So, about defenses aka. PHB2 defenses feats

[DracoSuave]

While I get what you're saying, the math doesn't include damage outlay from the monsters vs player's non-numerical defenses (hp, resistace, etc), and doesn't include things like standard tactics, player powers that are designed to disrupt tactics, etc. 'A monster hits on a 2' doesn't mean anything in a vacuum. 'A monster hits on a 2 and instakills your level 30 character' is a far more holistic statement, and not what I'm getting from this.

Take a wizard for example.

At level 1, he's got 10+Con hps, and monsters can typically do enough to knock him below blooded in a single hit. However, these same monsters have a lesser chance to hit, normally +6 vs an AC that can easily be 16. It's hard to get more precise than that without a definitive Con score, but assuming a con of 14, that's 24 hitpoints. Goblin Warrior, can easily get +6 to hit vs AC, doing 2d6+2 or 9 points on average.

This makes a DPR of 4.5, and an 'Attacks Until Unconscious' for the wizard of 24/4.5 or 5.33 rounds. The lower this is, the higher the relative damage (or threat) of an attack, making that attack have a damage-threat value of 19%.

This same wizard at level 30 will have 130 hps. He'll have +6 armor, +2 from masterwork, +4 from attribute bonuses, and +15 from level, for a total of +27 to 16, or 43 AC.

Orcus has his wand of Orcus, which does 3d12+12 damage for +37 to hit. This means it deals 31.5 average damage with a roll of 6 or higher. 6 or higher means a 75% chance to hit, meaning the DPR of this at-will is 23.625. The threat value of this is 23.625/130 or... 18%.

So... the threat of a level 1 sharpshooter's at-will to a level 1 character is for all practical purposes the same as the threat of a level 35 solo's at-will to a level 30 character... provided you ignore the powers that character has at the ready.

It isn't the chance to hit of a monster that is important. It's the chance to hit and the damage it does -relative to the hps of the target- that actually matters.

This is what I mean by the statement that examining the to-hit mechanics alone are not enough to get the right picture.

 

[Bayuer]

'A monster hits on a 2' doesn't mean anything in a vacuum. 'A monster hits on a 2 and instakills your level 30 character' is a far more holistic statement, and not what I'm getting from this.

It's not in a vacum, it's an attack roll versus your PC NAD that will autohit you and make you stunned/dominated and you can't do nothing now.

So... the threat of a level 1 sharpshooter's at-will to a level 1 character is for all practical purposes the same as the threat of a level 35 solo's at-will to a level 30 character... provided you ignore the powers that character has at the ready.

Wy on earth you take powers that hit AC! We don't talk about that. We talking about the NADs and attack versus them and attack rolls of players vs. AC and NADs (that actualy are the same). Anyway what logic is behind comparing normal monster (skirmisher) to Orcus (SOLO BRUTE!)? His dmg is much higher than normal monster, and his attack is much lower. I see you were trying to prove you 'monster threat scales at level' but it is worthless prove. Monsters have auras that make them better and can inflict effects. It's not just a flat damage! Anyone who plays 4E at higher level knows that.

Look at Orcus Touch of Dead (recharge 6) power:
+ 33 vs. Fortitude (when he hits you, you die)
High DEF - 41 (hited on 8 on die), Middle DEF - 38 (hited on 5 on die), Lowest DEF - 33 (hited on 2 on die).

Yeah. That looks damn fine to me!

It isn't the chance to hit of a monster that is important. It's the chance to hit and the damage it does -relative to the hps of the target- that actually matters.
This is what I mean by the statement that examining the to-hit mechanics alone are not enough to get the right picture.

Player's gain levels and gain more power. They have more options now. The monsters gain levels too, gains more power, but your option as DM are lesser, couse you don't want kill your party! You can't make as challanging options for monsters as the player's have. Higher your level, lowest the options for monster are.

Anyway thx for ignorig my sample encounter from last post! You have there a easy sample what can monsters hitting NADs do, and what? No arguments how this isn't right? It's not a threat? It's overpowered?

 

[monboesen]

It isn't the chance to hit of a monster that is important. It's the chance to hit and the damage it does -relative to the hps of the target- that actually matters.

This is what I mean by the statement that examining the to-hit mechanics alone are not enough to get the right picture.

IMO this boils down to the point that the game may well be designed to make high level monsters hit much more often than low level monsters. Assuming they face level appropiate PC's.


The likely explanation is that PC's are better suited to dealing with getting hit and hurt a LOT at higher levels. Look at epic destinies, several of them assume that you routinely die one or more times a day.


In that perspective it is not a flaw that some monsters will have a trivially easy time hitting PC's, it is a feature. Part of the way the game subtly changes with levels and tiers.


Disclaimer: Just like most of the posts in this thread this is pure theorycraft as I have not played any 4ed at epic levels yet.

 

[Bayuer]

IMO this boils down to the point that the game may well be designed to make high level monsters hit much more often than low level monsters. Assuming they face level appropiate PC's.

No it isn't! Look above examples.

 

[Thundershield]

No it isn't! Look above examples.

Bayuer does have a point here. While it's okay - at least for some players - that high-level monsters hit the players more often, it does get problematic when NADs fall so much behind that a given defense becomes irrelevant as the monster can only miss on a 1 (and even then only 'cause a natural 1 is an auto-miss).

It takes the whole point of having that defense out of the game. 4E is built around the idea of maintaining a challenge in any given dice roll, as opposed to 3.5 where a 6th-level Fighter/6th-level Dwarven Defender might have an AC around 50, making it impossible for anything to hit him.

To maintain a challenge, there has to be a decent chance for the roll to fail as well as a decent chance for the roll to succeed. I'm not necessarily talking about a 50/50, but at least a 30% for either should persist on a regular basis. It's fine if a power or temporary bonus brings this as low as 10% for failure or success, or possibly even 5% if it's very temporary, but beyond that the point of a given roll becomes a mere formality, the random chance that this roll represents taken out of the game.

I've been considering increasing the way masterwork armor scales (possibly even having masterwork cloth armor at +2) and also make amulets/cloaks/capes and the like have masterwork versions, but I must admit that the idea of giving players +1 to three stats at levels 4, 8, 14, etc. also sounds very interesting.

It would, however, be good to know the developers' view on the problem. Are the PH2 feats just a temporary solution? Are they the final solution? How will this problem affect future content? Is it a problem to them?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred
Skill feat is just only pseudo-roleplay feat option in game. Linguist may be better and that's it. We don't talk about skill use couse it will need another thread when we can discuss about it's broken ST ie. Skill Challange. Stop making an examples of roleplaying combat consequences, couse it's not the fact, and almost none use such a fights in they games, couse 4E is mostly about attack rolls and damage rolls.

Dude, I think you need to get out more and play in some games with DMs that are not so stuck on hack hack hack. You're missing 3/4 of the goodness of 4e if your games are 'mostly about attack rolls and damage rolls'. The rules looks skewed to you because you are only playing half a character.

I don't know what broken skill challenge you are talking about. Skill challenges work perfectly fine with the errata. There is NOTHING wrong with them. Just like encounter design, you have to make sure the challenge is properly designed. Is the combat system broken because an adult dragon will eat a 3rd level party? No, and neither is the skill challenge system broken because you can make impossible or auto success challenges.

And no, I am not going to stop making examples of roleplaying combat consequences because it IS one of the key things you are missing in your understanding of the numbers. Sorry, that is just the way it is. I'm not going to argue with you endlessly about, but you need to factor into your understanding of character balance the full choices players have. Your analysis is flawed if you don't take everything into account.

The truth of the matter is that the DMG encounter guidelines ARE just guidelines. A DM can make very bad encounters and follow the guidelines. I think we all know that. What I am suggesting is that if a DM is good and they understand all the things that must go into an epic level encounter to make it a good encounter, then well rounded characters can always have fun.

In your Kuo-Toa example the Barbarian should be able to use skills to help defeat the enemy. Maybe there is terrain he can use to only fight one monster. Party teamwork will help him too. The cleric can give him extra saves, the paladin can make the one monster he faces want to go fight someone else, etc. The encounter should also have a way for the Barbarian to use his big athletics skill to defeat the kuo-toa. Maybe he can push a rock onto them, or he can go past them to tip a container of acid on them, etc. There should be moving terrain or other terrain effects so he can keep away from their attacks if the player will use his head and not only hack with a weapon.

Now the PHB II feats let him also have the choice to boost his weak defense. Maybe he has a potion to do that too. If all numbers to hit are always close to a certain number then all he needs to learn to do is hack. The game is not any longer about anything except DPR and defenses and status effects. It is not so much fun.

The math is only broken if the RESULT of using the math is broken. If you use an example of a broken encounter with no stunting opportunity and no terrain factored in then it is the example that is unrealistic, not broken math. If the DM makes an encounter like that, it is a broken DM, not broken math!

There are other considerations too. Epic is not like heroic or paragon tiers. It should not be the same. If all levels play the same, then why have levels at all? Monsters WILL hit a lot more on the epic level of play. It is supposed to be that way. Once you hit high epic level there are also no more higher level monsters to fight. The equal level monsters now must be stronger vs the party because there is no level + 4 monster anymore at 27th level, no level + 3 monster at 28th level, not even a level + 1 monster (except Orcus) at 30th level.

Weak NADs are a feature of epic play. If the players are good then they will adapt to win.

 

[monboesen]

No it isn't! Look above examples.

Honestly I'm confused now. Isn't it your argument that NAD trail behind as levels fly by and that at high (epic) levels some attacks will almost always hit your weakest NAD?


All I'm saying is that your theory of faulty math isn't the only one. It could be that the game is designed with increased hitting of NAD as a goal, not a flaw.


There is no doubt characters are far more capable to deal with both damage and status effects at higher levels. As such the group of PC's will not be as hindered by being stunned/other nasty status effect or even killed as they would have been at low level.

 

[Thundershield]

Now the PHB II feats let him also have the choice to boost his weak defense. Maybe he has a potion to do that too. If all numbers to hit are always close to a certain number then all he needs to learn to do is hack. The game is not any longer about anything except DPR and defenses and status effects. It is not so much fun.

The math is only broken if the RESULT of using the math is broken. If you use an example of a broken encounter with no stunting opportunity and no terrain factored in then it is the example that is unrealistic, not broken math. If the DM makes an encounter like that, it is a broken DM, not broken math!

There are other considerations too. Epic is not like heroic or paragon tiers. It should not be the same. If all levels play the same, then why have levels at all? Monsters WILL hit a lot more on the epic level of play. It is supposed to be that way. Once you hit high epic level there are also no more higher level monsters to fight. The equal level monsters now must be stronger vs the party because there is no level + 4 monster anymore at 27th level, no level + 3 monster at 28th level, not even a level + 1 monster (except Orcus) at 30th level.

Weak NADs are a feature of epic play. If the players are good then they will adapt to win.

Apologies for cutting your post in half for the quotation, but to stay on topic, I jumped to the part about attack rolls and defenses.

While you do have a point in your arguments, I can't say I agree with it. At no point in the game should the attack rolls of monsters (or players for that matter) be reduced to check for the off-chance you might miss or crit (on a natural 1 or 20, respectively), with the exception of temporary boosts.

And while it is true that you can boost your lowest defenses with the PH2 feats, there's little point to it. Given that your lowest defense is around 33 at level 30, even a +4 feat bonus will only raise the chance a monster will miss you to around 15%. That's effectively only a 10% increase, since the miss chance will always be at least 5%. Sure that's a nice bonus, but you'll rarely notice it in the game compared to getting hit all the time when fighting something targeting your weakest defense.

And then you say that the DM shouldn't abuse the math - as in, he shouldn't use monsters or hazards that target a given player's weakest defense? Given that a party has about 4-5 players, odd are pretty good that each defense will be low on at least one player, so the DM can't use any monsters targeting anything but AC?

You could argue that getting hit all the time is a feature of epic play, but several elements suggest otherwise. Why not simply give the monster auto-hit abilities, then? Saves us the dice-rolling... Although auto-hitting might be a bit nasty for something like Orcus' insta-kill ability, no?

Anyway, I do think balancing the game around maintaining decent hit and miss chances for most any roll is better for the overall experience of the game than simply ascribing this as a "feature" of the game and letting it be.

As for skills and skill challenges, and roleplaying, they're definitely integral and important parts of the game too. They're just not issues in this thread and thus should be discussed in other threads.

 

[Bayuer]

And no, I am not going to stop making examples of roleplaying combat consequences because it IS one of the key things you are missing in your understanding of the numbers. Sorry, that is just the way it is. I'm not going to argue with you endlessly about, but you need to factor into your understanding of character balance the full choices players have. Your analysis is flawed if you don't take everything into account.

No you analysis is flawed. Roleplay don't have ANY impact on game math! Well maybe giving +2/-2 for nice description and that's in core rules. You still missing the point. RP is nice thing. You made wrong assumptions that I'm hack and slash player. Man. Even if I will be that doesn't change/proove antything. I can say my barbarian has weak REF and he is clumsy, when my REF is low. But not make it as an example o RP imapct on game. He will be hitted in his REF on roll on 2! What RP is that. Monster Attack his REF... ups 2 on die, you'r lucky... no wait. It's hit. Your REF sucks! You are dazed untit the end of encounter and if you'r so RP player that means that it's the only encounter on that session. <BIG SMILE> Yeah, that sounds like a lot o fun for RP players! Uff... it's so good that the player's a clumsy character. There's nothing wrong now. There may be some player's who don't mind this, but... This isn't a standard situation we are talking about. So please, make as many arguments as you, can, but please... <b>arguments</b>.

Even when you use you RP power to make combat much flawed, and you let players drop death titan from cliff you will still use... the math! Skill check, that will say if you succed or not. And this is again so, so not very offten in games, that can't be treaten as big factor that makes game balanced. It's rare and occasional thus --> not important in terms of game balance.

The truth of the matter is that the DMG encounter guidelines ARE just guidelines. A DM can make very bad encounters and follow the guidelines. I think we all know that. What I am suggesting is that if a DM is good and they understand all the things that must go into an epic level encounter to make it a good encounter, then well rounded characters can always have fun.

That doesn't proove anything too. Firstly, he can't avoid autohitting the PCs NADs, couse wizard will have bad FOR, barb DEX, and someone else WILL. Secondly, this will take enormous amount of time and thus it's in conflict with 4E motto: "creating encounters is easy and not time consuming". I can agree tha good DM will need some time to make good/challengig encounters and fun at the same time, but with this math problems is much more problematic than it suppose to be.

In your Kuo-Toa example the Barbarian should be able to use skills to help defeat the enemy. Maybe there is terrain he can use to only fight one monster. Party teamwork will help him too. The cleric can give him extra saves, the paladin can make the one monster he faces want to go fight someone else, etc. The encounter should also have a way for the Barbarian to use his big athletics skill to defeat the kuo-toa. Maybe he can push a rock onto them, or he can go past them to tip a container of acid on them, etc. There should be moving terrain or other terrain effects so he can keep away from their attacks if the player will use his head and not only hack with a weapon.

Show me where this is said in Encounter Design in DMG. Rules are simply. Terran to make fights more interesting. Using terrain by PCs to make them fun, but no out kill if you hurl rocks on monsters. If you playing such a games I no wonder that autohit from monster don't bother you. All what you described and placed as examples are nice additions to battle making it more fun, but not solutions to problem we are talking here.

If you want to talk with people about how RP impacts game make another tread and don't troll here. I will say it for the las time. Facts, facts, facts.

Now the PHB II feats let him also have the choice to boost his weak defense. Maybe he has a potion to do that too. If all numbers to hit are always close to a certain number then all he needs to learn to do is hack. The game is not any longer about anything except DPR and defenses and status effects. It is not so much fun.

If you say that talking this feats is a choice... Well. Good luck Did you even looked at the math from first post? I don't think so. We talking about feats that make the math workable, not the feats for free to maximize PCs power!

There are other considerations too. Epic is not like heroic or paragon tiers. It should not be the same. If all levels play the same, then why have levels at all? Monsters WILL hit a lot more on the epic level of play. It is supposed to be that way. Once you hit high epic level there are also no more higher level monsters to fight. The equal level monsters now must be stronger vs the party because there is no level + 4 monster anymore at 27th level, no level + 3 monster at 28th level, not even a level + 1 monster (except Orcus) at 30th level.

But they are stronger. The have more powers and they powers are stronger! Autohit is not an intended thing from designers. Look at above same examples I posted!

Weak NADs are a feature of epic play. If the players are good then they will adapt to win.

No they aren't. I almost love you ignorance about facts. Seriously

All I'm saying is that your theory of faulty math isn't the only one. It could be that the game is designed with increased hitting of NAD as a goal, not a fl

I know what you were trying to say. I answered no it wasn't the goal. If it was... I can say WotC have poor designers, but like someone else mentioned, some bugs always can happen. WotC knows that and that's way we have defense feats and Expertise in PHB2. Also I don't belive that almost autohitting was made on purpose. Maybe designers didn't think about that problem, and just looked at highest, middle def. Well, it can be true, couse then the hit chance is around 15 on monster dice. But... we have this lowest defence and that's the pure fact that it's autohit and a very big problem. I don't belive it was made on porpose. Also I don't think that hit chance of players (and Expertise feats) and highest DEF weaknes at epic (-2 disadventage; and Paragon Defenses, Robous Defenses and Epic feats) come for vacum. They bonuses make the math suprisly fine.

 

[KarinsDad]

To make my point a little better:

You have people using math (but not actual play) to suggest that the game is hard at high levels, and you have people using play to suggest that the game is not hard at high levels.

Now, difficulty is experienced through play, and so evidence garnered through play is a lot more indicative of problems than mathematical theorycraft.

I've done mostly the math, but I also ran a high level test.

The math is obviously incorrect. The math creates a problem where players might not enjoy the game because they are -3 to hit whereas the monsters are +3 to hit. It gets old when a player keeps missing on a 12.

That does not mean that the players cannot win. They can. It just takes forever because the monsters have so many hit points and are so hard to hit.


Here is the point you missed before and keep talking about. The game is not hard at high level. It's not hard. Unlike your claim, that is not what the math shows. The math shows that the game is slow at high level.

The PCs still hit. They just happen to hit 40% of the time instead of 55% of the time on same level monsters. They have to use up more resources to handle easy situations. Granted, they have more resources than they did at low levels and it makes sense that they have to use up slightly more resources. But, the problem is that at 30th level, the delta is 20% in both directions.

On top of that, the monsters do relatively small amounts of damage at high level compared to low level and have excessively high number of hit points at high level compared to low level.

Actual play bears this out. The combats are long. They are many rounds and use up a lot of resources.

Your claim is that people playing high level do not consider it hard. That is correct. The math bears that out.

The game is not hard at high level. It's long and slow and tedious.

They are not the same.


And one final point. WotC added a bunch of feats into PHB II because the math is wrong. They cannot correct the number of hit points for monsters until MM II, but they can correct the math with feats. And, that's precisely what they did.

They also added a bunch of smaller conditional +1 to hit type feats in PHB II to attempt to mitigate the problem.