High HP feel a little too high?

[keterys]

An example Striker that is slightly better used for damage (though by no means optimized):

Demigod / Battlefield Archer / Ranger, +6 Vicious Longbow
Manticore's Volley every round
60% chance to hit
3 attacks, 1W+Dex each, +1W if 2 hit, +2W if 3 hit
1W+Dex = 1d10 + 9 (Dex) + 6 (Enh) + 3 (Foc) = 23.5 avg, +6d12 on crits (67 avg), 1 in 12 hits is a crit (60% hit rate) so avg damage per hit is 27.13

6.4% chance of 0 hits, 33.6% chance of 1 hit, 38.4% chance of 2 hits, 21.6% chance of 3 hits, 3d8 Quarry is added in the 93.6% of rounds that have at least 1 hit

Average Damage per Round: 66.675
So 4 or 5 rounds to kill a 30th level monster, solo, at 30th using its Demigod "at-will".

Judging from the Efreet Karadjin it will also take the monster at least 4-5 rounds to kill the Ranger.

So that all seems reasonable.

Edit: Eh, forgot that the crits would maximize the quarry damage, so that's another 1.5 damage per round, but, whatever.

 

[Reaper Steve]

Tell the players I keep TPKing that they have too many hit points!
(In actuality, that's due to their complete incomprehension of how to work together and synergise effects. And my ability to open a hole in their line for the Hobgoblin Warcaster to get right in the middle of them and Force Pulse them all into the dirt!)

I will say that it seems like some of the lower level enemies seem to have too many hit points, like a regular kobold or even a level 2 human guard. But that goes back to the teamwork thing... if the party would focus it's efforts, they could drop an opponent or two around, even with high HP.

My new mantra is: "3.5 rewarded teamwork... 4E requires it!" But that's a topic for another post...

 

[Flazzy]

Judging from the card backs in Dungeons of Dread and Against the Giants, monsters had less HP in earlier versions of the game (especially at higher levels and elites and solos). I can't quite figure out how they calculated them, but some monsters used to have as few as 30-50% HP (Shadow Hulk, Young/Elder Red Dragon, Eye of Flame, Thunderblast Cyclone etc.). Looks to me like the playtests convinced the designers to up the HP (perhaps by too much).

 

[keterys]

They definitely upped hp considerably.

It's very disappointing that the RPG cards from Against the Giants are off, too. I mean, I expected DoDe, I hoped for DoDr, but c'mon... stupid round trip time on the manufacture in China.

 

[Falling Icicle]

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.

If a fight takes 20 rounds, you can assume the player probably makes 20 attacks, 21 if he spends an action point. So typically, even in such an extremely long encounter, the odds are the player will only crit once. If you assume there are 6 PCs, that's 6 crits typically that will occur in such an encounter. And 20 rounds is a pretty long encounter.

You also have to keep in mind that the value of a crit varies considerably depending on whether it was an at-will, encounter or daily attack that crit. Players only get about 10 total encounter and daily attack powers, so the odds are slim, even if they use every single encounter and daily they have in a fight, that one of those is going to crit. It's much more likely that an at-will power will crit, which has a much less significant effect.

But even being very generous and assuming that it is the Wizard's meteor swarm that happens to crit, and not a weaker power, you're only looking at gaining another 40 points of damage or so (MS's avg damage is 43, a crit does 63 damage plus whatever bonus the implement gives to crits, usually +6d6, for a typcial critical damage of 84. That's 41 extra damage over a typical MS hit. Divided up among the 20 rounds of the fight, that translates to only 2 extra damage per round. As I said, crits are, on average, statistically insignificant. And again, this is assuming MS crits, and not a weaker spell!

 

[MeMeMeMe]

If a fight takes 20 rounds, you can assume the player probably makes 20 attacks, 21 if he spends an action point. So typically, even in such an extremely long encounter, the odds are the player will only crit once. If you assume there are 6 PCs, that's 6 crits typically that will occur in such an encounter. And 20 rounds is a pretty long encounter.

In case you're interested, here's a more comprehensive look at the likelihood of criticals:

If a character makes 20 attacks, the chance he gets at least 2 criticals is 26%; he has a 7.5% chance of getting at least 3 criticals, and a 1.5% chance of getting at least 4 criticals.
(Those aren't cumulative; I've included in the chance of getting two criticals, the chance of getting 3 and more criticals as well.)

That said, there is also a 35% chance he won't get any criticals at all.

It averages out a bit more cleanly with multiple characters:
With 5 players, and 100 attacks, there's a 56% chance the group will get a total of 5 criticals or more, 38% chance they'll get 6 or more, a 23% chance of 7 or more, a 13% chance of 8 or more, a 6% chance of 9 or more, and a 3% chance of 10 or more.
Of course, there's also a 44% chance they'll get less than 5 criticals.

But the point is, in any given long fight, there's a good chance that players will get more than one critical, though in some of those fights, individual characters might get none.

 

[kouk]

I don't think players have excessive amounts of hit points. They have a large amount yes, but not compared to strong monsters. Monsters are fairly able to hit even the highest AC member of the party now, so the players will consistently be taking damage.

If you follow the guidelines exactly, at least at low levels, an appropriate level fight seems to drain the party of about 3-6 surges in my experience. That includes in-fight heals and out of fight uses. Upping the encounter even a little greatly improves the damage the PCs take.

I can't comment specifically about the DMG adventure because I haven't run it, but depending on all sorts of factors, your PCs may have done better or worse than expected by the encounter levels.


And as a tactical note; players really have to get used to rationing their Dailies and only using Encounters at the best moments. These are valuable resources (especially at low levels), and it is usually not to the party's benefit to simply use all their Encounter powers in the first couple of rounds and then be left with just At-Wills. Mixing the At-Wills with sound tactics and teamwork should be the majority of actions taken I would say, with Encounter powers used gradually over the course of the fight.

Dailies are good for "finishing" a fight more than starting one, so pulling out a huge burst of Dailies from everyone after the big bad is Bloodied is where you'll see the most benefit. Hitting for 15% of HP is not all that impressive sure -- but when the creature has already been reduced to about 25% of his hit points, suddenly 15% is much more noticeable.

Action Points should also be stored up a little bit, so you never run out when you actually need one.

With more practice everyone will get better at the system, and fights will make more sense.

 

[Runestar]

I am not sure how much you mean by having too much hp. Yes, the hp in 4e is heavily frontloaded, but only to help survivability. Considering how little hp you get at each additional level, it won't seem so great at lv10, much less at lv20 or 30.

 

[Stalker0]

As others have mentioned, that while yes an individuals chance of critting isn't that high, for the party the chances are pretty good.

For 5 players in a 4 round combat (which is short for 4e standards in my experience) the players should crit at least once. However, since we are considering high levels, we also have to factor in that there are epic feats that double crit ranges, and powers that often give temporary bonuses to crit ranges. Further, wizard spells often hit multiple creatures, greatly increasing the chance of a crit. I would bet the chances of critting at high levels is actually closer to 8% and not 5%.

That means you'll see about 3 crits over 8 rounds of combat, and if crits are doing around +35 damage or so, that's an extra 100 damage from crits alone.

One thing that has not really been talked about in this analysis are the parties encounter powers. Its fair to not look at dailies, as you can't assume a party is going to use them for any given fight (though I would think a solo would increase the likelihood). However, we should expect every player to use every encounter power in any given fight. I'm curious to see is someone wants to take on the challenge of seeing how much damage players kick out when you consider the high level encounter powers.

 

[theNater]

Magic Missile, for example, would go from 2d4 + 5 (avg 10) to 4d4 + 15 (avg. 25) damage.

But even being very generous and assuming that it is the Wizard's meteor swarm that happens to crit, and not a weaker power, you're only looking at gaining another 40 points of damage or so (MS's avg damage is 43, a crit does 63 damage plus whatever bonus the implement gives to crits, usually +6d6, for a typcial critical damage of 84. That's 41 extra damage over a typical MS hit.

Go back to considering Magic Missile to be one round's worth of damage. So, at level 30, one round's worth of damage is about 12.5(25 divided by 2 to account for the chance of missing). 6d6 averages to 21. So a successful crit is nearly two rounds worth of damage. Let's cut it back to one round, on the grounds that sometimes we won't get to apply full damage because we killed the enemy with it. Under that assumption, every critical hit shortens the combat by at least one round. Given that the length of combats is what we're discussing here, that is not insignificant.

Divided up among the 20 rounds of the fight, that translates to only 2 extra damage per round.

Meteor Swarm does an average of 43 damage, as you say. But a character only gets to use it once per day. If we divide it up over a day with 40 rounds of combat, it's barely doing 1 damage per round. Does that mean it is insignificant?