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Object HP in D&D is confusing as heck.
Here's a guide.
How much HP should an object have?
Zee Bashew
How much HP do objects have in d&d?
Uhh, hit dice. So every monster in the Monster Manual has, next to its HP value, some dice listed. Those are the monsters, hit dice. Hit dice are how much HP something should have. You can either use the average, or you can roll those dice for a different value for each monster. Players also have a number of hit dice equal to their level. But did you know that dice have hit dice? Objects have an AC determined by their hardness, as well as hit dice, which are determined by their size and durability. Tiny, D4s. Small, D6s. Medium, D8s. Large, D10s. And the number of hit dice can go from 1, if it's fragile, all the way up to 2, if it's tiny, 3, if it's small, 4, if it's medium, and 5, if it's large. What the fuck does that mean? Brought to you by paid-add for Che Peku tokens. It means that a small coffee table has between 1 and 3 D6 HP, depending on how durable you think it is. And it'll have an AC of 15, because it's made out of wood. It's that simple. When a player attacks a piece of scenery that you weren't expecting them to attack, first make sure that it's not immune to the damage type. All objects are immune to psychic or poison damage, as well as effects caused by con, ant, charisma, or will-saves. But they always fail-saves against strength or decks. Also, as a DM, you can use common sense. You're not gonna cut a rope with a hammer. Okay, now that you've determined that, roll a couple dice, determine the HP, figure out the material, determine the AC, you're done. Unless, of course, it's a structure which is larger than large, like a huge gargantuan or bigger structure. In which case, things start to get complicated. Huge gargantuan and larger objects track HP in one of four ways. Method 1, don't do it. Just tell the players they can't break through. Method 2, lie to the players. Let them do damage until the pacing feels right, and then they break through. Method 3, subdivide it. The DM tries to actually track the HP. The suggested way is to break a structure down into smaller objects. The stone wall could be broken down into large sections of 5D10HP, 27HP if you don't feel like rolling. Or, it could be broken into individual rocks in the wall if you want it. Maybe the wall is 5 rocks thick, so each rock would have a small, durable object. 3D6 made out of stone, AC17, and have an additional immunity to slashing damage, maybe a vulnerability to picks and hammers. Who knows? Here's where things get kind of weird. The smaller the sections, the more devastating an AoE like Shatter is. Especially because the book does say, if you manage to create a situation where you've taken out enough of a huge plus object structural integrity, the object should fall. Meaning, if you delete enough of its sub-objects that are important to keeping it up, boom. To mitigate this issue somewhat, we have damage threshold. The sub-objects of huge and larger structures can have something called a damage threshold. If you hit for more damage than the damage threshold, you ignore it, you just do the normal amount of damage. If you hit for less than the damage threshold, then you miss. It's hard to work out how much the damage threshold should actually be, because although there are examples of objects that have damage thresholds in other sections of the DMG, those objects don't seem to totally conform to these rules. With some exceptions, it seems like the ACs are actually set by the materials, but the HP rules are different. They seem to be listed as huge or gargantuan objects that have one pool of HP, and in some cases, large objects, which have pools of HP that seem too high. Which brings us to method 4, give the giant structure however much HP you want, up to kind of 500 seems like the max, and give it a damage threshold of either 15 or 20. I haven't seen a lot of damage thresholds except 15 or 20, which seem to crop up a bunch, but I guess that makes sense. Hey, I thought you said that objects can only have sections above the 5v10 HP, I hear you asking. Uh, yep, that's true. A ship's siege weapon, some doors from listed adventures, a slew of other specific objects exist in published materials that don't conform to this rule set. But I have a theory on that, or at least a way to apply that. I believe that that's the object's functioning HP, meaning if a ship with 500 HP reaches 0 HP, the ship sinks bad. If you and your fellow adventurers are trying to break through a wall inside the ship, maybe that wall could be tracked individually as large objects are smaller. Um, and maybe you add the damage of going through that wall to the total tally of ship damage, and if it gets to 0 then it still sinks. Then you're using a hybrid of the two HP tracking techniques, which I think is kind of neat. That's object HP. If they attack it, grab the right amount of dice, toss it out of the table, set the AC. Also, honestly, I would ignore damage threshold most of the time, just raise the HP or have the confidence to say no. Brought to you by a paid advertisement for Che Peku tokens. Che Peku tokens are kick-ass customizable tokens built from assets made by actual artists. You can pre-subscribe now for a massively discounted fixed rate of 9 bucks, this offer ends soon, it's normally 28. And I genuinely think it sells itself. If you're using 2D VTTs, check out the link. It has samples, a demo for creating your own custom bugbear, and way more details than I can fit into an ad rate. Alright, thanks for watching.