Taking my cue from the Wizards R&D staff, I decided to cut all monster hit points in half as my players made their way into the Keep on the Shadowfell. The campaign has been dragging already, sometimes to the tune of a single encounter per session, and they were getting tired of not going up levels. This is partially due to the module’s design, which has several mega encounters all in a row to start things off. Given that everyone playing is going to be learning the system, I think they might have made some better choices here.
Halving all monster hit points let us get through more encounters last night than we ever had before. The players are all more adept at using their abilities as well, which is helping, but the more fragile monsters has really amped up the action level. Combats are going about as long as they should (i.e., the length they’ve always gone in D&D before now) but the players are still feeling the sting. I had a couple of guard drakes hide and wait for the dwarf to fall into their pit, where they pounced and mangled him.
(It was fun watching character after character frantically blowing their dailies in an effort to save him. 
Now, I think they over-reacted a bit, but it was a fun reaction.)
We had the most fun we’ve ever had with 4e last night, and so I’m hoping it continues to go that way. Playing with the half hit points house rule is the closest we’ve gotten to what the designers promised, which is a fun game that allows for more exploring per day than previously possible. We’ll see how things hold up next game.
3:04 pm on September 10th, 2008 1
I’ve been running KOTS, and I’m thinking of implementing this house rule as well. Combat for us already goes a lot faster than 3.5, but is really vicious. Even holding back, I still bounce a PC off the floor almost every encounter. No actual deaths yet, but everyone has hit the death spiral at some point.
I don’t think it’s so much the 4e rules, but rather the design of KOTS that makes combat so rough on the PCs. At Gen Con, I heard the guy that designed the Irontooth encounter (I think it was Noonan) mention that it got edited to end up a lot tougher than it was originally meant to be.
Still, both I and my players love minions because they go down so quick, and I doubt it will hurt our play any to go through the other monsters quicker. I’m going to give it a try.
3:14 pm on September 10th, 2008 2
I’ve been using 3/4 hit points for non-elite, non-solo monsters, myself. It works pretty well — there’s a point in most fights where it’s pretty clear that the PCs will win, but the combat just goes on, and cutting hp to 75% makes the combat end a lot closer to that point.
Might try half, and see how that works.
I wouldn’t reduce the hp of solos, though. They need to be able to stick around for a while.
4:29 pm on September 10th, 2008 3
Good advice, Ninetail. If any solos or elites ever show up in this adventure I’ll be sure and keep them super tough.
5:32 pm on September 10th, 2008 4
I may have to try this as well. I’ve noticed that fights tend to go on longer than I intend, but I attributed it to the fact that I don’t use minions.
I also have to wonder if the problem becomes greater at higher levels as it looks like player damage output does not keep up with the hit points of monsters as you go to higher levels (but I have not tested this yet).
5:38 pm on September 10th, 2008 5
This suggestion / house rule from Rich Baker was actually in response to a question that I asked at the panel, and I was very happy to hear that they’d experienced some of the same things and had the same thoughts that most of us had about monster hitpoints.
Now that I’m running a campaign (and not KotS), and my players are level 3, the monster hit point issue has mostly faded as the characters can pull out more encounter powers and use dailies a bit more handily. I agree with Patriarch that I think a lot of the issue is specific to how the encounters / module were designed in KotS.
9:23 pm on September 10th, 2008 6
So the designers said that we should reduce the hp of monsters by half for all monsters in the MM or just in KoTS?
10:41 pm on September 10th, 2008 7
This is something I ran into in at most of my encounters in our 4E playtest campaign — while it didn’t happen every combat, it seems like about 3/4 of them dragged on three or four rounds longer than I wanted them to simply because of the number of hit points the monsters have.
Knocking off a quarter of their hit points seems like a good starting point for me. It’s what I ended up doing on an ad-hoc basis as the campaign went on, though I never sat down and said “let’s lose X number of hit points and see how this works”. It was more like “this is dragging … on the next hit, this guy’s going down.”
My group didn’t like minions much. In concept, they’re ok, but practice it always felt awkward to say that they were immune to missed power attacks that do damage — it took us out of the game every time it happened. I think the problem with 4E minions is that they’re so binary; they’re either alive or dead. I think the concept works better in Savage Worlds, where minions essentially need two hits (or one really good one) to be taken down, but it’s abstract wound system doesn’t translate well to D&D.
10:46 pm on September 10th, 2008 8
That sounds like a good idea. Our last combat took the whole session! Mind you, In this dungeon I’ve kept the minions to a minimum, so I think that has something to do with it.
Is it just me or do players love minions? What I typically do is have the character described what they do to the minion every time they hit, and have the next player start rolling. The PCs love it and get into the combat a lot more readily when there are a few tough, choice opponents and a lot of squishies.
8:26 am on September 11th, 2008 9
We’ve been playing the KotS adventure for the last 5 sessions and we haven’t experienced this problem. From the players’ reactions they seem to be enjoying the extra pounding/rounds which actually makes them want more role-playing after a fight (if that makes any sense.
Concerning minions we had the same reaction. They have really started to fear Kobold minions (especially after a nasty streak of natural 1s that they [the players] experienced).
All in all, 4th edition hps and fights have worked pretty well for my group. And finally the PCs have learned that they should act smartly even if the battle Kobolds!
9:34 am on September 11th, 2008 10
[...] first idea I came across slapped me pretty hard in the face (thanks Propagandroid!): halve the hit points of the monsters. Apparently R & D have suggested this themselves if you find combat dragging. I [...]
12:29 pm on September 11th, 2008 11
I’d be curious if it is a KotS-specific issue as well. It would surprise me greatly if it turned out to be gamewide, considering that the game is thoroughly play-tested. (Perhaps not so thoroughly at beginning levels?)
Since 4e has so many hallmarks of being miniature-battle focused, I wonder if the combats were designed to go long, assuming players would enjoy that more?
My preference would be to drop the monster count before neutering the monsters. Granted, it’s a cruder adjustment, but I struggle with players who enter combats by default, when they should be running away. I feel like a few of the encounters that PCs experience should be like that.
1:03 pm on September 11th, 2008 12
I’ve been running 75% too. Keeping elites and solos as is. IT helps, but it really sucks that my core set is being errata’d to death…It wont be long before I ask them for a new set of books - gratis.
I understand development cycle and all that, but this is ridiculous. In any event, I sure hope they have implemented the errata in future releases.
4:24 pm on September 11th, 2008 13
As tehGM can’t you just have some of the monsters dying early..
I meen if you feel the pace is dragging let the players start whacking out monsters on the next hit just to keep momentum in the story.
5:44 pm on September 11th, 2008 14
You guys can find our write-up from the workshop where this all started here:
http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/08/25/adventure-design-seminar-gencon-2008/
The suggestion in particular shows up in the Q&A portion pretty far down, about time spent fighting vs. XP gained. The answer was not specific to KotS, but in relation to all of 4e but it was not a suggested WotC strategy, just something they’ve been toying with to see how it works out.
7:18 pm on September 11th, 2008 15
@Mark: Sure, I could do that, but I prefer to have some objective measure…to me and my players that’s part of the fun. We would have missed out on a pretty fun meme last campaign if I was using arbitrary hit points.
@Anarkeith: I don’t see how it could be any better if KotS is designed with the guidelines for encounter creation in the DMG. I don’t think it will be a problem for us, since we’re not playing 4e after we’re done with KotS, but I think I’d still just use 50% until it turns out to be a problem.
3:54 am on September 16th, 2008 16
I tried your rule last friday. It didn’t really accelerate the game. Of course, I have to say that there are 7 players at the table, thus I had to add a few mobs. Nevertheless it took them about 2 hours to go through the first encounter of the dungeon (goblins + trap).
BTW in this first encounter I added this little trick.
When I described the entrance of the dungeon, I added some broken stone pilars, one almost blocking the strairs. As soon as the charaters entered the dungeon two goblins, who were waiting for them (one of the halfling from the previous encounter fleed), came and push one of the stone down the stair. The stone rolled and bullrushed the warlock in the trap. soo funny
3:33 pm on September 19th, 2008 17
[...] (et les autres). Il y a une bonne discussion sur le blog Gamer Dome qui fait valoir que, particulière dans les encounters de ton aventure, les monstres auraient trop [...]
12:02 pm on September 24th, 2008 18
KotS was a TPK (save one eladrin wizard that teleported out of danger and made it out alive.) We played with full HPs. Despite the near-total TPK, it was fun. Glad we are moving to LFR now.
2:42 pm on March 11th, 2009 19
Gone through a couple of adventures in 4e, both as DM and as player and have to say that I think the HP are completely broken. We’ve halved them, 3/4rd them, killed monsters on whim, increased minions, decreased monsters… whatever we could to get through more in a session… and its impossibly slow.
As a DM I felt the combats drag on interminably with little to no threat. And as a player I felt invincible with so many hit points and ways to heal.
I also don’t appreciate how mathematically, your choices don’t matter. Be it a fighter, a wizard or a rogue… as you level, the distinctions of the classes matter less and less…. everything is so “balanced”.
As a group we’re either moving to another system or overhauling 4e to be quicker, dirtier, less tactical, more deadly with proper “magical” magic.