Narrow the gap between multiattacks and many-dice single attacks

[SabreCat]

Totally half-baked idea here...

Ability mod is the only damage bonus that can “stack” within a single action. When present, it multiplies by the number of dice in the hit.

Multiple attacks in the same action always add dice to a final pool that is rolled together. A crit on an individual attack maximizes that die and other damage dice from outside the power (Hunter’s Quarry, Horned Helm, etc.) and adds crit dice. Multiple crits in the same action maximize more dice but don’t add bonus crit dice again.

Simple examples:
Ranger Dude attacks with Twin Strike and hits twice. He has a +1 weapon, Hunter’s Quarry, and no other damage adds. Since TS doesn’t include an ability mod, he deals 2[W]+1+Quarry damage.

Barbarian Dude hits with a five-die Rage Strike. He has a Strength mod of +5 and a +2 weapon. He deals 5[W] + 5*(Str mod) + 2 = 5[W]+27 damage.

Complicated examples:
Uber Ranger Dude attacks a prone target with a blistering six-attack combo benefiting from Headsman’s Chop, Hunter’s Quarry, and his +4 weapon, but no ability mod. He hits four times, including two crits. He rolls 2[W] damage and his bonus crit dice, and adds (maximized 2[W]) + (maximized Hunter’s Quarry) + 4 (enh) + 5 (Headsman’s Chop).

Frost Barbarian, with his Frost weapon and Lasting Frost, takes a double attack action that deals 2[W]+Str per hit, hitting both times and critting once. He rolls 2[W] damage and his bonus crit dice, and adds (maximized 2[W]) + (4 * Str mod) + (weapon enhancement). The enemy is now cold-vulnerable, so he uses an action point and uses the same power again, hitting twice. He rolls 4[W] damage and adds (4 * Str mod) + (weapon enhancement) + (cold vulnerability).

 

[the Jester]

I strongly suspect that damage bonuses applying to multiattack powers more than once and to multi-dice attack powers only once is intentional and a part of the 4e balancing act.

Have you seen a real problem here that you're trying to fix with this? If so, what?

I haven't seen the need.

 

[SabreCat]

I strongly suspect that damage bonuses applying to multiattack powers more than once and to multi-dice attack powers only once is intentional and a part of the 4e balancing act.

Have you seen a real problem here that you're trying to fix with this? If so, what?

If intentional, it's not an intention I much care for. Attack powers that roll lots of dice look attractive, enticing players with lower system mastery to take them... but when compared to anything that instead attacks more than once, they swiftly lose out. It's why Twin Strike is the game's most damaging at-will; you can often expect to dish out more damage with a single Twin Strike than you can with a many-dice daily power.

CharOp will give you much more detail than I can succinctly provide, but here's a quick illustration. Let's suppose we're attacking with a 75% hit chance, critting on 20 for +3d6, rolling d10s for damage, and have +10 in static damage bonuses: say, a +5 attack stat, +3 weapon, and +2 Focus.

A 4[W] single attack is expected to do:
.7 * (5.5 * 4 + 10) chance of normal hit, 22.4 expected
+ .05 * (40 + (3.5 * 3) + 10) chance of crit, 3.025 expected
for a total average damage of 25.425.

Compare to making two attacks of 2[W] each:
.7 * (5.5 * 2 + 10) chance of normal hit, 14.7 expected
+ .05 * (20 + (3.5 * 3) + 10) chance of crit, 2.025 expected
all times 2 makes an expected damage of 33.45.

That's already clearly superior. What if instead you flailed away with four attacks at 1[W] each?
.7 * (5.5 + 10) chance of normal hit, 10.85 expected
+ .05 * (10 + (3.5 * 3) + 10) chance of crit, 1.525 expected
all times 4 makes an expected damage of 49.5 -- nearly double what you'd get out of a single big attack!

Even if you make the 1[W] attack barrage Twin Strike-like, taking away the ability mod damage, it still beats the 4[W] attack by 9 points. I don't like that--Rage Strikes and their ilk should be mechanically impressive to go with the feeling of power from rolling buckets of dice. (Granted, I didn't include miss damage above, but if you give the multi[W] power some miss damage, it only boosts it by around 4 points expected.) Right now, multiattack beats multi[W] too easily, so I'm tinkering with ideas for how to narrow the gap.

 

[the Jester]

Sure, but you usually don't have two power choices at the same level whose only difference is "two attacks for 1[W] or one attack for 2[W]"... at least I don't think so.

However, I'll admit that I'm a dm and hardly ever a player, so I might be totally wrong about this.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Sure, but you usually don't have two power choices at the same level whose only difference is "two attacks for 1[W] or one attack for 2[W]"... at least I don't think so.

Rangers pretty much have that choice every single level. Other classes have the occasional opportunity, and every time they're offered it if they're aiming for damage-dealing the multi-attack power is always far superior to other options.

It's a problem, but sabrecat's solution doesn't really help because ability mod is only a fraction of static bonuses. Hell, twin strike doesn't even add ability mod at all and it's still extremely powerful.

 

[SabreCat]

It's a problem, but sabrecat's solution doesn't really help because ability mod is only a fraction of static bonuses. Hell, twin strike doesn't even add ability mod at all and it's still extremely powerful.

There's two parts to the idea, though: +Ability mod per [W] for non-multiattacks, and static bonuses only applying once per action (per target, I suppose; Twin Striking two different enemies isn't as big a deal). Shouldn't the latter make a difference with what you mention?

 

[Saeviomagy]

There's two parts to the idea, though: +Ability mod per [W] for non-multiattacks, and static bonuses only applying once per action (per target, I suppose; Twin Striking two different enemies isn't as big a deal). Shouldn't the latter make a difference with what you mention?

Ah, you're totally right: I missed the summing dice thing because your complicated examples confused me .

But rereading, I think I get it. And your solution fixes the problem ok.

Personally I don't think that stacking up ability mod is necessary: once you've eradicated the duplication of static bonuses on multi-w attacks, the problem is gone.

My personal fave (that I've never actually used) is to say "static bonuses apply once per foe per turn". That fixes not only multi-[w] attacks, but also the berserk wierdness the CO board can get out of stuff like melee-magic-missiling a target 10 times in a round (the build is currently dead because of the revisions to magic missile, but could conceivably be remade if wizards got a basic attack spell that rolled dice IIRC).

It also somewhat improves the value of attacks which hit multiple targets (which are currently considered to be overly weak).

It does however result in a net reduction in damage overall (because most strikers should be making use of minor action and free action attacks), so it might need to be compensated for.

 

[Gorgoroth]

no no no no

Limiting all untyped to 1/round bonuses would nerf even combat advantage's +2 to-hit bonus for rangers, multi-attacking barbarians, anyone using an action point, etc. removing that would seriously kill the game for so many classes it's not even funny.

If you, as a DM, dislike rangers getting frost bonuses more than 1/round, disallow frost weapons in the game, problem solved. Any DM can do that, it's really easy! Or, just give the player ONE frost weapon. See how that works?

Imagine taking an archer ranger and telling him his archery bracers only work once instead of 5-6 times per round using a Daily. Hmmm, not gonna fly man. How about weapon focus? Might as well nerf feat bonuses to 1/round too, since getting benefits multiple times is so unfair to you. It's how the class works. It's how 4e works. Hate rangers? Play something other than D&D. Trust me, you will find other instances of players benefiting from stacking bonuses (in this case, it's by design. It's SUPPOSED to work that way).

Twin Strike is not the most damaging at-will in the game, the highest DPR is a riposte-striking rogue. The rogue in our party is consistently out-damaging me, and I'm a fairly optimal ranger (no frost cheese though). He charges and does like 8d8 on an encounter power. I'd need to blow Blade Cascade daily at level 15 to get more DPR than his one encounter power, at level 11.

Just quit it with trying to fudge the game, there are problems with the game but they aren't related to getting bonuses twice. E.g. ranger takes Exotic weapon prof, his damage benefit is twice as good as a guy who only uses one such weapon. Yeah, but it costs him twice as much. Not everyone plays in munchkin territory land and can buy double frost weapons all the time. They are uncommon items, and thus the DM can either give them out or not. By paragon, you want your strikers to be hitting harder.

The rogue holds his own quite nicely on the DPR front, especially with charging...

Players are not doing ENOUGH damage compared with monster HP by paragon and epic. Look it up...you have to stay very optimized according to the current rules to avoid TPKs or massive grind.

Reduce the static mods to 1/round and you kill the will to action points for the whole party...think about it : it's the Wrong Thing to Do (tm). A higher W weapon proficiency benefiting your off hand is almost the same as a Two-Weapon fighting. Will you nerf that power too? It's an untyped bonus, giving you +1 to both main and offhand attacks. Whoops, your nerf invalidates half the ranger and barbarians powers, feats, items, etc.

I bet it will also have unintended side-effects for other classes too. Sorcerer static mods? Yay, way to make them even LESS powerful. You can't implement that house rule without breaking the game.

 

[Saeviomagy]

So... I hear you play a ranger gorgoroth...

I wrote that line in jest and then read through your post again and realised that you do!

Anyway - I wouldn't be altering hit bonuses: they benefit single large attacks at the same rate as multiple attacks. The issue that this rule tries to address is that static bonuses are worth far more to specific powers and classes than to others. So I'll restate the more corrrect version "static damage bonuses only apply once per turn per foe". And yes, that includes weapon focus.

Most of the rest of what you say is just... wrong. APs aren't affected: you still do more damage blowing an AP than not blowing an AP.

A riposte striking rogue is boosting 2 stats for his attacks (he needs dex for the primary and str for secondary) and only gets the damage if his foe attacks him.

If you're not beating the party rogue on DPR then you're probably not making heavy use of static damage boosts, so this house rule would not affect you. If his super duper charge attack doesn't have a noticeable static damage mod, it's not going to affect him either.

The relationship of player damage to monster hitpoint totals isn't really anything to do with this. I also don't think it's an issue at all.

 

[SabreCat]

For my part, I'm thinking boosting many-dice attacks using the multiplied attribute part of the idea may be more palatable to most and easier to calculate (whether at build/level-up time or on the fly) than the 1/action static mod nerf. I'd have to dig a lot deeper into the numbers to figure out how successful it is at narrowing the gap as per the post title, but it does something for the "Twin Strike hits harder than a 9[W] daily" issue.

I'm amused at the rage that comes out whenever a multiattack nerf is suggested, though. Charging and multiattacking may be the only effective damage strategies at the moment, but I don't get why this is considered a good thing. If I did tone down multiattacks, sure, maybe I'd need to reduce monster HP at the upper levels or something--you're not going to solve the systemic goof (I don't think R&D ever intended this state of affairs), but you can mitigate it some.