Increasing Monster Health without modifying the CR

[Shotaro]

I was having a discussion with one of my players the other day and wanted your opinions.

They were fighting a monster (I don't recall what only that it didn't have many hitpoints and had a low AC even though it didn't hit especially hard nor did it - let's say it was a group of goblins)

Said player happened to know how many HP that monster has according to the MM - 1d8+1 (5hp) in the case of said Goblin.

The goblins they were fighting were straight out of the book but since they are a large party and I did not want to boost the ECL to obscene levels rather than increasing the number of mobs I gave each goblin 12hp.

The player was incensed by this, saying that increasing the hitpoints (and not the bab, saves or anything else for that matter) was increasing their CR because they had two hit dice, even though the benefit of this was only that they lived through more than one attack from the Barbarian.

What are your guys thoughts on this? Is increasing the HP of a monster and ONLY the HP of a monster to make a fight longer and more interesting - for a 1st level party in this instance - mean it needs the change to the CR or do you guys view it as I do, which is an (admittedly lazy) DM fudge to make a fight last longer than three rounds.

I should probably emphasise that there are ten players in the party making them around ECL 3 and throwing twelve goblins at them would have led to them being quite easily over-whelmed.

[Aharon]

At first level, surviving the barbarians hit may well lead to the goblin killing another character in the next round...

An increase in HP of the opponents makes the fight harder, but not substantially so. I would rule that CR stays the same, but the encounter was under harder conditions so the XP gained is higher by a percentage that sounds right (I would say ~10% to 20%).

[some guy]

Mmmyeah, I agree with Aharon; not worth a CR increase but would be worth a small xp increase.

Though with 10 players I would do anything but try to make the fight last any longer. But that's just my opinion, you know?

[Drynwyn]

A 10-player party? That must be hellish.
But seriously, the problem here isn't so much the HP thing, it's the party size. The game simply wasn't built for such a large group- anything that doesn't die in one round probably has too high an AC to be realistically hit, and anything that can be realistically hit dies in one round and isn't a challenge, and lots of small mobs lead to players growing tres impatient as they wait for their turn.
Home-brewed monsters are your friend here. You genuinely do want higher HP so that it is a challenge. I would compensate by lowering AC rather than altering CR or XP rewards.
Also: tell that incensed player to stop metagaming.

[ILM]

Kick the metagaming player out of the group. Smaller group to manage, and no more complaints. Problem solved! :smallbiggrin:

Kidding. If goblins have more hp, the fight is longer. If the fight is longer, PCs expend more resources; that's pretty much the definition of CR increases, so I think it would warrant an increase in CR - though not nearly as much as if you'd simply given them extra HD since, as you pointed out, they didn't get a BAB/save/etc. increase. In the end, I'd just wing it but the end result would probably be more XP from the encounter, yes.

[LTwerewolf]

They may be level 1, but with the number of them, the CR the party can take actually changes. You can do this by either making the enemies they fight stronger, or adding more of them. The game just wasn't designed around that many players. A good way to "increase" the CR is to throw in a cleric on the other side and have a lot of your enemies pre-buffed.

[Glimbur]

Kick the metagaming player out of the group. Smaller group to manage, and no more complaints. Problem solved! :smallbiggrin:

No, talk the metagaming player into being another DM so you can have two smaller groups.

They should get extra XP, for the reasons previously described. Whether it changes the CR is more fiddly... CR is kind of strange anyway.

[Invader]

Yeah CR isn't an exact science so adding a few HP's to a creature isn't neccesarily going to change anything. Did you allow your players to take flaws/feats, did you give them more than standard starting gold, plus there was more than a standard sized party. I wouldn't worry about it to much honestly.

I would suggest never going over the max amount of hps listed for the creature, in this case 1d8 +1 = 9, that way none of your players have anything to complain about.

[TuggyNE]

While doubling HP probably does increase CR, the immense party size necessitates increased EL for the same effective challenge. The SRD's encounter calculator (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) can help with this.

On the other hand, I'd second the suggestions of splitting the party into two groups, because ten characters is a whole awful lot for 3.5's assumptions.

[Kamikun]

The goblin first level feat is Alertness. If you'd like to boost their HP a little, you could always swap that for Toughness. That wouldn't affect the CR at all, and you'd only lose a little spot/listen.

[ScubaGoomba]

I would suggest never going over the max amount of hps listed for the creature, in this case 1d8 +1 = 9, that way none of your players have anything to complain about.

This big time, specifically the fact the the HP stated is not necessarily the HP of each Goblin. They give you a dice and they give you an average. Who's to say that, firstly, the Goblins are exactly the same as the ones in the MM (meaning they have the same feats, as per Kamikun's suggestion) or that they're all average?

(the answer is you're the one to say, as the DM, and say NO, they're not the same)

[Shotaro]

Thanks for all of the replies guys - I like the idea of giving them max HP and swapping Alertness for Toughness, which gives them 12 hp... heh, that's the number I ended up with anyway, though via fudging rather than any mechanical reasoning.

As for the suggestions to split the group into two, as much as I like the idea it's not possible. We rent the room and with less than eight people (IE a DM and 7 players) we end up losing money. If we split the group we'd need to rent another room and double our rent (which is already LOW because of the amount we drink). For reference we each chip in £2 a week and pay £15 in rent, in the town centre, on a Friday night.