D&D 5E Expertise Dice - some problems and some solutions

[Sadrik]

I do think they are aiming for quicker combat - lasting fewer rounds, but yeah some tweaking is probably needed.

Comparing the fighter's 1d12+2d6+4 = 17.5 damage to the Wizards 5d6 = 17.5 damage fireball and just looking at the damage numbers is missing part of the point.

Let's say the fighter has a 65% chance to hit, while the fireball has a 50% chance of getting saved. Average damage for the fighter is 11.4 while the wizard is doing 13.1 damage. Let's say the fireball hits 5 targets - it's a daily resource so you probably spend it when it hits a lot of targets, it now does 65.5 damage vs 11.4 for the fighter.

Personally, I think fireball looks like a spell that can completely dominate the outcome of one encounter per day. Just like Wizards did in earlier editions. (I played in a campaign with a wizard that did pretty good blast damage, but against low ac opponents, the fighter with 15-20x2 crit and two-handed power attack and cleave was right up there and could dish out the damage every round. He did get much bigger benefits from buffing with haste/prayer/bless really upping his damage output).

I hear your argument and it is solid, I am just of a different opinion. I feel that area effect damage that is a 1/day resource should do more damage than a fighter hitting with his sword... even if it hits multiple opponents (+allies sometimes ).

 

[Gorgoroth]

fire go boom

everyone needs their chance to shine. Fireball cannot be used in most combats, without hurting allies or burning the whole village down, or making a mess or a huge noise. My evoker used Lightning Bolt far, far more often, over the course of a 5-year campaign, for that reason.

DDN just needs to keep fireball as actually setting stuff on fire, and let it be your big boom spell, or your doomsday weapon to take out the BBEG and the party at the same time in a last-ditch effort to save the world...

Fighters should do more in the average battle, consistently, but wizards should be the ones who change the battlefield in a big way. Those two playstyles are NOT equivalent. A wizard should be useful all the time but take a back seat to the fighter until he's ready to fire some big guns, when the opportunity presents itself.

Class should not be "fluff". Agree with the poster who said if wizards are the glass canon, give them a big canon. Maybe it can't be reloaded fast or often, but when it hits the target, better make peace with your maker if you're on the receiving end.

Seeing an enemy wizard on an open battlefield should be absolutely TERRIFYING.

 

[Sadrik]

Just as a note... 'damage bloat' is one of the key foundations of Bounded Accuracy in the system. There's supposed to be extremely high damage totals.

You know I was thinking about this some more. Think about this in terms of the evolution of the attack roll. We went from fairly tight AC scores 10 to -10 a range of 21 to 3e which blew the doors off and scaled it 10 to anywhere with a variety of BAB and there was a lot of variability touch attacks etc. Then we had the +1/2 level in 4e which people likened to the rat race. If the expectation is that you will have essentially the same chance to hit whether you are 1st or 30th why bother with the +1/2 level so we arrive at fairly flat math in 5e.

Now look at HP, is the expectation at high level that a critter is going to take the same number of rounds of attacks as at 1st level. I think that you are making the argument that it should. I honestly can see it going both ways. If the expectation is that HP should scale and damage should scale right along side it... Perhaps we need a 5e "+1/2 level" rule for damage... that affects all characters and creatures.

I'll take this concept from another angle. Why should the flesh golem deal 4d6+4 damage per hit? Is it for no other reason than it is a level 6 monster? Or is its damage scaling up due to level? The point being that if this is a concept of 5e, damage scaling by level why not approach it fairly even handed and make a general rule about it. A +1/2 level-like rule...

Of course the post modern approach afterward would be lets strip the bonus damage rule out and go with true damage. LOL, Nah, one of the tenants of D&D is scaling HP. How do you handle scaling HP though.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I hear your argument and it is solid, I am just of a different opinion. I feel that area effect damage that is a 1/day resource should do more damage than a fighter hitting with his sword... even if it hits multiple opponents (+allies sometimes ).

It does do higher average damage, 13.1 vs 11.4 when you take the to-hit chance into consideration. Which in my opinion makes a lot of sense. There is no use have a large damage dice if you don't get to roll it.

It's not like a 3e Wizard at level 5 was anything über in the previous editions either. It's just when they start getting up on the same power level as the fighter. It's another thing when you get to level 10, it's when the quadratic wizard vs linear fighter really showed.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

It does do higher average damage, 13.1 vs 11.4 when you take the to-hit chance into consideration. Which in my opinion makes a lot of sense. There is no use have a large damage dice if you don't get to roll it.

It's not like a 3e Wizard at level 5 was anything über in the previous editions either. It's just when they start getting up on the same power level as the fighter. It's another thing when you get to level 10, it's when the quadratic wizard vs linear fighter really showed.

ADnD 5d6 and 3.x 5d6 are two different kind of shoes...

while in ADnD chances were big, that 5d6 is more than the average hp wizard, and on a failed save he was toast, 5d6 in 3.x usually only means half dead...

5d6 vs a fighter in ADnD could take a big chun of his hp, while in 3.x it is only a scratch. Right now 5e seems to be rather at the ADnD level than the 3.x level.

 

[Sadrik]

It does do higher average damage, 13.1 vs 11.4 when you take the to-hit chance into consideration. Which in my opinion makes a lot of sense. There is no use have a large damage dice if you don't get to roll it.

In your assessment this was true. However I would like to know how you figure the 65% and 50% to hit/to save numbers...

Level 1 fighter
Greatsword (13 average) +3 weapon attack, +4 Str (+7), assuming no feats or anything. Vs. AC 17? Another 1st level character does not have the money to buy AC 17, AC 15 is more likely. Needing a roll of an 8, 1-7 misses so 35% to or 65% to hit.
Level 5 fighter
Greatsword (17.5 average) +4 weapon attack, +4 str, +1 sword (+9), again assuming no feats. AC 17 or 18 is likely now, still same % to hit.

Level 1 Wizard
Thunderwave, 2d6 damage (7/3 average) save DC is 15 vs. Dex +2 or +3, so 65%-70% chance of failure or even more for non-dex creatures. We are talking about 7 or 3 damage though.
Level 5 Wizard
Fireball, 5d6 damage (17.5/9 average) save DC is now 16 vs. Dex, it increases slightly 70 to 75% chance or perhaps more vs. non-dex based monsters.

After running the numbers Wizards do have a slightly better chance of hitting but still, the ability to spam massive damage is not my preferred style of play. I want massive damage to come from 1/day abilities.

5d6 at 5th level in my book is massive damage. Not because it hits multiple opponents but because 5d6 is a lot! Fighters should not be hitting for what amounts to 5d6 every round at 5th level.

 

[Blackbrrd]

In your assessment this was true. However I would like to know how you figure the 65% and 50% to hit/to save numbers...

Guesswork, and your numbers show that my average damage numbers after calculating with to-hit was too conservative when it came to the Wizard, so they do even higher damage.

Anyway, the Fighter has been able to do the same kind of damage as the Wizard since 3e, but usually to fewer targets. Nothing really new there, and it's not something that bothers me. I think the Balance between Fighter and Wizard in 5e looks ok. A bit boring spell selection for the Wizard, but the damage is ok.

 

[Stalker0]

My main disagreement is this....I don't feel the current ED system is complex.

Sure, a player can choose to make it complex by trying to milk every bit out of a variety of manuevers.

But if a player wants a simple fighter, simply use deadly strike and....your done. I'm a fighter that just does great damage, simple as can be. What's great about that is as the new player gets comfortable and perhaps would like to try more complexity, its already baked right into the class.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I mean, just because there's an ED ability called "parry" doesn't mean that the other characters cannot parry, it only means that they cannot use that specific mechanic called "parry".

I don't really buy this.

They are using the commonly used descriptive word 'parry' so that the fighter player can simply say "I parry", and then roll some dice. The Paladin or Ranger by comparison can't use that narrative without causing enough confusion to learn not to utter that phrase again. Essentially, by comparison to the fighter, these classes become stiff-armed-&-legged warriors that seem unable to even fight properly.

I miss the features that were associated with 3E's power attack and expertise feats. Any endowed combat character could opt for more defence or damage by sacrificing accuracy. Characters could fight more naturally, changing priorities as the battle ebbed & flowed.

All combatant characters should have at least the option to have a small part of their combat ability that they can allocate round to round. Damage and DR seem the fashion for 5E so I'd like to see that - although for a rock scissors paper feel for duels, I'd prefer a 3rd mechanic be included.

 

[Li Shenron]

I miss the features that were associated with 3E's power attack and expertise feats. Any endowed combat character could opt for more defence or damage by sacrificing accuracy. Characters could fight more naturally, changing priorities as the battle ebbed & flowed.

My guess is that these will be available in the [strike]Tactical [/strike] Narrative Combat Module.

I also liked them in 3e, but I have heard many people complain that these should be just combat actions available to all, i.e. they should not cost a feat (or whatever).

But if you put too many "freely available" combat options/actions, you're going to seriously increase the complexity of the game, and a lot of people don't want to have to deal with that, including me. It doesn't work to just say "ignore", because when the combat chapter has 20+ possible actions to choose from, my players are going to waste time browsing the list over and over every round puzzling about what to choose... then end up choosing the normal attack 90% of the time.

It would be so much better to have a list as short as now in that chapter (it has ONE defensive option, the "Dodge" action, it's ENOUGH), and then they can get creative when designing the Tactical Combat Module or the Narrative Combat Module - whatever is more appropriate for these - and include plenty of options, with the idea that a gaming group could easily adopt the whole module or just a bunch of selected options and discard the rest (obviously, a group that even looks at such module, is a group that has little problems customizing the game and increasing complexity).