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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5883460" data-attributes="member: 54877">Then add to that. The assumption we are working on right now is relatively flat (but not completely flat) attack and defenses, with hit points and damage scaling somewhat faster.  The easiest way to dial lethalness of the system, which is about 75% of what is being discussed here, in essense, is to vary hit points and/or damage while leaving everything else alone. The problem with both, of course, if making that easy to use for everyone--and even worse, not having undesired side effects on combat pacing.  But supplement what KM is talking about with such a system, and I think his idea covers most of the other 25%, and smooths out a lot of rough edges that will result in the rest.   About the only clean, obvious way I can see towards something like that is to list hit points and damage not as flat amounts, but as base amounts to which a factor is applied. You apply a "lethalness" factor to hit points, giving more or less of them. You apply a "lethalness" factor to damage, doing more or less damage. If you apply the factors roughly in sync, you'll maintain default combat pacing. If you apply them out of sync, you won't, and will need to adjust or live with it.  The rub, then, is if the factors getting out of sync produces results that people can live with. For example, you leave hit points alone but double damage outputs. This doubled damage is often wasted when a dragon or other high level creature tangles with extreme low-level creatures, because it was already going to kill them anyway. In the meantime, it makes the dragon even more dangerous to heroes--or at least more risky, since presumably their damage is doubled to. However, the low-level creatures, trying to take that dragon down, can kill it more readily. That brings us to the impossible thing--A > B > C > A, which Balesir so aptly identified. The only way that equation "works" is if you change the meaning of one of the variables mid-calculation! So in the above example, because low-level creatures in mass are a "threat" to PCs, they get the doubled damage dice when fighting them. But they aren't much of a threat to dragons. So no "lethalness" boost for them, then. That is, the "lethalness" factor is not something supplied as a flat adjustment for the campaign, but is a flavor thing provided by the DM, with whatever resulting inconsistency the group is prepared to tolerate.</blockquote>

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