Monster Hit Dice in DnD
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2023
- #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #rpg #ttrpg #dnd5e #tabletopgaming #5e #criticalrole #dungeonmaster #wotc #tabletop #mtg #wizardsofthecoast #gamemaster #homebrew #player #gamedesign #dmtips #monster #monsters #hitdice
- Ігри
*Players after five hours of fighting one wolf* “WHY WONT YOU DIE?” Dm: “Meet Okami. It’s got more health than a tarrasque.”
It rolled max d8s.
Yeah, sure, that's only 18 hp, but the real question is who gave it legendary Power Armor. 😂
Ookami, you mean? Okami with a short O means landlady, not wolf.
@@okkoheinio5139 nah obviously the landlady is here to beat your ass for rent due.
This reminds me of my first owl near fight
@okkoheinio5139 You never know. It might own that patch of forest.
Note that PCs automatically get a max roll on their first hit die, but monsters don’t.
Monsters also don't round up on their HP. A d8 for a player gaining a hit die would default to 5 if you aren't rolling, but a monster would only get a 4.
@@Dragowolf_Rising They indeed do not round up, but they take the average roll, so not 4 but instead 4,5 (for the d8, ofc)
Though if they have an odd amount of hit die they still round up the total (ie, the average of 3d8 would be 14)
Here's a fun and useful tip for DMs:
Some NPC stat blocks are based on classes. The CR is different than their class level, and they don't get all class features, but if you pay attention you'll see they get the same number of hit dice as their class level. For example, the necromancer in Volo's is a 12th level caster, uses the wizard spell list, and has 12d8 hit dice. (Keep in mind, the hit dice are still based on creature size, not class.) There are exceptions to this, but often those exceptions still follow a similar logic, like multiplying the hit dice by 2 or 3 times their hidden class level. You can figure this out by looking for stats like multi attack on fighter based classes, or the sneak attack damage of NPCs like Master Thief. Some monsters follow the same logic, but not always.
That makes sense thank you! That’s wild you actually saw that comment and explained. I was stoked when I realized because I had the same question as the one in the video lol. I’ve actually never played DND but it seems really fun
My goodness you explained that so well, I’ve just purchased the storm wreck isle starter and I’m the one DMing and I just couldn’t understand how the hit dice worked in the monster block after reading the rules so many times, thank you for all the help !
Thank you Cinder, I really appreciate when you explain the specific mechanics of dnd like this. I know a lot of more experienced players might find it boring but I find it really helpful and interesting so I thought I’d let you know. Thanks
Tbh I think it's much easier to just decide that this monster should have x number of hit points rather than trying to engage with the hit die
Once you have a good feel for how many hit points a creature should have at whatever level, I generally agree, since you can reverse-engineer the hit dice to give you whatever number you want.
However, I don't think you should just pick. You should definitely make sure your monster doesn't just have an absolutely absurd amount of hit points for theit level, either being made of glass, or constructed of adamantium.
This was genuinely so helpful as sometimes I need to re read the core rules so many times before I understand what it actually means
I just imagine ending up with a low roll for the wolf's health so you just say it's young or it's weak and starving or something
If a monster gets bigger, so does it's hit dice
If a monster gets smaller, so does it's hit dice
It talks about this in the DM's guide.
This is also where it says that a monster can't have any stats over 30.
People generally apply the latter rule to player characters but not the first.
Pick to apply them or not for your perception of general rules. Not part one way part the other.
Keep in mind that I'd be happy to be a barbarian of that rave that gets bigger at level 5 and team up with a wizard so I could be huge and have a d100 hit dice.
There are plenty of stat boosting options that don't care what it already is. For example, the 50 piety features for serving the theros gods and certain magic items.
OH THOSE ARE ALSO ITS HIT DICE!!!!! I thought it was just to roll the hp, that actaully makes so much sense, and the type of die being related to the size of the creature is super helpful to know for homebrew in the future
Any time I run a mob encounter for my group I roll for each individual one, it took them for surprise when they would kill one enemy quickly but another was able to withstand the same blow. Just made it feel like one was younger or more frail than the other, almost like it was an adolescent not an adult
Also, for high level Grave Clerics, the number on the left of the "d" is the number you can heal people for as part of Keeper of Souls.
I prefered to go with both monsters an pc/npcs having hit dice based on size regardless of class, since it made the fact much easier for the players an dms in my groups to understand it.
What I did for clases is that like with your con score giving you a bonus on each role for hit points, a class gives you a bonus to your hit dice (some dms in my groups even do this for different types of monsters. Like dragons or abominations giving a higher hit dice bonus than humanoids or undead). When my fighter players see they are getting a 1d8+10 each level (+6 for being a fighter and a +4 for thier con stat), while the mage is getting a 1d8+5 (+4 for being mage, and +1 for con stat) they actually seem to like it better since their base hp they have felt is much more reliable an useful amount.
My old ass is used to 3.5 where monster HD are based off type. It sure does simplify it
Check out 3rd edition for some cool monster building ideas. Monster HD is determined by monster type as opposed to size. Dragons get d12s, Aberrations get d8s.. etc
for boss encounters i have the minimum and maximum values of the hitdice written down. if the fight is going south and i want to avoid a tpk. i rule the monster has hp closer to the minimum value, if the fight is too easy i have the monster be closer to the maximum range. i never go below or above the range. it's really helpful for balancing on the fly.
The real answer is "don't worry about it, you aren't going to take a short rest anyway"
I tend to add a die or two depending on if the npc has a name and maybe class levels if it fits with the character
Omg thank you I been wondering
I am proud to know this knowledge before watching this video 😊
Typically, larger creatures tend to have comparatively higher Con. And, of course, they have larger hit dice. So, for a given number of hit points, larger creatures will have fewer hit dice. Which makes Imprisonment weird. The spell component cost is based on hit dice, making it cheaper to imprison a larger creature of equal hit points. I just changed it to be 1kgp per CR instead.
Rather than rolling, I always calculate HP as: max at first level, plus half max +1 for each additional level. That said, I preferred the 4E version: starting HP adds constitution score plus class bonus.
I would still maybe use healing if a enemy is going to be used later. Obviously not every battle i think should be to the death a human who feels like they are going to die might stand to reason they might try to run away and I would probably use it to mess around with repeat enemy’s who might get a bit stronger by the time the party maybe meets them again or maybe if the party consistently uses a similar strategy maybe they understand it and try to take advantage of it being similar
In the wolf scenario, i always liked the explanation that the alpha probably has max health for its die, and the others would have more or less based on their 'place' in the pack. The absolute weakest would probably only have 4hp.
Can I get a bit of advice on how to deal with a fellow PC? I'm new to d and d, and in this campaign I'm in, I'm playing an air genasi wizard who focuses on doing a lot of damage. We just had a recent addition of one of my friends as a player with us, and he is playing and evil drake keeper ranger. Our party was attacking a pirate king, who was holding onto the rangers drake as leverage to keep him under the pirate king's thumb. The rest of the party was attacking the town under the pirate king's control, along with a few NPCs we had hired named the furious 5. The 5 are a family with the head of the family being their dad, a famous, and very strong, paladin. One of the half-brothers of the 5 is an 8 year old named Jant, and my character really liked him. The issue arises when the ranger singled him out and killed him for helping us attack the town. My character lashed out in anger and attacked him with a level 3 witch bolt, but I rolled a crit and knocked him. He then rolled a nat 1 on one of his death saves and died. Our DM says he has a way to bring him back, but I don't know how my character would react to him coming back. Any tips?
Depending on how long it is after the incident that caused his death your character could have dealt with the anger, and even though still disliked him for what he did begrudgingly agrees to ally with him out of a need of the group. You can still having a grudge an conflict between the two characters (lo0ok at Gimli and Legolas their two races hate each other, but they play that fact off as a rivalry between the two.). Work with the player and the dm to get a good background of how the ranger is brought back, and how your character deals with it. Maybe you feel regret for striking out in anger an killing over wounding him, and seek a method of brining him back to pay for that overstep.
And 18 is max regular wolf but also you could make it a warg
If players are steam-rolling encounters because they've found a perfect synergy of powers between their characters, that equation lets the DM use the same monsters they planned to use, just increasing the HP to make the fight less one-sided.
I give all my monsters twice the HP, BUT when they hit 'half' they attempt to flee the battle and/or surrender. A wolf isn't going to fight to the death unless its pups are in danger. Goblins aren't going to fight to the death unless whipped into a frenzy. Most humans aren't going to fight to the death ever.
Because the number of hit dice a monster has is arbitrary and not determined by anything except "the monster should have more or less health", I find the use of them on monsters counterintuitive. You're not getting an HP based on how many of this resource a monster "should" have, you're simply changing the number until you hit the amount of HP that you want.
It stands to reason that a monster with d12 hit dice would have more health than a monster of equal cr with d8 hit dice, but many Medium monsters simply have more hit dice assigned to them than Huge and Gargantuan ones, giving them more HP overall.
You could roll for monster hp, but all that does is shorten or extend the length of a battle without actually changing an of its characteristics.
How would you suggest going about making home brew monsters, like start from scratch. Ive got a couple ideas but i don’t know where to start and id like then to be useable.
There's a spreadsheet in the DM book for average range of stats for each cr rating. You can use this alongside the stat blocks of monsters that are about as strong/have similar abilities as the monster you want to make to get a feel for what the stat block should look like.
Of course you never know how good it is until you actually run it, if it's too weak you can add some supporting monsters and if it's too strong have it retreat or just pretend it has less hp so the party can kill it before someone dies.
Ok thanks
my first campaign was a very beautiful mess , it was me and my brother , only i had an idea about dnd rules and mechanics so i was the dm , made up a world based on lotr lore but did some changes and started without thinking of the whole campaign idea so i just started and figured everything in its time , i didn't find monsters that fit my world *especially after overloading my brother's characters with buffs cuz i didn't know how often should i give them* so had to make my own monsters starting with orcs , they are very weak and only a challenge at first levels but moving on in levels a wizard with an army of orcs wasn't a very big deal to deal with , so i made my trained orcs with their buffed health , team work ability and poisonous blade and more attacks per round , but orcs on their own wouldn't make the army i needed trolls but the lore to the bbeg i made said that he figured out the secrets of creating orcs and then he modified them to make his army do trolls won't work , so i had to make my giant orcs or orc-trolls with their giant health and thier giant clubs adding their rock throw attack , a legendary action to smash or spin attack cuz why not and a rage ability so fighting one of them would be a hard task , of course we can not forget the followers of that wizard that are sorcerers , wozards and druids that i had to creat too with spells and abilities to fit thier roles depending on what task are they given by their master , then the bbeg and his best warrior -which also had his lore- a wizard who can summon orcs , trained orcs and some orc-trolls with his list of spells from first level to 9th level all to fit his abilities, my brother played with 2 characters and i played with 2 npcs to make the campaign playable, it was alot of work but it was fun , the conclusion is just follow your story and make abilities that fit the theme of the character and don't worry about them being not-well-written or unbalanced unless you wanna share them on the internet
I like to go with 2s on monsters that looks weaker. Such as a trio of a big, (6-7/8) medium (average), and small(3/8) (this only works for low challenge ratings, and I wouod got with percentages later on.
Never asked this myself.. does a multiclass change the size on the hit dice? For the short Rest HP I mean.
I always give my monsters health based on how much damage my party can do as a whole on average, and of course the monster itself a single goblin isnt ment to tank a whole party on its own XD
Unless it is (:
@DrakeTurtle lol yeah I meant more like a random grunt shouldn't tank the party, but I can see a boss like goblin really making their day a hectic one hell a group of unassuming kobolds are sometimes the scariest thing in dnd
Linguistically, they work like any dice. One hit die, some hit dice.
Okay, I often hear it used wrong without "hit" in there. If you just follow the common rule of adding an 'S' to make a word plural, you're aces. If you say "One die, some dies," it works. I don't know why the spelling throws people off so hard. I hope this helps.
What I'm confused about is whether or not there's any default number of hit die in relation to something (i.e. cr) and creators get to choose to adjust it from there, or if it's all entirely by fiat/ random.
I think it’s based if you want the monster to have more less hp and not much more. You want a monster with a lot of HP but a low con? More hit dice.
@@Cinderblocksally
I want rules!
(I mean, you're probably right tho.
It is what it is)
Do ranger pets level up as in get more hit die?
Or if you're home brewing, don't bother with the dice. Just make up whatever s*** you want. It doesn't matter
rolling for hit points always feels silly to me, it feels like it would cause some very variable encounters.
for instance 25% of the time you can roll HP for an Owl and come up with a dead Owl. (1d4-1)
If you Fincher a wall, roll low, and have never strength mod, would you just fly backwards
Poorly, Next!
Meanwhile my players keep running into Bandits with 30HP 😂 I am one of three DMs in my group, while they are great at not meta gaming I still want to make generic encounters interesting.
How does hit die work for multiclassing?
Why does the wolf have - 2 charisma.
So my summon fae will have 1?
Aggressive wolf enemies are a cringe DM decision. Real life wolves overwhelmingly avoid humans, they don't attack.
If you're going to have a wolf or wolf pack attack your party, at least give some compelling answer for why they'd do so, like they're being controlled by an NPC, or their cubs are nearby and they think the party is a threat.
fuck it, just give them rabies
I have been struggling with a lot of the nomenclature of dnd, so certain acronyms just confuse me. Can we get a breakdown of the basics n most commonly used terms n what they mean?
I don't think 5e uses any acronyms but if you just mean the abbreviations/initials for shorthand here are some really common ones. DM = dungeon master, PC = player character, NPC = non-player character, DMPC = dungeon master player character, AC = armor class, CR = challenge rating, PB = proficiency bonus, ASI = ability score increase, DC = difficulty class, TPK = total party kill, HP = hit points. I'm sure I'm forgetting several but feel free to ask more specifically if I didn't cover any you were wondering about or you want elaboration on any!
@Dragowolf omg dude you are so awesome thank you man!
I think I have alsimers, 😅 I have dislexic a , me no spell good. Going to do a Christmas D&D game for the family. It's going to be a home broo. Can you give me some tips for playing a silly fun game ? Please 😊
Iv bean thinking about a steampunk Santa clause as a big boss that keeps terrorising the players 😂
Hey, I have a question, I’m a dm and I don’t really like the idea of a player pc getting extra health every time they level up. I think it is pretty stupid that a level 2 character somehow can withstand 2x times the bonks on the head than a level 1 character. I thought about making hp fixed on all levels, but How do I balance all the spells and damage?
Dont spells also affect monster hit die aswell
So a monster cannot regain health on a short rest?
Lawful evil paladin... disgusting.
Did you trim your beard?
Using size to determine HD is stupid IMO
Bigger things can usually take more of a beating.
hit dice confuse me. like for starters, how do you "spend hit dice" to regain health? what does it mean to "spend" a hit die? when i spend money, i no longer have that money. so if i spend a hit die, do i no longer have it?
They recover half on a long rest
Or be evil (like me) and make players take the average hit die and make monsters have max hp.
Now, I'm even more confused. How is 11 the average from a 2d8+2+1? I know the max health it could have is 19. Where is the 11 coming from?
It's 11 the plus is done after the dice. So when it says average it means the average roll.
... how is the average of 2d8 + 2 11? I don't get it. 2d8 averaged is 16÷2=8. Plus 2 would be 10. But since you add con for each hit die, it should be 12???
Dnd math is weird. The average of a d8 for the purposes of calculating stats is 4.5, not 4. So the average of 2d8 would be 9 instead of 8. So 9 + 2 is 11. The +2 is the adding the con modifier. (+1 for each hit dice). maybe someone who understands dice math knows the logic behind it. But if you look at any dnd monster attacks or HP, that is how it’s done.
@@Cinderblocksally The math is not weird. The average of 1 and 8 is 4.5.
Anti damage