High HP feel a little too high?

[Ahrimon]

I ran that with 6 PC's. In the end the dragon proved to be just barely do-able. The paladin went into the dragon fight with no surges left and almost bit the farm. The others only had one or two left by the end. In at least half the fights someone was dropped below 0.

I thought it was a meat grinder. But I did increase each fight by roughly 20% XP worth of monsters.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I don't think the hp at low levels are too high. My poor 20 hp wizard has been nearly one-shot far too many times already. I got very tired of previous editions where low level characters, especially wizards, could practically die from stubbing their toe.

I do think the hp get far too high at higher levels, though. The hp scaling just doesn't even come close to keeping pace with hp scaling, especially the hp scaling for monsters. The 29th level wizard spell meteor swarm does 8d6 + int damage, which is not even 3 times the damage of the 5th level spell, fireball. As long as combat takes at low levels for my group, I really dread what it's going to be like at higher levels.

 

[keterys]

Meteor Swarm may not be the best pick (it's pretty maligned as a choice)... but, let's assume for the moment that it does about 45 fire damage and hits 3 enemies. So 135 damage with one action, out of... 5 * ((31 * 8) + 28) = 1380 hp... so almost 10% of the damage in one action of one round from one of five party members.

That's certainly not horrible.

 

[Shroomy]

Also, don't forget that after 1st level, hit point gain slows down considerably.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Meteor Swarm may not be the best pick (it's pretty maligned as a choice)... but, let's assume for the moment that it does about 45 fire damage and hits 3 enemies. So 135 damage with one action, out of... 5 * ((31 * 8) + 28) = 1380 hp... so almost 10% of the damage in one action of one round from one of five party members.

That's certainly not horrible.

I don't really like mutliplying the number of creatures hit as a way of demonstrating the supposed usefulness of AoE spells. That damage will barely put a dent in anything that's not a minion at level 30, and for minions the damage is irrelevant. A Wizard could easily exhaust all of his encounters and dailies without killing a single creature. And the damage he did to the group of monsters isn't going to deter them the way it did at lower levels, where it was actually threatening.

 

[keterys]

1 of 5 people. In 1 round. 10%. In theory if others could keep up with that pace you'd finish the combat within 3 rounds. And combats are designed to last longer than that.

It doesn't really matter how many powers the wizard can exhaust and fail to kill anything if you're not factoring in the rest of the team as well.

 

[Falling Icicle]

1 of 5 people. In 1 round. 10%. In theory if others could keep up with that pace you'd finish the combat within 3 rounds. And combats are designed to last longer than that.

It doesn't really matter how many powers the wizard can exhaust and fail to kill anything if you're not factoring in the rest of the team as well.

What's better, slightly wounding several creatures or taking one of them out of the fight, so that it can no longer hurt your party? At low levels, the damage is a high enough % of a creature's hp that it actually does serve as a measure of "control." But at higher levels, the damage is so insignificant compared to a cerature's hp that it doesn't "control" anything. And this, plus the endless boredom of long, drawn out combats in which at-wills are used for dozens of rounds are the main reasons I have a problem with how much hp outpace damage at higher levels.

4e was supposed to be mathematically well thought out, where the "sweet spot" stays throughout all 30 levels. But it's very obvious to me that this isn't the case at all.

 

[KarinsDad]

4e was supposed to be mathematically well thought out, where the "sweet spot" stays throughout all 30 levels. But it's very obvious to me that this isn't the case at all.

I tend to agree. I won't know for sure until I see how synergies play out at high level, but I suspect that TPK rates will increase as levels increase.

Bottom line is that high level monsters have about 8 to 20 (or more) times as many hit points each whereas PCs only have about 6 to 7 times as many hit points each.

Additionally, PCs only do about 3 to 5 times as much damage at high levels than at low levels. High level combats have got to take a real long time (along the lines of 3 to 4 times as many rounds as first level ones).

 

[Danceofmasks]

Dragon goes first.
Stuns everybody.
Spends action point.
Munches on wizard.
Spends other action point.
Wizard dies.
Everybody loses their turn from being stunned.
Dragon flies up out of melee range and blats the party with a breath weapon.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

High HP is high. Even Mearls admitted that he might have screwed it up just a li'l.

That's not what he said. He said, in the specific case of solo monsters, care has to be taken to make the fight interesting, because it will be a long fight.

That has nothing to do with whether hit points for PCs are too high.

My own experience (with a 3-player group and a 5-player group) is that those hit points can be whittled away quite successfully in a balanced encounter. My players have been facing a lot of kobolds, and are earning respect for them.