At-Will damage scaling too slow?

[UngeheuerLich]

The thing is: every single feat or magic item makes just a difference of maximum +4. This is a lot less than in 3.5 where power attack made a difference of +10 or so. Also The difference between Fighters and magicians is not that different as it used to be. In 2nd edtion a fighter at low levels did 5 times as much damage as a mage (1d12 + 6 vs 1d4 + 1) and this balanced at level 5-7 and he started to fall behind afterwards and maybe ended with damage less than a tenth of a magic users damage later on. In 3.5 it was not so much different.

now you are just speaking of a difference of 1/2 damage which is much less than before. And you can miss one magic item and you are still doing well. If you however don´t even try to do damage, which can be ok, you should not wonder why your fights are too hard. The DM has to adjust to this playstyle.

 

[DracoSuave]

If you however don´t even try to do damage, which can be ok, you should not wonder why your fights are too hard. The DM has to adjust to this playstyle.

Quoted for Truthery.

Seriously. Everything in this RPG is a tool. The DM has to learn how to adjust. For all the 'How is a New DM supposed to know how?' a lot of the DMG -is- 'How a DM Knows How'

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It is however useful if the standard encounters assume a middleground. Which can be too easy for some and too hard for other groups.

it is so easy to adjust on the fly. All it needs is a DM screen and a poker face

 

[Stalker0]

The thing is: every single feat or magic item makes just a difference of maximum +4. This is a lot less than in 3.5 where power attack made a difference of +10 or so. Also The difference between Fighters and magicians is not that different as it used to be. In 2nd edtion a fighter at low levels did 5 times as much damage as a mage (1d12 + 6 vs 1d4 + 1) and this balanced at level 5-7 and he started to fall behind afterwards and maybe ended with damage less than a tenth of a magic users damage later on. In 3.5 it was not so much different.

In 3rd edition this was somewhat mitigated by the lower hp of monsters, which often resulted in "wasted damage".

In fact, its the main reason I never liked x3 or x4 crit ranges over 19-20/x2, a lot of cases x3 damage is just overkill, and the monster would have been taken out with x2.

So while 3rd edition had more damage bonuses, 4e I think you get more mileage out of them. Though I am saying this of pure speculation, I haven't run any numbers to say how much average damage is wasted.

 

[abyssaldeath]

In 3rd edition this was somewhat mitigated by the lower hp of monsters, which often resulted in "wasted damage".

In fact, its the main reason I never liked x3 or x4 crit ranges over 19-20/x2, a lot of cases x3 damage is just overkill, and the monster would have been taken out with x2.

So while 3rd edition had more damage bonuses, 4e I think you get more mileage out of them. Though I am saying this of pure speculation, I haven't run any numbers to say how much average damage is wasted.

I can agree with that. There were plenty of times my fighter could have killed the monster 3 times with the amount of damage he did. Especially with the feats that double your crit chances. 3.5 fixed that, somewhat, by not allowing the Keen property stack with what ever the equivalent feat was called.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Ok, maybe you are right there...

but on the other hand, it was more difficult to hit in 3.5 at lower levels at least (later it didn´t matte that much for fighters anyway), so when you connect, every point of damage can mean the difference between a one hit k.o. and 2 hits. And yes, in general higher crit chance was better than 20/x4 because it was more reliable.

A combination of those two things made power attack more of an art than hard mathematiks, because even though the average damage function had a maximum, wasted damage and tresholds had to be taken into consideration.

I really don´t know, how much power attack is worth in 4e, i guess its not so useful at heroic, but i can be wrong. Didn´t do the math.

still i believe, 4 points of damage, when we speak about an average of 30 is no game breaker. So missing out 2 or 3 feats doesn´t matter that much.

 

[keterys]

A +3 bloodclaw nets a difference of 9 damage in just one item so the gap can happen pretty quickly.

Also 1d12+6 averages 12.5 and 1d4+1 is 3.5, so that's less than x4 difference... but more importantly most 1st level wizards can manage to do the 'Crossbow' spell which would up their damage to 1d8 (4.5) or sometimes higher. And yeah, that wasn't too good a thing then either.

I'm not worried about strikers dealing more damage than non-strikers though. I'm worried about the _same exact_ characters dealing half (or double, depending on direction) damage based on items and feats. It's just a bit off kilter. But oh well, that die is cast.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

yeah, right... i was stupid... 1d4 is 2.5

and, yes, maybe bloodclaw is a bit too much

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Yeah, the disparity of damage happens when there are too many stackable static damage bonuses. 4e promised to fix this by not allowing almost anything to stack. Only they appear to be slowly breaking this with each item that comes out.

Items should never add more than 6 damage beyond their enhancement bonus. And that's ALL your items. I think that Iron Armbands of Power should be changed to +1/+2/+3. Bloodclaw should be 1 for 1, or 1 for 2 used two handed(and should be an item bonus so they don't stack with Iron Armbands). Reckless should be changed to do only damage equal to the enhancement bonus instead of times 2. It should also be changed to an item bonus. Dual Implement Spellcaster should be changed to a feat bonus.

I haven't seen any other abuses yet. But those changes are enough to rebalance damage so that you can still differentiate your character damage wise, but not by enough to totally outstrip others in your group.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

Over on the WotC boards they suggest that ideally strikers should be doing 20 at-will dpr by 10th level, 40 at-will dpr by 20th level, and 60 at-will dpr by the 30th level. If your party has strikers who hit that benchmark, fights shouldn't drag too much unless the DM really loves brutes or something. Of course, its possible to build many strikers to go far over those numbers--stormwarden rangers abusing bloodclaw, sorcs using staffs of ruin, lasting frost and arcane admixture, crt-fishing avengers....If you really want monsters to go down in a shot or two from a single at-will, there are builds that can definitely do it. But you definitely don't need that. If you're hitting 20/40/60, or something close to it, you really should be fine.