[4E] various questions concerning HP and monster design

[Kol Korran]

<making sure all the sacred designes are in place, the right incense burning, i check again that all the preliminery prayers have been said, and that the sacrifice has been brought. right... now, time to finish the "consult mystic forumists" ritual>

"hear me oh great spirit and sages of the Forum! I, a new practicioner of the arts of DMing of the fourth edition call upon you for help! though i thought i was skilled at thr rules, some of them baffle me, and so i urge you to shed your guidance upon me, so i could serve my players and The Game better!"

"my questions concern the matter of moinster design, an art to be sure, but any rule would help as well. the first of my quanderies is this: if i add the insubstantial trait to a monster, it basically just doubles it's HP. should i then lower the actual written hit points to half? should i leave it as it is? the monsters i checked (ghost and wraith) don't seem to go by the rules, and seem to posses about 20-25% less hit points. is that the rule? also, is there some damage source that bypass this trait? (a common enough source, not just a magic item with that ability)"

"i apologize for inconviniencing you from your rest for thsi second, unworty question, but it is a matter of some concern: the regeneration ability is also a powerfull one, especially combined with the insubstantial one (i have made a case study of the wraith- does adding it somehow affects the monster total hp?"

"i have come to the final question oh wise forumist spirits. this concerns the matter of healing a monster, by such a power as a healing word. what do i replace the healing surge with? a quarter of the monster's hp? but the monsters were made tougher in advance to balance the fact that they don't use second wind, or are healed. this question touches on a cleric and his comrades, who are fighting my party."

"i thank you greatly for your time, patience, and advice. as ordained by the ancient laws that bind us, you make take a sacrifice of your choice once you have given your words of wisdom." (thinks a second...) "what the hell, take a sacrifice anyway. but i would value your input."

(in the middle of the sacrificial circal are piled up lots of different kinds of items, trying to appease all tastes, shapes, and spirits. there are squeaky toys, a stuffed squid, a bottle of jack daniels, "the lonely spirit's guide to finding a soul mate- literaly", new born kobold babies, a virgin green hag, money, some more money, a game of "clue", the blood of the mostly innocent, a whip, a metric cube of chocolate. the unpublished works of shakespear, and so on... choose your fancy)

Kol.

[Dhavaer]

If you use Healing Word on a monster, it just spends one of its healing surges. They do have them, they just don't have the Second Wind ability, so there's not normally a way to use them.

*takes the chocolate cube*

[Tsotha-lanti]

I wanted to answer, but I can't read that. I will try to if you can reword your question into a concise, readable form. Thank you.

[kieza]

1) I would suggest giving insubstantial monsters 2 less hitpoints per level. (i.e., lurker HP for a skirmisher and soldier HP for a brute, or 4 + 4 per level for a lurker or artillery) You could alternately use the stats specified for a different monster role.

2) I recommend compensating by giving it less powerful...powers. Decrease its damage, deny it forced movement, etc. Certainly don't give it any options for boosting its defenses.

3) Monsters do have surges, but only one per tier, and they don't have Second Wind. I highly recommend using healing sparingly in any encounter involving an Elite or Solo

EDIT: *Takes the unpublished works of Shakespeare.*

[Dentarthur]

The relevant parts of your post:

if i add the insubstantial trait to a monster, it basically just doubles it's HP. should i then lower the actual written hit points to half? should i leave it as it is? the monsters i checked (ghost and wraith) don't seem to go by the rules, and seem to posses about 20-25% less hit points. is that the rule? also, is there some damage source that bypass this trait? (a common enough source, not just a magic item with that ability)
I'd follow the pattern seen in existing monsters. It seems that monsters with the Insubstantial property have about 70% of the normal HP granted by their role, plus their Con score. (A soldier, for example, normally has (level+1)*8 + Con. An insubstantial one would have (level+1)*8*0.7 + Con.) Also note that the insubstantial monsters seem to have less in the way of attacks and special abilities, to make up for the advantage of having roughly half again as many HP as other monsters have.

There is no damage source that ignores Insubstantial. You'd have to have an effect that explicitly ignores that property, or deals double damage against insubstantial critters, and I don't think such an effect exists.


the regeneration ability is also a powerfull one, especially combined with the insubstantial one (i have made a case study of the wraith- does adding it somehow affects the monster total hp?
Nope. Regeneration is just another ability that monsters have; again, though, if a monster has it, that means he lacks other abilities that some other monster would have had.


[...] healing word. what do i replace the healing surge with? a quarter of the monster's hp? but the monsters were made tougher in advance to balance the fact that they don't use second wind, or are healed. this question touches on a cleric and his comrades, who are fighting my party.
All creatures have healing surges, and the surge value is (almost) always 1/4 of the maximum HP. Yes, monsters tend to have more HP than PCs to compensate for, among other things, the lack of Second Wind; however, there's absolutely no reason to think that monsters aren't able to be healed. Put a Cleric in the middle of your monsters, and bam, your monsters have healing. That's part of what makes the Cleric dangerous (and again, it's just another ability; if it didn't have that, it'd have to have something else to compensate).

[Hzurr]

*jumps in, grabs the squid, jumps out*

UP UP AND AWAY!!!!!!

[Thajocoth]

Monsters can 2nd Wind. They just don't list that on every monster. I only use it if the players are REALLY beating the crap out of them, and aren't otherwise gonna get to see the monster's cool stuff.

A minion has 0 surges.
A monster has 1 surge.
An elite has 2 surges.
A solo has 3 surges.



As others have said, I'd go by what the other insubstantials are doing for hp adjustment.


There's a wizard feat that allows force powers to, instead of dealing half damage, deal extra damage to insubstantials. I think it's paragon tier though...


Be careful of accidentally making an hp bag, which is a lot easier to do with insubstantial. If a monster is going to require a lot of pummeling, make sure they're actually interesting during that time. As an example, I submit my Portalmancer (level 8 elite, fey humanoid (Eladrin)). You can find both versions of this monster in the Homebrew section, in an aptly named thread... The first version looked interesting on paper, but wound up being a huge pain. They barely dealt damage, and were really all about screwing up the party's tactics constantly, dealing only minor papercuts. It was a long drawn out & boring fight. Adding more abilities, and varying the limits of those abilities, the monster became fun for everyone. (I pitted a pair of Portalmancers against 2 different groups of players of near identical makeup with the same battlefield... One fight was the first version while the other was the second one. I've yet to test out the high Portalmancer.)


Best of luck to you.

[ninja_penguin]

actually, re: Insubstantial; isn't it just half max HP? I've been using that for a off the cuff 'ghost' template without any problem.

[Edge of Dreams]

Monsters can 2nd Wind. They just don't list that on every monster.

Sorry, but this is incorrect. Page 291 of the player's handbook, under "Second Wind": "Unless otherwise noted in the statistics block of a monster or nonplayer character, this action is available only to player characters."

So, monsters cannot second wind unless the stat block explicitly says they can.

[Kol Korran]

thanks for the help guys. adjuciating powers is my toughest challenge yet DMing in 4E, and this helped. i was realy susprised that insubstantial can't be by passed by anything that doesn't specifically states otherwise. oh well...

you can still grab up sacrifices to your liking, but other than that i'm good.

[Yakk]

Monsters can 2nd Wind. They just don't list that on every monster. I only use it if the players are REALLY beating the crap out of them, and aren't otherwise gonna get to see the monster's cool stuff.

A minion has 0 surges.
A monster has 1 surge.
An elite has 2 surges.
A solo has 3 surges.Wrong, irrelevant, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Monsters have 1 healing surge per tier (Heroic = 1, Paragon = 2, Epic = 3), but this is not an important balance concern, as by default they have no method of using healing surges. It can be used for "what happens if we engage, run away, then come back" -- monsters will have spent their healing surges in the short rest.

...

You can do balancing in 4e from 'first principles' as follows:

Each normal monster takes about 4 hits to kill. This means that, one-on-one, it should take about 8 rounds to kill.

If you boost it's defenses, it takes longer to kill.

The amount of damage you do in that much time should be measured.

If it eats player actions (via daze, stun, immobilise, knockdown, etc), then that in effect lengthens the duration it (or another monster) is alive.

You want an even-level monster to do about 50%-75% of a player's HP before it dies (as an arbitrary rule of thumb), or 12% to 18% of a player's HP per hit (4 hits before it dies, on average). This allows 5 monsters to take a player down from 100% to below 50% on a series of blows -- and it means any bloodied player is in danger of being 'taken out' in a single round. But unbloodied characters are unlikely to be insta-splatted.

Players have less HP than monsters, but are expected to burn healing. So, use the standard monster HP totals as your goal, and then divide by 8.

Some compensation for increased healing at higher levels should be added to the above total, but I'm not experienced enough to tell you how much.

Monsters that last longer should do less damage -- the total damage budget of your monster should be around the same.

Note that 'hiding' makes your monster last longer, but the players can attack other monsters. And while hiding you aren't attacking. So... it only sort of counts.