Damage Equivalence

[ferratus]

Incidentally the point where we stopped playing 4e literally mid-session and made new 3.5 characters was when the DM was told something like "you're stunned (save ends), then you're blinded for 3 rounds".

You're not going to get away from that by fleeing to 3e.

That's a word for word description of the 1st level "colour spray" spell. Which is way, way too powerful to be there.

 

[BryonD]

Just shooting from the hip with little information about the actual target.....


My gut reaction was quite negative.
After two minutes of thinking I started coming up with ways to like it.

It makes me think of CR.
I long ago gave up having a high level of faith in CR. The science of consistently assigning CRs under stable circumstances is complex enough that even if you think you have a handle on it, you can't blindly trust that the guy who wrote the book you are holding does. And then you add in the variations on circumstance.

But the practical reality is that if you trust it more as an art and you are willing to take ownership of your game then it ends up working as a really nice little tool despite the voodoo foundation.
I think this methodology could work the same for spells.
There will be errors. And there will be places where people just really disagree on some value calls. But it has the potential to cut through a lot of issues and get to "more than good enough" in an efficient manner.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Sammael!

My heads hurts just thinking about it. It does make some sense, but I think it's wholly unnecessary.

I'd like for [MENTION=326]Upper_Krust[/MENTION] to chime in here.

I apologise for the delay, I have been REALLY busy this past week and not much time online, so give me a few hours to catch up on the DDXP Seminars and stuff and I'll get back here later today and add whatever minor help I can.

 

[Tilenas]

You're not going to get away from that by fleeing to 3e.

That's a word for word description of the 1st level "colour spray" spell. Which is way, way too powerful to be there.

Not entirely, no. It was 3.5 because that was what we had played before and also the only other system some of the players knew.

 

[Stalker0]

My reaction is...thank god they have a systematic way of gauging spells.

The designers have mentioned using damage classes like the fighter as a baseline, and then taking away damage and replacing that with other options. But damage is very sexy (look at the prevalance of strikers in 4e).

If you are going to do that and make it work, where a pure damage guy and a 60%, 40% other guy are in the same party and both feel about equally useful, then some comparison is in order. Might as well be a damage comparison.

 

[Ahnehnois]

So I go talk to the mayor, ask him for help, and he refuses. The party bard starts playing a song in the background, and mixes in the words for a subtle spell of enchantment, and five minutes later he agrees to send the town guard looking for my undead nemesis.

Or I could have just had the fighter hit him with a greatsword for an average of 10.5 damage.

Wait, what?

I can see the use of assigning spells a point value to estimate balance, but this doesn't seem like the best way of framing it. It's a bit concerning, but not a disaster unless that mentality goes a lot farther than we've heard.

 

[ferratus]

Not entirely, no. It was 3.5 because that was what we had played before and also the only other system some of the players knew.

Btw, I'm surprised you gave up a long-running 4e campaign just over that. You would have had to have been at least 10th level to run into blinding+stunning effects in the same attack.

Plus, there is no such thing as "3 rounds". It's always either (save ends) or until the end of the attacker's next turn.

Frankly, I think the DM tricked you by playing fast and loose with the rules, and pushed you into a system that does have those kind of attacks, and away from one that doesn't.

 

[Hussar]

What's the damage equivalent of comprehend languages?

Yeah, we're talking about relativity in design. The damage comparison will NOT be in the book.

I think that's an important point to remember. Just like the calculation of CR (and, yes, BryonD, this is one place where we are in complete agreement), it's more of a rule of thumb than a hard and fast metric.

If Charm Person forex, is worth 10.5 points of damage, then Comprehend Languages is probably less than that since it doesn't really let you hurt anyone, nor does it actually achieve any goals - it might help you achieve a goal, but, it doesn't do anything in and of itself.

For those who don't like this, what metric would you suggest? Gut feeling resulted in some fairly large mistakes - Color Spray is a good example here, as is Glitterdust. If you baseline on how effective something is in combat, then at least you'd avoid those problems.

Hopefully.

 

[Upper_Krust]

I've had a chance to read over the seminar information.

My take on the Charm Person example is that WotC have a basic framework for Fighter damage (which we can assume scales very slowly) which they are using as the default (Fighter as 100% as is mentioned a few times).

Assuming Charm Person is the equivalent of 10.5 damage then, we must assume it has a likely duration of "Until the end of your next turn" (or possibly save ends).

The former assumes that basic Fighter damage is roughly 10.5 damage per round and that the Charm Person effectively nullifies the attack of one humanoid character.

The save ends option might assume that the basic Fighter damage is 7 (2d6) and that any save ends option is treated as a flat 50% increase.

Fireball at 5d6 is equivalent to a 9th-level Daily from 4E.

Hypothetically...

d4 (2.5) = base Wizard damage (area attack?)
d6 (3.5) = base Caster damage (single target, roughly 50% more than area attack)
2d6 (7) = base Fighter damage
5d6 (17.5) = Fireball damage (area attack, Daily Spell)
7d6 (24.5) = (single target, Daily Spell)

The difference between d4, 2d6 and 5d6 is between x2.5 and x2.8. Which would balance the idea of the Wizard being weaker than the Fighter in typical play but flip that around when taking Daily Spells into account.

Looking at the single target difference and it seems balanced against:

50% (Caster single target base), 100% (Fighter base), 350% (Caster Daily single target).

That assumes daily spells would be balanced for use (on average) every 6 rounds of combat.

Of course all the above is speculative based on the scant amount of information we have at this stage.

 

[Dragonblade]

I've had a chance to read over the seminar information.

My take on the Charm Person example is that WotC have a basic framework for Fighter damage (which we can assume scales very slowly) which they are using as the default (Fighter as 100% as is mentioned a few times).

Assuming Charm Person is the equivalent of 10.5 damage then, we must assume it has a likely duration of "Until the end of your next turn" (or possibly save ends).

The former assumes that basic Fighter damage is roughly 10.5 damage per round and that the Charm Person effectively nullifies the attack of one humanoid character.

The save ends option might assume that the basic Fighter damage is 7 (2d6) and that any save ends option is treated as a flat 50% increase.

Fireball at 5d6 is equivalent to a 9th-level Daily from 4E.

Hypothetically...

d4 (2.5) = base Wizard damage (area attack?)
d6 (3.5) = base Caster damage (single target, roughly 50% more than area attack)
2d6 (7) = base Fighter damage
5d6 (17.5) = Fireball damage (area attack, Daily Spell)
7d6 (24.5) = (single target, Daily Spell)

The difference between d4, 2d6 and 5d6 is between x2.5 and x2.8. Which would balance the idea of the Wizard being weaker than the Fighter in typical play but flip that around when taking Daily Spells into account.

Looking at the single target difference and it seems balanced against:

50% (Caster single target base), 100% (Fighter base), 350% (Caster Daily single target).

That assumes daily spells would be balanced for use (on average) every 6 rounds of combat.

Of course all the above is speculative based on the scant amount of information we have at this stage.

Excellent analysis, UK!

Damage really is the best way to guage effects like this. Its simply the easiest and most universal guage of class combat effectiveness since all classes do damage. When a wizard casts a spell like Charm Person in lieu of a combat spell like Magic Missile, they are paying an opportunity cost to cast that spell.

What the designers need to do is look at those spells and analyze that opportunity cost. If a particular non-damaging spell is so good that a wizard would consistently rather cast it then a spell that straight up does damage, then that is a big red flag that spell is broken, or overpowered for its level. Likewise, if its more advantageous for a caster to always go for damage and never cast one of these other spells then thats a red flag its underpowered.

The trick is to balance spells such that the wizard player has to make a meaningful choice as opposed to a no-brainer choice most of the time. Given the breadth of spells in the game pre-4e and the situation specific usefulness of many of them, this will definitely be more art than science.

But the fact that it appears to be somewhat of a design consideration tells me the designers are approaching this in the right way.