In my own Dungeon masters words there should be no more hp or hit dice given to players after lv 5-7 as it’s game breaking and ruins the game. There’s no point according to him for players to have more health as they level because no creature can win. His thoughts on this are as follows “An aproprietly calculated fight, a Deadly encounter verses a solo Adult Red Dragon (CR 17) 5 players should be level 11. A Red Dragon’s Breath is 18d6 (average 63) damage, and only recharge on a six. So it will get only one chance to recharge ia fight, twice if the dice favor it. Just taking average HP, by 11th level a wizard and sorcerer will be able to take a full breath attack, even fail their save, not have any other magic protection, and still survive. Soon after the cleric can cast Heal and bring that character back to full. And even current amount of damage the party can deal now, that dragon dies in 3 rounds but probably less. So that’s what I mean about the power scaling breaking down as characters approach 10+. I think that’s why 90% of all official content is only for one to seventh level.
I asked him why a dragon wouldn’t just fly away and make sweeping attacks an opportunity - he says that is with that taken into account. I’m at a loss as myself and none of the other players want to stop gaining Hp. We already have an extensive wound system where if you go down you get a wound or take half your full health you get one. Wounds give a minus to all attacks, skills, etc as well ASB we use the exhaustion system.
Any thoughts on the fairness of this? His idea is that the internet fully supports his decision and we are wrong. If it’s reasonable I want to consider it but it doesn’t feel that way. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
I find this pretty entertaining. I can see how your DM feels this way, however, if the party is so strong then the "Deadly" encounters just need to be revised. The DM has the unique ability to create the encounter, they can choose to make it easy or difficult purely by how they play the monsters. For example, we take a party of lvl 10 players entering a small dungeon known to be a kobold lair, they presume it to be a simple task with the possibility for some gold coins. However, the DM could easily make it a death trap without even needing to use high level creatures or modifying the kobolds with any gear outside of what they normally have. The DM only needs to give the kobolds a single leader that co-ordinates the attack by using the dungeons terrain. In this way the previously simple fight can be an extremely deadly one for the players, regardless of the players hp. In your example if the dragon is unable to win the fight because players either min-max or just play intelligently then you should learn to control the flow and add subordinates to the encounter such as a cult that follows the dragon. Where the dragon always has two priests along with it to do its bidding.
Simply put, if the DM wants to make the fight "Deadly" then he/she should make the fight Deadly not based off of the book, but based off of the players themselves. I find that the books are more of a guideline to allow DMs the ability to roughly judge how something should be done, not a strict rule-book that needs to be followed letter for letter. I believe it even says that somewhere in the DMs guide but that might be an earlier edition I can't really remember, I have played 3rd, 3.5, pathfinder (3.75), 4th, and 5e.
The dragon's breath is going to get a 60 ft cone - at the beginning of the battle, this is potentially every player taking the 60+ damage. Not only that, during the player turns he can pull out 3 tail attacks or a tail+wing attack. So in one round the dragon can do:
Breath/tail/tail/tail: 63 (AOE) + 17 + 17 + 17 = 114 (enough to down most lv 11 characters in one round)
Breath/tail/wings: 63 (AOE) + 17 + 15 (AOE) = 95 and potentially knocking characters prone ready for adv on dragon's next turn
Oh and he can move 80 ft, which definitely enables him to target squishy characters, which an intelligent dragon would do.
Even without adding in minions, wearing characters down with prelim fights, etc. there is lots of possibility for a TPK. The dragon could even use its Frightful Gaze to make melee fighters useless and other attacks to be at disadvantage. IMO your DM needs to give the dragon some AI and make proper use of those legendary actions (and probably some lair actions as well!).
Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.—Puck.
Kaisintenro raises some good points, and clearly you can run challenging Combat with high level Characters. People do it all the time. Sit down with your DM and watch the campaign finale of Critical Role season one if they won't believe you: 7x 19th level Characters vs. a God in a 5 hour combat, and it wasn't a cakewalk for those 'brokenly powerful' Characters.
Since the rules are built with up to 20th level Characters, the rules are unlikely to break at level 7 - although the style of combat and encounters does change at 6th, 11th, and 17th levels: the "tier breaks". He needs to adjust how he approaches combat. It needs to scale to the Players. Designing combats strictly around the CR numbers gets increasingly inaccurate as the levels go up - this might be what he means by "the internet fully supports his decision and we are wrong".
DMs need to learn how to structure interesting and challenging combat, beyond the hand-holding of the CR number, and it's more complex than sticking increasingly powerful stat blocks in an empty room! Here's my take on how to set up combat encounters. A well designed environment and circumstances, and you can TPK a high level Party with Kobolds.
As for capping Player progression? I can see Players quitting over that, and I wouldn't blame them. Part of the Player fun is progression. What your DM is basically saying is "I'm going to take away a large piece of your fun, because I can't be bothered to learn how to intelligently structure challenging combat for your Party".
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If your DM only does one fight a day, I can see where they might get the idea that you don't need more hp. It gets increasingly hard to make a single encounter feel dangerous without TPKing the party as they level up.
If your DM only does one fight a day, I can see where they might get the idea that you don't need more hp. It gets increasingly hard to make a single encounter feel dangerous without TPKing the party as they level up.
I agree. It seems hard to me to make combat challenging at upper levels without turning every session into a combat-fest. And so groups that like to spend a lot of their time RPing and puzzle-solving are going to wade through most of their infrequent combat opportunities, unless as you say you run the risk of outright killing one or two of them each time.
I do wonder why the DM in question can't just respond by jacking up monster HP, though. If the concern is that the monsters won't last long enough to damage the PCs enough, just make the monsters last longer.
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I am not saying the DM is unimaginative, nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone willing to take on this role has founts of imagination and more besides. Maybe he is being to timid. It is not our job to set out to kill our players, it truly is not us vs them. We are a liaison between their character sheets and the PHB. They tell us what their characters want to do and we find the rule that best helps them do it.
If players make good decisions and go into combat with more forethought than a roving band of murder hobos, they will stand a very good chance of making it out alive as long as the DM has properly thought through the encounter. My guys know that character death is always on the table and that they need to make good choices in game. If it is looking bad for one or more and it is because of something I did to craft the encounter incorrectly then I will try and fudge my way out without breaking SOD.
At first, I was timid and I quickly realized just what my players' party was capable of. It is a learning curve for a DM. Sometimes the party wades on through so easily that I just insert a second or even a third wave as long as they are not to low on HP, I want it to be interesting. If I see that I threw them under the carriage, it can be tricky but I try and pull subtle punches, again, if it is my fault and poor planning.
Don't be hard on your DM. He may just be in over his head and has just not seen what he is capable of crafting at higher levels. Things may well shape up as a session or two of heavy RP building up to a six hour single battle. Yeah, seen it happen. Did it once in a friend's adventure. But a DM has to be comfortable in their own skin. The DM cannot be pulled along. If they are not comfortable above Lvl7, then maybe the adventure should be capped there as well.
One of the problems is that of the math involved. As combat goes into higher numbers, the likelihood of the standard deviation playing a part in the combat goes up as well. In low level combat you may roll a small number of damage dice over the whole affair. Lets say that small number is ten dice. In a very advanced encounter you are going to roll a lot more damage dice. If one of those rolls work too well for the monster, then PCs start to die. This creates a problem because the DM and the PCs don't want to die after taking damage in a single round, but it can happen. Nobody minds it when two PCs both make Crits in round one (which depending on the number of attacks might be just uncommon and not a rare event) but when the monster Crits you that's a different matter. This is why as DM I want to keep all the damage rolls on the monster to myself and all the to-hit rolls on the players to myself.
I remember my first dungeon with a group of three other boys. I hadn't played with this group before and their attitude was it was the players AGAINST the DM. When they DMed they were trying to kill the party and their henchmen. And in the days before online anything, they thought that was the way everyone played D&D. I had real trouble in this group with the idea that the DM had final say on everything when they were trying to kill us. And in AD&D it was easy to kill low level players.
One of the problems is that of the math involved. As combat goes into higher numbers, the likelihood of the standard deviation playing a part in the combat goes up as well. In low level combat you may roll a small number of damage dice over the whole affair. Lets say that small number is ten dice. In a very advanced encounter you are going to roll a lot more damage dice. If one of those rolls work too well for the monster, then PCs start to die. This creates a problem because the DM and the PCs don't want to die after taking damage in a single round, but it can happen. Nobody minds it when two PCs both make Crits in round one (which depending on the number of attacks might be just uncommon and not a rare event) but when the monster Crits you that's a different matter. This is why as DM I want to keep all the damage rolls on the monster to myself and all the to-hit rolls on the players to myself.
I remember my first dungeon with a group of three other boys. I hadn't played with this group before and their attitude was it was the players AGAINST the DM. When they DMed they were trying to kill the party and their henchmen. And in the days before online anything, they thought that was the way everyone played D&D. I had real trouble in this group with the idea that the DM had final say on everything when they were trying to kill us. And in AD&D it was easy to kill low level players.
This is a good point, one of the times I wish I was better at stats.
Wouldn't the higher number of dice being rolled tend to make the numbers more closely correspond to a normal distribution? For example, if everyone has 10 hp, and you're in a fight with bad guys with 2 handed swords, a single die roll has a 10% chance of dropping someone to 0. Is that a better chance or worse chance than dropping a 60hp character to 0 with a higher damage roll?
This is a good point, one of the times I wish I was better at stats.
Wouldn't the higher number of dice being rolled tend to make the numbers more closely correspond to a normal distribution? For example, if everyone has 10 hp, and you're in a fight with bad guys with 2 handed swords, a single die roll has a 10% chance of dropping someone to 0. Is that a better chance or worse chance than dropping a 60hp character to 0 with a higher damage roll?
More dice being rolled means the total is more likely to be closer to the middle. It also means that it's more likely that something weird will happen, such as two characters each taking the same number of dice in damage, but one taking 2-3 times as much or one character getting completely missed by lots of attacks while another takes multiple crits.
This is a good point, one of the times I wish I was better at stats.
Wouldn't the higher number of dice being rolled tend to make the numbers more closely correspond to a normal distribution? For example, if everyone has 10 hp, and you're in a fight with bad guys with 2 handed swords, a single die roll has a 10% chance of dropping someone to 0. Is that a better chance or worse chance than dropping a 60hp character to 0 with a higher damage roll?
More dice being rolled means the total is more likely to be closer to the middle. It also means that it's more likely that something weird will happen, such as two characters each taking the same number of dice in damage, but one taking 2-3 times as much or one character getting completely missed by lots of attacks while another takes multiple crits.
Thanks, that was what I was suspecting. It's more likely that the character will take average damage with a given attack. But when two characters have 'non-average' results, it's more likely that those results will be very different.
The overall effect on a single character, though, is still that it's less likely that they'll die from a single attack, right? 10hp vs 1d0, or 60hp vs 6d10. The first instance is more likely to result in one-shot death.
I'm not sure that just throwing more HP into a monster is an optimal solution. It just becomes a longer toe-to-toe slug-fest, that's not any more interesting for Players.
If you want the combats to be more challenging and more interesting, you have to make the combat more sophisticated.
Opponent Motivations
Intelligent Tactics
Adaptive Tactics ( start pulling out fall back plans, and "emergency resources" as things start to go downhill for the opponents )
Tactics that take advantage of opportunities ( The Barbarian got cut off from the main party? Swarm 'em, take 'em down, hold them hostage to force a surrender ).
Integrated Tactics from different kinds of opponents ( close in skirmishers, long range archers, flying support, Mages, Clerics/Shaman ).
Interesting Environments / Environmental Hazards
Dynamic ( and destructible ) environments
etc.
The party standing toe-to-toe with a single creature in a large dry well lit empty cave is one thing - no matter how many HP it has.
The Party fighting in a swamp ( rough terrain ), with Gnolls on the ground ( skirmishers ), Goblins in the treetops ( ranged attacks, and benefiting from 1/2 to 3/4 cover ), Giant Crocodiles swimming under the surface, striking from below, being controlled by the Orc Shaman/Druid, who is also healing the Gnoll fighters, buffing their attack abilities, and using Entangle to slow up the Party, and the occasional pocket of explosive swamp gas ... that's a totally different and much more challenging combat.
You can't just crank up the dials on HP and Damage to solve the problem of challenging a Party in combat. You need to fight the opponents smarter, not just harder.
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You can't just crank up the dials on HP and Damage to solve the problem of challenging a Party in combat. You need to fight the opponents smarter, not just harder.
I should clarify--you are totally right that these things are all great options. I was suggesting upping HP here specifically for this DM, based on what OP was saying. This DM seems...adverse?...to wanting to think in terms of strategy, and particularly seemed to be worried that monsters will just die too soon before they can threaten the party. If that's the case, then more hp is a (ridiculously) easy way to go :)
But you are completely correct--if the DM is willing to put in the work, then tactics are much, much better.
Yes, rolling more dice does cause the cumulative result to stay closer to the median, but with critical rolls you can get an occasional non-standard result on the high side (more than an average number of crits). Nobody cares, usually, when the non-standard result goes low for the monster, but when it goes high people die. Remember that for every bad result, you are going to see an exceptional result.
Compound that with the game mechanic that has say five PCs with 100 HP each against a single monster with 500 HP. The monster can wear you down by focusing on one PC, killing him, and moving onto the next. Against one monster you can't do that. Giving him 499 HP damage is just the same as giving him 1 HP of damage. For this reason you can't just compare HP of the two teams. As a matter of fact, this shows in good contrast the root problem.
If most groups don't want the PCs to die if they are playing smart, then the party has to kill the monster before one of the party members gets 100 HP damage.
The party, in our dragon example, have spells and other abilities that have "area" effects. But that doesn't do them a bit of good because they are fighting an army of one. The dragon may be able to use his area effects, so this makes it harder to compare head-to-head how the two sides line up. One person earlier mentioned that dragons can fly. In open country this effects everything. It also means every archer gets a chance to shoot too. But it enhances the dragon's ability to go after the squishy players.
My point is everyone wants it to be fun, although they may define fun differently (as in my early AD&D experience). I think most players think their chance of being killed is around 1% if they are playing smart. I think most DMs want the players to survive if they are playing smart and not just charging every creature. The number of possible combinations makes it impossible for a DM to gage the right balance for every party. There are no formulas for stuff that complex. I have tried to compute probabilities for some straight forward games like Axis and Allies and believe me Dungeons and Dragons is off the charts for complexity. So my solution is keep the health of the monster a secret.
There are a lot of folks who play to level 20 with challenging and fun encounters. This is probably most reliably done in Adventurers League. My highest level characters are now level 13 and encounters are still fun and challenging even for groups of 7 characters.
Finally, in the example you cite, keep in mind that single creatures are much weaker than groups. Strong creatures like dragons and others are given Legendary and Lair actions along with Legendary Resistances to partly compensate for the action economy. However, a dragon with 2-4 reasonable minions would usually be a very challenging fight unless the characters get lucky with some attacks and spells.
Hank on Runehammer has an interesting video about how to string together combats to make it challenging. He basically talks about using rest or lack thereof to whittle th party down. By the final fight they should be on lower health and have little or no spells left if you don't let them rest, and even a regular encounter because a challenge.
D&D with its pool of hit points strongly enforces a power creep when it comes to challenging foes. I can see the reasoning behind your DM's idea to limit hit points.
Take a look at a "bandit" with lets say 12 hp and d8 damage. When you are level 3 as a player, two good cuts could down you. If you are level 10, you either have to buff the individual bandits (which could create lore problems, because why should those not rob a whole town) or flood the encounter with "three dozen bandits" (who could also plunder a small town).
I like RPG systems with a Life points + Endurance point system. Life points hardly go up when you level, while you endurance pool is the hit point pool that increases. You can defend longer, need a longer time to be exhausted, can cast more spells with endurance points etc.
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In my own Dungeon masters words there should be no more hp or hit dice given to players after lv 5-7 as it’s game breaking and ruins the game. There’s no point according to him for players to have more health as they level because no creature can win. His thoughts on this are as follows “An aproprietly calculated fight, a Deadly encounter verses a solo Adult Red Dragon (CR 17) 5 players should be level 11. A Red Dragon’s Breath is 18d6 (average 63) damage, and only recharge on a six. So it will get only one chance to recharge ia fight, twice if the dice favor it. Just taking average HP, by 11th level a wizard and sorcerer will be able to take a full breath attack, even fail their save, not have any other magic protection, and still survive. Soon after the cleric can cast Heal and bring that character back to full. And even current amount of damage the party can deal now, that dragon dies in 3 rounds but probably less. So that’s what I mean about the power scaling breaking down as characters approach 10+. I think that’s why 90% of all official content is only for one to seventh level.
I asked him why a dragon wouldn’t just fly away and make sweeping attacks an opportunity - he says that is with that taken into account. I’m at a loss as myself and none of the other players want to stop gaining Hp. We already have an extensive wound system where if you go down you get a wound or take half your full health you get one. Wounds give a minus to all attacks, skills, etc as well ASB we use the exhaustion system.
Any thoughts on the fairness of this? His idea is that the internet fully supports his decision and we are wrong. If it’s reasonable I want to consider it but it doesn’t feel that way. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
I find this pretty entertaining. I can see how your DM feels this way, however, if the party is so strong then the "Deadly" encounters just need to be revised. The DM has the unique ability to create the encounter, they can choose to make it easy or difficult purely by how they play the monsters. For example, we take a party of lvl 10 players entering a small dungeon known to be a kobold lair, they presume it to be a simple task with the possibility for some gold coins. However, the DM could easily make it a death trap without even needing to use high level creatures or modifying the kobolds with any gear outside of what they normally have. The DM only needs to give the kobolds a single leader that co-ordinates the attack by using the dungeons terrain. In this way the previously simple fight can be an extremely deadly one for the players, regardless of the players hp. In your example if the dragon is unable to win the fight because players either min-max or just play intelligently then you should learn to control the flow and add subordinates to the encounter such as a cult that follows the dragon. Where the dragon always has two priests along with it to do its bidding.
Simply put, if the DM wants to make the fight "Deadly" then he/she should make the fight Deadly not based off of the book, but based off of the players themselves. I find that the books are more of a guideline to allow DMs the ability to roughly judge how something should be done, not a strict rule-book that needs to be followed letter for letter. I believe it even says that somewhere in the DMs guide but that might be an earlier edition I can't really remember, I have played 3rd, 3.5, pathfinder (3.75), 4th, and 5e.
The dragon's breath is going to get a 60 ft cone - at the beginning of the battle, this is potentially every player taking the 60+ damage. Not only that, during the player turns he can pull out 3 tail attacks or a tail+wing attack. So in one round the dragon can do:
Breath/tail/tail/tail: 63 (AOE) + 17 + 17 + 17 = 114 (enough to down most lv 11 characters in one round)
Breath/tail/wings: 63 (AOE) + 17 + 15 (AOE) = 95 and potentially knocking characters prone ready for adv on dragon's next turn
Oh and he can move 80 ft, which definitely enables him to target squishy characters, which an intelligent dragon would do.
Even without adding in minions, wearing characters down with prelim fights, etc. there is lots of possibility for a TPK. The dragon could even use its Frightful Gaze to make melee fighters useless and other attacks to be at disadvantage. IMO your DM needs to give the dragon some AI and make proper use of those legendary actions (and probably some lair actions as well!).
Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.—Puck.
Kaisintenro raises some good points, and clearly you can run challenging Combat with high level Characters. People do it all the time. Sit down with your DM and watch the campaign finale of Critical Role season one if they won't believe you: 7x 19th level Characters vs. a God in a 5 hour combat, and it wasn't a cakewalk for those 'brokenly powerful' Characters.
Since the rules are built with up to 20th level Characters, the rules are unlikely to break at level 7 - although the style of combat and encounters does change at 6th, 11th, and 17th levels: the "tier breaks". He needs to adjust how he approaches combat. It needs to scale to the Players. Designing combats strictly around the CR numbers gets increasingly inaccurate as the levels go up - this might be what he means by "the internet fully supports his decision and we are wrong".
DMs need to learn how to structure interesting and challenging combat, beyond the hand-holding of the CR number, and it's more complex than sticking increasingly powerful stat blocks in an empty room! Here's my take on how to set up combat encounters. A well designed environment and circumstances, and you can TPK a high level Party with Kobolds.
As for capping Player progression? I can see Players quitting over that, and I wouldn't blame them. Part of the Player fun is progression. What your DM is basically saying is "I'm going to take away a large piece of your fun, because I can't be bothered to learn how to intelligently structure challenging combat for your Party".
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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If your DM only does one fight a day, I can see where they might get the idea that you don't need more hp. It gets increasingly hard to make a single encounter feel dangerous without TPKing the party as they level up.
I agree. It seems hard to me to make combat challenging at upper levels without turning every session into a combat-fest. And so groups that like to spend a lot of their time RPing and puzzle-solving are going to wade through most of their infrequent combat opportunities, unless as you say you run the risk of outright killing one or two of them each time.
I do wonder why the DM in question can't just respond by jacking up monster HP, though. If the concern is that the monsters won't last long enough to damage the PCs enough, just make the monsters last longer.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
So ... you're advocating capping at level 7? Let's not lose track of the OP.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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Me? No, if I were the DM I'd jack up monster hp if I was worried about the issue.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
I am not saying the DM is unimaginative, nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone willing to take on this role has founts of imagination and more besides. Maybe he is being to timid. It is not our job to set out to kill our players, it truly is not us vs them. We are a liaison between their character sheets and the PHB. They tell us what their characters want to do and we find the rule that best helps them do it.
If players make good decisions and go into combat with more forethought than a roving band of murder hobos, they will stand a very good chance of making it out alive as long as the DM has properly thought through the encounter. My guys know that character death is always on the table and that they need to make good choices in game. If it is looking bad for one or more and it is because of something I did to craft the encounter incorrectly then I will try and fudge my way out without breaking SOD.
At first, I was timid and I quickly realized just what my players' party was capable of. It is a learning curve for a DM. Sometimes the party wades on through so easily that I just insert a second or even a third wave as long as they are not to low on HP, I want it to be interesting. If I see that I threw them under the carriage, it can be tricky but I try and pull subtle punches, again, if it is my fault and poor planning.
Don't be hard on your DM. He may just be in over his head and has just not seen what he is capable of crafting at higher levels. Things may well shape up as a session or two of heavy RP building up to a six hour single battle. Yeah, seen it happen. Did it once in a friend's adventure. But a DM has to be comfortable in their own skin. The DM cannot be pulled along. If they are not comfortable above Lvl7, then maybe the adventure should be capped there as well.
Thank you.
ChrisW
Ones are righteous. And one day, we just might believe it.
One of the problems is that of the math involved. As combat goes into higher numbers, the likelihood of the standard deviation playing a part in the combat goes up as well. In low level combat you may roll a small number of damage dice over the whole affair. Lets say that small number is ten dice. In a very advanced encounter you are going to roll a lot more damage dice. If one of those rolls work too well for the monster, then PCs start to die. This creates a problem because the DM and the PCs don't want to die after taking damage in a single round, but it can happen. Nobody minds it when two PCs both make Crits in round one (which depending on the number of attacks might be just uncommon and not a rare event) but when the monster Crits you that's a different matter. This is why as DM I want to keep all the damage rolls on the monster to myself and all the to-hit rolls on the players to myself.
I remember my first dungeon with a group of three other boys. I hadn't played with this group before and their attitude was it was the players AGAINST the DM. When they DMed they were trying to kill the party and their henchmen. And in the days before online anything, they thought that was the way everyone played D&D. I had real trouble in this group with the idea that the DM had final say on everything when they were trying to kill us. And in AD&D it was easy to kill low level players.
This is a good point, one of the times I wish I was better at stats.
Wouldn't the higher number of dice being rolled tend to make the numbers more closely correspond to a normal distribution? For example, if everyone has 10 hp, and you're in a fight with bad guys with 2 handed swords, a single die roll has a 10% chance of dropping someone to 0. Is that a better chance or worse chance than dropping a 60hp character to 0 with a higher damage roll?
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
More dice being rolled means the total is more likely to be closer to the middle. It also means that it's more likely that something weird will happen, such as two characters each taking the same number of dice in damage, but one taking 2-3 times as much or one character getting completely missed by lots of attacks while another takes multiple crits.
Thanks, that was what I was suspecting. It's more likely that the character will take average damage with a given attack. But when two characters have 'non-average' results, it's more likely that those results will be very different.
The overall effect on a single character, though, is still that it's less likely that they'll die from a single attack, right? 10hp vs 1d0, or 60hp vs 6d10. The first instance is more likely to result in one-shot death.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
I'm not sure that just throwing more HP into a monster is an optimal solution. It just becomes a longer toe-to-toe slug-fest, that's not any more interesting for Players.
If you want the combats to be more challenging and more interesting, you have to make the combat more sophisticated.
The party standing toe-to-toe with a single creature in a large dry well lit empty cave is one thing - no matter how many HP it has.
The Party fighting in a swamp ( rough terrain ), with Gnolls on the ground ( skirmishers ), Goblins in the treetops ( ranged attacks, and benefiting from 1/2 to 3/4 cover ), Giant Crocodiles swimming under the surface, striking from below, being controlled by the Orc Shaman/Druid, who is also healing the Gnoll fighters, buffing their attack abilities, and using Entangle to slow up the Party, and the occasional pocket of explosive swamp gas ... that's a totally different and much more challenging combat.
You can't just crank up the dials on HP and Damage to solve the problem of challenging a Party in combat. You need to fight the opponents smarter, not just harder.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I should clarify--you are totally right that these things are all great options. I was suggesting upping HP here specifically for this DM, based on what OP was saying. This DM seems...adverse?...to wanting to think in terms of strategy, and particularly seemed to be worried that monsters will just die too soon before they can threaten the party. If that's the case, then more hp is a (ridiculously) easy way to go :)
But you are completely correct--if the DM is willing to put in the work, then tactics are much, much better.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
Yes, rolling more dice does cause the cumulative result to stay closer to the median, but with critical rolls you can get an occasional non-standard result on the high side (more than an average number of crits). Nobody cares, usually, when the non-standard result goes low for the monster, but when it goes high people die. Remember that for every bad result, you are going to see an exceptional result.
Compound that with the game mechanic that has say five PCs with 100 HP each against a single monster with 500 HP. The monster can wear you down by focusing on one PC, killing him, and moving onto the next. Against one monster you can't do that. Giving him 499 HP damage is just the same as giving him 1 HP of damage. For this reason you can't just compare HP of the two teams. As a matter of fact, this shows in good contrast the root problem.
If most groups don't want the PCs to die if they are playing smart, then the party has to kill the monster before one of the party members gets 100 HP damage.
The party, in our dragon example, have spells and other abilities that have "area" effects. But that doesn't do them a bit of good because they are fighting an army of one. The dragon may be able to use his area effects, so this makes it harder to compare head-to-head how the two sides line up. One person earlier mentioned that dragons can fly. In open country this effects everything. It also means every archer gets a chance to shoot too. But it enhances the dragon's ability to go after the squishy players.
My point is everyone wants it to be fun, although they may define fun differently (as in my early AD&D experience). I think most players think their chance of being killed is around 1% if they are playing smart. I think most DMs want the players to survive if they are playing smart and not just charging every creature. The number of possible combinations makes it impossible for a DM to gage the right balance for every party. There are no formulas for stuff that complex. I have tried to compute probabilities for some straight forward games like Axis and Allies and believe me Dungeons and Dragons is off the charts for complexity. So my solution is keep the health of the monster a secret.
To the OP:
There are a lot of folks who play to level 20 with challenging and fun encounters. This is probably most reliably done in Adventurers League. My highest level characters are now level 13 and encounters are still fun and challenging even for groups of 7 characters.
Finally, in the example you cite, keep in mind that single creatures are much weaker than groups. Strong creatures like dragons and others are given Legendary and Lair actions along with Legendary Resistances to partly compensate for the action economy. However, a dragon with 2-4 reasonable minions would usually be a very challenging fight unless the characters get lucky with some attacks and spells.
Lots of good answers above, so I’ll just drop this reference on monster tactics
http://themonstersknow.com/category/dragons/
I used an article from that site the first time I ran a phase spider and I think the players were satisfied with the encounter.
Hank on Runehammer has an interesting video about how to string together combats to make it challenging. He basically talks about using rest or lack thereof to whittle th party down. By the final fight they should be on lower health and have little or no spells left if you don't let them rest, and even a regular encounter because a challenge.
D&D with its pool of hit points strongly enforces a power creep when it comes to challenging foes. I can see the reasoning behind your DM's idea to limit hit points.
Take a look at a "bandit" with lets say 12 hp and d8 damage. When you are level 3 as a player, two good cuts could down you. If you are level 10, you either have to buff the individual bandits (which could create lore problems, because why should those not rob a whole town) or flood the encounter with "three dozen bandits" (who could also plunder a small town).
I like RPG systems with a Life points + Endurance point system. Life points hardly go up when you level, while you endurance pool is the hit point pool that increases. You can defend longer, need a longer time to be exhausted, can cast more spells with endurance points etc.