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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5845668" data-attributes="member: 54877">No, I mean explictily that whatever the bottom of the scale is for weak combatants, they should hit somewhat harder than +0, and certainly should not be dipping into the negatives unless they have outright penalties.&nbsp; I can see a 3 Str, pixie wizard using an improvised weapon with which he is not familiar hitting at +0.&nbsp; That's pretty much the bottom of the scale.&nbsp; And in any case, the principle I'm discussing doesn't need to account for every possible negative.&nbsp; If that example dips into the -1 to -3 range but the math is otherwise good, then ok.&nbsp; It won't come up enough to matter.&nbsp;But the vast majority of characters on the scale--including farmhand wizards, should not be generally doubled or trippled by farmhand fighters.&nbsp; it's the doubling and trippling that causes all kinds of issues in the low-level math--and not infrequently, ends up causing different imbalances on the other end of the leveling scale, because of things put into to compensate.&nbsp;This becomes even more important if they sharply narrow the range of the numbers.&nbsp; For example, want to really leave a place for +N weapons and armor, in a scaled down system?&nbsp; One option is to have such weapon do bonus damage but not change chance to hit, while amor ignores damage equal to the plus, but doesn't make the wearer harder to hit. (Leave aside for the moment the other issues with armor as damage resistance--we are talking only the magic part in this hybrid idea.)&nbsp; When you've got attacks doing 1d4-1, that does not work well in D&amp;D.&nbsp; When your attacks start somewhere in the 1d4+4 range and go up from there, a magic dagger is nice but hardly as critical.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5845668, member: 54877"] No, I mean explictily that whatever the bottom of the scale is for weak combatants, they should hit somewhat harder than +0, and certainly should not be dipping into the negatives unless they have outright penalties. I can see a 3 Str, pixie wizard using an improvised weapon with which he is not familiar hitting at +0. That's pretty much the bottom of the scale. And in any case, the principle I'm discussing doesn't need to account for every possible negative. If that example dips into the -1 to -3 range but the math is otherwise good, then ok. It won't come up enough to matter. But the vast majority of characters on the scale--including farmhand wizards, should not be generally doubled or trippled by farmhand fighters. it's the doubling and trippling that causes all kinds of issues in the low-level math--and not infrequently, ends up causing different imbalances on the other end of the leveling scale, because of things put into to compensate. This becomes even more important if they sharply narrow the range of the numbers. For example, want to really leave a place for +N weapons and armor, in a scaled down system? One option is to have such weapon do bonus damage but not change chance to hit, while amor ignores damage equal to the plus, but doesn't make the wearer harder to hit. (Leave aside for the moment the other issues with armor as damage resistance--we are talking only the magic part in this hybrid idea.) When you've got attacks doing 1d4-1, that does not work well in D&D. When your attacks start somewhere in the 1d4+4 range and go up from there, a magic dagger is nice but hardly as critical. [/QUOTE]

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