Slow combats

[Elric]

Re: the adjustment of damage when changing the hit points. Obviously, it would be more precise to up the average damage of the monster's attacks by the same amount (in %) that you decrease it's hit points. But I wonder how close the +½ level damage is to that number.

Anyone take a look at that?

See my post above. This idea is only true for small changes to HP/damage. If you reduce monster HP by 90%, it's not going to be balanced by increasing damage by 90%!

The reason is that how long a monster lives is (roughly) proportional to its HP, the number of attacks it makes is (roughly) proportional to how long it lives, so the total damage it deals before getting killed is roughly proportional to (its HP)*(its damage per attack). For this expression to remain constant, when HP goes down by -X%, then new HP/old HP= 1-X. So to compensate, damage per attack needs to go up by a factor 1/(1-X).

Plug in X=-50%, and you see damage needs to double. If you plug in something small like X=10%, you'll get an answer very close to (but slightly larger than) "damage needs to go up by 10."

 

[Jack99]

See my post above. This idea is only true for small changes to HP/damage. If you reduce monster HP by 90%, it's not going to be balanced by increasing damage by 90%!

The reason is that how long a monster lives is (roughly) proportional to its HP, the number of attacks it makes is (roughly) proportional to how long it lives, so the total damage it deals before getting killed is roughly proportional to (its HP)*(its damage per attack). For this expression to remain constant, when HP goes down by -X%, then new HP/old HP= 1-X. So to compensate, damage per attack needs to go up by a factor 1/(1-X).

Plug in X=-50%, and you see damage needs to double. If you plug in something small like X=10%, you'll get an answer very close to (but slightly larger than) "damage needs to go up by 10."

*facepalm*

Of course. Just find the average damage of an attack and add that to the attack, while halving the hit points. That should do the trick.

Ex: Monster attack is 3d8+9 (average 22,5) should do 3d8+31 or so, if it had half the hit points?

 

[Jack99]

Just modified a level 17 brute (the level at which my campaign is at).

It definitely looks brutal now, that's for sure. Then again, 102 hit points is less than the fighter's crits, and he does 30+ on his at-wills, so it won't last long, that's for sure.

Actually it really looks brutal lol

 

[Elric]

*facepalm*

Of course. Just find the average damage of an attack and add that to the attack, while halving the hit points. That should do the trick.

Ex: Monster attack is 3d8+9 (average 22,5) should do 3d8+31 or so, if it had half the hit points?

Yep. If you're halving HP, you can double monster damage directly in this way. You can also just double the dice and double the bonuses (6d8+18 in the above case), so you don't have to compute any averages on the spot.

This has some problems: for example, monsters with low damage plus conditions (many controllers) don't gain enough from simply doubling their damage. In that case, you might want to do more than simply doubling damage.

Adding a standardized amount based on monster level/role avoids that problem and helps reduce some of the disparities between monsters. Ddoubling damage is going to leave Guard Drakes as nasty as ever, and would have left all those poor pre-errata low-damage Brutes just as weak.

However, it has its own problems: for example, adding static damage to every attack greatly strengthens multiattack monsters which have low damage to balance their many attacks. The same phenomenon can be observed in how AV's items with static damage boosts (Iron Armbands, Bloodclaw, Reckless) made multi-hit powers comparatively much better than before.

If you're going all the way to a 50% reduction in monster HP (which I'd consider too much, but some people want to speed up combat a lot), doubling monster damage (either through adding the average back on or just doubling everything, including the dice) is probably the easiest thing to do.

 

[Jack99]

Another one. Looks decent enough. Might die a tad fast, but that is the point after all. Damage is going to be spiking however. Not so much with this one, but in general.

 

[ggroy]

*facepalm*

Of course. Just find the average damage of an attack and add that to the attack, while halving the hit points. That should do the trick.

Ex: Monster attack is 3d8+9 (average 22,5) should do 3d8+31 or so, if it had half the hit points?

3d8+9 would be medium damage for a level 25-27 power of a monster, according to p185 in the 4E DMG.

At level 26, classes like the paladin, fighter, barbarian, etc ... would have at least 175 hit points. An average monster attack damage of 22 hit points (3d8+9) would take on average 8 hits to bring down a paladin/fighter/barbarian. An average monster attack damage of 44 hit points (3d8+31), would take on average 4 hits to bring down a paladin/fighter/barbarian.

Without knowing the damage patterns of the player's weapons/powers, one would want the average player attack damage to at least bring down a monster in 8 hits with full hit points, or 4 hits with half hit points.

 

[Jack99]

Yep. If you're halving HP, you can double monster damage directly in this way. You can also just double the dice and double the bonuses (6d8+18 in the above case), so you don't have to compute any averages on the spot.

Gonna go with averages. Not only do I come prepared to my sessions, but I hate having to use 6-8-10 dice for one attack.

This has some problems: for example, monsters with low damage plus conditions (many controllers) don't gain enough from simply doubling their damage. In that case, you might want to do more than simply doubling damage.

A condition will still amount for the same % of an attack. If having stun as an condition makes the attack about 1/3rd damage, it will still do that when you enhance the attacks. Not sure it couldn't work.

Adding a standardized amount based on monster level/role avoids that problem and helps reduce some of the disparities between monsters. Ddoubling damage is going to leave Guard Drakes as nasty as ever, and would have left all those poor pre-errata low-damage Brutes just as weak.

I want faster combats, not all monsters to be equal. I like my nasties...

However, it has its own problems: for example, adding static damage to every attack greatly strengthens multiattack monsters which have low damage to balance their many attacks. The same phenomenon can be observed in how AV's items with static damage boosts (Iron Armbands, Bloodclaw, Reckless) made multi-hit powers comparatively much better than before.

Aye.

If you're going all the way to a 50% reduction in monster HP (which I'd consider too much, but some people want to speed up combat a lot), doubling monster damage (either through adding the average back on or just doubling everything, including the dice) is probably the easiest thing to do.

Mostly I want to see how far this can be pushed without turning into something completely swingy.

 

[Jack99]

3d8+9 would be medium damage for a level 25-27 power of a monster, according to p185 in the 4E DMG.

At level 26, classes like the paladin, fighter, barbarian, etc ... would have at least 175 hit points. An average monster attack damage of 22 hit points (3d8+9) would take on average 8 hits to bring down a paladin/fighter/barbarian. An average monster attack damage of 44 hit points (3d8+31), would take on average 4 hits to bring down a paladin/fighter/barbarian.

Without knowing the damage patterns of the player's weapons/powers, one would want the average player attack damage to at least bring down a monster in 8 hits with full hit points, or 4 hits with half hit points.

Exactly. Which should be no problem, if you cut the hitpoints in half.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Sometimes I wonder if the problem is just we put too many fights into our stories.
Something like a plot/fight ratio.

How much encounters should a murder investigation contain? How much encounters a wilderness travel? How much a dungeon?

If the parties goal is, for example, to stop the ritual that opens a portal to the Shadowfell - how many fights do they really need to tell the story? Does it really have to 3 goblin encounters, 3 undead encounters, 1-2 random encounters, 3 hobgoblin encounters and one final encounter? Or wouldn't something like 3-4 encounters not be sufficient? A hook encounter, an encounter to enter the location, a counterstrike, and the climatic final encounter where you "resolve" the plot?

It took the party in my online campaign around 8-10 hours and probably 6 encounters to resolve a Far Realm infestation aided by Bullywugs? Were all these really necessary to "tell the story"?
[/Tangent]

The problem with this type of planning is knowing what will become a combat encounter. Even an ambush scenario can be possibly detected and turned into a negotiation encounter. Planned "fight scenes" are a form of railroad.

Combat time really depends on what the group enjoys. If a fight takes 90 minutes and everyone is satisfied with how the combat played out then there isn't a problem. If the time it takes to resolve combat is too long for the group then its time to simplify things.

 

[ggroy]

Another issue which comes into play, is the probability of hitting the monster and how many rounds it takes to finally kill a monster. In general, a harder to hit monster can significantly drag on an encounter to more and more rounds.

Here's a model of this which is exactly solvable mathematically. The assumptions are:

- a target starts off with H "hit points"
- an attacker has probability p of hitting the target
- the attacker attacks the same target each round
- each time the attacker hits the target, 1 "hit point" of damage is done on the target

For this model, the average number of rounds (denoted A) it takes to kill the monster is A = H/p, with variance H(1-p)/(p^2).

Looking at this formula A = H/p, an attacker with a 50% probability (ie. p=0.50, or a roll of 11 or higher on a d20) of hitting a target monster with 2 "hit points" (ie. H=2), it takes on average around A = 2/0.50 = 4 rounds to kill the target monster. For an attacker with a 25% probability (ie. p=0.25, or a roll of 16 or over on a d20) of hitting the target monster with 2 "hit points", it takes on average around A = 2/0.25 = 8 rounds to kill the target monster.

The "hit points" of the above model can be thought of as "health units". Using my first elaboration of Jack99's example in a previous post, a monster's 3d8+9 damage roll has an average numerical damage of 22 hit points of damage, which can thought of as 1 "health unit" damage. For a target paladin/fighter/barbarian with 175 hit points, this can be thought of as the target having around 8 "health units". If a monster attacking a paladin target has a 25% chance of hitting the paladin, it would take an average of A = 8/0.25 = 32 rounds to kill the paladin. For a monster attacking the paladin with a 50% chance of hitting the paladin, it would take an average of A = 8/0.5 = 16 rounds to kill the paladin.

For my second elaboration of Jack99's example, the monster having a 3d8+31 damage roll has an average numerical damage of 44 hit points, which can be thought of as 1 "health unit" damage. For a target paladin/fighter/barbarian with 175 hit points, this can be thought of as the target having around 4 "health units". If a monster attacking a fighter target has a 25% chance of hitting the fighter, it would take an average of A = 4/0.25 = 16 rounds to kill the fighter. For a monster attacking the fighter with a 50% chance of hitting the fighter, it would take an average of A = 4/0.5 = 8 rounds to kill the fighter.