3/16/2024 0 Comments D d 5e calculating monster health![]() ![]() Thus, we're more likely to want to lower hit points when a battle drags on. A battle going too long is usually a bigger problem than a battle happening too quickly. We DMs might sometimes feel like a battle went too fast but, when a battle goes too slow, everyone feels it. Maybe we don't double it, but we can max it out within the range of the hit dice and lower it if the battle goes too long. If this sort of destruction is routine, however, we might want to up the difficulty by increasing the monsters' hit points. Sure, we thought the battle against six hill giants would go longer but so what? They just got to cut down six hill giants in a round and a half! That's pretty bad-ass. ![]() How do the players feel about blowing through powerful monsters like that so quickly? Was it boring or was it awesome? If its awesome, we don't have to change a thing. If we know the characters pack a big punch through optimization, a high number of characters, a large amount of available resources, or with experienced players we can increase the threat of a battle by increasing the hit points of the monsters. Our characters drop everything they have in round one and turn a big battle into a slaughter before it has barely begun. Sometimes combat seems to go either too fast or too slow. I argue that there are two good reasons to tweak the hit points of a monster: to change the pace of a game and to change the upward or downward beat of the scene. Why Tweak Hit Points?ĭMs may have a variety of methods they use to modify a monster's hit points, but why would they do so? Lowering a monster's hit points to one ensures the battle is over quickly but still gives players the joy of finishing off their foes.īoth of these techniques require little work and can be done right at the table. I much prefer this technique over the dreaded "let's call the battle right here" method of ending combat early I often see at organized play games. This minionization of a monster ensures that, on its next hit, its going down. Second, we can reduce a monster's current hit points to one. Many D&D adventures offer this up for variant boss versions of a monster so, while it likely breaks outside of the hit dice equation of a monster, it's a technique even the designers of D&D use. First, if we think a monster could use a boost, we can double its hit points. I'll offer two easy ways to tweak monster hit points for us lazy dungeon masters. Sometimes they want a monster to get off its big ability before its beaten down too fast. Sometimes they want a player who hasn't gotten a break to get in a solid killing blow. Other DMs describe ignoring hit points after a certain point and deciding when a monster dies on one hit or another. This keeps the pace and threat of the battle in the control of the DM, to a degree, and lets them lower that threat if things are starting to feel hopeless or boring. For example, some DMs maximize the hit points of a monster based on its hit dice equation before the battle begins and then lower those hit points to speed things up if they need to. During discussions of the topic on Facebook and Twitter, I heard some great ones. You and I might have our own feelings on this conclusion but we can all assume that, just as you and I have these feelings and opinions, so do the DMs who choose either to tweak hit points during a game or do not. DMs may do so for a variety of reasons, some of which we'll discuss in this article, but the main point is that most DMs likely adjust hit points during a game. ![]() In a poll on the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition Facebook group with 523 respondents, about three out of four DMs said that they modify monster hit points during a game. Today we're going to dig deeper into why and how we would deviate from the average monster hit points listed in the Monster Manual. It gives us a dial we can use to affect the speed, pace, challenge, and feeling of our D&D game. That number gives us the range of a monster's hit points that we DMs can use to tweak the difficulty of a monster. However, that first number is equally important to us in another way. Many of us might look at that average and say to ourselves "that's how many hit points the monster has" and call our job done. We're given the monster's hit dice equation the equation that tells us the range of hit points a monster can have and the monster's average hit points. When we look at monster hit points in the Monster Manual, we're given two numbers. New to Sly Flourish? Start Here or subscribe to the newsletter. ![]()
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