D&D 4E 4E vs 5E: Monsters and bounded accuracy

[AaronOfBarbaria]

1e AC was 'bounded,' going from 10 to -10 (so 21 possible ACs). FWIW.

2nd edition had that same bounds stated in the Player's Handbook... it just seemed to make a habit of breaking it when it felt like it, such as by listing the AC of an age category 12 red dragon as -11.

Maybe in 2e. In 1e a huge ancient red dragon had only 88, a huge ancient gold, 96...

Age 12 red had 23 Hit Dice, so an average of 103.5 hp.

 

[flametitan]

There's a difference in table feel between rolling three attacks and averaging 20 damage and rolling one attack that averages 20 damage, but there's not much of a different outcome from a "balance" perspective.

Which is to say, I haven't crunched the numbers, but it's probably possible to replace Extra Attack with a 4e-style "3[W] and a rider" in 5e without throwing off the balance. I'd expect it to be higher level than a comparable 4e effect, and not do quite as much damage, but totally in the realm of possibility.

I did some very rough math (that is, I didn't account for crits, and only tested a 60% chance to hit, or compared to the Fighter's 4th attack, results may skew when you account for those) but they're equal if you double the damage for two attacks (presumably doubling the damage modifiers as well), and roughly equal if you triple the damage to account for three attacks.

However, while they're roughly equal in overall damage at 2-3 attacks, the second attack means that you only have a 1/9 chance of not dealing any damage whatsoever. This drops to a 1/27 chance with a third attack. This is a pretty dramatic difference in feel, to have a low to no chance of completely whiffing.

Whether you like the feeling of "One strike Will topple anything!" or "My individual attacks don't do much, but I do enough that I'll at least deal some damage this round," is up to the player. Personally, I like the latter, especially as it's flexible enough to switch between fighting multiple weak opponents or a single tough foe.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I did some very rough math (that is, I didn't account for crits, and only tested a 60% chance to hit, or compared to the Fighter's 4th attack, results may skew when you account for those) but they're equal if you double the damage for two attacks (presumably doubling the damage modifiers as well), and roughly equal if you triple the damage to account for three attacks.

However, while they're roughly equal in overall damage at 2-3 attacks, the second attack means that you only have a 1/9 chance of not dealing any damage whatsoever. This drops to a 1/27 chance with a third attack. This is a pretty dramatic difference in feel, to have a low to no chance of completely whiffing.

Whether you like the feeling of "One strike Will topple anything!" or "My individual attacks don't do much, but I do enough that I'll at least deal some damage this round," is up to the player. Personally, I like the latter, especially as it's flexible enough to switch between fighting multiple weak opponents or a single tough foe.

Yeah, the latter is also less binary, and so it involves less catastrophic failure. Having another attack is a great salve on the burn of a missed attack. I don't object to having the option of switching between multi-attacks and BIG WHUMPS, though! It'd be a fun little design experiment to give an alternative to Extra Attack that was spikey like that...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Whether you like the feeling of "One strike Will topple anything!" or "My individual attacks don't do much, but I do enough that I'll at least deal some damage this round," is up to the player. Personally, I like the latter, especially as it's flexible enough to switch between fighting multiple weak opponents or a single tough foe.

If you have an X% chance of hitting, then making one attack for Y damage means that you'll deal Y damage X% of the time and the rest of the time you'll deal nothing. If you split that same Y damage up across Z different attacks, then as you increase the value of Z, the total damage you deal will approach X% of Y.

Do you want a 60% chance of dealing maximum damage? Or would you prefer to always deal 60% of your maximum damage?

It seems like the safe bet is always safer, especially if you can split those attacks up and not worry about overkill, but the risky bet is the only way that you can possibly kill a monster with Y hit points in one round.

 

[flametitan]

Personally I now kind of want to see another class with the single big attack scaling, but not quite like the rogue's. I wasn't in the playtest, but I've heard about how classes back then used superiority dice to scale their attacks, rather than extra attacks.

While I don't think that should be every class, what about one focused on it? The only problem is that I can't think of a good fluff to hang off of it, and other abilities to expand it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So an unarmored dude with Dex 3 (generating an AC modifier of +4) would be no worse off than an unarmored dude with Dex 14 (no AC modifier from Dex), since it's impossible to have an AC worse than 10?

IIRC, yes, in 1e there was no AC 11+. 2e might've been different, I tended to ignore where it was different.

Do you want a 60% chance of dealing maximum damage? Or would you prefer to always deal 60% of your maximum damage?

It seems like the safe bet is always safer, especially if you can split those attacks up and not worry about overkill, but the risky bet is the only way that you can possibly kill a monster with Y hit points in one round.

Yep. Same logic as the greatsword being better than the greatax in 3e. If the system is stacked in your favor (as 5e is, if you follow the encounter guidelines, it's tuning to fast combat will deliver swift & frequent PC victories), then you want as little variance as possible, a nice consistent DPR, for instance. Swinginess is what gets you killed. 5e can make with the swinginess, though, especially at lower level. ;>

 

[The Crimson Binome]

IIRC, yes, in 1e there was no AC 11+. 2e might've been different, I tended to ignore where it was different.

I looked it up, because there are limits to my disbelief on how bad 1E could have possibly been. It took a bit more work than I was expecting. First of all, the chance to hit isn't anywhere in the PHB; the "attack matrices" were in the DMG. Second of all, it was "attack matrices" rather than attack bonus or THAC0 or anything.

That's fine, though. It's a different way of presenting information, but it's all in there. There's even a kind of neat thing where the 20 result repeats six times, so if you needed a 20 to hit (for example) AC -4, then you could still hit anything as high as -9 before you would need a 21 to hit. Honestly, that's way better than our current "anyone can hit on a 20" rules.

That's probably where you got the idea that AC can only go from -10 to +10, because that's as far as the chart shows. Fortunately for my faith in the designers, there's a note on using the table, which mentions you can get ACs that aren't on the chart by shifting 1 for each additional point of AC (accounting for the six repeating 20s, as above). It does mention that AC rarely gets worse than 10 unless you've been cursed, which is odd.

 

[CapnZapp]

The discussion between [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] back a few pages (around posts 55-60) comes across as surreal to me.

As if oneshotting was ever a thing in D&D? Everybody has already moved on to accept that with high level comes so many hit points you become functionally immune to being oneshotted.

Being susceptible to being oneshotted is a bad thing. Its the reason why everybody wants to escape tier I asap. The game at low levels is too unstable to be sustainable.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

As if oneshotting was ever a thing in D&D? Everybody has already moved on to accept that with high level comes so many hit points you become functionally immune to being oneshotted.

We're not talking about one-shotting PCs, or at least I wasn't. I was talking about one-shotting ogres, or other generic enemies that you would expect powerful characters to mow through like they were nothing.

In 3.5, an ogre had 29hp, and a flaming greatsword wielded by a level 8 barbarian with power attack could easily exceed that. In 4E, you would eventually get to the point where you could represent the ogre as a minion, so anyone could one-shot it. In 5E, you never get to a point where you can easily one-shot an ogre, because it just has way too many hit points; it always takes something special, like a critical hit or a high-level spell slot.

 

[CapnZapp]

We're not talking about one-shotting PCs, or at least I wasn't. I was talking about one-shotting ogres, or other generic enemies that you would expect powerful characters to mow through like they were nothing.

In 3.5, an ogre had 29hp, and a flaming greatsword wielded by a level 8 barbarian with power attack could easily exceed that. In 4E, you would eventually get to the point where you could represent the ogre as a minion, so anyone could one-shot it. In 5E, you never get to a point where you can easily one-shot an ogre, because it just has way too many hit points; it always takes something special, like a critical hit or a high-level spell slot.

You can still oneshot a generic 29 hp creature in this edition (you can deal 33 points of damage with a 3E-style flaming greatweapon). It's just not an Ogre.