Doing away with "Bigger Fish" problem.

[Mostlyjoe]

It's a problem if you're trying to build encounters on the fly, and or you want to find something thematic to the campaign you are running. It would just be nice if the scaling rules to increase a power of a monsters were more thought out.

Stuff like developing larger and larger encounter situations, just because the PC's are facing off against ORCs for 50% of the campaign doesn't makes it borning. Especially if say you're running a tribal game where the PC's are nation building with ally tribes and you're playing out a massive countrywide civil war between the major tribe chiefs. Etc.

Or maybe you really, really want to scale a primay Demon foe that keeps showing up again and again but need a reasonable way to represent this power without kiling yourself to explain weird jumps in raw numbers. Sure I could house rule it, but eventually I'd really love to have some tools to use to help gauge what I'm doing.

Imagine monsters as nesting dolls. I'd LOVE to see a framework that allows for easy scaling of an encounter with NPC building suggestions. Like a big book of foes and how to tweek them to the encounters you're building. Minions, what does a lair grant them, what sorts of items or new tactics could they develop. Just guidelines to play with. Nothing set in stone.

With the exception of some talk in the DMG and monsterous races taking PC levels in 3.X, it's always been something that was glossed over. 4E really assumed the foes you were facing would be tiered. Orcs were Heroic, Drow in Paragon, etc.

Why not allow for a fuller scale? That's all. It's just something I'd really love to see more material out there to play with. Something to make foes viable for longer.

 

[innerdude]

This entire thread seems like one big "talkaround" to the Alexandrian's Calibrating your Expectations essay that largely became the inspiration for E6.

Yes, we can recalibrate the math, go "flat" or "bigger fish," or somewhere in between.

But the real problem is player expectations surrounding what they think their heroes should be capable of.

The increased power curve of 3.x has made this a big issue, as well as the expectation of "high level play" being viable across all aspects.

At some point, D&D/WotC has to decide whether it wants to include Wuxia/Crouching Tiger/Superhuman heroes as being included in the "core" gameplay, or whether "heroic" tier is the default, and everything else is an add-on, because from a math, genre, and functional standpoint, they're basically different games.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Yeah, okay, I can see some good ideas in what you're saying now, but I don't agree with all of it. I'd say yes that I think the following could be better presented: how to scale encounters (up or down); how to transition specific monsters in level, particularly across the tier boundaries; and how to develop bigger and badder encounters with the same monsters.

I disagree, however, that this is all within a system mechanic fix. For example, I think it's fine that kobolds are all low-level and once the heroes get to a certain point, they won't meaningfully encounter a kobold in combat again (except for story-oriented reasons, such as the big, bad kobold avenger of doom). I see no reason why we should alter the entire game system to allow kobolds (and orcs, etc.) to have meaningful combat interactions. I include in this that I see no problem in having higher-level only monsters. However, I could see a way to capitulate in perhaps limited the scalability of the monsters. Drow, for instance, might only go to high heroic and not below. Kobolds might only go to high heroic, too, or perhaps low paragon. (As an aside, make sure you pronounce drow so it rhymes with whoa and not kapow.)

 

[KidSnide]

At some point, D&D/WotC has to decide whether it wants to include Wuxia/Crouching Tiger/Superhuman heroes as being included in the "core" gameplay, or whether "heroic" tier is the default, and everything else is an add-on, because from a math, genre, and functional standpoint, they're basically different games.

I hope not. Or, rather, I agree that they are a different style of game, but I hope the same set of rules can accommodate both styles with different modules and levels of play.

I always thought this fed into the great lost opportunity of tiered play. Tiered play should allow campaign-level decisions to influence character ability. For example, if you're playing a wuxia-style paragon game, wizards should be able to fly and fighters should be able to run up walls and leap through the air. On the other hand, if you're playing a Kingmaker-style game, you should be able to recruit an army, but running up walls is silly.

I hope D&DN lets me choose the version of D&D I want...

-KS

 

[Tony Vargas]

Part of what's been going on with scaling changes has to do with the roles monsters play relative to the PCs.

In classic D&D (pre 3e), monsters had pretty arbitrary stat blocks not directly related to the way PCs were generated or leveled. The role a monster played relative to the PCs was also arbitrary, monsters just were what they were, and the PCs dealt with them or not.

In 3.x, monsters had more formulaic stat blocks that used many of the same systems as PCs for customization and leveling-up. The role of any given monster was to modestly challenge a 4-player party of the same level. Or, with a friend, a party 2 levels higher. Or, with 3 friends, a party 4 levels higher.

In 4e, monsters had formulaic stat blocks that did not use any of the same system as PCs for customization or leveling-up. The stats of a monster depend on it's role. A monster meant to be cannon fodder is a minion, one meant to challenge a party on it's own is Solo, in between are standards and elites. Monsters also got roles in combat (Soldier, Artiller, lurker, etc). The weird part is that a monster didn't always have the same stats. An ogre might be a solo or elite at low level, standard at mid-heroic, and minion at Paragon, for instance. It's quite easy for the DM to slide a monster up or down levels or across the Solo-minion spectrum.


On one hand, that's a pendulum swing. Monsters going from not like PCs, to much like PCs, back to not like PCs.

Viewed another way, it's an evolution. Monsters going from having one set of stats for all monsters of a type, to being customizeable and level-able in great detail, to being easily tailored to the role they play in the party's story, at the moment.



What does that have to do with 'flatter math?'

Well, in classic D&D, where a monster might need to be a big challenge for a low-level party, but cannon-fodder for a high level one, monsters had to be hittable and killable, over a wide range of levels.

As monsters became customizeable, their numbers could slide with the party's, so the math could be steeper.

Once monsters became defined primarily relative to the party, 'the math' could be steeper, and more broadly and evenly advancing, as well.


5e 'flatter math' would thus be indicative of a return to the classic approach to monsters - as 'status quo' encounters, with the monster's stats being about the monster, not how the DM might want to use it, or how the party might go about defeating it, or what role it might play in the cooperative story the DM and players or weaving.

 

[ExploderWizard]

5e 'flatter math' would thus be indicative of a return to the classic approach to monsters - as 'status quo' encounters, with the monster's stats being about the monster, not how the DM might want to use it, or how the party might go about defeating it, or what role it might play in the cooperative story the DM and players or weaving.

It also allows the monster to have a more natural & organic place in the campaign world and feel like a part of it instead of an engineered construct designed specifically to combat a party of X level.

The part it has to play has nothing to do with stats. That is determined by the interaction of the monster with the PCs. It can be fought, negotiated with, tricked and robbed, ignored, or anything else that comes up during play.

Anything that emphasizes more organic play over setpiece encounter design is a good thing IMHO.

 

[Hautamaki]

I prefer flatter progression. A high level character that exists in the world should still be able to at least be hurt or hindered by things he encountered at first level. In the past, advancing up to 12th level or so suddenly made it so that goblins and orcs no longer existed. At 1st-5th level they were threats that PCs were needed to deal with in order to rescue whole villages or even provinces. But by 12th level I suppose you've wiped out every trace of evil humanoid civilization or something.

The whole point of advancement is so that your characters have a natural mechanic that keeps the game fresh by allowing them to do things they couldn't do in the past, and give players a sense of accomplishment. But I don't think that the geometric power growth we've become accustomed to is the only or best answer to those problems. Rather, advanced characters should certainly be provided with a lot more options, but not nearly so much advancement in raw power. Something like what the E6 system was going for, but refined, would be ideal imo.

 

[JonWake]

I came up with a two part solution to this: Slower BAB advancement and increasing damage output. I have characters advance with a +1 to BAB every 3 levels, with a +1 damage die every 5 levels. This has two major effects: it makes higher level monsters incredibly deadly against lower level parties (while still making them potentially beatable), and it has effectively eliminated the need for minion rules. I've also front-loaded the BAB (+0 to +3), which holds true for monsters as well.

Lets say my 5th level fighter has an AC of 18, a BAB of +4(+8 for melee), and a longsword that does 2d8+4 damage, and 42hp.

An orc with 1HD (8hp) , 16 AC, +5 to hit and 1d8+4 damage can still threaten the fighter, even if he won't one-shot him. The fighter, on the other hand, will be able to one-shot the Orc without breaking a sweat. The creature is a 'minion', as well as a viable threat to a low level creature without an mechanical re-jiggering. A 10th level fighter with +10 to hit, and 3d8+4 damage will cut through orcs like they weren't even there.

The downfall of this is that it makes combat much more lethal against tougher foes, making charging a dragon at low levels if not suicidal, a test of faith in your dice.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

If the issue at hand is the systems difficulty in having the PCs encounter low level bad guys and still have a challenge, then 4e actually goes a long way to making this easier. If you assume the monster stats are based on the threat the critter provides to the PCs at the level they are at... then it makes sense.

Using XP values as a guide you can adjust the critters role to reflect the threat level it has compared to the PCs. A normal Orc at 1st level becomes a minion at 8th level.

Expand on this with squads and platoons and you can have a squad of orcs challenging the PCs at 16th level or platoon at 24th level...
which can go even farther and treat the platoon as a minion at 30th level.

Which is what I am doing in my WoBS campaign. The PCs are facing entire armies of bad guys, and the stats provide a matching threat.

Of the issue of the bigger fish still needs addressing, but I think it can be handled better by defining the goals of the various tiers so that DMs can be better prepared to bring in the special bad guys, like Dragons, in an appropriate fashion that doesn't break the feel of the game world.

 

[JonWake]

Oh, I just noticed something else. If you treat level as rarity as well as power, you end up with a kind of expertise curve. This is based heavily (by which I mean stolen outright) on this blog post.

1st: 1 in 12 – The best in an extended family
2nd: 1 in 40 – The best in an estate or hamlet
3rd: 1 in 100 – The best in a tiny barony or village
4th: 1 in 200 – The best in a small barony or large village
5th: 1 in 500 – The best in a barony or large village
6th: 1 in 2,000 – The best in a march or town
7th: 1 in 6,000 – The best in a county
8th: 1 in 10,000 – The best in county
9th: 1 in 30,000- The best in a small duchy or big city
10th: 1 in 100,000 – The best in a duchy

If you extend this to the monsters, you get a good idea of how much of a threat a particular creature is. A 5HD orc is a warboss of a village. A 10 HD orc commands a Horde, or at least is the most dangerous orc in the horde.

Your 10th level fighter probably won't be encountering many 10th level threats unless she travels across the continents, but you can extrapolate backwards to find out how many of what level threats there are in an area.

This also lets you gauge what level you want to start at. A 1st level fighter might be the most gifted fighter in his squad, or the 1st level thief might have to work as a backalley pickpocket. If you want to play a more 'epic' game, you can start at 4th level as the best wizard in the entire wizard school.