Average PC damage per hit?

[MrBeens]

True, but if the players don't report damage, then you wouldn't touch the monster's HP totals either.

Ultimately it might just depend on the party. The question of power choice would be easily addressed by knowing what the players can do. If no one has a daily that does more damage than an encounter, frex.

What about powers that specifically do more damage instead of applying effects?
What about powers that have powerful effects but specifically do lower damage (just stat modifier, or fixed damage).
What about ongoing damage?
What about auto damage that are not "hits" (zones, divine challenge etc)
What about feats and powers that give bonus damage for a period of time (Blessed weapon etc.)?
What about healing?

 

[Herschel]

I don't know that this is a very good idea. Even if you count encounter attacks as 2 hits and dailies as 3, the fact is, two encounter powers of the same class and level often deal different damage, because the "extras" vary significantly.

Leaders and controllers have a fair number of powers that don't even do damage, and some are dailies.

I think you'd be setting yourself up for a lot more headaches than you would solve, personally.

This is exactly what I do on occasion for quick & dirty mook fights where they have few, if any, special abilities but it doesn't work for enemies with cool abilities very well. The fight with grunts in the bar taht are just there to slow you down a bit or milk a few resources because there's only one "big" encounter for the day is where I'd use it.

 

[Rechan]

What about powers that specifically do more damage instead of applying effects?

See: knowing the party's powers. If a player has powers that do less damage, you can know that. For instance, very few of the Bard encounter powers do 2[W]. Doing 1[W] would be on par with an AW.

As far as all those others: the fiddly bits that add just 2-5 damage: I'd ignore it.

But it could just be played by ear. I was thinking of doing monster HP in terms of like, boxes. Similar to WoD health. If a PC reported a significant amount of damage (critical, extra damage Enc/Daily), just mark off more boxes, based on judgment.

What about healing?

I always avoid monster powers that heal, unless it's a power like vampiric (do damage/gain hp). IME those powers don't really help the monsters at all.

If what you want is simpler tracking of monster health behind the screen, you could just round all damage to the nearest 10. It should work out pretty close to correct and be significantly easier to track. At higher levels you could round to the nearest 20, or whatever feels appropriate.

That could very well work.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It seems like you forgot at will attacks doing 2[W] damage at epic. although of course the number of times you actually make at will attacks decreases...

 

[I'm A Banana]

Avg. PC damage per hit is about 1/8th the avg. monster HP. Strikers deal about double this (1/4th avg. monster HP).

If you're changing monster HP to a specific number of hits, you might want to look at this useful series, which is pretty much what I do in my home games.

It's SUPER EFFIN' elegant, and I <3 it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Avg. PC damage per hit is about 1/8th the avg. monster HP. Strikers deal about double this (1/4th avg. monster HP).

Per successful hit, or per attack?

Most monsters fall in 3 successful hits at low level since most attacks do a minimum average of 7.5 damage (slightly more for certain types of classes and non-striker roles, and for PCs that take certain feats).

The reason it increases by level is that monster hit points increase by 6 to 10 hit points per level whereas damage only increases by 0.5 to 1.5 hits per level.

So by level 3, it generally takes a minimum of 4 successful hits for non-striker roles. For example, the 7.5 average damage vs. 24 hit points level 1 PC using inherent bonuses jumps up to either 8.5 (or 9.5 damage with a feat) versus the 32 hit points level 2 NPC, but doesn't gain any more damage at level 3 versus the 40 hit points level 3 NPC.

The monster hit points start outpacing the increased damage for the non-striker roles per level. This gets offset by having strikers in the party and by increased power, utility, and synergy of higher level powers.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I see that [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] has already posted Haze's excellent Hit Box system, which I use and am very happy with.

This thread here might also be of help.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Per successful hit, KD.

It's not really taking into account every corner case, but that's probably OK. There's precious few corner cases where it is very vital. If what you want is a handy guideline, it works just fine. Haze's final chart of soft, hard, and multi-hits is really a great tool to speed up play by having a DM use hit boxes instead of HP.

 

[Rechan]

Saved the links for later, KM, Viking, Thanks. I probably would not convert PC health to boxes - that might feel a bit much. But it would make HP tracking for me much easier.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I'm fine with HP as it is for PCs. For monsters, though, I prefer this kind of approach.