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

[KarinsDad]

Having thought about this for a while, I think that the OP's model probably won't work. Combats will be too swingy with considerably higher level foes taken out too easy and considerably lower level foes taking out the PCs too easily.

But what might work is a hybrid model.

Instead of monsters getting +1 to hit and defenses every single level like 4E and +1 to hit and defenses every 5 levels like in this model, what if they only got +1 to hit and defenses every other level?

Using first level 4E PCs and monsters as a baseline, this would mean that a foe 10 levels higher than the PCs would only be +5 to hit and +5 defenses compared to the PCs (plus the ton of extra hit points and damage). PCs could then get a +1 to hit and defenses every 3 levels.

30th level monsters would be +15 and defenses to hit over 1st level monsters (assuming the bonus comes in on even levels). 30th level PCs would be +10 to hit over 1st level PCs (assuming the bonus comes in on levels 3, 6, etc. for simplicity). The other +5 at level 30 comes from either inherent bonuses, or magical items (+1 inherent levels 5, 10, 15, etc.).

Note: on the concept of inherent bonuses vs. magic items, I think the plus to hit of both should be the same. But, I think that magic items should also get the bonus to damage that inherent bonuses should not.

As an example (with PCs gaining 1 points of damage per level, similar to what most PCs might gain in 4E). 30th level NPC vs 30th level PC:

PC has a normal non-magical weapon. PC is +15 to hit over first level and +29 damage over first level.

PC has a +2 magical weapon. PC is +15 to hit over first level and +31 damage over first level.

PC has a +4 magical weapon. PC is +15 to hit over first level and +33 damage over first level.

So, the magical weapons are still coveted for their increased damage (and other abilities), but there is no actual requirement to hand them out at all. The PC fighting with the normal non-magical weapon at level 30 still does some serious damage (say 38 points) compared to the PC at level 30 that has a +5 magic weapon (say 43 points). Give or take.

A 30th level PC could pick up a chair and fight with it and would still be doing some serious damage. This resolves one of the 4E issues without having the swinginess that the OP's system introduces.

From the current model, monsters change from +1 to hit and +1 defense once per level to every other level. PCs change from +1 to hit and +1 defense every other level plus magic plus ability score changes plus feats, to +1 to hit and +1 defense every third level plus magic/inherent. It drops ability score boosts, feat boosts, masterwork armor boosts, a plethora of other boosts out of the equation.

As a rough idea:

	PC		hit		magic	Monster		hit
level	to hit	AC	points	damage	damage	to hit	AC	points	damage
1	4	18	25	9	9	5	15	25	9
2	4	18	31	10	10	6	16	31	11
3	5	19	37	11	11	6	16	37	12
4	5	19	43	12	12	7	17	43	14
5	6	20	49	13	14	7	17	49	15
6	7	21	55	14	15	8	18	55	17
7	7	21	61	15	16	8	18	61	18
8	7	21	67	16	17	9	19	67	20
9	8	22	73	17	18	9	19	73	21
10	9	23	79	18	20	10	20	79	23
11	9	23	85	19	21	10	20	85	24
12	10	24	91	20	22	11	21	91	26
13	10	24	97	21	23	11	21	97	27
14	10	24	103	22	24	12	22	103	29
15	12	26	109	23	26	12	22	109	30
16	12	26	115	24	27	13	23	115	32
17	12	26	121	25	28	13	23	121	33
18	13	27	127	26	29	14	24	127	35
19	13	27	133	27	30	14	24	133	36
20	14	28	139	28	32	15	25	139	38
21	15	29	145	29	33	15	25	145	39
22	15	29	151	30	34	16	26	151	41
23	15	29	157	31	35	16	26	157	42
24	16	30	163	32	36	17	27	163	44
25	17	31	169	33	38	17	27	169	45
26	17	31	175	34	39	18	28	175	47
27	18	32	181	35	40	18	28	181	48
28	18	32	187	36	41	19	29	187	50
29	18	32	193	37	42	19	29	193	51
30	19	33	199	38	43	20	30	199	53

So, the magic damage column is the damage if the PC has gets a +1 increasing bonus item at levels 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 (no inherent or magic bonus at level 30).

This isn't a perfect model. The damage column for the PCs and monsters are a rough idea based on the fact that there will be extra synergies at higher levels. For example, monsters with claw, claw, bite; or PCs with multiple attacks per round or AoE attacks, or striker damage. Auras, Ongoing damage, etc.

I sort of took that into account with the monster damage (which for any given attack would only probably be +1 damage per level like in the current 4E model), but would be more overall. I didn't do that for the PC damage column, just to give a rough idea of what a single PC attack might do (without bonus striker damage or without AoEs, etc.).

The PC's to hit and AC get a 2 jump at level 15. +1 for every 3rd level and +1 for inherent/magic bonus.


But, the rough idea is here. A 9th level PC fighting a 19th level NPC is +8 to hit AC 24. He needs a 16. Doable, but still extremely tough.

Course, this like any other model, only works if the game designers stick to it and don't start handing out offensive and defensive bonuses like candy via feats and class (paragon class, epic destiny) abilities like in 4E. Granted, part of the extra bonuses in 4E are to fix the math problem, but they really have to curb that tendency to have stackable bonuses scattered throughout the game system.

 

[mmadsen]

Having thought about this for a while, I think that the OP's model probably won't work. Combats will be too swingy with considerably higher level foes taken out too easy and considerably lower level foes taking out the PCs too easily.

How so? As I understand the proposal, it's to increase damage and hit points, rather than to-hit and AC, with level, so that everyone retains the same to-hit probabilities throughout their progression. So, the Fighter typically hits, say, 75 percent of the time, and gets hit, say, 25 percent of the time, while the Wizard faces the inverse -- more or less regardless of level.

If the Fighter also does three times as much damage and can take three times as much damage, then he doles out nine times as much damage and has a life expectancy nine times a long.

But it's not especially swingy. As their damage and hit-point numbers go up, combat shouldn't get any swingier, should it?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Right, I know I thought this all through a while back and tinkered with it. I think the thing is with a system like this you become more focused on individual challenges vs gauntlets. That is to say you fight your dragon, but that's the thing you do that day, vs the 4e sort of concept where you fight 4 other attrition battles first. If you ARE going through a gauntlet (raiding the orc lair) then you're dealing with lower level foes.

I think after thinking about that one rather elegant solution would be 'restoration'. Whereas in 4e you have HS and hit points, why not just make this simpler? You fight a battle, and if you win you get back say 80% of whatever damage you took. Now the style of fights will be either the big bad dragon knock down where all that matters is if you can hang on and win, vs your 'attrition' fights where you'd rather not take damage, but as long as you can avoid being swarmed or cornered you can mow through a slew of enemies. You could also have a Second Wind that would restore say 25% of your lost hit points pretty much like now. So hit points become more of a pacing mechanic that still has a limiter effect on your overall endurance but the two aren't so closely slaved together. Your magical healing can now be used to break that rule and is distinctive, where your shouty warlord guy can just trigger some recovery within those limits.

It certainly seems possible to work out a set of tweaks that would make it work, but I agree, WotC would never do it in D&D. I think we can fully expect the resource management of 5e to look a lot like say 1e and you'll be using a d20 and d8's etc (and yeah, White Box did use d6 for all weapons, even daggers). Still, it is fun to dream up cool stuff, lol. Maybe someone will get bored of being lectured on how horrible a betrayal of all that is sacred 4e is and read it and get some ideas, lol!

 

[KarinsDad]

How so? As I understand the proposal, it's to increase damage and hit points, rather than to-hit and AC, with level, so that everyone retains the same to-hit probabilities throughout their progression. So, the Fighter typically hits, say, 75 percent of the time, and gets hit, say, 25 percent of the time, while the Wizard faces the inverse -- more or less regardless of level.

If the Fighter also does three times as much damage and can take three times as much damage, then he doles out nine times as much damage and has a life expectancy nine times a long.

But it's not especially swingy. As their damage and hit-point numbers go up, combat shouldn't get any swingier, should it?

So, what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

If you can supply me with this information, I can extrapolate out whether it will work or not.


As an example:

Level 1 PC has 20 hit points, does 7 damage against 20 hit point monster.
Level 2 PC has 30 hit points, does 10 damage against 30 hit point monter.
...
Level 11 PC has 110 hit points, does 37 damage against 110 hit point monster.

Ok, so you've increased damage by 3 points per level and hit points by 10 points per level. The 1st level PC has a 50% chance to hit the 11th level PC (he's -2 to hit). The 11th level PC has a 60% chance to hit the 1st level PC.

Since the damage and hit points were significantly increased (more so than in my earlier examples), a battle between the two of them will last about 2 rounds where the 1st level PC is insta-killed. No problem with that per se, but what was gained here? One still cannot fight a foe 10 levels higher. They'll wipe you out even faster than in the current system.

So far, so good.

The 30th level PC is doing 94 average points of damage.

How do you roll that?

Is it 3D8+82?

How do you make this part of the game easy.

In order to increase damage significantly enough, you need to use bigger damage dice, more damage dice, or much larger modifiers.

In 4E, a lot of the extra damage is done via rolling a lot of extra dice for the Striker classes. I've seen strikers roll 8 dice. Are normal Epic level PCs now going to roll 10 or 15 dice? How much will that slow up the game?

Granted, the solution is to make the damage modifier big instead like 3D8+82. No problem. Course, that creates feel problems of it's own. At that point, you might as well not even roll and just take the average cause it ain't gonna matter to much too often.

The piddly +4 for strength damage that the PC has is a mere drop in the bucket at Epic level. Bonus damage for a magic weapon? Mostly worthless. It shifts the damage portion of the game somewhere where nothing matters except that mega-level +3 damage per level bonus


Course, I could be mistaken here. So, you tell me what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

 

[mmadsen]

So, what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

I was assuming that both hit points and damage were proportional to level, the way hit points are now, via hit dice.

In order to increase damage significantly enough, you need to use bigger damage dice, more damage dice, or much larger modifiers.

Right, we have any number of ways to increase hit points and damage. The tried and true D&D way is to increase hit points by giving one hit die per level. We could mimic that on the damage side: whatever damage you would roll, you now roll once per level.

It doesn't matter too terribly for a back-of-the-envelope analysis.

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

It clearly depends on what "working" means. I cringe at the notion of high-level Fighters not hitting orcs any more often than low-level Fighters -- without a special orc-smiting feat.

But, if all you care about is (relative) damage per round remaining stable, then keeping to-hit probabilities static and increasing both damage and hit points at the same rate should achieve that.

 

[Hassassin]

Course, I could be mistaken here. So, you tell me what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

Let's start from something close to 4e math, like:

PC: 25 + 5/level hp, 6 + 2/level damage
Monster: 24 + 8/level hp, 8 + 1/level damage

PCs hit two times out of three, monsters once in three. PC vs. PC and monster vs. monster would be 50% I guess.

Are there problems with this?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

If you can supply me with this information, I can extrapolate out whether it will work or not.


As an example:

Level 1 PC has 20 hit points, does 7 damage against 20 hit point monster.
Level 2 PC has 30 hit points, does 10 damage against 30 hit point monter.
...
Level 11 PC has 110 hit points, does 37 damage against 110 hit point monster.

Ok, so you've increased damage by 3 points per level and hit points by 10 points per level. The 1st level PC has a 50% chance to hit the 11th level PC (he's -2 to hit). The 11th level PC has a 60% chance to hit the 1st level PC.

Since the damage and hit points were significantly increased (more so than in my earlier examples), a battle between the two of them will last about 2 rounds where the 1st level PC is insta-killed. No problem with that per se, but what was gained here? One still cannot fight a foe 10 levels higher. They'll wipe you out even faster than in the current system.

So far, so good.

The 30th level PC is doing 94 average points of damage.

How do you roll that?

Is it 3D8+82?

How do you make this part of the game easy.

In order to increase damage significantly enough, you need to use bigger damage dice, more damage dice, or much larger modifiers.

In 4E, a lot of the extra damage is done via rolling a lot of extra dice for the Striker classes. I've seen strikers roll 8 dice. Are normal Epic level PCs now going to roll 10 or 15 dice? How much will that slow up the game?

Granted, the solution is to make the damage modifier big instead like 3D8+82. No problem. Course, that creates feel problems of it's own. At that point, you might as well not even roll and just take the average cause it ain't gonna matter to much too often.

The piddly +4 for strength damage that the PC has is a mere drop in the bucket at Epic level. Bonus damage for a magic weapon? Mostly worthless. It shifts the damage portion of the game somewhere where nothing matters except that mega-level +3 damage per level bonus


Course, I could be mistaken here. So, you tell me what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

My proposed answer was level multiplier for damage. You are level 1 and have a sword and a STR of 18 you do 1d8+4 damage. You're level 10 and have a sword you do (1d8+4)*10 damage. This will probably be too swingy, but some degree of compromise can be made here, like you roll an extra die (with STR modifier) per half-tier and then multiply, so you might roll 1d8+4 at level one and (2d8+8)*5 at level 11. Lets see how big the jumps are using that progression.

level 1: 1d8+4 is average 8.5
level 2: (1d8+4)*2 is average 17
level 10: (1d8+4)*10 is average 85
level 11: (2d8+8)*5 is average 85

Well, what we see is basically it works, then you'd clearly use a linear progression of hit dice as well, so a level 1 figure would have say 25 hit points, and you'd increase by 25 per level.

I agree that the dice handling is somewhat awkward whatever way you cut it but some more noodling might work it out. I think its acceptable to have people rolling up to say 6 dice without it being horribly slow as long as things are otherwise pretty quick. It helps too if they are all d6.

So maybe you restructure things like there are 6 levels per tier, but instead of calling them levels 1-18 you call them levels 1-6 heroic, 1-6 paragon, and 1-6 epic. Now you can roll 1d6 per level and just multiply by either 1, 7, or 13 depending on tier. Still don't like that too well.

How about a simple chart? You just have a damage range that is determined by a d6 (or whatever) and you can keep those numbers in a fairly tight range, so you do say 6-8 damage with a sword blow, plus STR and each column on the chart is a level with the damage output specified, so no multiplying. That's getting close to being workable. You can even have low probability outliers. Heck, use 3d6 and you have your bell curve, which is pretty good, and the chart is just there to do the multiplication for you and scale the damage back to the 1-8 range so numbers don't get awkwardly big. I think that might work fine.

So basically hit points start at 3* average damage and go up by that amount per level. I think that works reasonably well overall. The 'squishy' guys are going to be pretty squishy against high level foes, but I'm not sure anyone would complain too much about that.

 

[Dragonblade]

Let's start from something close to 4e math, like:

PC: 25 + 5/level hp, 6 + 2/level damage
Monster: 24 + 8/level hp, 8 + 1/level damage

PCs hit two times out of three, monsters once in three. PC vs. PC and monster vs. monster would be 50% I guess.

Are there problems with this?

Right, pretty much what I had in mind.

So a level 1 PC might have 25 HP to start and do an avg of 8 damage per round. A level 30 PC would have say 170 HP on avg. and do 66 damage a round (or even more).

So higher level combat is more lethal in a straight up fight, but higher level PCs would naturally have more options in the way of abilities, feats, talents, powers, or whatever to help offset some of that lethality.

Then you can have a lethality dial. Want to make combats tougher and grittier, then up the hit percentage, or up damage, or lower HP, or reintroduce save or die. All sorts of ways to customize it.

 

[Roland55]

It's going to be awhile before I can give you XP ... although this Thread seems to have attracted plenty for you.

Sound thinking. I hope the designers are reading this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right, pretty much what I had in mind.

So a level 1 PC might have 25 HP to start and do an avg of 8 damage per round. A level 30 PC would have say 170 HP on avg. and do 66 damage a round (or even more).

So higher level combat is more lethal in a straight up fight, but higher level PCs would naturally have more options in the way of abilities, feats, talents, powers, or whatever to help offset some of that lethality.

Then you can have a lethality dial. Want to make combats tougher and grittier, then up the hit percentage, or up damage, or lower HP, or reintroduce save or die. All sorts of ways to customize it.

You could tweak it like this, but I don't even think you need to. High level monsters are going to have all sorts of abilities.

Lets think about the dragon. It is going to have a breath weapon, probably multiple attacks, etc. Maybe it has other magical type abilities that give it added ways to avoid or do damage, etc. High level PCs doubtless will as well.

Even with the straight linear system and no level bonus of any kind on to-hit there's bound to be a lot of other ways that level increases your power, that's just inherent to the concept of the game, so even though you don't gain a lot of your added power from stoked up defense numbers as you do now in 4e for instance, you'd certainly have a much less flat curve than the raw numbers indicate.