D&D 5E Damage in this Packet is Totally Out of Control

[variant]

They need to scale the martial dice based on the weapon and get rid of the arbitrary martial damage bonus.

Right now the martial characters feel like they are outshining the spellcasters to a ridiculous degree, they need toned back.

 

[Falling Icicle]

That level 20 Fighter also only hits Asmodeus 70% of the time causing his damage per round to drop to 35.35. It takes a little more than 7 attacks on average for a Fighter to deal 250 points of damage to Asmodeus.

It depends if he has a magic weapon or not. But still, even assuming it takes the fighter 7 rounds to kill Asmodeus all by himself, that's a huge problem. Asmodeus is supposed to be an epic solo monster type threat, and it won't just be the fighter attacking him, the rest of the party will be helping. A 4 man party including a fighter, rogue, monk and cleric could easily kill Asmodeus in 2 rounds. That's hardly what I'd call an epic fight.

You are misreading it. The effects of overlaping clouds do not stack. Each creature in the clouds only make one save and only take 6d6 fire and 6d6 bludgeon or half that on a successful save.

You could be right, and that would definitely make the spell much more sane. If they aren't meant to stack, they need to clarify that.

2) bounded accuracy - I can see some of the complaints, and right now it is not very elegant at high level, but something has to increase with level. In this case, it is Hit Points and Damage. It still beats both attack bonus, defence bonus, plus damage & hit points.

Originally they said that gaining levels in Next would be more about gaining new abilities and cool toys rather than bigger numbers. Instead, what we have now is just the opposite: a whole lot of dead levels and whole lot of "MOAR DAMAGE!"

And just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that HP and damage not improve at all with level, I would just prefer that they improve much more gradually than they do in this packet.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

The trick with all of this is to find the right scale over which something will increase during the course of 20 levels. With accuracy, I think we've hit the right track with 0-5, and it would be nice to see skills come into line with that rather than the silly skill die. With damage we have more difficulty, because HP canonically go up by quite a large amount every level, and we're still seeing +Con mod every level too. If you expect a 1st level 1-on-1 fight to be over in 4-5 rounds, then with d10 HP every level you've got to scale damage to end up with 4-5d10 at 20th, for the fight to last the same time.

Now I wouldn't be against to a little extension in combat times at higher levels, epic fights are naturally more drawn out affairs, but we could also work at the other end to reduce the HP gain every level. Perhaps making d8 the highest player HD? Removing the Con mod every level? Fixed value HP gains? Non-linear HP gains? There are a number of options to explore.

 

[variant]

The trick with all of this is to find the right scale over which something will increase during the course of 20 levels. With accuracy, I think we've hit the right track with 0-5, and it would be nice to see skills come into line with that rather than the silly skill die. With damage we have more difficulty, because HP canonically go up by quite a large amount every level, and we're still seeing +Con mod every level too. If you expect a 1st level 1-on-1 fight to be over in 4-5 rounds, then with d10 HP every level you've got to scale damage to end up with 4-5d10 at 20th, for the fight to last the same time.

Now I wouldn't be against to a little extension in combat times at higher levels, epic fights are naturally more drawn out affairs, but we could also work at the other end to reduce the HP gain every level. Perhaps making d8 the highest player HD? Removing the Con mod every level? Fixed value HP gains? Non-linear HP gains? There are a number of options to explore.

The skill die is essentially like +6.5 on average, reducing that to d10 at high level would put it more on par with the 0-5 progression. I agree that 0-5 is about right though.

As for hit points, we simply need to scale damage correctly with hit points. The problem is that it becomes more complicated to balance out as you get high level as more robust abilities come into play. I don't think reducing the maximum hit die size wouldn't do much to help this, it just narrows the differences between the classes which I think is a bad thing.

 

[Libramarian]

Yeah I'm not really into this whole bounded accuracy idea anymore. This feels way too experimental for what D&D Next is supposed to be. This math is substantially different from any previous edition and I don't trust them to get it right with the initial release, and I don't want to keep up with a torrent of errata or buy a new half-edition 2-3 years later.

These designers need to eat a nice big slice of humble pie and just go back to classic D&D math imo.

They have way too long a leash and are wasting a lot of time here. When you think about it's pretty ridiculous that it takes 3+ years to put together a new edition of a 38 year old dice game.

 

[variant]

Yeah I'm not really into this whole bounded accuracy idea anymore. This feels way too experimental for what D&D Next is supposed to be. This math is substantially different from any previous edition and I don't trust them to get it right with the initial release, and I don't want to keep up with a torrent of errata or buy a new half-edition 2-3 years later.

These designers need to eat a nice big slice of humble pie and just go back to classic D&D math imo.

They have way too long a leash and are wasting a lot of time here. When you think about it's pretty ridiculous that it takes 3+ years to put together a new edition of a 38 year old dice game.

Bounded accuracy is a lot more easy to balance because the shift from level 1 to 20 is not that big. The more math you add, the more complicated the game becomes, and the longer it takes to calculate that math. This is why previous editions of D&D always start breaking down after level 10. It breaks down under the weight of bloated numbers. Every issue D&DN has right now is in the realm of hit points and damage because it isn't bounded. It is going to take a lot more work to balance it out.

You want to go back to what is literally a broken system.

 

[Stalker0]

It depends if he has a magic weapon or not. But still, even assuming it takes the fighter 7 rounds to kill Asmodeus all by himself, that's a huge problem. Asmodeus is supposed to be an epic solo monster type threat, and it won't just be the fighter attacking him, the rest of the party will be helping. A 4 man party including a fighter, rogue, monk and cleric could easily kill Asmodeus in 2 rounds. That's hardly what I'd call an epic fight.

This is a problem where people just crunch the numbers and forget about abilities, and with Asmodeus you cannot ignore them.

First, every round the fighter has to make a saving throw against A's Authority of Nessus. If he fails, he will do MINIMUM damage for the rest of the fight.

Second, every round A can choose and try to charm one of the players. So all that fighter damage might just serve his will instead.

Third, A can summon a pitfiend every 3rd round if he chooses to, giving him plenty of additional meat shield to help out.


So while yes a fighter could in theory wreck A's day, doesn't necessarily mean its going to happen. The pure numbers aren't everything.

 

[triqui]

The skill die is essentially like +6.5 on average, reducing that to d10 at high level would put it more on par with the 0-5 progression. I agree that 0-5 is about right though.

As for hit points, we simply need to scale damage correctly with hit points. The problem is that it becomes more complicated to balance out as you get high level as more robust abilities come into play. I don't think reducing the maximum hit die size wouldn't do much to help this, it just narrows the differences between the classes which I think is a bad thing.

But the d10/d12 has other possible benefits, such as being random. This is useful for things like the rogue skill tricks. If you go with the 0-5 route (which I like more than the dice, for that matter), you need to change the rogue skills and build something different.

 

[variant]

But the d10/d12 has other possible benefits, such as being random. This is useful for things like the rogue skill tricks. If you go with the 0-5 route (which I like more than the dice, for that matter), you need to change the rogue skills and build something different.

I honestly like the concept of the skill die, but I think it would benefit to reducing the maximum die to d10 to make it on par with the 0-5 progression in other areas. It also leaves the d12 for any kind of feat or ability that would increase your skill die by one, instead of immediately jumping to 2d6 which is clunky. For people that prefer a simple bonus, they can add a +1 to +5 in parentheses next to the die.

 

[Blue]

Yeah, I'd rather higher level enemies have 20 hp less and fighters not get their extra 20 damage, too. Also, the martial dice....this has been noted before....make the weapon choice insignificant, almost insultingly so.

This is a feature for me. A high level fighter armed with a dagger is still someone to be GREATLY FEARED. It's more about the hero and less about the gear.

4e didn't allow disarming, partially because it was such a big difference to some PCs/enemies and not a big deal to others. I'm glad that a fighter is still dangerous with some other weapon.