High HP feel a little too high?

[Plane Sailing]

Yes and no. I did run my group through the adventure against the 4th level dragon, and that battle alone literally took 4 hours. After blowing their one daily and one encounter spell, the rest of the fight was just flinging at-wills, and it got really boring. And this was a very low level fight. I haven't played a high level game yet, but the math speaks for itself.

Honestly, this is not the best platform to base your assertion that the math is all broken, now is it?

1st level characters have one encounter spell, one daily spell, no magic items... it is a worst case situation for them.

I would hesitate to comment on how well thought out (or otherwise) it might be until I'd played a number of paragon and epic encounters too - The extra damage from crits with magic items, the extra powers of some magic items, the wider range of encounter and daily powers, each of which do more damage... You really need to consider factoring these in order to understand how well the maths stands up in the whole game.

Cheers

 

[Falling Icicle]

Honestly, this is not the best platform to base your assertion that the math is all broken, now is it?

I obviously shouldn't have answered that bait question, but you shouldn't be so eager to dismiss my arguments. I have been playing RPGs a very long time, and I have played enough of 4e to have a pretty good grasp on how it works. If nobody were allowed to comment on anything unless they've actually used it in play themselves, these boards would be pretty empty. Have you ever commented on a race, class, spell, ability, item, etc that you haven't actually used in play? Of course you have. Now, if someone has had experience with that, great, I'd love to hear from them. But I'm not going to keep all of my thoughts to myself simply because I haven't.

1st level characters have one encounter spell, one daily spell, no magic items... it is a worst case situation for them.

I would hesitate to comment on how well thought out (or otherwise) it might be until I'd played a number of paragon and epic encounters too - The extra damage from crits with magic items, the extra powers of some magic items, the wider range of encounter and daily powers, each of which do more damage... You really need to consider factoring these in order to understand how well the maths stands up in the whole game.

Crits happen a mere 5% of the time. They're a very, very rare occurance. As for the powers of magic items, one of 4e's stated design goals is that a character's own abilities far outweigh those of his toys, and it shows. Most magic items in 4e are really very unimpressive. Those that do have a decent power are usually only able to invoke it once per day. The consistent bonus from implements is the main thing that matters, and I included it in my calculations. And as for encounter and daily powers, I already adressed those as well. When the hardest hitting damaging spell wizards have usually doesn't even deal double the damage of magic missile, yeah, I don't think the whopping 5 or 6 daily spells you can pull out of your hat each day are going to swing the results by THAT much, do you?

 

[Belphanior]

Crits happen a mere 5% of the time. They're a very, very rare occurance.

Eh? A party of five PCs launches about seven attacks per round; one each, except for ranger and wizard who probably get two. This is very simplified and ignores action points and massive dailies that target a lot more. Statistically speaking I expect a crit from the PCs alone about every other round. Because the chance of not getting any crit after 14 attacks is (.95^14*100) 48%. In three rounds it's only a 34% chance.

The monsters perform roughly the same, so... there's more or less a crit in it every round. I'm sure a super-statistician will be along soon to provide the exact numbers.


Anyway, whatever the hardcore math may be, it's not a very very rare occurance. It should happen several times each combat.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

I wanted to look at this. For example purposes, I'll use a 30th level warlock(as a striker with "standardized" damage, rather than weapon damage) who is focusing on damage. Going infernal pact, life-stealer paragon path, eternal seeker epic destiny(but still using only warlock powers). A 16 con, 14 int and 13 cha at level 1, boosting con every chance and alternating between int and cha ends up with 24 con(+7), 19 int(+4), and 18 cha(+4). Use a +6 Rod of Reaving. Encounter and at-will powers only. Assume a monster with 280 hit points(1/5 of red dragon's 1400). Note that average curse damage is 10.5. Calculations are in the spoiler block.
[sblock]Round 1: Curse for 6 damage. Then Hellfire Curse. Average on 5d10 is 27.5, so average damage for a hit is 27.5+10.5+7+4+6=55. Divide in half for 50% chance to hit, then add the 6 guaranteed, and we get 33.5 for the first round.

Round 2: Spiteful Darts, average on 4d8 is 18, so 18+10.5+7+6=41.5, halved for 20.75.

Round 3: Warlock's Bargain, average on 3d10 is 16.5, so 16.5+10.5+7+15+6=55, halved for 27.5.

Round 4: Soul Scorch, average on 3d8 is 13.5, so 13.5+10.5+7+6=37, halved for 18.5.

Subsequent rounds: Eldritch Bolt, average on 2d10 is 11, 11+10.5+7+6=34.5, so average 14.25 per round with it.

280-33.5-20.75-27.5-18.5=179.75. 179.75/14.25 is about 12.6. So 12 or 13 rounds of using at-wills, 16 to 17 rounds total.

Note that a critical with Eldritch Bolt does an average of 20+18+7+6+27(average for 6d8)=78 damage, which is over 5 rounds worth of damage. The chance of critting at least once in 10 rounds is about 40%, and a successful crit makes the combat about 10-12 rounds long, or shorter if the crit occured with a stronger power.[/sblock]
For a warlock attacking a single creature and expending no daily resources, it takes 10-17 rounds to defeat it. There are any number of things the warlock can do to speed that up(Bracers of the Perfect Shot, for example, can reasonably trim two rounds from that, while an action point provides eternal seekers with two bonus actions).

Why arent you adding in damage bonus for a magical implament? For a +6 rod you are supposed to get a +6 to every damage roll.

EDIT: You also arent factoring in Hellish Rebuke. Its impossible to acurately predict the damage output, but for a possible 4d6+2con in comparison to just 2d10+con, there is a diffirence that should be noted, especialy for an Infernal Pact warlock.

 

[Byronic]

Has anybody ever tried just cutting everyones HP in half? PC's and Mobs? that might speed combat up quite a bit in lower levels. Or maybe something you'd inplement at level 15 or some other level.

 

[theNater]

Crits happen a mere 5% of the time. They're a very, very rare occurance.

5% is, as you know, one-in-twenty. Given a group of 5 characters, each making one attack roll per round, we'd expect one crit every four rounds. In an 8-10 round combat, it would be very surprising not to see two or three crits. With the massive damage a crit can do, especially at high levels, we can't just write them off as negligible.

When the hardest hitting damaging spell wizards have usually doesn't even deal double the damage of magic missile, yeah, I don't think the whopping 5 or 6 daily spells you can pull out of your hat each day are going to swing the results by THAT much, do you?

I do. Let's say that Magic Missile does one round worth of damage, and that the damage on Meteor Swarm is double that on Magic Missile(it's a little less when they both hit, but if we give Meteor Swarm a boost for doing damage on a miss, double is a reasonable approximation). So if Meteor Swarm is used on one target, the combat is one round shorter. If it is used on two targets, the combat is three rounds shorter. And we get an additional two rounds of combat effectiveness for each enemy in the area of effect. A single well-placed Meteor Swarm can make a standard fight against five enemies take 9 fewer rounds.

I count that as significant.

 

[theNater]

Why arent you adding in damage bonus for a magical implament? For a +6 rod you are supposed to get a +6 to every damage roll.

My calculations were in the form (average damage roll)+(average curse damage)+(ability modifier)+(special power bonus, if any)+(implement). There's no second +6 from the property of the Rod of Reaving because a curse cannot be placed on an already cursed target.

EDIT: You also arent factoring in Hellish Rebuke. Its impossible to acurately predict the damage output, but for a possible 4d6+2con in comparison to just 2d10+con, there is a diffirence that should be noted, especialy for an Infernal Pact warlock.

I used Eldritch Blast precisely because it can be accurately predicted. Using Hellish Rebuke and ensuring the bonus damage is another thing the warlock can do to speed up the process.

 

[Dormain1]

thank you thenater and minigiant for the number crunching

if we can assume that minigiants numbers are correct 25 + levelx5 HP so that's 5-7 hits to kill with at wills and basic attacks. 10-15 hits for elites, and near 40 for solos. Encounters and dailies shave off I'd say 3 hits a piece is that what we want?

how about player hp and monster damage

can we say average 25 hp add in a second wind which means a minion can kill a PC in about 10 hits

what # of rds do we think is a good encounter? how many resources(dailys, equipment) should get used?

for me between 6 and 10 rds would be good using about 20% of resources which would give about 6 combats a day this is for an average encounter a harder would take longer and use more resources, non favorable encounters again would use more

 

[Plane Sailing]

I obviously shouldn't have answered that bait question, but you shouldn't be so eager to dismiss my arguments.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to appear dismissive.

Of course we comment on stuff based on our general experiences all the time (a quick look at any of my posts shows I'm very happy to do so!).

I was just struck that your original post seemed to completely dismiss the maths on the basis of one, potentially corner-case scenario.

My experience of running the black dragon fight in 'raiders of oakhurst' sounds very similar to yours, and amounted to a pretty boring grind. However, when I ran it the pregens which were used in 'raiders of Oakhurst' suffered from not having any optimised strikers (no rogue, the ranger didn't have twin strike, and warlocks are probably the least damaging of strikers) - and also suffered from the dragon defences being too high, which meant more whiffing.

The adventures I've run since then haven't had this problem, and although I was worried about the possibility of a 106hp 'Iron Tooth' being a bit of a grind it didn't turn out to be - he had plenty of staying power, but was taken down about 4-5 attacks after he was bloodied.

I'm looking forward to seeing how things work out with higher level combats, with fights with solos, and with magic items coming into the mix - especially since, as others have pointed out, crits aren't too rare in combat as a whole now.

Cheers

 

[Bluewyrm]

They can run long, or they can run short...

Depending on how many Dailies the players have already used that day.

We can all pretty much look at the numbers and see that our "at-will" damage won't stack nearly as quickly as the enemies HP (or even the players' HP). But I feel what many people are failing to include in their calculations is the players' Dailies and Encounters. As players go up in level, they not only get more powerful Dailies and Encounters, they get more of them.

So really, Solo and Brute battles can be done pretty "timely" if players didn't foolishly waste all of their Dailies in earlier encounters.

Yes, this can definitely be a problem. Yes, I definitely think is a design flaw. Really, I hate any mechanic whatsoever that encourages resting after every encounter. Still, even sticking with RAW, there are still ways of dealing with this...

Give players ample warning there is a "boss" fight coming up.
Have the "boss" monsters show up early in the "adventuring day" rather than later.
Discourage players from wasting Dailies in earlier encounters with helpful hints from PCs, graphic description of "overkill" death-blows to enemies, or even have the players "notice" the enemies sending opponents after them in "waves" to try and draw out their resources (make up some kind of Insight roll or something). In other words, try and "teach" your players the right way of doing things.

Or screw the RAW and use some kind of mechanic that allows "Dailies" to be more like "Encounters".