When I have more than two of the same monster in an encounter, I use the hit dice from their stat block to roll their hit points individually. This has two benefits.

1. I am able to describe differences between the monsters. For example, an average orc has 15 HP. An orc that rolled 10 HP would be described as smaller than the others, bearing a recent wound, or showing signs of a disease. An orc that rolled 20 HP would be described as more muscular, taller, bigger tusks than the rest, etc. The players can then target the weaker or stronger ones first, adding more strategy to the combat.

2. Meta gamers who look up stat blocks will be at a loss. I’ve had a player quit my game because they insisted the damage dealt “should have” killed a monster, but didn’t. Despite this being in my short list of House Rules, (which was made readily available to the players from Session Zero) they got so upset about it that they fumed all of next week and quit the day before the next game. I can safely say I dodged a bullet there.

What do the rest of you think? Any other minor house rules/homebrew that you like to implement?