hit points of killing a monster (usually a grunt, like a basic goblin or orc or something), I'll just say it had slightly fewer hit points and let them kill it right away, especially if it's like the last monster standing or something. (Other times, I might have those monsters with only 1 or 2 hit points left try to run away or surrender.)

On the flip side, I might give a BBEG or solo monster a few extra hit points or just let them stay up another round or two, if it seems dramatically appropriate. I prefer to give BBEG/solos back-up, though. So like if the BBEG is getting creamed, some more minions might show up on the next round to draw some of the PCs' fire away.

 

[Uchawi]

I have done it, but more often than not, I regretted doing it. It is so easy to fall in the trap of DM fiat with one thing, and it bleeds over into the next thing. I get much more satisfaction out of planning a challenging encounter and let it run it's course, regardless of who wins.

 

[Aribar]

I prefer not to fudge HP values (or dice rolls) when playing or DMing. It's a slightly slippery slope that leads to the mechanics and the game's rules being detrimental or meaningless to some extent. Except when I was super new to 3E/4E/5E or didn't have a solid grasp on my players' abilities, I haven't really had a problem with fights being in the extreme "players/enemies utterly stomp the opposition" phase. There have been times I've gotten too close to comfort to killing players or the enemies started dwindling in strength too fast, though. In those cases I like to try and shift the narrative to a sensible extent; maybe that's the break the enemies need to escape with their hostage, or maybe (as others have mentioned) reinforcements show up to support the hurting side.

 

[Umbran]

If the enemy has largely used up their resources, and has no more tricks to pull out of their hat, but still has many hit points, so that the remaining fight is going to be an uninteresting slog, the party may find the bad guy drops on the next hit, yes.

Some will say that I am negating the possibility that maybe the party will have some really horrible luck, or the monster grand luck, and that is interesting - my answer to that is "risk assessment". What is the risk/value of that potential upset, compared to the negative value of the slog. I make a judgement call on behalf of my players. So sue me.

 

[Ezequielramone]

Only just before the first roll is made. I usually use max HP for bosses, npcs or creatures I want to make players feel pain.