Primal said:
No, I don't think it takes too much effort ("extra work"), say, to give a monster lower-than-average HPs, right? Do you*really* think that a DM, who adjusts the "danger curve" of the campaign to match the party's abilities is using a "crappy" method?
Sure, it doesn't take much effort to give it lower HP, but it might not have the effect you want. A creature who hits for 60 damage on a single attack with +31 to hit but only has 1 hitpoint is still extremely dangerous to a 10th level wizard if it goes first. Just lowering hitpoints isn't sufficient to properly lower a monster's difficulty.
As for adjusting for a party's abilities being a crappy method: Yes it is. Because its almost always giving one party member an unfair advantage or disadvantage. The good method is to have balanced PCs, balanced rules, and balanced enemies so no adjustment is necessary.
Primal said:
I'm a bit baffled why you'd think that it would be "bad" or "not fun" if *all* the PCs get to "shine" , since I though this was one of the design goals in 4E? So some of the guys (e.g. those with better HPs) may occasionally get to be more "heroic" than they "normally" would at their level, but I never saw this "unbalancing" the game at all. And why would "weaker" monsters make for an "unbalanced" campaign, if the DM knows how to adjust their numbers and stats for a balanced encounter?
Alright, here's an example. You have 5 PCs. 4 of them rolled above average and 1 rolled below. They rolled: 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%, and 30% of max hitpoints respectively. Let's say they are fighter, barbarian, cleric, wizard, rogue respectively. Let's assume the rogue also skimped on his con since he's not all that knowledgeable about power gaming. His con is 12. The party is 20th level. The rogue has 60 hitpoints. Let's assume various ranges of powergaming amongst the rest of the party so their hitpoints are: 281, 441(while raging), 174, 86. The fighter and barbarian are both capable of power attacking and can do a combined damage of about 150 damage a round to most creatures of their level. The wizard can do another 75 or so damage by himself in a round.
Now the trick is to build an encounter that challenges the entire party, makes each member of the party feel like they COULD die if things go badly for them(including the barbarian) without dramatically increasing the chance that the rogue(or wizard) dies(and simply having the monster never attack the rogue doesn't count).
Compare that to the game where everyone has no con bonus and automatically rolls average hitpoints. They would have hitpoints of: 115, 136, 94, 52, 73. Now a creature that deals average 50 damage a round would be dangerous, but predictably so. You know that it'll take 2 rounds to kill any member of the group except the fighter and the barbarian and they'd die in 3 rounds. Now if you also know that the party does a combined average damage of about 100 per round, you know that if the monster has 195 hitpoints, it'll likely die in 2 rounds. Now we have an interesting battle. If the PCs roll below average, they might not kill it in 2 rounds and it'll get a 3rd round which might kill the fighter or barbarian. Unless the monster rolls low as well, or all(or some) of the PCs go before it in the 3rd round.
There are variables so nothing is certain, but on average, the party wins, only just barely. Therefore it has high tension and nail biting. However, you can only plan this sort of encounter when you can remove a bunch of the variables. If the monster gets + or - 100 HP than all the PCs could die. If the PCs have + or minus 50 HP then the encounter can lose all tension since they kill the creature long before being in fear of dying.
You just can't do that with the above example since any creature capable of threatening the Barbarian in less than 6 rounds kills the rogue in one hit. Anything that's capable of threatening more than one of the party in less than 10 rounds kills the rogue in one hit. That's what we call "unbalancing".
Primal said:
And the funny thing is that under the "normal" circumstances any one of use should have killed that BBEG in melee. Now, would this be a valid argument for static *attacks* in D&D?
No, that's what we call EXTREMELY bad luck. It happens now and then, but that much bad luck in a row is statistically very improbable(it really depends how many bad rolls caused it).
However, normally when a group of characters is all attacking the same monster, when one rolls low another rolls high and it comes out average. This is perfectly fine in terms of attack rolls or damage rolls. If you roll low one combat you might roll high the next.
However, compare that to a situation where one character rolls low on HP due to a string of bad luck while one of the others rolls well due to a string of good luck. Now, both players deal with the consequence of that roll every combat for the entire game.
Primal said:
You may seem to think that every PC must be "optimized" for combat, since that's the "heart and soul" of D&D, right? And "sucky" PCs are "badwrongfun", right? Yet I know many people who run campaigns in which "non-heroic" abilities and events play a much larger role. I tend to see it this way: if the basic premise of a campaign is interesting, I don't mind creating a "weak" (minimized) PC as long as the character is interesting and fun to play *and* has some sort of goals which are also possible to achieve in that campaign. If you want to play cobblers, blacksmiths and whatnot -- why should you not be able to play them in D&D? Is it because D&D *should* be about "monster bashing" and little else? Is variety in character options a bad thing, if it allows for "non-optimized" builds? I don't think so, if the DM and the players both know which sort of campaign a DM is going to run. So, maybe you don't like players who create "Tanks who can't do their job", but is that really the "heart" of the problem, or is it because you can't think of ways to work around this "problem"?
No, it's because I shouldn't have to work around it. When I say, "We're playing D&D next week, I'm running an adventure I bought. It's designed for 10th level characters, everyone make up a character and have it ready to start for the beginning of the session." I shouldn't then have to delay the start of the session by an hour as I go through all of the characters at the table to make sure they fit in with the plot of the adventure. I shouldn't have to go through the adventure with a marker changing the hitpoints of every creature in there because one player decided to make a poorly made character.
And even then, if I spend the effort to just reduce hitpoints I'm not going to get a full picture of what will happen as I mention above. I still might kill the whole party if they are all extremely unoptimized.
Even if I tell all my players "this is a very combat intensive adventure, make characters who are good at combat", it doesn't guarantee that any character THEY think is good at combat actually is if they aren't familiar with the rules.
I'd like a game that just works. Playing a non-combat game isn't wrongbadfun, it just isn't the default way to play the game. My games certainly have non-combat sections, sometimes large ones. But when I get to the combat portions of the game I don't want to slaughter the party simply because someone decided they didn't want to be good at combat. I'd like to have a game where I KNOW the game will be balanced in combat for everyone.
Primal said:
In 4E, assuming wizards get 8 points at 1st level and 4/level, he might have about 54-62 HPs (excluding Feats). So in 4E you're actually able to know which tactics everyone *should* use to take him down -- maybe even on round 1. So yeah, it's just for NPCs, but I think most DMs prefer using PC races and classes for BBEGs and I think it might prove to be a serious "flaw" in 4E.
I'm missing the part where this is a problem exactly.
We know the monster has 55 hitpoints. The fighter has an attack that does 2d6+4, the rogue has one that does 2d6+6, the cleric has one that does 1d8+3, the paladin has one that does 1d10+4. The rogue can do more damage when flanking. The paladin's attack gives a bonus to someone's ac when it hits and the fighter can push the creature back when he hits. The cleric can heal someone when he hits.
Now, how does the knowledge of the creatures hitpoints suddenly become a horrible flaw in the game? The players know approximately how long the combat will last with average damage? MAYBE it will cause them not to heal someone if they know the creature will die this round. However with attack rolls and damage being variable, would they even still risk it?
