Game design trap - Starting too close to zero.

[KidSnide]

Magic items contain an example of this problem. Adding +1 to hit and damage is a pretty excellent magical ability. When the designers of 4e dubbed a "+1 magic weapon" as a canonical example of a 1st level magic item, they threw the balance off the entire magic item equation.

The level 1 "+1 magic sword" made it very difficult to come up with magical effects that were weaker than providing +1 to hit and damage, and it generated the unfortunately situation where magic weapons and implements were much more powerful than any other items at their level.

-KS

 

[Pyromantic]

Magic items contain an example of this problem. Adding +1 to hit and damage is a pretty excellent magical ability. When the designers of 4e dubbed a "+1 magic weapon" as a canonical example of a 1st level magic item, they threw the balance off the entire magic item equation.

The level 1 "+1 magic sword" made it very difficult to come up with magical effects that were weaker than providing +1 to hit and damage, and it generated the unfortunately situation where magic weapons and implements were much more powerful than any other items at their level.

-KS

But again I find this a more compelling argument for changing the way magic items are treated rather than requiring increased granularity in damage scaling.

Firstly, +1 weapons were, IMO, far more important for their bonus to hit than damage. There is indeed no reason that a magic weapon can't just give a damage bonus. Any to-hit bonus it gives is a separate issue.

Secondly, what has been said about magic items in 5th is that the system will assume you have none in working with scaling. The expectation of magic items is being downplayed or outright removed, and that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of changing the starting point for certain things, but only if a real need is identified. If you give more bonuses to damage across the board, where is it going to come from? If you place it as a separate bonus from class, proficiency, or somesuch, then it's just one more thing to clutter the system.

You could increase all attribute modifiers by 5 or something, but I think that's unnecessary if your only real goal is to narrow the gap between the low and high ends of melee damage.

 

[Pyromantic]

To add:

The funny thing is that the one place it was said it was unnecessary to change the scale (starting level) is one place I absolutely would like to see it change.

If they're thinking about 3.5-style multiclassing, then one of the big issues that came up before is that taking a level in two classes gave you just about everything a starting character gets from either class. If you split the stuff a default starting character gets over several levels, and begin at a level higher than 1, then you have room to allow a more gradual acquisition of function through mutliclassing. You also have the added benefit of allowing mutliclassing as a beginning character in a more functional manner than 3rd or 4th ever really did. (Something akin to the apprentice rules in the 3.0 DMG, which I really liked.)

I'm curious as to what kind of mechanics you would like to see in place Crazy Jerome with the kind of change you're talking about.

 

[KidSnide]

But again I find this a more compelling argument for changing the way magic items are treated rather than requiring increased granularity in damage scaling.

As a starting point, I'm not entirely sure how the post you're responding to relates to damage scaling.

The point I'm suggesting is that identifying +1 magic weapons as "level 1" items is an example of starting too low. If a +1 magic weapon was a 3rd-to-5th level item, then you have design room for weaker items without resorting to a scale where items of the same level are of radically different power by design.

-KS

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm curious as to what kind of mechanics you would like to see in place Crazy Jerome with the kind of change you're talking about.

I'm more interested in awareness of the problem than specific changes. In particular, I'm interested in not assuming that some possiblities won't work because of the way the math has been done in the past would make them not work. A completely new version is the only time you get to productively question such assumptions, after all.

So I think normally that if 20 such potential areas were examined, it might be that only a few were worth changing in this manner, because some option will work better getting away from zero. On the other hand, with 5E looking to create the feel of multiple editions, it will need a lot more options. The more options you have, the more likely a good one will require some kind of ratio effect (directly or indirectly) that makes numbers very close to zero problematic.

With things like damage expressions, you do want to consider as many options as possible. It could be (making up numbers here) that getting rid of d4s in damage expressions has 4 positive benefits and 2 negative ones, while increasing the base damage from +0 to +4 has 3 positive benefits and 3 negative ones. Or it could be the other way around. And maybe none of those positive benefits are so great as to warrant going against tradition. But you don't know if you don't look, and you don't look if you assume that starting at zero is just inherently better and right.

Edit: I do think that 4E was on the right track getting starting hit points away from zero, but overdid it, while not doing enough on the damage expression front--though having things like at-will wizard attacks getting +Int on damage helped a lot there. There are two different things at play with wizards, and naturally you can solve one of them differently than the other:

1) Letting the base damage expression for wizards start a little higher can mean higher base damage on his staff or dagger, or can mean +Int mod to repeatable spells. Either works.

2) The game making as many options as possible at least situationally viable means that his staff or dagger should at least be worthwhile when trapped in melee, for at least some characters--means the damage expression for weapons needs to change a bit.

If you don't value this second one, then the first option may work better for you. I prefer that both be available so as to maximize the options in play. And you might notice that the way they overdid the starting hit points tended to nullify the increase in damage expression that was provided. How long it takes a character with awful\poor\lacking\average\better\good\excellent options to take out opponents with awful\poor\lacking\average\better\good\excellent defenses (including hit points) is something that ideally the game should support a viable range as wide as possible. When you reach the point where "can't even help", then that option isn't really on the table in play. And you probably will reach that well before you get to, say, awful NPC helper aiding against excellent opponent. A tighter scale of to hit bonuses will help, but not if the damage expressions and hit points aren't supporting that scale.

So I'd definitely want some serious attention paid to hit points and damage, and start both at least a little bit more off zero than something like 3E, if only for insurance. The ratio of how long it takes A to take out B will always be in the game. Make the real possibilities there as wide as possible.

Wizard attacks are only a convenient example of why this is so. If you want to make goblins and orcs and kobolds first level threats that continue to be threats in mass for some time, one of the easiest ways to accomplish that goal, right after slow scaling hit chances, is upping the base damage expression. Again, 4E got half of this right by giving such creatures enough hit points to hang around, but this led to grind for most people. Up the damage expression, they can get by with hit points between the 3E and 4E extremes (and scale slower to boot).

Moreover, you can have "secondary" damage effects with real bite, but still noticably lower than primary effects.

 

[Lanefan]

Find me someone ... [lots of stuff about skills] ... the effects in D&D are often subtle.

First off, you seem to be stuck in 3e mode and projecting that onto 5e. If the 3e skill system goes away (as I hope it will) then all of what you wrote in that example becomes moot.

Other than that I just don't see what you're getting at. What is there in the game that multiplies in such a way that a bonus of +6 vs. +0 vs. -3 presents any kind of problem? And, if there is no difference, why not keep the bonuses/penaitles as small as possible?

For combat, I would in fact posit that for all bonuses (and penalties) smaller is always better. If I'm fighting a foe that has 20 h.p.* and I'm doing a straight d8 every time I hit (thus on average I need 5 hits to put it down but it might only take 3 and could take 20 if I'm really unlucky), the math works much different than if the foe has 70 h.p. and I'm doing d8+10. On average I'll still put it down on 5 hits, but it's gonna take me at least 4 and can't possibly take more than 7. The actual die roll has become far less meaningful. To me, this is bad.

* - for these purposes let's assume death at 0 h.p. and ignore crits and fumbles.

Lan-"what determines the grind value is AC; how long it takes to get those 5 hits in"-efan

 

[Pyromantic]

As a starting point, I'm not entirely sure how the post you're responding to relates to damage scaling.

The point I'm suggesting is that identifying +1 magic weapons as "level 1" items is an example of starting too low. If a +1 magic weapon was a 3rd-to-5th level item, then you have design room for weaker items without resorting to a scale where items of the same level are of radically different power by design.

-KS

Ok. I missed the point that your issue was the level given to a +1 item rather than the impact a +1 item has on the way damage scaling worked. I think what you're identifying is a separate issue however, and one that has already been identified as something likely to change in Next.

 

[Minigiant]

One thing I dislike about starting at zero it it can make the dice roll too important. Gasp. Shock.

A trained fighter shouldn't miss an unarmored nameless commoner with a roll of 5 or higher. A ranger shouldn't fail to forage to food in a forest in the spring. A wizard shouldn't fail to read a basic cantrip without having to cast read magic. A random farmer should have a chance to survive 10 hits of a longsword.

I prefer skill and attack bonus to be a nice distance from the zero. +0 would be equivalent to the most pathetic individual with no knowledge of the task, improper tools, no knowledge of the tools needed, with no experience at the task. +0 should be something that is rare for actually PCs with only a few instances of such a bonus unless the player purpose forces it.

 

[Pyromantic]

I'm more interested in awareness of the problem than specific changes. In particular, I'm interested in not assuming that some possiblities won't work because of the way the math has been done in the past would make them not work. A completely new version is the only time you get to productively question such assumptions, after all.

That's fair. Options should definitely be considered.

I would suggest however that you underestimate the negative impact of scaling everything in this way. Keeping numbers smaller when possible does have an aesthetic appeal and an approachability factor, even in cases where it may not matter mathematically. Some people really hate the +1/2 level on 4E for the simple fact that they hate dealing with +20-something on die rolls all the time. May not make any difference for a lot of people, but some find it unwieldy.

I see 4th's changes to hit point and damage scaling at 1st level as an improvement, even if the way it progresses needs some work, but I'm not sure exactly what you want to do with it. Would you increase all stat modifiers, so that an "average" score of 10 gives something like a +5 modifier? Or are you saying that specific instances of game mechanics (like damage expressions or skill acquisition) should generally start on a larger scale?

I guess I'm saying that I don't see that what you're asking can be entirely removed from specifics. And given the history of changes in hit point/damage in 4th edition, and the fact that WotC has already openly discussed the question of starting hit points, I think this is certainly a consideration for them already.

 

[Hassassin]

One thing I dislike about starting at zero it it can make the dice roll too important. Gasp. Shock.

Somewhere a lonely mathematician dies every time someone repeats the idea that a smaller bonus makes the die roll more important.

A trained fighter shouldn't miss an unarmored nameless commoner with a roll of 5 or higher.

So any of the following would work:

Fighter has +0 to hit, commoner AC is 5.
Fighter has +5 to hit, commoner AC is 10.
Fighter has -5 to hit, commoner AC is 0.
Fighter has +100 to hit, commoner AC is 105.