How Useful is Fast Healing on Monsters?

[Dr. Cliché]

Inspired by the thread discussing the value of Fast Healing on players. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=335293)

Basically, I'm curious as to how useful people find Fast Healing on monsters?

Is it something that often buys a monster an extra turn or two of life, or does it rarely matter?

Is it only effective when very high, or on specific monsters (e.g. those well suited to hit & run tactics)?

Has anyone accidentally made a monster much better by giving it Fast Healing? :smallwink:

[nedz]

It really depends upon the numbers, the situation and it's tactics.

E.g. In the situation where

The monster beats up the PCs, but takes significant damage
PC's run away and cure up
PC's return


It is useful to have the monster fix itself.

[Red Fel]

I think the rules in that thread pretty much apply here, only more severely.

1. Having Fast Healing 1 just isn't worth it. It's basically just a watered-down, delayed DR, and until the numbers really add up it doesn't mean all that much.

2. Being able to auto-stabilize doesn't help when the players are going to kill you in the next round.

3. Combats are too fast for it to matter unless the numbers are high; it really applies more out of combat.

So, what you get is this: A creature with fast healing is not a big threat if you can consistently exceed its fast healing every round. It's fine if you want an enemy who can escape at the brink of death, because it can stabilize. It's great if the creature has a high miss chance, such as being incorporeal or having concealment, because it means that the PCs are unlikely to score enough consistent damage to offset the healing. And it's kind of awesome if the monster starts the battle extremely dangerous but heavily injured, and the players basically have so many rounds to put it down before it completely recovers.

But generally, if your players want to kill it, the fact that it recovers 5 hp a round doesn't mean all that much.

[IIzak]

If I want a monster to be gaining hp back during a battle, I usually just give him a vampric touch weapon (That's part of the reason I like kolyarut, vampric touch on its stuff? like 3-4 attacks a round (AFB ATM) works better in adding an extra round or two to a fight, especially if the PC's are unprepared/incur AoO's.

[grarrrg]

And there are tons of ways for spellcasters to disable the monster (coup de grace!) or outright kill it without even caring about HP totals, or...

[Grod_The_Giant]

But generally, if your players want to kill it, the fact that it recovers 5 hp a round doesn't mean all that much.
This one. For the healing to be meaningful, it'd have to be healing, oh, 20% of the damage it takes each round.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Fast healing tends to be relevant on monsters with sizeable defenses (concealment, high AC, large DR) or ones that can disengage and cheaply heal so they can repeatedly harass the party. It does little for your average bruiser.