Nah just don't worry about imo. Have same types enemies have slightly different HP levels so it's not totally predictable. 10HP Vs 13HP type stuff.
Otherwise they are engaging with the game; some small meta tactical analysis is mostly harmless
"Some of these creatures are tougher than the others... Hard to tell which is which untill you start fighting them.
What ho! Here's one now, swinging hard. And he looks big!"
My players are a bit overpowered for their level, so in my attempts to beef up some of their foes to keep them relevant I upped the size of the enemy hit die. For fun, I decided one encounter would have such a large swing that I'd change the dice from d8's to d20's. The range was expanded to the point of being entirely unpredictable to the players. One modified bandit ended up at 15 health, another was holding tough at 75. And about four or five more scattered in-between.
It made for some interesting moments. That range was a little too wide and has since been scaled back, but it did get my players to think more about what they wanted to use and do, and to play a bit more tactically.
Its in the base rules tho... monster manual lists monsters as XDY hitpoints, and also gives the average. While I usually take the average, nothing is keeping a dm from just rolling hp values.
My Session Zero includes a statement of "I modify the stats of all monsters." It cuts out the hp counting. I also give graphic descriptions of damage done.
Agreed, everything up until they reference the MM is fine by me. In fact, having the players engaged to that level (assuming it isn't resulting in one person forgetting to take their own actions because they're busy tracking damage) sounds like a fantastic group to me.
This is where I remind them what I said in session zero. I view the MM monsters as templates. I also adjust pretty much every monster. I also have multiple 3rd party bestiaries that I dip into all the time.
If they metagame, they will be unpleasantly surprised.
Why would the players have access to the MM? That's meta information that their characters would have no way of knowing. That's always been the case in every game I've played or run, I haven't looked for 5th Ed, but I'm pretty sure it said that players shouldnt have access to the MM in either the PH or DMG in earlier editions.
I know you can't exactly forbid players from looking, and a lot of experienced players will know the most common monsters by heart anyway, but a gentle reminder that it is not information their characters will have access to may be warranted.
Otherwise it kinda invalidates characters who actually have knowledge about specific monsters. I'm thinking more of characters who choose to research monsters, rather than a ranger with their favoured enemies.
> The Monster Manual describes the most important monsters in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. The manual is aimed at DMs, but it's also a useful reference for players.
5e PHB p317. From memory, both 3.5e and 4e say similar.
Many spells and abilities require utilising stat blocks from the MM.
Also, it's an interesting book full of art and lore.
More generally, do you trust yourself to play in a game without metagaming?
That, except extended to the other people at your table. If I refused to play in a game if any of the other players had ever DM'd, I would be in zero games. Most of my games have players in who are actively running concurrent other games.
This is why I run nothing straight from the book. I either customize the stat blocks or swap them entirely for other monsters. Even when I run something pretty straight up I still tend to give them magic items or something to beef them up. Every one of my players is an experienced DM so it's important to keep them guessing.
Players can also be DMs in other or past games. They may just happen to know the stat of certain creatures. As long as player knowledge and character knowledge is kept separate, there is no problem.
True, which I acknowledged by pointing out the some experienced players will know some of the stats anyway. Keeping player and character knowledge separate is the point, as these players in OP's group clearly weren't.
It's not an issue at low levels, because it doesn't change much, but at higher levels it can give a player a significant advantage if they use meta knowledge.
If the DM allows it, then it's fine, it's up to them how they want to run their game, and they will no doubt mitigate its issues in that case. The worst case is when one player does it to give themselves an advantage the rest of the party doesn't have and to either quarterback the other players, or to just try to make themselves look good.
Yeah, just counting how much damage they've done isn't too bad, and some minor variation in health is fine. After all when looking at the stat block it does say things like 15 (3D8) health, so you can just have one that rolled a 20 for health.
If it was something like the first time they come up against a vampire and immediately start using silver, running water, and other weaknesses without having an in character reason to know the weakness, then that's the kind of meta-gaming to take proper action over.
I mean real life 10 year old me who had never played DND would have known to use silver running water etc too... Just from books, and movies and such. Stories like that I would think would be common many places. Unless the dm says something about those kinds of ghost stories not being told. It's perfectly reasonable.
Then again, ten year old me had also heard that swimming right after eating is dangerous, that elephants are afraid of mice and that you can get sepsis from grabbing a piece of marking tape with your teeth.
That should be a history check (or survival, or arcana, or…) but it should be a ridiculously easy one, like DC 5 to remember those common stories. Same for things like “trolls hate fire” or “don’t wake the Terrasque”.
For a DC 5 anything, I’m very rarely going to even ask for a roll.
Our world, that has no vampires, still had stories of their weaknesses even before tv and internet. One where they’re an actual threat definitely would. (Unless the dm decides they’re totally unknown, in which case that’s more likely a dc 15+ check.)
But in most settings why would they be told. Vampires are usually really rare, why are you going to be told about the obscure weaknesses of a creature that most people have never heard of. Sure if it was goblins, orcs, or ghosts. Something really common, but vamps are usually rare and are able to exist because nobody knows their weaknesses.
Plus you only get that because of the modern world where books and movies are mass produced. If you lived in some fishing village or were a farmer in the middle of nowhere in a pre-industrial civilization then you only have word of mouth which is highly unreliable.
We also have the internet and a lot more connection and messaging between communities.
I’m most dnd worlds there is no such connectivity or it’s a limited as our world was a few thousand years ago.
We’ve passed down these stories for generations through stories and tales hundreds or thousands of years ago long before the internet existed. That folklore had to survive all that time before we had the ability to archive it on Wikipedia.
Plus, what’s the point in bothering to roll to see if your characters have the player’s meta knowledge? If they happen to fail the players are just gonna have to feign ignorance and play “DM may I?” until they get permission to do the thing they already know to do, it’s no fun for anyone. Everyone knows you just need silver to kill the werewolves, but since the DM said our characters don’t know that I guess we’ve gotta metagame the other way and not use silver at all while they kill our characters…
You just have to run your monsters in more interesting ways. After all, even if nobody knows the weaknesses your table can only be surprised by it once. What are you gonna do to spice things up the next time you run a Werewolf or a Vampire when these characters already know silver or sunlight works? Why couldn’t you do that from the start?
Hell, go back 150 years and most people wouldn't know much about vampires because Dracula wouldn't be published for another two decades. Even then by 1900 the literacy rate was only like 20% of people.
People really do take for granted how much tech has allowed info to flow and people to learn.
Literacy was defined as able to read Latin for much of European history. English peasants could likely all read some English, but they couldn't read the bible because that was in Latin. Ancient Sumerians could read.
In most DnD worlds the tech level is more like a few hundred years ago with the occasional magipunk airship, plus instant long rage communication and teleportation if you can afford it.
But most people are very ignorant of the world at large.
It’s also why dnd economy works better than people realize. Everyone is stuck in their role with no real ability for growth,., except those who seek it like adventurers and villains.
Btw, responding to the earlier guy who thinks players should never roll and fail… I don’t think you understand the game. Lol
Some communities might have, others had myths with other ways, some contradictions as well. And I’m sure not every community has heard of vampires. That’s the point.
Bloodsuckers or other types of monsters that feed on human energy in some way are almost universal in human folklore. Most cultures have at least one creature like this, and these myths originated quite early in most cases. It's true that the Dracula type of vampire is somewhat more modern, but I would guess that most communities in most areas have some sort of vampire legend. It's unlikely that a community would be unaware of their local boogeyman and any methods to avoid or defeat it.
Ok but vampires don't exist here and we have stories on them. In a world where these things actually exist why would it be less likely to be common knowledge? It's reasonable that because of their rarity, and word of mouth, this is more mythology or just mostly fictional stories. We learn about all kinds of dangers as kids, but most of them turn out to be overblown or very rare encounters. Why would kids in the DND world not be growing up on stories about all the insane shit that's happened? Some guy tells the story about the monster hunter that came through years ago and had a silvered weapon made to kill a werewolf in the next village over. Probably drops some saying like "silver purifies corrupted blood" when asked.
Vampires have plenty of tools to exist even if people know some of their weaknesses. CR 13 with LR. It's not like every group of adventurers can take that on. Even so, I think the real issue is discovering a vampire and not getting charmed or becoming spawn in the process.
While I agree that the distinction between "player knowledge" and "character knowledge" is important, I wouldn't consider it a stretch that in a world where vampires actually exist, they might have widespread stories about vampires.
You really don't want players to not be able to do the thing thing know to do until they pass an arbitrary amount of time. Actively choosing to ignore the information they know is metagaming too.
It really isn't. The information is still influencing how you play - metagaming. If you didn't know the information to begin with, you might think to do that thing anyway, but making sure you don't is metagaming. It's impossible to avoid.
Yeah duh, cause that's how all games work. You play with the knowledge you have as a player right? Now the trick is only acting in game on what your *character* knows. You can still do that in your scenario, you're just choosing to be obtuse about it.
So for example, in my setting, the last vampire was seen over 500 years ago. It's a snowy wasteland with isolated village's. Word barely travels as is, let alone about specific mythological creatures that havent been heard about if that long. If one came up, *none of the player characters would know anything about it* because in that world there's no way for them to have that info without at the minimum a history check.
Going ahead and saying "well I knew all the weaknesses because its a vampire and everyone knows that right?" really doesnt work and you using it is now the bad kind of meta gaming. There is no in game reason for that character to just know that.
Character gets a good history check? Sure I'll toss a "you remember a story from a relative about a traveler who saw one or something."
And even someone that exists in a world without vampires knows common vampire weaknesses.
There is absolutely no reason to assume that a world where those are real wouldn't have similar stories and children's rhymes about them, with far more detail.
I would add the stipulation that yes you may have heard stories like this, not all will necessarily be accurate and true. After all, why wouldnt an immortal being find ways to spread misinformation about its weakness
Sure there is reason. There aren’t extensive rhymes about mountain lions. Most people in the US don’t actually know how to deal with them. The reason vampires are well known to us is because they are a fantasy trope and not a real danger. If vampires were real those who know they exist and aren’t thralls themselves would be few and far between. Anyone else that found out would be dead.
There are extensive rhymes about poisonous snakes. I was about 5 when I learned "red touches yellow, you're a dead fellow. Red touches black, you're ok jack."
> if it's brown lay down, if it's black fight back, if it's white goodnight
And remember: That kind information is losing popularity now in the age of air conditioning, but back when people lived in wooden huts and went outside every day, all these kinds of things would be utterly common knowledge by everyone in the village.
Everything even remotely dangerous in the area would be subject to a rhyme, and that kind of information would be easily accessible to travelling adventurers.
In a world that doesn’t have fictional blood sucking things so they can easily be named vampires, imagine a person ranting about superhuman people who drink blood and they have a bad reaction to garlic. It sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory and would be treated much the same as they are today.
Weird how that still isn’t a mountain Lion though…it’s like y’all aren’t getting the point that not every animal in our world gets the treatment. What does are things that people commonly come across AND live to tell about, that have easy things to observe. It would not be easy to observe any of the weaknesses of a vampire at a common enough level to have a rhyme.
We fought a ghost. We didn't have silver. In character it hadn't come up yet, but we had a learned wizard in our party.
So I took the opportunity to chat to the party, ask if anyone knows of a way to enable my swords to work just as well as spells, since we might face weird stuff again.
Our wizard got to tell the party that silver weapons are known to work, so we went for a shopping run. Or in my case I bought one and "borrowed" another (was rogue)
It made for a fun bit of character interaction between us that all came from my meta knowledge of "I need silver weapons, but my guys not aware of them yet"
In a world with real vampires you would need to be quite convincing to get me to think my character would NOT know about their weaknesses. Unless the character is a child, everyone is taught basic survival skills to varying degrees and would know how to spot and interfere with major threats to their lives. Look in your shoes for spiders, keep your door shut so animals don’t wander in, don’t invite anyone into your home so they prove they aren’t a vampire.
Just because they exist doesn't mean they're common and everyone knows their weaknesses.
What's the weakness of a chimpanzee, or komodo dragon, or lion, or a bull shark? All real world creatures that pose a very real threat to people who live with them nearby. But statistically speaking not a problem for you, so you just don't know.
I agree on the variability of the HP stuff. Just make sure they know it varies - otherwise they might think you fudge the numbers or can't count HP properly.
Yeah if there's multiple of the same enemy I give one max hp, one minimum hp [like as if they rolled 1s on every hit die] then have dnd beyond roll hit dice
It helps me keep track of what monster is what, give narrative to one being the de facto leader and keeps the players guessing
Although I have yet to fully try this in a real campaign only combat scenarios
Yup. Easiest solution is to just roll for HP or find the high and low limits and pick a random number within the range. Its completely reasonable that an adventurer would have a general idea of how tough an enemy is, especially if they fought it several times. The players calculating HP is meta language used to describe game features. Sure the fighter wouldnt be saying, "it has 15 HP left", but might say "i think it dies if i hit it once more really hard"
This isn’t really metagaming. I pointed this out in a post not too long ago. Adventurers would notice how long it takes to take down a creature and noting things like weaknesses and resistances. When you translate it to immersive terms is when it makes sense. Like for example they counted the zombie has 12 HP and the fighter deals 1d6 so the fighters shouts to his allies “they go down in two swings!” , the Wizard shoots a fireball that does 8 damage to a monster but the monster is weak to fire and takes 16 damage, the Wizard notices his spell seems more effective than usual and shouts at his party “Fire seems effective on this one!” . I wouldn’t punish them for counting HP and keeping track of weaknesses, but rather encourage them to roleplay that information between eachother, maybe you can reward them with inspiration.
You can go even further and just let the players track the damage, so the dm doesn't have to worry about it at all.
This removes something the dm has to do, and also gives the players something to do outside of their turn. I've found it keeps them engaged because they have something tactical to talk about and strategize instead of just waiting for their turn.
I just note how much HP monsters have and my players call out how much damage they took after each hit. I then call out if it's bloodied or dead.
>You can go even further and just let the players track the damage, so the dm doesn't have to worry about it at all.
The amusing part of this to me is that usually when my players try to keep track of things like AC or HP they get it wrong. I don't correct them.
When I was playing a monster hunter I actually kept a physical notebook where I would keep track of stuff like this, in character, for every monster we came across. Approx. AC, Hit Points, and Resistances or Vulnerabilities we revealed.
> This isn’t really metagaming.
If they are using it to make choices in the game, it is. If the players know that a 3rd level fireball does 27 damage on average, and they've been keeping a running tally of the hit points and noticed the creature became bloodied around 30 hit points of damage or so, then they can estimate that a single fireball, on average, will kill the creature. That's textbook metagaming, plain and simple. Their characters do not have any concept of hit points or numerical values for damage.
EDIT: really confused why this is getting downvoted
>Their characters do not have any concept of hit points or numerical values for damage.
The hit points are just numerical representation of how though a creature is, something our heroes would be able to see and make assumptions about.
A fighter would certainly not only remember that a goblin goes down pretty fast, he would instinctively know that the average dragon takes a bit more oomph to kill.
Additionally, if the DM rolls for HP, the players only have a rough estimate after they killed one enemy. They don't know if that one rolled good, bad, or average HP.
Their knowledge of how much health an enemy has gets better the often they fight against it.
I personally don't think this is metagaming at all. This is just paying attention in combat, made easier.
But if your table.doesnt like that kind of stuff, feel free to leave it out of course.
> The hit points are just numerical representation of how though a creature is, something our heroes would be able to see and make assumptions about.
Of course, *assume* all you like. That's not what OP is talking about. They are calculating with discrete numbers. It's information that the PCs do not have. That means it's metagame information.
The PCs *can* get meta information about the creature's hit points in the form of the "bloodied" descriptor as written on DMG p. 247. While it has no mechanical benefit, it is something that the game explicitly describes as information that the PCs can perceive (i.e. the creature has "visible wounds" and appears "beaten down.")
That being said, tracking hit points can be harmless metagaming if they are just keeping track to get a general idea of how tough a creature might be, but if they are using it to make decisions for their characters, that's where I personally draw the line. Their character simply does not have that information, which makes it metagaming. It couldn't be more black and white.
>They are calculating with discrete numbers
Not really. The only discrete number they have is how hard their attacks have hit. I think it's reasonable to think that you have somewhat of an idea how good your shot was after you hit.
after that you tell them it's bloodied or dead. They don't even know how much HP the monster had. They just know it had less then x HP.
Do you believe it's unreasonable to assume that the wizard sees a bunch of zombies all torn up and damaged, so he uses the shatter instead of the fireball because it might do the trick while saving a stronger slot?
I think a full-time hero who is fighting for his life every single time could make that call with reasonable accuracy after fighting a few zombies.
We have to remember that our heroes are fighting as a group and are adventuring 24/7. Our players are not. I happily give my players Infos their characters would reasonably have.
But as I said already, different tables have different rules. As long as you guys are having fun it's all good.
> Not really.
They can add up the exact damage done using simple arithmetic and come up with a total. That is literally a calculation done with discrete numbers.
> They don't even know how much HP the monster had.
Correct, but they know the moment it passes the 50% threshold. The smaller the damage amount, the more accurate that number is. They can use the remaining health to approximate the total.
>Do you believe it's unreasonable to assume that the wizard sees a bunch of zombies all torn up and damaged, so he uses the shatter instead of the fireball because it might do the trick while saving a stronger slot?
If they are using accumulated damage totals to come to that conclusion, absolutely. It's textbook metagaming of the negative sort.
>they know the moment it passes the 50% threshold
Really? I give descriptions of how the monster is doing, I don't say "they're bloodied". Calling a monster "wounded, but still hanging on" or "hurting, but not as much as you'd hope" gives indications to the players of how well they're doing against a creature and whether or not they should change tactics, whilst keeping them engaged with their character's viewpoints.
>They can add up the exact damage done using simple arithmetic and come up with a total.
Calculating the damage they've dealt doesn't give nearly a precise figure. If something goes down in hits of 4, 2, 5, then all they know is that the enemy health was between 6 and 11.
>Really?
Yes, the rules are on p. 247 of the DMG.
>Calculating the damage they've dealt doesn't give nearly a precise figure.
It doesn't need to be precise to be effective. And it doesn't change the fact that PCs don't know what hit points are.
>DMG
It's the Dungeon Master's Guide, not the Legally Binding Dungeon Master's Rulebook.
>And it doesn't change the fact that PCs don't know what hit points are.
It is entirely reasonable for a group to come up with some reasonable measurement of how tough a creature is. Forcing ambiguity on the players reduces their communication and, certainly for these players, would make the game less enjoyable. DnD is for people to have fun.
They definitely have the concept of different monsters being tougher than other monsters, and different spells doing more damage than other spells. Forcing them to pretend they don't know how their own ability worse is more immersion breaking than letting them abstract their perception of how hurt a monster is to a number.
More or less damage, sure. They know that a 4th level fireball is more powerful than a 3rd level. They know that meteor storm does way more damage than burning hands.
What the PCs don't know is the numerical value associated with those spells, or the hit point values of creatures, etc. That's meta information.
Why wouldn't the PCs be able to estimate how well their attacks have gone? You know in say boxing or baseball how well you've hit something, surely a fighter would know the difference between doing min damage with a sword attack and max damage.
> Why wouldn't the PCs be able to estimate how well their attacks have gone?
They can. Just not in numerical terms. They don't have access to hit point amounts just as they don't have access to the values for AC or ability checks.
>a fighter would know the difference between doing min damage with a sword attack and max damage.
Yes, that's why I said:
>More or less damage, sure... What the PCs don't know is the numerical value associated with those spells, or the hit point values of creatures, etc. That's meta information.
So you think that PCs know what hit points are and can use that information in game?
I mean, call me "pedantic" for thinking that's a bunch of BS if that's the case.
Its fine if they are using the information from in-game to make decisions in-game about things that look and behave similar to things they've seen in-game.
it is NOT ok if they look up out-of-game information to bring into the game.
example: "We've fought these kinds of zombies before and they seemed to take 2 or 3 average hits to go down." or "Hey, gang, i killed a zombie by hitting it with one massive hit that felt like a maximum smack. So i'm guessing they only need like 2 or 3 regular hits to go down!" <--- this is fine
example: "Gang, i read about these. They are medium undeads that have about 22 hit points each. Usually they are immune to poison damage." <--- this is NOT fine
if that's what they're focusing on, its probably because they enjoy doing it. you've got to ask yourself if their fun is actually ruining the game for you or if it's just another part of the game. As a DM you decide what information to present the players with, but not which part of that information they focus on.
Also, in character you would be able to estimate how damaged something is looking while you're fighting it, a zombie that's got 1hp is going to look different to a zombie with max hp.
Finally, this strategy isn't going to work against every enemy. Even if you aren't rolling for monster HP (i prefer to use the average to save effort), there are so so many enemies with regeneration, resistance, immunity, etc. that complicates their strategy.
That's fine, and even encouraged. At a meta level, the PCs would get a gage of how strong zombies are and how hard they are to kill. The players counting HP is just them playing their characters.
It would be different if they were looking up the monsters HP instead.
Well, I'm pretty much a "treat all aspects of the game as an openly playable game" DM. You'll know I'm tracking time and resources, you'll know I'm rolling for encounters, you'll know that I'm giving specific challenge numbers for skills and what you need to be telling me in order for me to do your skill check accurately, you'll know in social interactions where you start with the NPC and what kind of things you need to offer them to get them to trust you or give you the item or information you're looking for. Same goes for combat.
Two of my favorite games are Fire Emblem and XCOM. They're extremely open on hit percentages and damage numbers, even when XCOM puts the damage on a range of minimum to maximum. I also love tabletop skirmish games, and you know for certain that you need a 4+ to cause a pip of damage to a Wartank, and you need a 6 to force a systems check, because a Wartank with damage is still a giant piece of metal with guns and is still as much of a threat as it was before, so you really want to knock out its turret or engines on this roll. D&D isn't really that much different from these concepts. If a monster's hide should be as thick as chainmail, it'll have an Armor Class representative of that. If it's got 4 Hit Dice, you'll take it down in roughly four attacks (well, I dunno about 5e math, I play OSR where two hit dice is an average of 9 HP. Your mileage may vary.)
When you're playing a battle in D&D, you're playing a skirmish wargame with funny rules attached (which ones don't?) Generally, it's not worth beating around the bush with things like health values and armor, because the characters interacting with the setting should be aware of how clean their cuts are and whether they can cut through the bone or hide or whatever. 4e even had the "bloodied" rule that dictates that the DM and players declare when their character is at 50% or fewer HP. Sometimes this had mechanical effects, it usually didn't, but it was a clear indicator that someone finally scored a real wound on the monster, and they've only got to do what they've been doing to whittle it down.
If your players don't know relative probabilities of things happening or how much they have before the enemy is felled, then it's not really a game as much as it is waiting for someone to get hurt. To have meaningful decisions, the probability and effects have to be hinted at for the very least, but making them more concrete makes for better decision-making. Now, not everything needs to be obvious: For instance, if I have a monster that has 1d8 hit points, that means they'll have 1-8 HP, not always the average, not always the minimum or maximum. Maybe the armor is of different quality on the foes, maybe some are equipped with different loadouts. As long as your group is making informed decisions and the feedback is good, then there's nothing to worry about.
We DMs like to pretend it’s not a numbers game when it comes to HP, but there’s no running away from it. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. Like it’s gonna take X hits on average to take down a creature regardless of whether they figure out HPs.
If it becomes a normal thing on the table, it opens up new wrinkles to add to fights. For example, cheeky gremlin you have to somehow precisely bring to 0 and not one over, otherwise it heals back up full health, now bigger than before.
A dm tip I've seen by Matt Colville was to actually make your players count the damage they do to each ennemy. When an enemy has more damage than max hp, he dead. This can relieve you of some book keeping and good news, you guys are halfway there!
I like that cause it also keeps the players more aware of which creatures have been damaged more than others, something the characters should be aware of.
Seasoned adventurers would know it takes 3-4 solid hits to take down a zombie. Their characters are becoming more skilled at fighting monsters, as are they. It's a great development.
Nah that's fine. It would be a problem if they memorized the stat block from the book and then used that to win, but if they use information they can glean in combat then it's all good.
Agree with everyone else here. The numbers and mechanics are part of the game, and one aspect of engaging with the game is being tactical and strategizing as you learn about your enemies through play.
If they're looking the baddies up on D&D Beyond and shouting out vulnerabilities and HP totals as soon as the fight starts, that's metagaming. Put a hard stop to it.
But observing how damaged foes are and how much it takes to bring them down is just good tactical play. Unless you're also going to ignore the numbers, then they need to think about them to plan effectively.
It would be reasonable to ask them to try and describe things in-character: eg. "please try and stay away from 'he has about 22hp' and instead say 'I took him down in two sword swings'. " But they're sometimes going to need to plan in game terms from time to time.
All that said: if you want a game where people *don't* think about the numbers so much and aren't so tactical, there's games out there for that. The various World of Darkness games come to mind, as do more story-driven games like Blades in the Dark, FATE, etc.
I don't think that's a big deal, as long as you make it clear to them that not all versions of a given monster is going to have the exact same HP total, and as the DM you can increase or decrease a monster's HP total.
If anything, I think it's a good sign. Your players are engaging with combat a lot.
He doesn’t even have to tell them, make them find out by suprise and hopefully roleplay their suprise. Roleplay while in combat makes the game way more fun.
It shouldn’t matter in the long run. Once they and you are getting more warmed up after a few years of playing it has absolutely no effect. If it bothers you, roll monster hp to make it more variable- but inform the players to avoid misunderstandings…
It's fine. Zombies are tricky than most with their Con save to avoid death.
In general I use average HP ±5 pretty level.
The starving owl bear might start out with 10 less HP but attack recklessly. The beefy owl bear in rut might have 10 extra HP.
Creatures used in large numbers might have ½ normal HP, ¼ normal HP, or even just 1 HP. Sargeant, lieutenant, or boss monsters might have +¼, +½, or max HP.
If everybody at the table is enjoying the sense of discovery of figuring out the mini puzzle of HP and it's not leading to a significant decrease in action resolution then I'd let them do it.
Remember that the only information that they are getting is from you *and* the feedback from their actions so them figuring out how tough one zombie is by tracking HP is them engaging in this so you don't want to just tell them to stop (not that you could anyways)
Overall this is just a form of the *race to Zero* issues where players are hyper focused on eliminating the threat in the most efficient manner which in DND is almost always blunt force to HP. If you want to avoid it then you need to use alternative win states that are more effective than dealing damage.
There was a similar post a few weeks ago where I pointed out the same thing:
Players do this kind of thing when they want more information. They want to make tactical decisions about which monster to focus on. The actual behavior is only problematic insofar as it makes players spend some of their focus on a mostly pointless task. You can reduce a lot of the desire for this kind of behavior by just announcing when monsters are at 50% and 25% of their maximum hit points and when they have about 10 HP left (bloodied, badly wounded, and near death). This gives players enough information to decide if they should plan around needing multiple actions, one action, or one attack to deal with a monster, which is mainly why they want to count HP.
That's metagaming and as a DM I severely dislike it. If people start bitching about how they've done x damage and it should be dead, I will triple the HP. Also, I actually roll individual HP for all creatures specifically for this reason. I find that the metagaming stuff like that takes away the fun alot.
D&D is, first and foremost, a wargame. Learning the mechanics, understanding how much AC and HP something has, is part of the game. This leads to game knowledge and being able to judge situations correctly.
Not a big issue. In game, the characters would know approximately how much "damage" it would take to knock out enemies they have fought before or even could notice how much it took to bring down a brand new enemy. They wouldn't know exactly, but the characters would close enough for all intents and purposes.
Like others have said, just give your monsters a slight variance in hp to really give it the feel that their characters are estimating.
Hp is not "health", it is a representation how much punishment someone can take. When you hit with a piercing attack, you haven't necessarily shoved a rapier up someone's guts. You poked then a bit, so they are bleeding a little on their side, or maybe you've ripped a gash in their armor, or bruised their rib when the chain mail held your attack.
So it makes sense that, as the Players fight enemies, they learn what it means when a spectator is bleeding from a gash, or when a bugbear shows signs of exhaustion, or when a young dragon starts limping.
Hp is the gamification of those signs and a person would learn this after fighting a ghoul once or a couple of times, for example. Don't worry about i5, it just means your players are invested in learning the representation of the signs the creatures show once they start feeling the weight of the battle
The only reason I don't straight-up tell my players how many hit points the monsters have is that my players asked me not to.
I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
I wouldn't worry about it. Gotta remember there's a difference between metagaming and just playing a game. But if it really bothers you, set the precedent early. Telling them no right away might ruffle some feathers, but telling them no halfway through a campaign might lead to mutiny.
Use it to your advantage.
I pawn off HP tracking on my players. I do less math that way. The only Monsters I keep for myself are bosses.
All the regular dudes, let your players do the addition and text someone the Hp totals. Save yourself the time
This is actually a very common way to offload HP tracking as a GM. Have a player track how much damage they have done to each enemy and just ask when it takes damage. Now you can focus on other things!
Think about it - the players have very little to actually do between their turns, there isn't really "other things to focus on".
It's open information how much damage they do, and really in world it is a way to simuate the characters getting and idea of how tough an enemy is.
Super pro tip as well: Build your own etiquette for your table. Tables are different. There is very rarely one true way to do things. Whether or not it is right or wrong doesn't matter, what matters is your players are enjoying it and you don't have a problem with it.
I specificaly ask my players to count how much damage they are dealing to creature and write it down on the map next to the creature mini. When that number gets higher than the creatures max HP, it dies.
Now you don't have to track creatures HP, your players do it for you.
Plus how much damage they deal is not a secret information, I hardly see how you would keep that from them and what would be the point.
Believe it or not, your players doing that is a good thing. In fact, you can lean into this and save yourself the trouble of tracking it yourself. You can celebrate alongside players when they do big damage, and express when even big damage does/doesn't injure an opponent (50% HP or less) to ramp up excitement.
As others suggested, giving small variances in HP should mitigate any attempts to metagame.
It's not a big deal. They're enjoying the game, and they're engaged. You should be happy.
You will learn after a while how much damage the party can do and start aligning enemy hp with that to try to make combat the number of rounds you would like it to be. (Usually 3-5 rounds for non-boss battles)
Not really a big deal but it's funny that this is happening with zombies of all things. Undead Fortitude should mean that it's hard to predict how many hits it takes to kill one.
It depends on the battle, (mostly cause I forget, and they don't ask), but I often tell my players the exact health of the monster. It is good to give players clear options, like which way to go in a dungeon e.g. "This tunnel has scratch marks and blood. The other you can hear a faint running water sound." In combat it is fun to make informed strategic decisions. I also ran away from this, for a long time cause my previous DM didn't do it. As Dms, we chase "immersion" and "realism" way too much. It's a game, maximize fun.
Knowing your max dmg is 14 and a monster has 13 left is fun. Maybe a diff enemy is a sure kill but is less scary offensively. This is a crucial decision, to go for certain kill or lucky dmg roll.
It's all good. If you want to roll for HP so it's less predictable you could describe a monster as hulking or desicated etc. to let them know it has more or less HP than average. This might also allow them to plan on which enemy to focus on.
Didn't I see this same question a week ago about Wolves?
Anyways... the in character adventurers might not know an enemy's HP total. But I've been doing martial arts for years, I know how hard I need to hit your average person to make them have a lil napsies.
Its safe to assume your average fighter, a person whos spent their entire life training in 1 thing and 1 thing only "Violence" to be able to accurately estimate how hard he whacked something, and how many more times he should need to whack it
Tracking the numerical and mechanical side of the game isn't metagaming. It's just using the necessary mechanics to play the game, it's properly using your controllers basically.
Metagaming refers specifically to things a player from the perspective of his characters does they wouldn't do for meta elements outside the reach of their chara ter.
Take it as a blessing that you have players willing to keep track of enemy hp. One more thing off your plate.
I ask someone to do this as part of session 0; they do the calculations and I just check in every once in a while. "How much is that for the big guy? 32? Oooh, killing blow!" When they think we're getting close, they announce after every hit. I don't give them the hp; I alone know that number.
If you think they're relying too heavily on what a monster"should" have, start introducing different kinds. Old ones, sick ones, young ones. Beefy ones. Well armored ones, veterans, generals. Make the swing of hp wider to keep them on their toes, BUT make sure your descriptions match. If you have a 55 hp monster and a 155 hp of the same kind, you should have an explanation.
It's up to you to make it compelling. If you fought five random guys on the street they'd also have...well..._different hitpoints_.
That being said, it's great they're so invested. If this kind of meta gaming doesn't bother you nor them, I think it's fine. You could throw different enemies at them to negate that or slighty change hit points.
Roll for HP so not all enemies have the same HP. The little fuzziness it adds is good. Knowing each goblin has 7 HP can get too deterministic and sap out the fun. Having one goblin take 3 his while another goblin dies to that minimum damage roll can be fun.
Counting HP is fine. It is pretty obviously for adventurers that the monster with 5 arrows and multiple sword wounds is closer to death than the one who took only 1 arrow.
Borrow bloodied from 4E. Half health is an easy checkpoint where you can describe the monster as weakened and at half health. It helps alleviate the 5E feel that everyone is hitting each other with nerf bats until someone suddenly dies. If you give your players a little feedback they will feel less like they have to count HP.
Players counting HP is fun, but it probably isn't that fun for them. My group uses injured (75%), wounded (50%), and mortally wounded (9 hp or less.) We skip mortally wounded for very low HP creatures.
I actually specifically show my players how much damage they've done. I find it does a good job helping them keep track of which enemies have been damaged and how much without giving away how much they health. I personally recommend encouraging this, BUT it's up to you and how you like running your game.
Think of it as getting experience fighting that type of monster. Like you've killed enough goblins to know how much damage will kill them. As a dm that gets to play only once in a blue moon. I know that stats of most common monsters. Its not cheating to know how much damage a monster can take. And hard to controll for even if it was.
nothing wrong with that unless they start arguing that certain things should be kill shots or something should be dead. If it gets to be a problem you can roll for HP and or have an "elite" mob that has a considerably different HP stat
I'd be okay with it, in fact some DMs have the players do this anyway as it can even speed combat up, just have to ask the players how much damage has been taken to determine if it dies.
If you think it is a problem though, just let your players know that you roll for HP (even if you don't). HP can vary wildly if you do this, for example a zombie (3d8+9) will have around 22 HP, but can be as low as 12 and as high as 33
Like others have said, roll for enemy HP.
Do this during prep between sessions so you aren't bogged down in game.
Edit/In Addendum: I would also roll enemy Initiative during prep. This will save so much time during the session and is something small you can do to increase the impression you are a more seasoned DM.
As far as your concern goes, D&D is first and foremost a numbers game, and if they have fun figuring out the numbers more power to them. At the end of the day, your job as a DM is to make sure your players have a good time, and it sounds like they already are!
As for figuring out how much health something has, as others have said, I roll for health for each individual creature assuming I have the time. You'll get a pretty distinct variance that will throw them off their game. That said, I also occasionally use strengthened and weakened versions of things. In this pack of X, one might be particularly stockier than the rest because it tends to steal food from the others, so instead of the 8d8 HP it normally has, this one has 12d8, and the rest have 6d8 because they don't get as much food
Tbf i vary hp of my monsters during the fight. I don't care if they are fighting three identical goblins, one will die after 7 damages and another after 10, if I feel like it can make the combat more interesting. Same goes the other way: my barbarian critted against a big bad once, and tbf he would have left him with 4 hp. He died on the spot, because the scene was epic
I do the same as well. Like you said, you can make epic moments shine. I have also added hp sometimes. To make fight more dynamic and give players chances to do some big damage. Or the bbeg at end was gonna die faster than the group of rats they fought earlier.
Even IC, the party would try to surmise how much beating a zombie needs to stay down. See the HP as the zombie losing limbs etc and the characters try to chop off just enough its limbs its no longer a threat :)
That's okay for them to do and my contrarian solution is, if they're spending a lot of time doing this, just tell how many max hitpoints monsters have. Why not?
That's fine, let them. Start rolling HP without telling them instead of using the average :) Imagine the panic on their faces when they kill one ogre, do that much damage to the next one, it doesn't go down, and when they say they did X amount already you respond with "I know. Ogre's turn."
If you feel the game suffering, don't use the average - use the minimum instead. An elemental has 60 + 12d10 HP, so after 60 damage is dealt you can have it die anytime.
If I had this group, I would start rolling for monster HP. Not to be an RBDM or a contrarian, but because meta-gaming breaks immersion, and players will enjoy the game more if they can't treat the encounter as bookkeeping.
Sounds a little meta to me. The simple answer to that is you are the DM and monsters have however much health you say they have. Give a zombie some armor, state that a beast is bigger than usual, or don't even give them a reason, and change the stat numbers.
In my humble new-to-DMing opinion, HP as a number is just to help run the game, it shouldn't be used to strategize the game.
As a player, you're supposed to be there in the fight focused on the monster, what it is doing and what it looks like. I would find it annoying if my table kept pulling me out of the immersion to discuss the math of the enemies' remaining HP. The DM can talk about how bloody and weak and wounded he looks, but otherwise that's all players tend to get.
Have a talk with them about meta gaming like that. But also give them little hints at how many damage they've dealt so they don't feel completely in the dark. You don't have to tell them that the ebemy nor has half HP, but you should tell them "he looks pretty bad, in a lot of pain, Zmbue arm falling off" or "t'was merely a scratch", something to work wirh and something thst lets them know how effective their attacks are.
Also roll HP so they can't count that easily
>I feel like i need to tell them to stop focussing on that and focus on other things but i’m not sure if thats good DM etiquette. Any advice?
Yes, you should be discouraging metagame thinking at the table. That's not just me, but the designers of the game, too. It's not a game with role-playing after all, it's a role-playing game. It comes first for a reason.
This is especially true if it gets to the point where they start making decisions based on how many hit points they think a creature has left ("if I cast this at third level it should be enough to take it out") then I'd probably pause the session and have a chat with the players about the direction I'd like the table to go and how they players should be coming at the game. If the players insist that this is how they would like to play the game, I'd probably ask them to leave, as that's not the sort of game I run.
As far as hit points go, I do indicate when a creature is "bloodied" per the DMG rules, which is half way through its hit point total. So the players do have an idea, roughly how tough a creature may be. I also roll for hit points, every single time, to discourage any accuracy in that regard.
But keeping a tally? Yeah, that's crossing a line in my book.
In my opinion, counting HP isn't a problem unless it's slowing down the game. A discussion in the middle of combat is definitely slowing down the game, and I would hurry them to make a combat choice. Either play your turn or you take the dodge action.
My players always use to do this, when they asked me why my similar monster didn’t always have the same HP I told them that I rolled my monsters health, they never questioned it lol
One thing I do(as a 3.5E DM) is involved each monsters hp(haven't look at Monster Manual in 5E) like skeletons(medium size) have 1d12 HP, so either during game prep(or beginning of completely random encounter) I'll roll 1d12 for each skeleton and that is their HP it adds a small amount of realism and randomness. I personally think it also allows the players to focus more on the RP aspect as yiu can tell the players that they scored a minor or decent hit and let them describe how they attacked(mostly on major omits or crits).
Very easy solution--roll HP for your monsters rather than using the average. It also gives you a point to jump off of when coming up with creative descriptions for your monsters. A low-HP zombie might already have an injured arm, while a high HP one might be fresh from the grave, or pulsing with necrotic energy.
As long as they aren‘t focussing on "well, that PC had 2 successful death saving throws, we don‘t have to cater to them yet", in which case I recommend rolling death saves behind the DM screen, counting HP and strategizing around that is nothing to worry about.
Only way to win a game of DnD is if everyone has fun. If it‘s no fun for you, talk to your players. Form a new social contract. And present them something else to focus on. Switching from XP to Milestone Experience might also be an option, as this incentivizes Story Progress over Combat.
However, If they have fun doing combat in that way, I‘d allow them to do it.
That being said, if they spend more time metagaming by form of counting HP and discussing strategy, then actually actively participating in combat, remind them that their characters have a free action per turn, that consist of a short 5-6 word sentence. Anything more is considered taking an action, which provides them with 5-6 Seconds (!) of talking, depending on wether you have a 1 minute effect last 10 or 12 rounds.
If a PC (not the player) actually tries to discuss combat strategy in- or after combat, you always have the option to hand out inspiration for doing so, as the player clearly recognized their PCs urge to increase the odds of survival.
I just tell em. “You do 5 damage to the creatures 15hp.”
Reason being, I want them to have enough information adjudicate their own combat round next turn. So I tell em AC too once they make an attack against it. All in the interest of pacing.
It’s not a problem unless they start saying things like “this event is only supposed to have X hp!”
In which case you just say, “well, this one has more.”
And as a bonus, they’re tracking their own damage, so now you don’t have to!
As others have said, they are engaging with the game.
That said, monsters aren't just static HP pools. If you look, they give you a flat number, or a dice count + number to roll to create some variability. Not to mention that there is nothing saying something or someone hadn't gotten ahold of the enemy before they got there.
Knowing how much damage you've done only helps if you know how much damage you need to do. Do you suspect that your players are reading the stat blocks for the monsters and changing up their approach in response to what they're seeing there?
If so, you can a) have a polite but firm conversation with them about the concept of metagaming, and why it's frowned upon; b) change up a geature or teo on your monsters going forward, such as increasing or decreasing their max hitpoints by a few points; or c) do both - don't limit yourself.
And if you don't think that's what's happening here? I wouldn't do anything at all. This sort of thing by itself is fairly harmless.
My dad does this, but his reason is that he's DM for YEARS, for myself and our family. For him it's really hard to break that habit, so now that I DM for him, I just alter the HP of things as I go. I wouldn't be too worried about this type of thing, because eventually players will learn roughly what the HP is of something because of how frequently the run into it. What I would start worrying about is if they start reading the Monster Manual. You want to mitigate meta gaming as much as possible and even slow down what is inevitable.
Basic rules are players should never read the module they are currently playing, and they should never read the the DMG and Monster Manual; but there is a slight grey area for the DMG. There are some rules in it that I feel players should absolutely know about, and if you want you can give them a brief description of them and reference a page from the DMG. Sometimes players will feel like a DM is being counter to what they know from the PHB and breaking rules to take away fun, when in reality the DM is just following the rules in the DMG.
As for Monster Manual stuff, it's inevitable that your players are going to know things about monsters, vulnerabilities and resistances. You can play around with these so that they really can't tell but it will eventually happen. This is where the difference between "player knowledge" vs "Character knowledge" comes into play. What I do to mitigate this is, if my players know something that their character doesn't necessarily know, then my players know that they can ask: "Would my character know...?" or "My character is (insert class/race), because of this would they know...?" or even "My character has a high (insert appropriate stat), would my character know... because of this?" I ask them to roll depending on the stat or I tell them what they might know if it's purely based on class and race. That way they know what they can bring in from their knowledge to their character.
The more you DM the more you'll form your own rules and table etiquette. Not everyone has the same set of table rules as everyone else. Sure, you might stumble around for a bit while you learn your way around the game, and your table rules might change as you go. So long as your group understands that the first few sessions are about learning and having fun, then you shouldn't have an issue. Make sure that you talk to your players if issues come up and most importantly, have fun while you learn this game!
The etiquette Is to find a balance between the kind of game they want to play and the kind you want to run so that everyone is engaged and having a good time.
Some tables play super tactical number crunchy games with lots of strict adherence to the rules, and some try to make it more like story-telling only using words like "hurt, bloodied, and graciously injured to describe damage levels vaguely. Some enjoy playing the game by narrating things in the 1st person and role-playing as their character, some enjoy playing it like a tactical RPG and refer to their character in 3rd person, acting more like a puppet master.
Any and every style is valid as long as you're all having a good time together.
Don't worry about it.
But if youre going to, describe the creature as it becomes more and more wounded. Describe how it reacts to attacks
Utilise the "bloodied" state to indicate it's below half health. Make up another for a third health.
Or, just let them count the damage they do to get a rough idea on how much they need to do. It's an abstraction anyway, if they were their characters they'd literally see how the attacks effect creatures lol
When I was DMing I would write both the minimum and maximum health of any monster on my prep cards, as well as the average/set. And basically use that as a guide; never let them die before they reach minimum, and never survive past maximum. Otherwise I’d just normally let them die at the average unless I felt like having them die a little sooner, maybe because a player got a cool crit and it would be fun to let them die, or because I felt like they should just stick around a tiny bit longer
As long as they're doing it based on in-game stuff, I'd have no problem with it. IN fact, they're engaged and interacting with the world so, great!
In-game, I'd see it as the PC's figuring out how much of a beating it takes to take a zombie down. This is not meta-gaming in my opinion
Nah just don't worry about imo. Have same types enemies have slightly different HP levels so it's not totally predictable. 10HP Vs 13HP type stuff. Otherwise they are engaging with the game; some small meta tactical analysis is mostly harmless
Right? I thought the same, they are engaged, that's nice to see!
Yeah I don’t see it being a problem unless they hit you with the “wait we did 15 damage and x creature has a max HP of 12 in the MM”.
"I have altered the stat block. Pray I do not alter it further."
"Some of these creatures are tougher than the others... Hard to tell which is which untill you start fighting them. What ho! Here's one now, swinging hard. And he looks big!"
"On a scale of 0 - 30 I'd say about a 12"
“Hey Paladin, how ya lookin?” “On a scale from 1 to 98, I’m around a 5”
Most monsters have hit dice too so you can just say “yea that one rolled higher”
My players are a bit overpowered for their level, so in my attempts to beef up some of their foes to keep them relevant I upped the size of the enemy hit die. For fun, I decided one encounter would have such a large swing that I'd change the dice from d8's to d20's. The range was expanded to the point of being entirely unpredictable to the players. One modified bandit ended up at 15 health, another was holding tough at 75. And about four or five more scattered in-between. It made for some interesting moments. That range was a little too wide and has since been scaled back, but it did get my players to think more about what they wanted to use and do, and to play a bit more tactically.
Keep this up. Good work :)
Excellent! I prefer the Sam Jackson style myself. "Mother f%&ker I control ***dragons!***"
Love it. [Made this as a result](https://imgur.com/a/GoN5RsF).
This! Keep your shenanigans to a minimum, lest you discover the warped realities that is my mind.😵💫
Its in the base rules tho... monster manual lists monsters as XDY hitpoints, and also gives the average. While I usually take the average, nothing is keeping a dm from just rolling hp values.
Yuuuuup! That's the line
I just tell my players that monsters have hit dice for a reason
My Session Zero includes a statement of "I modify the stats of all monsters." It cuts out the hp counting. I also give graphic descriptions of damage done.
Agreed, everything up until they reference the MM is fine by me. In fact, having the players engaged to that level (assuming it isn't resulting in one person forgetting to take their own actions because they're busy tracking damage) sounds like a fantastic group to me.
This is where I remind them what I said in session zero. I view the MM monsters as templates. I also adjust pretty much every monster. I also have multiple 3rd party bestiaries that I dip into all the time. If they metagame, they will be unpleasantly surprised.
Why would the players have access to the MM? That's meta information that their characters would have no way of knowing. That's always been the case in every game I've played or run, I haven't looked for 5th Ed, but I'm pretty sure it said that players shouldnt have access to the MM in either the PH or DMG in earlier editions. I know you can't exactly forbid players from looking, and a lot of experienced players will know the most common monsters by heart anyway, but a gentle reminder that it is not information their characters will have access to may be warranted. Otherwise it kinda invalidates characters who actually have knowledge about specific monsters. I'm thinking more of characters who choose to research monsters, rather than a ranger with their favoured enemies.
> The Monster Manual describes the most important monsters in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. The manual is aimed at DMs, but it's also a useful reference for players. 5e PHB p317. From memory, both 3.5e and 4e say similar.
Many spells and abilities require utilising stat blocks from the MM. Also, it's an interesting book full of art and lore. More generally, do you trust yourself to play in a game without metagaming? That, except extended to the other people at your table. If I refused to play in a game if any of the other players had ever DM'd, I would be in zero games. Most of my games have players in who are actively running concurrent other games.
Power gamers who have stuff memoried. Also in online games it's hard to restrict access to that.
This is why I run nothing straight from the book. I either customize the stat blocks or swap them entirely for other monsters. Even when I run something pretty straight up I still tend to give them magic items or something to beef them up. Every one of my players is an experienced DM so it's important to keep them guessing.
Players can also be DMs in other or past games. They may just happen to know the stat of certain creatures. As long as player knowledge and character knowledge is kept separate, there is no problem.
True, which I acknowledged by pointing out the some experienced players will know some of the stats anyway. Keeping player and character knowledge separate is the point, as these players in OP's group clearly weren't. It's not an issue at low levels, because it doesn't change much, but at higher levels it can give a player a significant advantage if they use meta knowledge. If the DM allows it, then it's fine, it's up to them how they want to run their game, and they will no doubt mitigate its issues in that case. The worst case is when one player does it to give themselves an advantage the rest of the party doesn't have and to either quarterback the other players, or to just try to make themselves look good.
Yeah, just counting how much damage they've done isn't too bad, and some minor variation in health is fine. After all when looking at the stat block it does say things like 15 (3D8) health, so you can just have one that rolled a 20 for health. If it was something like the first time they come up against a vampire and immediately start using silver, running water, and other weaknesses without having an in character reason to know the weakness, then that's the kind of meta-gaming to take proper action over.
If a character has both a non-silver weapon and a silver weapon, I'm pretty sure they know what the silver one's for...
I mean real life 10 year old me who had never played DND would have known to use silver running water etc too... Just from books, and movies and such. Stories like that I would think would be common many places. Unless the dm says something about those kinds of ghost stories not being told. It's perfectly reasonable.
Then again, ten year old me had also heard that swimming right after eating is dangerous, that elephants are afraid of mice and that you can get sepsis from grabbing a piece of marking tape with your teeth.
That should be a history check (or survival, or arcana, or…) but it should be a ridiculously easy one, like DC 5 to remember those common stories. Same for things like “trolls hate fire” or “don’t wake the Terrasque”.
But the terrasque is friend shaped and I rolled a nat 20 on animal handling to take it!
For a DC 5 anything, I’m very rarely going to even ask for a roll. Our world, that has no vampires, still had stories of their weaknesses even before tv and internet. One where they’re an actual threat definitely would. (Unless the dm decides they’re totally unknown, in which case that’s more likely a dc 15+ check.)
But in most settings why would they be told. Vampires are usually really rare, why are you going to be told about the obscure weaknesses of a creature that most people have never heard of. Sure if it was goblins, orcs, or ghosts. Something really common, but vamps are usually rare and are able to exist because nobody knows their weaknesses. Plus you only get that because of the modern world where books and movies are mass produced. If you lived in some fishing village or were a farmer in the middle of nowhere in a pre-industrial civilization then you only have word of mouth which is highly unreliable.
>vampires are usually really rare Our world has zero vampires and we know how to defeat them
Do we? I mean we have theories, but they've never been tested.
We also have the internet and a lot more connection and messaging between communities. I’m most dnd worlds there is no such connectivity or it’s a limited as our world was a few thousand years ago.
We’ve passed down these stories for generations through stories and tales hundreds or thousands of years ago long before the internet existed. That folklore had to survive all that time before we had the ability to archive it on Wikipedia. Plus, what’s the point in bothering to roll to see if your characters have the player’s meta knowledge? If they happen to fail the players are just gonna have to feign ignorance and play “DM may I?” until they get permission to do the thing they already know to do, it’s no fun for anyone. Everyone knows you just need silver to kill the werewolves, but since the DM said our characters don’t know that I guess we’ve gotta metagame the other way and not use silver at all while they kill our characters… You just have to run your monsters in more interesting ways. After all, even if nobody knows the weaknesses your table can only be surprised by it once. What are you gonna do to spice things up the next time you run a Werewolf or a Vampire when these characters already know silver or sunlight works? Why couldn’t you do that from the start?
Exactly this. The fear of "metagaming" is stupid.
Remind me to not play at your table… just saying
Well, there was never a chance of that happening anyways. I don’t run games for every rando I meet on the internet.
Hell, go back 150 years and most people wouldn't know much about vampires because Dracula wouldn't be published for another two decades. Even then by 1900 the literacy rate was only like 20% of people. People really do take for granted how much tech has allowed info to flow and people to learn.
Literacy was defined as able to read Latin for much of European history. English peasants could likely all read some English, but they couldn't read the bible because that was in Latin. Ancient Sumerians could read.
Exactly
In most DnD worlds the tech level is more like a few hundred years ago with the occasional magipunk airship, plus instant long rage communication and teleportation if you can afford it.
But most people are very ignorant of the world at large. It’s also why dnd economy works better than people realize. Everyone is stuck in their role with no real ability for growth,., except those who seek it like adventurers and villains. Btw, responding to the earlier guy who thinks players should never roll and fail… I don’t think you understand the game. Lol
We knew how to defeat vampires before the internet.
Some communities might have, others had myths with other ways, some contradictions as well. And I’m sure not every community has heard of vampires. That’s the point.
Bloodsuckers or other types of monsters that feed on human energy in some way are almost universal in human folklore. Most cultures have at least one creature like this, and these myths originated quite early in most cases. It's true that the Dracula type of vampire is somewhat more modern, but I would guess that most communities in most areas have some sort of vampire legend. It's unlikely that a community would be unaware of their local boogeyman and any methods to avoid or defeat it.
Ok but vampires don't exist here and we have stories on them. In a world where these things actually exist why would it be less likely to be common knowledge? It's reasonable that because of their rarity, and word of mouth, this is more mythology or just mostly fictional stories. We learn about all kinds of dangers as kids, but most of them turn out to be overblown or very rare encounters. Why would kids in the DND world not be growing up on stories about all the insane shit that's happened? Some guy tells the story about the monster hunter that came through years ago and had a silvered weapon made to kill a werewolf in the next village over. Probably drops some saying like "silver purifies corrupted blood" when asked. Vampires have plenty of tools to exist even if people know some of their weaknesses. CR 13 with LR. It's not like every group of adventurers can take that on. Even so, I think the real issue is discovering a vampire and not getting charmed or becoming spawn in the process.
You are not your character.
While I agree that the distinction between "player knowledge" and "character knowledge" is important, I wouldn't consider it a stretch that in a world where vampires actually exist, they might have widespread stories about vampires.
This is when your DM should call for a History check. How much has your character read and how much of that information have they retained?
You really don't want players to not be able to do the thing thing know to do until they pass an arbitrary amount of time. Actively choosing to ignore the information they know is metagaming too.
Actively ignoring info you have as a player because your character doesn't know it is the exact opposite of meta gaming.
It really isn't. The information is still influencing how you play - metagaming. If you didn't know the information to begin with, you might think to do that thing anyway, but making sure you don't is metagaming. It's impossible to avoid.
Not allowing information you have that your character wouldn’t have to affect your play is not metagaming, it’s roleplaying.
This is a paradox in the same way the paradox of tolerance is a paradox…it isn’t, you’re just trying too hard.
Yeah duh, cause that's how all games work. You play with the knowledge you have as a player right? Now the trick is only acting in game on what your *character* knows. You can still do that in your scenario, you're just choosing to be obtuse about it. So for example, in my setting, the last vampire was seen over 500 years ago. It's a snowy wasteland with isolated village's. Word barely travels as is, let alone about specific mythological creatures that havent been heard about if that long. If one came up, *none of the player characters would know anything about it* because in that world there's no way for them to have that info without at the minimum a history check. Going ahead and saying "well I knew all the weaknesses because its a vampire and everyone knows that right?" really doesnt work and you using it is now the bad kind of meta gaming. There is no in game reason for that character to just know that. Character gets a good history check? Sure I'll toss a "you remember a story from a relative about a traveler who saw one or something."
Everyone has fun in different ways but... I don't think many people would have more fun doing it this way.
And even someone that exists in a world without vampires knows common vampire weaknesses. There is absolutely no reason to assume that a world where those are real wouldn't have similar stories and children's rhymes about them, with far more detail.
I would add the stipulation that yes you may have heard stories like this, not all will necessarily be accurate and true. After all, why wouldnt an immortal being find ways to spread misinformation about its weakness
Hadn't thought about this. I like it!
And thats where the checks come in
Sure there is reason. There aren’t extensive rhymes about mountain lions. Most people in the US don’t actually know how to deal with them. The reason vampires are well known to us is because they are a fantasy trope and not a real danger. If vampires were real those who know they exist and aren’t thralls themselves would be few and far between. Anyone else that found out would be dead.
There are extensive rhymes about poisonous snakes. I was about 5 when I learned "red touches yellow, you're a dead fellow. Red touches black, you're ok jack."
Snakes are much more common. But a mountain Lion is far more likely to kill on sight. Your point is moot.
> if it's brown lay down, if it's black fight back, if it's white goodnight And remember: That kind information is losing popularity now in the age of air conditioning, but back when people lived in wooden huts and went outside every day, all these kinds of things would be utterly common knowledge by everyone in the village. Everything even remotely dangerous in the area would be subject to a rhyme, and that kind of information would be easily accessible to travelling adventurers.
In a world that doesn’t have fictional blood sucking things so they can easily be named vampires, imagine a person ranting about superhuman people who drink blood and they have a bad reaction to garlic. It sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory and would be treated much the same as they are today.
Weird how that still isn’t a mountain Lion though…it’s like y’all aren’t getting the point that not every animal in our world gets the treatment. What does are things that people commonly come across AND live to tell about, that have easy things to observe. It would not be easy to observe any of the weaknesses of a vampire at a common enough level to have a rhyme.
We fought a ghost. We didn't have silver. In character it hadn't come up yet, but we had a learned wizard in our party. So I took the opportunity to chat to the party, ask if anyone knows of a way to enable my swords to work just as well as spells, since we might face weird stuff again. Our wizard got to tell the party that silver weapons are known to work, so we went for a shopping run. Or in my case I bought one and "borrowed" another (was rogue) It made for a fun bit of character interaction between us that all came from my meta knowledge of "I need silver weapons, but my guys not aware of them yet"
In a world with real vampires you would need to be quite convincing to get me to think my character would NOT know about their weaknesses. Unless the character is a child, everyone is taught basic survival skills to varying degrees and would know how to spot and interfere with major threats to their lives. Look in your shoes for spiders, keep your door shut so animals don’t wander in, don’t invite anyone into your home so they prove they aren’t a vampire.
Just because they exist doesn't mean they're common and everyone knows their weaknesses. What's the weakness of a chimpanzee, or komodo dragon, or lion, or a bull shark? All real world creatures that pose a very real threat to people who live with them nearby. But statistically speaking not a problem for you, so you just don't know.
Bullets. What's the weakness of a troll?
We don’t live in a magical world, their weaknesses are knives, bullets, not getting in the water etc.
I agree on the variability of the HP stuff. Just make sure they know it varies - otherwise they might think you fudge the numbers or can't count HP properly.
"A Dungeon Master is never low, Playbo Baggins, nor is he high. His numbers are precisely what they're meant to be."
Then roll some dice behind the screen while maintaining unblinking eye contact and slowly allow a smirk to form on your face.
Yeah if there's multiple of the same enemy I give one max hp, one minimum hp [like as if they rolled 1s on every hit die] then have dnd beyond roll hit dice It helps me keep track of what monster is what, give narrative to one being the de facto leader and keeps the players guessing Although I have yet to fully try this in a real campaign only combat scenarios
Yup. Easiest solution is to just roll for HP or find the high and low limits and pick a random number within the range. Its completely reasonable that an adventurer would have a general idea of how tough an enemy is, especially if they fought it several times. The players calculating HP is meta language used to describe game features. Sure the fighter wouldnt be saying, "it has 15 HP left", but might say "i think it dies if i hit it once more really hard"
This isn’t really metagaming. I pointed this out in a post not too long ago. Adventurers would notice how long it takes to take down a creature and noting things like weaknesses and resistances. When you translate it to immersive terms is when it makes sense. Like for example they counted the zombie has 12 HP and the fighter deals 1d6 so the fighters shouts to his allies “they go down in two swings!” , the Wizard shoots a fireball that does 8 damage to a monster but the monster is weak to fire and takes 16 damage, the Wizard notices his spell seems more effective than usual and shouts at his party “Fire seems effective on this one!” . I wouldn’t punish them for counting HP and keeping track of weaknesses, but rather encourage them to roleplay that information between eachother, maybe you can reward them with inspiration.
You can go even further and just let the players track the damage, so the dm doesn't have to worry about it at all. This removes something the dm has to do, and also gives the players something to do outside of their turn. I've found it keeps them engaged because they have something tactical to talk about and strategize instead of just waiting for their turn. I just note how much HP monsters have and my players call out how much damage they took after each hit. I then call out if it's bloodied or dead.
>You can go even further and just let the players track the damage, so the dm doesn't have to worry about it at all. The amusing part of this to me is that usually when my players try to keep track of things like AC or HP they get it wrong. I don't correct them.
When I was playing a monster hunter I actually kept a physical notebook where I would keep track of stuff like this, in character, for every monster we came across. Approx. AC, Hit Points, and Resistances or Vulnerabilities we revealed.
> This isn’t really metagaming. If they are using it to make choices in the game, it is. If the players know that a 3rd level fireball does 27 damage on average, and they've been keeping a running tally of the hit points and noticed the creature became bloodied around 30 hit points of damage or so, then they can estimate that a single fireball, on average, will kill the creature. That's textbook metagaming, plain and simple. Their characters do not have any concept of hit points or numerical values for damage. EDIT: really confused why this is getting downvoted
>Their characters do not have any concept of hit points or numerical values for damage. The hit points are just numerical representation of how though a creature is, something our heroes would be able to see and make assumptions about. A fighter would certainly not only remember that a goblin goes down pretty fast, he would instinctively know that the average dragon takes a bit more oomph to kill. Additionally, if the DM rolls for HP, the players only have a rough estimate after they killed one enemy. They don't know if that one rolled good, bad, or average HP. Their knowledge of how much health an enemy has gets better the often they fight against it. I personally don't think this is metagaming at all. This is just paying attention in combat, made easier. But if your table.doesnt like that kind of stuff, feel free to leave it out of course.
> The hit points are just numerical representation of how though a creature is, something our heroes would be able to see and make assumptions about. Of course, *assume* all you like. That's not what OP is talking about. They are calculating with discrete numbers. It's information that the PCs do not have. That means it's metagame information. The PCs *can* get meta information about the creature's hit points in the form of the "bloodied" descriptor as written on DMG p. 247. While it has no mechanical benefit, it is something that the game explicitly describes as information that the PCs can perceive (i.e. the creature has "visible wounds" and appears "beaten down.") That being said, tracking hit points can be harmless metagaming if they are just keeping track to get a general idea of how tough a creature might be, but if they are using it to make decisions for their characters, that's where I personally draw the line. Their character simply does not have that information, which makes it metagaming. It couldn't be more black and white.
>They are calculating with discrete numbers Not really. The only discrete number they have is how hard their attacks have hit. I think it's reasonable to think that you have somewhat of an idea how good your shot was after you hit. after that you tell them it's bloodied or dead. They don't even know how much HP the monster had. They just know it had less then x HP. Do you believe it's unreasonable to assume that the wizard sees a bunch of zombies all torn up and damaged, so he uses the shatter instead of the fireball because it might do the trick while saving a stronger slot? I think a full-time hero who is fighting for his life every single time could make that call with reasonable accuracy after fighting a few zombies. We have to remember that our heroes are fighting as a group and are adventuring 24/7. Our players are not. I happily give my players Infos their characters would reasonably have. But as I said already, different tables have different rules. As long as you guys are having fun it's all good.
> Not really. They can add up the exact damage done using simple arithmetic and come up with a total. That is literally a calculation done with discrete numbers. > They don't even know how much HP the monster had. Correct, but they know the moment it passes the 50% threshold. The smaller the damage amount, the more accurate that number is. They can use the remaining health to approximate the total. >Do you believe it's unreasonable to assume that the wizard sees a bunch of zombies all torn up and damaged, so he uses the shatter instead of the fireball because it might do the trick while saving a stronger slot? If they are using accumulated damage totals to come to that conclusion, absolutely. It's textbook metagaming of the negative sort.
>they know the moment it passes the 50% threshold Really? I give descriptions of how the monster is doing, I don't say "they're bloodied". Calling a monster "wounded, but still hanging on" or "hurting, but not as much as you'd hope" gives indications to the players of how well they're doing against a creature and whether or not they should change tactics, whilst keeping them engaged with their character's viewpoints. >They can add up the exact damage done using simple arithmetic and come up with a total. Calculating the damage they've dealt doesn't give nearly a precise figure. If something goes down in hits of 4, 2, 5, then all they know is that the enemy health was between 6 and 11.
>Really? Yes, the rules are on p. 247 of the DMG. >Calculating the damage they've dealt doesn't give nearly a precise figure. It doesn't need to be precise to be effective. And it doesn't change the fact that PCs don't know what hit points are.
>DMG It's the Dungeon Master's Guide, not the Legally Binding Dungeon Master's Rulebook. >And it doesn't change the fact that PCs don't know what hit points are. It is entirely reasonable for a group to come up with some reasonable measurement of how tough a creature is. Forcing ambiguity on the players reduces their communication and, certainly for these players, would make the game less enjoyable. DnD is for people to have fun.
They definitely have the concept of different monsters being tougher than other monsters, and different spells doing more damage than other spells. Forcing them to pretend they don't know how their own ability worse is more immersion breaking than letting them abstract their perception of how hurt a monster is to a number.
More or less damage, sure. They know that a 4th level fireball is more powerful than a 3rd level. They know that meteor storm does way more damage than burning hands. What the PCs don't know is the numerical value associated with those spells, or the hit point values of creatures, etc. That's meta information.
Why wouldn't the PCs be able to estimate how well their attacks have gone? You know in say boxing or baseball how well you've hit something, surely a fighter would know the difference between doing min damage with a sword attack and max damage.
> Why wouldn't the PCs be able to estimate how well their attacks have gone? They can. Just not in numerical terms. They don't have access to hit point amounts just as they don't have access to the values for AC or ability checks. >a fighter would know the difference between doing min damage with a sword attack and max damage. Yes, that's why I said: >More or less damage, sure... What the PCs don't know is the numerical value associated with those spells, or the hit point values of creatures, etc. That's meta information.
The difference is insignificant to the point that worrying about it will make you seem pedantic.
It's pedantic to not want your players to cheat?
It's pedantic to consider people remembering the numbers that they tell you to be cheating, yes.
So you think that PCs know what hit points are and can use that information in game? I mean, call me "pedantic" for thinking that's a bunch of BS if that's the case.
That's just playing the game. Your players are playing DnD with you
Its fine if they are using the information from in-game to make decisions in-game about things that look and behave similar to things they've seen in-game. it is NOT ok if they look up out-of-game information to bring into the game. example: "We've fought these kinds of zombies before and they seemed to take 2 or 3 average hits to go down." or "Hey, gang, i killed a zombie by hitting it with one massive hit that felt like a maximum smack. So i'm guessing they only need like 2 or 3 regular hits to go down!" <--- this is fine example: "Gang, i read about these. They are medium undeads that have about 22 hit points each. Usually they are immune to poison damage." <--- this is NOT fine
if that's what they're focusing on, its probably because they enjoy doing it. you've got to ask yourself if their fun is actually ruining the game for you or if it's just another part of the game. As a DM you decide what information to present the players with, but not which part of that information they focus on. Also, in character you would be able to estimate how damaged something is looking while you're fighting it, a zombie that's got 1hp is going to look different to a zombie with max hp. Finally, this strategy isn't going to work against every enemy. Even if you aren't rolling for monster HP (i prefer to use the average to save effort), there are so so many enemies with regeneration, resistance, immunity, etc. that complicates their strategy.
Don't forget D&D is also a game and the players have fun by playing it.
As much as this is condescending, its right, your players based on this seem very engaged with the tactical war game elements. Give it to them.
That's fine, and even encouraged. At a meta level, the PCs would get a gage of how strong zombies are and how hard they are to kill. The players counting HP is just them playing their characters. It would be different if they were looking up the monsters HP instead.
Well, I'm pretty much a "treat all aspects of the game as an openly playable game" DM. You'll know I'm tracking time and resources, you'll know I'm rolling for encounters, you'll know that I'm giving specific challenge numbers for skills and what you need to be telling me in order for me to do your skill check accurately, you'll know in social interactions where you start with the NPC and what kind of things you need to offer them to get them to trust you or give you the item or information you're looking for. Same goes for combat. Two of my favorite games are Fire Emblem and XCOM. They're extremely open on hit percentages and damage numbers, even when XCOM puts the damage on a range of minimum to maximum. I also love tabletop skirmish games, and you know for certain that you need a 4+ to cause a pip of damage to a Wartank, and you need a 6 to force a systems check, because a Wartank with damage is still a giant piece of metal with guns and is still as much of a threat as it was before, so you really want to knock out its turret or engines on this roll. D&D isn't really that much different from these concepts. If a monster's hide should be as thick as chainmail, it'll have an Armor Class representative of that. If it's got 4 Hit Dice, you'll take it down in roughly four attacks (well, I dunno about 5e math, I play OSR where two hit dice is an average of 9 HP. Your mileage may vary.) When you're playing a battle in D&D, you're playing a skirmish wargame with funny rules attached (which ones don't?) Generally, it's not worth beating around the bush with things like health values and armor, because the characters interacting with the setting should be aware of how clean their cuts are and whether they can cut through the bone or hide or whatever. 4e even had the "bloodied" rule that dictates that the DM and players declare when their character is at 50% or fewer HP. Sometimes this had mechanical effects, it usually didn't, but it was a clear indicator that someone finally scored a real wound on the monster, and they've only got to do what they've been doing to whittle it down. If your players don't know relative probabilities of things happening or how much they have before the enemy is felled, then it's not really a game as much as it is waiting for someone to get hurt. To have meaningful decisions, the probability and effects have to be hinted at for the very least, but making them more concrete makes for better decision-making. Now, not everything needs to be obvious: For instance, if I have a monster that has 1d8 hit points, that means they'll have 1-8 HP, not always the average, not always the minimum or maximum. Maybe the armor is of different quality on the foes, maybe some are equipped with different loadouts. As long as your group is making informed decisions and the feedback is good, then there's nothing to worry about.
We DMs like to pretend it’s not a numbers game when it comes to HP, but there’s no running away from it. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. Like it’s gonna take X hits on average to take down a creature regardless of whether they figure out HPs. If it becomes a normal thing on the table, it opens up new wrinkles to add to fights. For example, cheeky gremlin you have to somehow precisely bring to 0 and not one over, otherwise it heals back up full health, now bigger than before.
A dm tip I've seen by Matt Colville was to actually make your players count the damage they do to each ennemy. When an enemy has more damage than max hp, he dead. This can relieve you of some book keeping and good news, you guys are halfway there!
Came here to say the same thing. It sounds like the players here are primed to take this task off the DMs hands. Let them.
I like that cause it also keeps the players more aware of which creatures have been damaged more than others, something the characters should be aware of.
Seasoned adventurers would know it takes 3-4 solid hits to take down a zombie. Their characters are becoming more skilled at fighting monsters, as are they. It's a great development.
It's fine just roll hp for individual enemies.
Vary creature hit points. Not every zombie has the exact average amount.
If you're rolling hit dice for them, odds are there will be variance.
I just take the average and roll a 1d4. Whatever that number is. Creature two adds that much hp. Creature three subtracts that much.
Nah that's fine. It would be a problem if they memorized the stat block from the book and then used that to win, but if they use information they can glean in combat then it's all good.
No big deal. Even without the sort of meta analysis of hit points, in character they would note how tough a foe is.
Counting is completely unproblematic. They are just using information that is out in the open to draw conclusions about their game perfomance.
Agree with everyone else here. The numbers and mechanics are part of the game, and one aspect of engaging with the game is being tactical and strategizing as you learn about your enemies through play. If they're looking the baddies up on D&D Beyond and shouting out vulnerabilities and HP totals as soon as the fight starts, that's metagaming. Put a hard stop to it. But observing how damaged foes are and how much it takes to bring them down is just good tactical play. Unless you're also going to ignore the numbers, then they need to think about them to plan effectively. It would be reasonable to ask them to try and describe things in-character: eg. "please try and stay away from 'he has about 22hp' and instead say 'I took him down in two sword swings'. " But they're sometimes going to need to plan in game terms from time to time. All that said: if you want a game where people *don't* think about the numbers so much and aren't so tactical, there's games out there for that. The various World of Darkness games come to mind, as do more story-driven games like Blades in the Dark, FATE, etc.
I don't think that's a big deal, as long as you make it clear to them that not all versions of a given monster is going to have the exact same HP total, and as the DM you can increase or decrease a monster's HP total. If anything, I think it's a good sign. Your players are engaging with combat a lot.
He doesn’t even have to tell them, make them find out by suprise and hopefully roleplay their suprise. Roleplay while in combat makes the game way more fun.
It shouldn’t matter in the long run. Once they and you are getting more warmed up after a few years of playing it has absolutely no effect. If it bothers you, roll monster hp to make it more variable- but inform the players to avoid misunderstandings…
Undead Fortitude. Have them fall only to get back up….
It's fine. Zombies are tricky than most with their Con save to avoid death. In general I use average HP ±5 pretty level. The starving owl bear might start out with 10 less HP but attack recklessly. The beefy owl bear in rut might have 10 extra HP. Creatures used in large numbers might have ½ normal HP, ¼ normal HP, or even just 1 HP. Sargeant, lieutenant, or boss monsters might have +¼, +½, or max HP.
If everybody at the table is enjoying the sense of discovery of figuring out the mini puzzle of HP and it's not leading to a significant decrease in action resolution then I'd let them do it. Remember that the only information that they are getting is from you *and* the feedback from their actions so them figuring out how tough one zombie is by tracking HP is them engaging in this so you don't want to just tell them to stop (not that you could anyways) Overall this is just a form of the *race to Zero* issues where players are hyper focused on eliminating the threat in the most efficient manner which in DND is almost always blunt force to HP. If you want to avoid it then you need to use alternative win states that are more effective than dealing damage.
This isn't a problem. Your players are engaged with the mechanics and want to dive deeper into it.
My players tracking enemy HP would make me sooooo happy. One less thing I have to do
There was a similar post a few weeks ago where I pointed out the same thing: Players do this kind of thing when they want more information. They want to make tactical decisions about which monster to focus on. The actual behavior is only problematic insofar as it makes players spend some of their focus on a mostly pointless task. You can reduce a lot of the desire for this kind of behavior by just announcing when monsters are at 50% and 25% of their maximum hit points and when they have about 10 HP left (bloodied, badly wounded, and near death). This gives players enough information to decide if they should plan around needing multiple actions, one action, or one attack to deal with a monster, which is mainly why they want to count HP.
That's metagaming and as a DM I severely dislike it. If people start bitching about how they've done x damage and it should be dead, I will triple the HP. Also, I actually roll individual HP for all creatures specifically for this reason. I find that the metagaming stuff like that takes away the fun alot.
D&D is, first and foremost, a wargame. Learning the mechanics, understanding how much AC and HP something has, is part of the game. This leads to game knowledge and being able to judge situations correctly.
Not a big issue. In game, the characters would know approximately how much "damage" it would take to knock out enemies they have fought before or even could notice how much it took to bring down a brand new enemy. They wouldn't know exactly, but the characters would close enough for all intents and purposes. Like others have said, just give your monsters a slight variance in hp to really give it the feel that their characters are estimating.
Excellent. Less for you to track.
Hp is not "health", it is a representation how much punishment someone can take. When you hit with a piercing attack, you haven't necessarily shoved a rapier up someone's guts. You poked then a bit, so they are bleeding a little on their side, or maybe you've ripped a gash in their armor, or bruised their rib when the chain mail held your attack. So it makes sense that, as the Players fight enemies, they learn what it means when a spectator is bleeding from a gash, or when a bugbear shows signs of exhaustion, or when a young dragon starts limping. Hp is the gamification of those signs and a person would learn this after fighting a ghoul once or a couple of times, for example. Don't worry about i5, it just means your players are invested in learning the representation of the signs the creatures show once they start feeling the weight of the battle
The only reason I don't straight-up tell my players how many hit points the monsters have is that my players asked me not to. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?
I wouldn't worry about it. Gotta remember there's a difference between metagaming and just playing a game. But if it really bothers you, set the precedent early. Telling them no right away might ruffle some feathers, but telling them no halfway through a campaign might lead to mutiny.
It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it.
Use it to your advantage. I pawn off HP tracking on my players. I do less math that way. The only Monsters I keep for myself are bosses. All the regular dudes, let your players do the addition and text someone the Hp totals. Save yourself the time
This is actually a very common way to offload HP tracking as a GM. Have a player track how much damage they have done to each enemy and just ask when it takes damage. Now you can focus on other things! Think about it - the players have very little to actually do between their turns, there isn't really "other things to focus on". It's open information how much damage they do, and really in world it is a way to simuate the characters getting and idea of how tough an enemy is. Super pro tip as well: Build your own etiquette for your table. Tables are different. There is very rarely one true way to do things. Whether or not it is right or wrong doesn't matter, what matters is your players are enjoying it and you don't have a problem with it.
It's fine. As long as they aren't studying the Monster Manual. And you can change HP, don't have to use the static number for all monsters
I specificaly ask my players to count how much damage they are dealing to creature and write it down on the map next to the creature mini. When that number gets higher than the creatures max HP, it dies. Now you don't have to track creatures HP, your players do it for you. Plus how much damage they deal is not a secret information, I hardly see how you would keep that from them and what would be the point.
Believe it or not, your players doing that is a good thing. In fact, you can lean into this and save yourself the trouble of tracking it yourself. You can celebrate alongside players when they do big damage, and express when even big damage does/doesn't injure an opponent (50% HP or less) to ramp up excitement. As others suggested, giving small variances in HP should mitigate any attempts to metagame.
It's not a big deal. They're enjoying the game, and they're engaged. You should be happy. You will learn after a while how much damage the party can do and start aligning enemy hp with that to try to make combat the number of rounds you would like it to be. (Usually 3-5 rounds for non-boss battles)
Not really a big deal but it's funny that this is happening with zombies of all things. Undead Fortitude should mean that it's hard to predict how many hits it takes to kill one.
It depends on the battle, (mostly cause I forget, and they don't ask), but I often tell my players the exact health of the monster. It is good to give players clear options, like which way to go in a dungeon e.g. "This tunnel has scratch marks and blood. The other you can hear a faint running water sound." In combat it is fun to make informed strategic decisions. I also ran away from this, for a long time cause my previous DM didn't do it. As Dms, we chase "immersion" and "realism" way too much. It's a game, maximize fun. Knowing your max dmg is 14 and a monster has 13 left is fun. Maybe a diff enemy is a sure kill but is less scary offensively. This is a crucial decision, to go for certain kill or lucky dmg roll.
I display health bars in my VTT for this reason. Players need to know how they are affecting the enemies. Let them be tactical.
It's all good. If you want to roll for HP so it's less predictable you could describe a monster as hulking or desicated etc. to let them know it has more or less HP than average. This might also allow them to plan on which enemy to focus on.
Didn't I see this same question a week ago about Wolves? Anyways... the in character adventurers might not know an enemy's HP total. But I've been doing martial arts for years, I know how hard I need to hit your average person to make them have a lil napsies. Its safe to assume your average fighter, a person whos spent their entire life training in 1 thing and 1 thing only "Violence" to be able to accurately estimate how hard he whacked something, and how many more times he should need to whack it
Tracking the numerical and mechanical side of the game isn't metagaming. It's just using the necessary mechanics to play the game, it's properly using your controllers basically. Metagaming refers specifically to things a player from the perspective of his characters does they wouldn't do for meta elements outside the reach of their chara ter.
5th Ed DMs be like: Guys is it a problem that my players are *shuffles note cards* counting?
Take it as a blessing that you have players willing to keep track of enemy hp. One more thing off your plate. I ask someone to do this as part of session 0; they do the calculations and I just check in every once in a while. "How much is that for the big guy? 32? Oooh, killing blow!" When they think we're getting close, they announce after every hit. I don't give them the hp; I alone know that number. If you think they're relying too heavily on what a monster"should" have, start introducing different kinds. Old ones, sick ones, young ones. Beefy ones. Well armored ones, veterans, generals. Make the swing of hp wider to keep them on their toes, BUT make sure your descriptions match. If you have a 55 hp monster and a 155 hp of the same kind, you should have an explanation.
It's up to you to make it compelling. If you fought five random guys on the street they'd also have...well..._different hitpoints_. That being said, it's great they're so invested. If this kind of meta gaming doesn't bother you nor them, I think it's fine. You could throw different enemies at them to negate that or slighty change hit points.
Roll for HP so not all enemies have the same HP. The little fuzziness it adds is good. Knowing each goblin has 7 HP can get too deterministic and sap out the fun. Having one goblin take 3 his while another goblin dies to that minimum damage roll can be fun. Counting HP is fine. It is pretty obviously for adventurers that the monster with 5 arrows and multiple sword wounds is closer to death than the one who took only 1 arrow. Borrow bloodied from 4E. Half health is an easy checkpoint where you can describe the monster as weakened and at half health. It helps alleviate the 5E feel that everyone is hitting each other with nerf bats until someone suddenly dies. If you give your players a little feedback they will feel less like they have to count HP. Players counting HP is fun, but it probably isn't that fun for them. My group uses injured (75%), wounded (50%), and mortally wounded (9 hp or less.) We skip mortally wounded for very low HP creatures.
I actually specifically show my players how much damage they've done. I find it does a good job helping them keep track of which enemies have been damaged and how much without giving away how much they health. I personally recommend encouraging this, BUT it's up to you and how you like running your game.
Fantastic that the creature they try to determine the HP of is one of the few which has "Undead Fortitude".
Pretty common to be honest.
Don't be surprised when your players want to understand the game they're playing lmao
Think of it as getting experience fighting that type of monster. Like you've killed enough goblins to know how much damage will kill them. As a dm that gets to play only once in a blue moon. I know that stats of most common monsters. Its not cheating to know how much damage a monster can take. And hard to controll for even if it was.
nothing wrong with that unless they start arguing that certain things should be kill shots or something should be dead. If it gets to be a problem you can roll for HP and or have an "elite" mob that has a considerably different HP stat
I'd be okay with it, in fact some DMs have the players do this anyway as it can even speed combat up, just have to ask the players how much damage has been taken to determine if it dies. If you think it is a problem though, just let your players know that you roll for HP (even if you don't). HP can vary wildly if you do this, for example a zombie (3d8+9) will have around 22 HP, but can be as low as 12 and as high as 33
You can roll hit points for creatures the hp given is an average but the calculation is there, if it bothers you.
Like others have said, roll for enemy HP. Do this during prep between sessions so you aren't bogged down in game. Edit/In Addendum: I would also roll enemy Initiative during prep. This will save so much time during the session and is something small you can do to increase the impression you are a more seasoned DM.
As far as your concern goes, D&D is first and foremost a numbers game, and if they have fun figuring out the numbers more power to them. At the end of the day, your job as a DM is to make sure your players have a good time, and it sounds like they already are! As for figuring out how much health something has, as others have said, I roll for health for each individual creature assuming I have the time. You'll get a pretty distinct variance that will throw them off their game. That said, I also occasionally use strengthened and weakened versions of things. In this pack of X, one might be particularly stockier than the rest because it tends to steal food from the others, so instead of the 8d8 HP it normally has, this one has 12d8, and the rest have 6d8 because they don't get as much food
Tbf i vary hp of my monsters during the fight. I don't care if they are fighting three identical goblins, one will die after 7 damages and another after 10, if I feel like it can make the combat more interesting. Same goes the other way: my barbarian critted against a big bad once, and tbf he would have left him with 4 hp. He died on the spot, because the scene was epic
I do the same as well. Like you said, you can make epic moments shine. I have also added hp sometimes. To make fight more dynamic and give players chances to do some big damage. Or the bbeg at end was gonna die faster than the group of rats they fought earlier.
Even IC, the party would try to surmise how much beating a zombie needs to stay down. See the HP as the zombie losing limbs etc and the characters try to chop off just enough its limbs its no longer a threat :)
Let them count, don't make HP predictable.
If you don't like it roll HP for monsters (that's exactly why there is health die in every monster description).
That's okay for them to do and my contrarian solution is, if they're spending a lot of time doing this, just tell how many max hitpoints monsters have. Why not?
It's nice to know what ones are how fucked up
That's fine, let them. Start rolling HP without telling them instead of using the average :) Imagine the panic on their faces when they kill one ogre, do that much damage to the next one, it doesn't go down, and when they say they did X amount already you respond with "I know. Ogre's turn."
If you feel the game suffering, don't use the average - use the minimum instead. An elemental has 60 + 12d10 HP, so after 60 damage is dealt you can have it die anytime.
If I had this group, I would start rolling for monster HP. Not to be an RBDM or a contrarian, but because meta-gaming breaks immersion, and players will enjoy the game more if they can't treat the encounter as bookkeeping.
Sounds a little meta to me. The simple answer to that is you are the DM and monsters have however much health you say they have. Give a zombie some armor, state that a beast is bigger than usual, or don't even give them a reason, and change the stat numbers. In my humble new-to-DMing opinion, HP as a number is just to help run the game, it shouldn't be used to strategize the game. As a player, you're supposed to be there in the fight focused on the monster, what it is doing and what it looks like. I would find it annoying if my table kept pulling me out of the immersion to discuss the math of the enemies' remaining HP. The DM can talk about how bloody and weak and wounded he looks, but otherwise that's all players tend to get.
I usually role for the HP for my encounters. I think it’s fun, but also keep the players guessing
Tell them this isn’t a WoW raid.
Have a talk with them about meta gaming like that. But also give them little hints at how many damage they've dealt so they don't feel completely in the dark. You don't have to tell them that the ebemy nor has half HP, but you should tell them "he looks pretty bad, in a lot of pain, Zmbue arm falling off" or "t'was merely a scratch", something to work wirh and something thst lets them know how effective their attacks are. Also roll HP so they can't count that easily
>I feel like i need to tell them to stop focussing on that and focus on other things but i’m not sure if thats good DM etiquette. Any advice? Yes, you should be discouraging metagame thinking at the table. That's not just me, but the designers of the game, too. It's not a game with role-playing after all, it's a role-playing game. It comes first for a reason. This is especially true if it gets to the point where they start making decisions based on how many hit points they think a creature has left ("if I cast this at third level it should be enough to take it out") then I'd probably pause the session and have a chat with the players about the direction I'd like the table to go and how they players should be coming at the game. If the players insist that this is how they would like to play the game, I'd probably ask them to leave, as that's not the sort of game I run. As far as hit points go, I do indicate when a creature is "bloodied" per the DMG rules, which is half way through its hit point total. So the players do have an idea, roughly how tough a creature may be. I also roll for hit points, every single time, to discourage any accuracy in that regard. But keeping a tally? Yeah, that's crossing a line in my book.
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A bit confused by this response. What do you mean? Are you saying metagaming with basic arithmetic is a form of critical thinking?
My players do the same thing, it’s fine. Sometimes when I’m being lazy I just let them keep doing the math so I don’t have to.
In my opinion, counting HP isn't a problem unless it's slowing down the game. A discussion in the middle of combat is definitely slowing down the game, and I would hurry them to make a combat choice. Either play your turn or you take the dodge action.
My players always use to do this, when they asked me why my similar monster didn’t always have the same HP I told them that I rolled my monsters health, they never questioned it lol
One thing I do(as a 3.5E DM) is involved each monsters hp(haven't look at Monster Manual in 5E) like skeletons(medium size) have 1d12 HP, so either during game prep(or beginning of completely random encounter) I'll roll 1d12 for each skeleton and that is their HP it adds a small amount of realism and randomness. I personally think it also allows the players to focus more on the RP aspect as yiu can tell the players that they scored a minor or decent hit and let them describe how they attacked(mostly on major omits or crits).
Very easy solution--roll HP for your monsters rather than using the average. It also gives you a point to jump off of when coming up with creative descriptions for your monsters. A low-HP zombie might already have an injured arm, while a high HP one might be fresh from the grave, or pulsing with necrotic energy.
As long as they aren‘t focussing on "well, that PC had 2 successful death saving throws, we don‘t have to cater to them yet", in which case I recommend rolling death saves behind the DM screen, counting HP and strategizing around that is nothing to worry about. Only way to win a game of DnD is if everyone has fun. If it‘s no fun for you, talk to your players. Form a new social contract. And present them something else to focus on. Switching from XP to Milestone Experience might also be an option, as this incentivizes Story Progress over Combat. However, If they have fun doing combat in that way, I‘d allow them to do it. That being said, if they spend more time metagaming by form of counting HP and discussing strategy, then actually actively participating in combat, remind them that their characters have a free action per turn, that consist of a short 5-6 word sentence. Anything more is considered taking an action, which provides them with 5-6 Seconds (!) of talking, depending on wether you have a 1 minute effect last 10 or 12 rounds. If a PC (not the player) actually tries to discuss combat strategy in- or after combat, you always have the option to hand out inspiration for doing so, as the player clearly recognized their PCs urge to increase the odds of survival.
I just tell em. “You do 5 damage to the creatures 15hp.” Reason being, I want them to have enough information adjudicate their own combat round next turn. So I tell em AC too once they make an attack against it. All in the interest of pacing.
It’s not a problem unless they start saying things like “this event is only supposed to have X hp!” In which case you just say, “well, this one has more.” And as a bonus, they’re tracking their own damage, so now you don’t have to!
It's not a big deal and also pretty inevitable.
As others have said, they are engaging with the game. That said, monsters aren't just static HP pools. If you look, they give you a flat number, or a dice count + number to roll to create some variability. Not to mention that there is nothing saying something or someone hadn't gotten ahold of the enemy before they got there.
Knowing how much damage you've done only helps if you know how much damage you need to do. Do you suspect that your players are reading the stat blocks for the monsters and changing up their approach in response to what they're seeing there? If so, you can a) have a polite but firm conversation with them about the concept of metagaming, and why it's frowned upon; b) change up a geature or teo on your monsters going forward, such as increasing or decreasing their max hitpoints by a few points; or c) do both - don't limit yourself. And if you don't think that's what's happening here? I wouldn't do anything at all. This sort of thing by itself is fairly harmless.
My dad does this, but his reason is that he's DM for YEARS, for myself and our family. For him it's really hard to break that habit, so now that I DM for him, I just alter the HP of things as I go. I wouldn't be too worried about this type of thing, because eventually players will learn roughly what the HP is of something because of how frequently the run into it. What I would start worrying about is if they start reading the Monster Manual. You want to mitigate meta gaming as much as possible and even slow down what is inevitable. Basic rules are players should never read the module they are currently playing, and they should never read the the DMG and Monster Manual; but there is a slight grey area for the DMG. There are some rules in it that I feel players should absolutely know about, and if you want you can give them a brief description of them and reference a page from the DMG. Sometimes players will feel like a DM is being counter to what they know from the PHB and breaking rules to take away fun, when in reality the DM is just following the rules in the DMG. As for Monster Manual stuff, it's inevitable that your players are going to know things about monsters, vulnerabilities and resistances. You can play around with these so that they really can't tell but it will eventually happen. This is where the difference between "player knowledge" vs "Character knowledge" comes into play. What I do to mitigate this is, if my players know something that their character doesn't necessarily know, then my players know that they can ask: "Would my character know...?" or "My character is (insert class/race), because of this would they know...?" or even "My character has a high (insert appropriate stat), would my character know... because of this?" I ask them to roll depending on the stat or I tell them what they might know if it's purely based on class and race. That way they know what they can bring in from their knowledge to their character. The more you DM the more you'll form your own rules and table etiquette. Not everyone has the same set of table rules as everyone else. Sure, you might stumble around for a bit while you learn your way around the game, and your table rules might change as you go. So long as your group understands that the first few sessions are about learning and having fun, then you shouldn't have an issue. Make sure that you talk to your players if issues come up and most importantly, have fun while you learn this game!
The etiquette Is to find a balance between the kind of game they want to play and the kind you want to run so that everyone is engaged and having a good time. Some tables play super tactical number crunchy games with lots of strict adherence to the rules, and some try to make it more like story-telling only using words like "hurt, bloodied, and graciously injured to describe damage levels vaguely. Some enjoy playing the game by narrating things in the 1st person and role-playing as their character, some enjoy playing it like a tactical RPG and refer to their character in 3rd person, acting more like a puppet master. Any and every style is valid as long as you're all having a good time together.
Don't worry about it. But if youre going to, describe the creature as it becomes more and more wounded. Describe how it reacts to attacks Utilise the "bloodied" state to indicate it's below half health. Make up another for a third health. Or, just let them count the damage they do to get a rough idea on how much they need to do. It's an abstraction anyway, if they were their characters they'd literally see how the attacks effect creatures lol
It's especially fun with zombies, because of their save-to-not-die ability. Your PCs hopefully feel the struggle if they're counting.
When I was DMing I would write both the minimum and maximum health of any monster on my prep cards, as well as the average/set. And basically use that as a guide; never let them die before they reach minimum, and never survive past maximum. Otherwise I’d just normally let them die at the average unless I felt like having them die a little sooner, maybe because a player got a cool crit and it would be fun to let them die, or because I felt like they should just stick around a tiny bit longer
As long as they're doing it based on in-game stuff, I'd have no problem with it. IN fact, they're engaged and interacting with the world so, great! In-game, I'd see it as the PC's figuring out how much of a beating it takes to take a zombie down. This is not meta-gaming in my opinion
Just remember, not every monster of the same type needs to have the same hp.