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

[EzekielRaiden]

Of course, Gygax is also widely quoted as saying, "A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make," and, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."

Gygax said an awful lot of things. Several of them appear to be diametrically opposed; there he is pretty clearly making a "everyone can play whatever they want, however they want," but elsewhere he explicitly said that people not playing his way weren't playing D&D.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Gygax said an awful lot of things. Several of them appear to be diametrically opposed; there he is pretty clearly making a "everyone can play whatever they want, however they want," but elsewhere he explicitly said that people not playing his way weren't playing D&D.

That's not actually a contradiction.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's not actually a contradiction.

Depends on how you view "not playing D&D," doesn't it? A lot of people get pretty sensitive about being told that the thing they enjoy "isn't D&D." Consider the interview bits from this blog post, for example. I also believe he explicitly called 2e "not D&D," back when it was the currently-published game, and said all kinds of things that (today) are considered edition warring when coming out of a typical fan's mouth.

 

[PnPgamer]

Make rolls, not war!

 

[Larac]

Story.
If it makes a great Story for ALL, let it happen.

If it means a plot NPC death that is needed elsewhere, many options.
It was not who you thought it was so the fight was too easy.
In this case the main one was watching the fight and is a bit more ready for them.

He was not the main bad guy, but his right hand.


The PCs overwhelmed because I the DM made it too hard, The Cleric or Pally might get a Boon, it will have a cost later of course.
The NPC might lose 30-50 HP if needed so the fight is a success, but then the party hears more coming, no time to rest.

If to keep the Story fun for all yes adjustments are made.

What fun is there in Goblin #6 critting and killing a PC.

As a GM I want to build up to the point where things are so dangerous the PCs may all die.
Warn them with events, fore shadowing, so that when the times come they have decided to risk life to finish the quest.

But that is me. You are free to do it how you wish.
One of the great strengths of RPGs.

 

[jrowland]

Here's a thought:

What if you wrote on a sheet of paper:

10 Goblins, 11 HP

And then as each goblin took damage you counted up, when a goblin was at or near 11 damage taken you declare him dead. Some might die at 9 damage, some might die at 14.

In other words, is the OP question relevant if you as DM don't know the monster HP, only the "average", and played accordingly.

 

[Imaculata]

I change monster's HP during combat all the time.

Sometimes a boss is dying a bit too fast, so I beef him up a bit, so everyone gets to have a whack at him.

Sometimes a player does an awesome attack, but the monster still has 1 or 2 HP left. I'd say, ignore those hit points, and let the monster die in that awesome attack. What matters is the story. The players don't know how many HP are left, and if you say the monster dies, then it dies.

 

[Pssthpok]

Any DM who doesn't call the occasional audible is straightjacketing themselves into every mistake they might have made in the design phase for the encounter at hand.

 

[Pauper]

Holy thread necromancy, Batman! Though I'm glad in a way, because this gives me an excuse to talk about a hit point tweak that I find effective, but that everyone I've told about seems leery that it's unfair and potentially abusive.

It started by playing in the G-series, in a party where a few of the guys were egregious min-maxers. After a couple of fights, the DM made some adjustments so that we wouldn't just walk over everything, and it seemed to work. After one session, I asked him about it, and he said he was basically just doubling the monsters' hit points.

My moment came when I realized that, in Fifth Edition terms, there's no mathematical difference between doubling the monsters' hit points and just giving them resistance to all damage. (You might get a rounding issue, but that's minor at best.) The problem is that, not everyone at the table might be min-maxing, and punishing them for the decisions of the other players seemed unfair to me. So at the next session I ran, I basically gave all my monsters an extra ability: "resistance to munchkin damage", where 'munchkin' was defined as 'I think this guy's doing too much damage'.

It worked like a charm -- the fight lasted just long enough to be interesting, and the entire party felt like they were contributing, though they couldn't put their finger on exactly why.

Of course, everyone I talk to immediately wonders how I can be so 'unfair' to the min-maxers at my table, but I think this solution is better than simply providing no fix at all and having boring fights, or punishing everyone by having them all do less effective damage by increasing the monsters' base HP.

I'm going to keep using this system, because it works.

--
Pauper

 

[Tony Vargas]

I ran, I basically gave all my monsters an extra ability: "resistance to munchkin damage", where 'munchkin' was defined as 'I think this guy's doing too much damage'.

It worked like a charm -- the fight lasted just long enough to be interesting, and the entire party felt like they were contributing, though they couldn't put their finger on exactly why.

Of course, everyone I talk to immediately wonders how I can be so 'unfair' to the min-maxers at my table, but I think this solution is better than simply providing no fix at all and having boring fights, or punishing everyone by having them all do less effective damage by increasing the monsters' base HP.

That actually strikes me as a reasonably fair way of compensating for a balance problem. It's just 'handicapping,' which is a legitimate enough way to let players of different skill levels participate in the same event.

You can try to flog balance into the system with repeated nerfs, or you can compensate with overpowered challenges to match the overpowered characters, you can try to give boosts to the under-powered characters (magic items can work well). But just handicapping the system masters seems like an elegant solution.
There are probably some who wouldn't even mind and take it as a complement.