D&D 5E No ascending bonuses: A mathematical framework for 5e

[mmadsen]

It seems like the best way to handle that kind of thing would be in the encounter design. If there was an emphasis on multiple victory or failure conditions, not every fight need end in death for either side.

I agree completely that encounter design plays a vital role, but it's far from independent of how the game models combat. You can play out the "same" encounter in OD&D, 3E, 4E, GURPS Fantasy, and Fantasy Hero and get totally different results.

Imagine a game where most attacks hit and do lethal damage. If someone gets the drop on you, you do what they say, or you die. If, on the other hand, attacks rarely hit and rarely do lethal damage, then the first attack isn't so valuable, hostages aren't in great danger, ranged attacks can't stop a charge, etc.

Furthermore, such a failure need not just mean that the campaign is not derailed; it could even spur the campaign on by throwing in a twist. Even a victory could complicate things (in a good way).

Historically, D&D had a problem, if you didn't want a loss to derail the campaign, because of the fine line between low hit points and death. You can improve the game by making it easier for characters to stick around without winning. That's why raise dead became a bit too common for many people's taste; it served a useful purpose, even if the flavor irked people.

 

[Rune]

I agree completely that encounter design plays a vital role, but it's far from independent of how the game models combat. You can play out the "same" encounter in OD&D, 3E, 4E, GURPS Fantasy, and Fantasy Hero and get totally different results.

Imagine a game where most attacks hit and do lethal damage. If someone gets the drop on you, you do what they say, or you die. If, on the other hand, attacks rarely hit and rarely do lethal damage, then the first attack isn't so valuable, hostages aren't in great danger, ranged attacks can't stop a charge, etc.

Sure, but it wouldn't be that hard for the system to support both styles, simply by sliding the scale of damage output or hit point gain (kind of a little changes with big flavor type of adjustment).

Historically, D&D had a problem, if you didn't want a loss to derail the campaign, because of the fine line between low hit points and death. You can improve the game by making it easier for characters to stick around without winning. That's why raise dead became a bit too common for many people's taste; it served a useful purpose, even if the flavor irked people.

Yes, but there are other, more mundane options (other than getting taken prisoner each time, which would get old, fast!). Maybe your group gets forcefully driven off. Maybe you needed to rescue a hostage before s/he is taken away. Maybe the foes are just taunting with you. The victory conditions would each have a failure condition attached. And they wouldn't need to be well-defined, either, just possible.

 

[mmadsen]

Sure, but it wouldn't be that hard for the system to support both styles, simply by sliding the scale of damage output or hit point gain (kind of a little changes with big flavor type of adjustment).

Thanks for the link, Rune, but sliding the scale of damage output or hit point gain goes beyond a little change, I'd say, because it has so many knock-on effects. (Surprise! Magic missile is the most powerful spell in the game now!)

Yes, but there are other, more mundane options (other than getting taken prisoner each time, which would get old, fast!). Maybe your group gets forcefully driven off. Maybe you needed to rescue a hostage before s/he is taken away. Maybe the foes are just taunting with you. The victory conditions would each have a failure condition attached. And they wouldn't need to be well-defined, either, just possible.

I love all those ideas, and I'd love for the new DM's Guide and sample adventures to give plenty of similar examples. I just don't think that we can ignore that the design of the combat system profoundly affects how they'd play out.

For instance, think through how the game would play if we eliminated the notion of hit points and made all ordinary attacks save-or-die -- with a low DC. Similarly lethal combats would feel very, very different.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If a natural 20 always hits, you already have an effective cap.

not really, it just means you always have a 5% chance to hit at worst.


lets look at 2e, My fighter has a thac0 of 1 at 20th level, and weapon spec +1/+2, and a +3 sword, and +3 to hit from str, and the cleric cast bless +1

that means I have +8 thac0 1... so if I roll a 5, I add 8 for a 13, then I hit a -12 AC.

in 3e this would look like a +27 to hit. you hit a 30 AC on a 3, but AC could be 45, and need a 18 to hit. Having that limit meant sonner or latter you always hit.

 

[Thraug]

I love this thread. A friendly and intelligent discussion on a topic I consider a route the new D&D should take. I hope WOTC's playtest is open enough to accommodate ideas such as this, without dismissing them as killinh the sacred cow. My biggest fear for the upcoming edition is using rules and ideas from previous editions because they are tradition and feel like D&D, not because they were good and loved rules.

Another benefit of this proposal is improving ease of play, something I pray is more prominent in 5e. Has anyone else played/run Epic 4e? Uhg, the numbers are high and the math just seem unnecessary. "I rolled a 17, add that to my +34 attack bonus, -5 for being blind, +2 for flanking.....". Easy math, but why go through this every attack? It's just not needed when better options exist.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the idea has merit, but I want to look at the math a bit closer.

So:

To hit: +1/5 levels
Defenses: +1/5 levels

Hit points: +x / level
Damage: +y / level

I think this is viable, but there are some areas where abuse could come in. First off is feats. Feats should never never never give an unconditional bonus and even conditional bonuses should be rare. Game designers have an itchy little trigger finger when it comes to bonuses via feats that they would need to control. Ditto for racial abilities. Class abilities should probably have small bonuses, but the moment you make it feat plus race plus class (plus item/inherent) plus powers plus plus plus it gets out of hand.

Assuming a base 50% chance to hit (as a starting point for discussion) and assuming the +1/5 doesn't kick in until level 6/11/16/21/26 (because I think that +6 in a D20 system is way too large, even for a high Epic PC), this means that the 26th level PC has a 75% chance to hit and his 5th level foe has a 25% chance to hit back.

Now, damage and hit points become the issue. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that we are talking 3 hit points per level for hit points (to more or less follow a 3 hits to wipe out a same level foe model or 3 times as many hit points as increased damage). The 1st level PC has 20 hit points, the 5th level PC has 32 hit points, and the 26th level PC has 95 hit points.

For damage, let's assume the first level PC does 8 points of damage (3- hits to wipe out a same level foe) and that each level adds 1 point of damage. The 5th level PC does 12 points of damage and the 26th level PC does 33 points of damage.

To hit: +1/5 levels
Defenses: +1/5 levels

Hit points: +3 / level
Damage: +1 / level

The 26th level PC does 33 points of damage, so he wipes out a 32 hit point 5th level NPC on every swing (ignoring for the moment the fact that it might be a 29 to 37 point damage range). In 20 rounds, he kills 15 5th level foes. In that same 20 rounds at one foe attacking per round, his 5th level foes hit him 5 times for 12 points or a total of 60 points.


In earlier editions of the game system, these 5th level foes all needed to roll a 20 to hit this 26th level PC which means a single shot out of 20 hit. The 26th level PC would have taken a single scratch and not be almost 2/3rds damaged.

If one ups the hit points and hence the damage (in order to stay in the 3- hits to take out a same level foe model), the 26th level PC will be even more damaged percentage-wise.


So although I think the idea has merit and should have some serious investigation by WotC as an option, I do think that ideas that sound good on the surface do not necessarily result in game mechanics that work in practice.

Your original idea (without the +1 per 5 levels modifier) would have been even "less heroic" for the 26th level PC where the 5th level NPCs would be hitting 50% of the time and killing him in 16 rounds (~3 rounds if 5 foes were on him each round).


If one decreases the extra damage per level, then one also needs to decrease the number of hit points per level, otherwise it takes 3 hits to kill a same level foe at first level, but a lot more than 3 hits to kill a same level foe at 30th level. This is also known as grind.

If one increases the extra damage per level, then one also needs to increase the number of hit points per level, otherwise it takes 3 hits to kill a same level foe at first level, but only 1 or 2 hits to kill a same level foe at 30th level. This is also known as swinginess.


All in all, I'm not quite convinced that someone can get the math to work, but I'm willing to consider that I could be mistaken. I do think that Epic level Avatar God-like beings shouldn't necessarily be wiped out in 5 rounds if the DM sends a steady stream of 6 NPCs 21 levels lower at him every single round (where he won't be able to kill more than one of them back each round shy of special powers), but then again, I might be biased as to what I think the power level of a 26th level PC should be based on earlier versions of D&D.

Yeah, its a reasonable analysis. There could be a number of possible fixes. One would be that higher level PCs can get multiple attacks vs lower level opponents for instance. Your setup is an edge case where that wouldn't really matter, but in general it would solve any such problems.

Also I'm not entirely sure that the results are all that bad. The level disparity is large, but there are ways to deal with the whole thing. For instance if you factored in surges then the issue is far less serious.

Other possibilities exist too. Higher level PCs are likely to be dishing out effects of various kinds, which would tend to blunt the lower level guys. You can also increase the spreads a bit more with say some kind of item or whatnot. NPCs can also be slightly less potent than a PC, which tips the math some more.

So I think there is room to shift it so that for instance the high level guy takes only half his hit points in damage in your example, and has an equal amount of surge healing he can recover from (heck, a 26th level 4e fighter is north of 200 hit points, has 8 surges (at least) and a surge value means essentially he's got 600 hit points in his battery. Scaling that to your example for the reasons you gave, that works out to around 300 total hit points he can take in damage per day.

I'd note too that clearly there would in practice have to be 'synergy' benefits to a party of that level working together that would count for a lot. This is already clearly true for 4e PCs where 5 of them working together are MUCH tougher than each fighting a separate foe. This means that in practice the poor 5th level dudes would put hardly a dent in the party as a whole.

And really that might be a kind of cool way for things to go. It certainly works with a lot of literature and even myth. Getting caught alone by a bunch of local goons in an ally is potentially dangerous whereas when you're cruising around with your bro's looking for it you aren't going to be much phased by those same guys.

Anyway, that was about the way I figured it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Also I'm not entirely sure that the results are all that bad.

I'm not convinced that the results are all that bad either, but I do see the potential for problems. I suspect that when WotC printed 4E, they didn't see bad results either, but later on, there were some serious fixes, especially for heavy armor, for NADs, and for monster damage (the Expertise fix is probably not quite as required due to synergies).

The idea is to not just jump on the "this is a great idea" bandwagon without having some data to indicate whether it will work, or whether it will be the math foobar of 5E.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not convinced that the results are all that bad either, but I do see the potential for problems. I suspect that when WotC printed 4E, they didn't see bad results either, but later on, there were some serious fixes, especially for heavy armor, for NADs, and for monster damage (the Expertise fix is probably not quite as required due to synergies).

The idea is to not just jump on the "this is a great idea" bandwagon without having some data to indicate whether it will work, or whether it will be the math foobar of 5E.

Yup! You're probably dead on there. I'd expect as it is currently formulated it would be lucky to be as good as the existing 4e math actually, lol. But then the 4e math really isn't too bad, now that they've tweaked monster stat blocks anyway.

I really like the way this system would get rid of the need for solos and elites (at least in terms of having specific special rules for them, they'd probably still exist notionally). While monster types are not really a bad thing they are one of those rather gamist concepts that tend to lead to strangeness. Level 8 PCs being able to tussle with a big level 15 or 20 dragon would be cool, and then having it show up again with the same stat block at level 20 and really be a regular monster just feels more elegant somehow.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the idea has merit, but I want to look at the math a bit closer.

That was a great analysis!

That said, I actually don't think that is too bad myself. An person taking on 20decently strong people in a 2 minute brawl that results in the one person standing triumph sounds pretty darn good to me, worthy of Conan.

 

[KarinsDad]

While monster types are not really a bad thing they are one of those rather gamist concepts that tend to lead to strangeness. Level 8 PCs being able to tussle with a big level 15 or 20 dragon would be cool, and then having it show up again with the same stat block at level 20 and really be a regular monster just feels more elegant somehow.

There is definitely some serious potential behind the idea in quite a few metagame and monster design areas.

But, the to hit delta is the big equalizer on high level vs. low level fights in 4E and earlier versions. This concept broadens and smothers that a lot.

In 4E, any monster 5 levels above the PCs is going to pretty much slam the PCs with it's +5 to hit, +5 damage and +5 to defenses.

In this system, a monster 5 levels above the PCs is going to be +1 to hit, +5 damage (presumably, possibly as much as +10), and +1 to defenses. Fights with a monster 5 levels above the PCs will be very swingy because the penalty to hit for the PCs is only 1.

I can easily see a fight where the PCs get surprise and the big tough dragon goes down before it can even flee with this model. The dice are nice to the players and everyone hits and hinders the dragon into submission in 2 or 3 rounds before the DM can necessarily pull out the Dragon's big guns (e.g. the PCs drop a bunch of effects on the Dragon).

Sure, the dragon will have a lot of hit points, but dragons have a lot of hit points now. Except for an extra round or so of fighting (because the dragon has more hit points), the dragon 5 levels above the PCs will be almost as easy to take down as the dragon the same level as the PCs and not much harder to take down than a dragon 5 levels below the PCs.

This swinginess will work against the players as well. Lower level foes that in 4E only hit one time in 3 now hit half of the time. The DM's dice get hot and lower level foes (which are rarely brought to the table in 4E, but might be a regular staple with this model) start kicking PC butt nearly as well as same level foes might.


If one ups the amount of damage and hit points every single level has to attempt to compensate for the lack of to hit and defense, then hit points and damage start becoming large numbers. For example, a PC of 40 hit points starting out at first level so that he can handle the 15 points of damage that a normal sword swing does. Hit points increase by 10 a level and damage increases by 3 a level.

Note: the ratio of hit point increase to damage increase has to be at whatever hit ratio that the game designers want a given PC or NPC to fall. For example, if the game designers want an average PC or NPC to fall if hit 3 times by a foe like in 4E, than this ratio should be approximately 3 to 1 (which I find reasonable). Less than that becomes swingy, much more than that becomes grindy.


Although WotC might consider this model, one sacred cow that I don't think that they are going to be giving up is the D20+x to hit and D6+y or D8+y damage at level one. So whatever level of hit points and damage works best here, I cannot believe that a longsword swing is going to be that much different than D8+4 damage in 5E. Using a D8 for a sword has been around since day one (IIRC, swords might have been D6+x in the real early days, I don't have my old books available at the moment) and I suspect that there would have to be an awesomely good reason for that to change.