MoleMage
2021-03-31, 04:19 PM
In running the game, I've found that monsters with finite resources or recharge abilities like breath weapons work about right according to balance if you treat them as a solo encounter or as the leader of a group of monsters without, but when using multiples of the same monster in a group encounter they quickly become much more of a threat than the guidelines for difficulty suggest (for example, a Hellhound's or Winter Wolf's breath weapon used on every member of a pack can turn what by-the-numbers should be an "Easy" encounter into a borderline TPK).
I know that Challenge is sort of...iffy on a good day, but I think I've found a way that helps mitigate this problem: every monster in a pack "shares" its limited resources. If you're running a coven of witches, they have a shared pool of spell slots. If you're running a pack of hellhounds, they share the charge of breath weapon (though each gets to roll to recover it on their turn, meaning you get roughly three times as many breath weapons over time).
This cuts down on the "nova" power of monsters with big but infrequent attacks, while still allowing more of those monsters to use their powers more frequently. It also makes things somewhat easier on the DM, since they only have to track one resource pool instead of each monster's breath weapon being tracked separately.
I'm curious if anyone else has used this house rule or a similar one, and what their results have been if they did.
I know that Challenge is sort of...iffy on a good day, but I think I've found a way that helps mitigate this problem: every monster in a pack "shares" its limited resources. If you're running a coven of witches, they have a shared pool of spell slots. If you're running a pack of hellhounds, they share the charge of breath weapon (though each gets to roll to recover it on their turn, meaning you get roughly three times as many breath weapons over time).
This cuts down on the "nova" power of monsters with big but infrequent attacks, while still allowing more of those monsters to use their powers more frequently. It also makes things somewhat easier on the DM, since they only have to track one resource pool instead of each monster's breath weapon being tracked separately.
I'm curious if anyone else has used this house rule or a similar one, and what their results have been if they did.