How fast does PC damage rise relative to monster hit points?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

When I started my campaign, the battles went pretty quickly, as monster hit points are actually relatively low at 1st-level. (Yes, PCs can't kill them in one round, but I didn't want battles that were so fast you couldn't show off your sense of tactics.) My game is just reaching 11th-level, and combat is slowing down. While there's issues with increasing character complexity, monster hit points scale faster than PC damage.

I created a new scale for determining proper monster hit points for my game. I didn't want to rely on a simplistic solution like simply cutting monster hit points in half. I wanted a typical monster to die in four hits when attacked by a defender or leader (fewer if hit by a striker and more if hit by a controller, of course). I found that this ratio worked quite well at level 1, so I used that as "the base". In 4e, the typical monster gets 8 hit points per level. In order to keep the kill ratio the same over levels, a PC would need to deal an average of +2 damage per hit each level, which doesn't keep up, except for some strikers.

The current scale used companion math to determine hit points. Companions deal a flat +1 damage per 2 levels (+0.5 per level), so a monster would need +2 hit points per level to keep up, much less than +8. I built my scale on this foundation, giving standard monsters +2 hp per level (beyond their 1st-level hit point scores), +1.5 if they used to get 6 per level and +2.5 if they used to get 10. However, this probably isn't enough. Even companions get ability score bonuses, after all. I'm considering doubling the extra hit points (so +4 per level for a standard), but I want to ask the community what they think of this first.

 

[Balesir]

I think you are right that 2 hp per level is too low if you are going for 4 times the PC damage increase. PC damage increase includes:

+6 by level 30 for magic weapons/implements

+4 by level 30 for characteristic increases (assuming the prime stat for attack/damage always gets boosted)

Extra damage because powers generally get more dice - AtWills get +1 die at L20, so +4, say, over 30 levels might give a fair average

More Encounter and Daily attacks as levels increase to Paragon; whereas the "extra dice" one cuts in at Epic, this one affects mainly Heroic - I assume it all comes out in the wash on average to give +1 die (roughly) by level 11 - another +4, say, overall

Feats; this can be a big one with a plethora of sundry feats to add 2-4 damage for general or very specific attacks per feat - one feat per 2 levels, but not all will be used for damage boosts (since some give attack bonuses...)

Overall, it looks like +1 per level to damage on each hit might be a fairer estimate, BUT also bear in mind that more powers (especially Encounter powers) will be area effects and Dailies (typically) do damage on a miss. It's possible that there is a "flat patch" around mid-Paragon, but in our low-Epic game the +8 hp per level for monsters is still giving ~5-6 round combats, sometimes shorter.

 

[Emirikol]

You've done a good evaluation of how to balance those numbers.

Here's my beef with all this though: You're assuming the "win button" mentality, where player characters should always be slightly better to the monsters they are fighting in terms of hit dice.

This gives me an odd feeling that there is something wrong with puny humans assassinating dragons as if their daggers are as tough as the dragons jaws.

I dunno, I'll have to think on it.

jh

 

[Balesir]

Here's my beef with all this though: You're assuming the "win button" mentality, where player characters should always be slightly better to the monsters they are fighting in terms of hit dice.

This gives me an odd feeling that there is something wrong with puny humans assassinating dragons as if their daggers are as tough as the dragons jaws.

Ah, but there is an important caveat - the maths assumes that the monsters and the "puny humans" are of the same level. There may be nothing in the world set-up that says that must be so; a 1st level human going up against an adult dragon is highly unlikely to work this way!

It's all about setting the baseline and making the "level" (or CR, or whatever) of monsters and characters meaningful as an assessment of combat ability. This makes the GM's job a LOT easier.

 

[JamesonCourage]

When I started my campaign, the battles went pretty quickly, as monster hit points are actually relatively low at 1st-level. (Yes, PCs can't kill them in one round, but I didn't want battles that were so fast you couldn't show off your sense of tactics.) My game is just reaching 11th-level, and combat is slowing down. While there's issues with increasing character complexity, monster hit points scale faster than PC damage.

I've noticed something similar (my party just hit level 10), but damage is actually pretty decent with my group right now. The Scout does 26 damage with his at-will melee attacks (if he hits), so that's before encounter powers. The Elementalist averages 27.5 damage with her at=will (again, no encounter powers). The Knight averages 16 per hit (though that's about to shoot up to over 20 at level 11) with his at-will melee attack. The only PC that was quite dramatically lagging behind with his at-wills was the Warpriest, but he has a summoned skeleton that averages 20 damage with its at-will (so, without using his encounter powers).

Overall, they're holding their own, and with the encounter powers (Power Strike adding damage 100% of the time 3 times/combat, the Elementalist's 3/encounter extra target + 1d10 damage, the Knight's defender aura, the Warpriest hurting enemies as soon as a creature dies, etc.), they can dish out some decent damage. Sometimes the fights still take a little bit, but I fit multiple bouts of RP/planning, 3 combats, and 2 skill challenges into my last 4 hour session. (We do only have 4 people in the party, though, which means my XP budget is a little smaller, and I'm sure that helps.)

It'll be interesting to see if it changes dramatically at level 10 and 11, though. And if you implement your changes, come back and let us know. It might help me out if we do slow down.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I did my first session at level 11 today. The fire elementalist sorcerer deals +26 damage per roast (the player said that going paragon gave him a +4 damage boost), plus our swordmage took a feat to really crank up his thunder damage. The battles went by pretty quickly, but I think I may need to compensate by adding a couple of monsters to a battle. Oddly, "hundred to zero" is fairly easy on both sides. If the elementalist couldn't turn insubstantial as an interrupt, he would have been outright killed by an enemy archer. That only really happens if I load up on "striker" types such as artillery or brutes though.

The "expected player victory" doesn't bother me, because:
1) Killing off the PCs is easy. All I have to do is crank the opposition's power.
2) If PCs are on the offense, NPCs are on the defense, or vice versa, and each has certain advantages. Right now the PCs are on the offensive, which means they can avoid the majority of their foes, but at the same time the opposition can better use the terrain. (The PCs fought a battle against a group of knights charging down a hill, while also simultaneously facing archers shooting at them from across a stream. Alas for the opposition, some of the PCs can teleport.)

 

[keterys]

The tuning for damage and hp gets a little wonky as you get higher and higher level, where there are obvious haves and have nots. In general, I found that for epic PC damage rose too quickly compared to monster hit points. That is to say, fights took fewer and fewer rounds.

That said, for many groups - especially ones that weren't really paying attention to how to improve their damage - the opposite occurred.

I remember discussing with someone who was complaining about how Epic games were all 9+ rounds and I reflected that I had to do egregious tricks to make them last meaningfully past _2_ rounds.

 

[Manbearcat]

Quick run-down of the medium damage expression as a percentage of the medium expectant value of NPC HPs through the levels.

lvl 1	.3
lvl 6	.2
lvl 11	.17
lvl 16	.158
lvl 21	.151
lvl 26	.1466
lvl 30	.1439

Obviously what stands out is the steep gradient from level 1 to mid-Heroic tier and the shallow gradient from Paragon onward. This makes sense as supplementary damage becomes a product of (1) PC's step-changes in the growth of their suites of powers (2), the level-based accruement of feats', items, & features' and their roles in amplifying those suites, (3) the growing prevalence of per-round, potency-augmenting, off-turn actions, and (4) the growth of breadth and potency of "team PC's" force multiplication of each other.

I'm not sure its a perfect match to the intangibles listed above in the PC power curve (as there are break-points later on when brutal status effects and the increasing ability to shrug off NPC status effects start to play), but its pretty good imo.

 

[MoutonRustique]

Having played my share of low-level, a good deal of paragon and some epic :
[MENTION=43019]keterys[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] 's values seem to match up to my play experience.

4e often ends up being : linear player/quadratic party - since synergies can get better and better. Party make-up not only has a big impact on play experience, it has different impacts depending upon tier of play.

From my experience (anecdotal, etc, etc)
- striker and controller party : quick and brutal at heroic, tactically proficient players will destroy paragon (tactical choices matter and less proficient players can face difficulties), quite swingy at epic*.
*Note: add-in a touch of save granting and the extra-swing is replaced by incredible monster destruction power.

- healer heavy group : longer and harder on resources at heroic, actually not that bad in paragon!, un-ending slugfests of extra ridiculous un-defeatable players -but for very few encounters in the day- at epic.

- leader heavy group : pretty long and predictable fights at heroic, some impressive "nova buffing" going one at paragon. At epic... well, as long as the main dps is operative: some impressive sequences can play out. Loose access to that main dps and it all goes to crap*.
*By "crap", I mean that the fights become very long and very draining for the players.

Those are the ones I have the most play experience with. On the whole, I have to say that healer-heavy parties require the most DM-side modifications to keep the combats fun : the outcome is known almost on round 2, but you have to get to round 11-12+ for the finish... Also, you burn up so many resources that your adventuring day is a lot shorter.

Striker and controller parties require some party investment in save-granting/condition removal to be more enjoyable to me (I'm not a fan of "surprise=win" and extra-swing in my combats) but they will destroy encounters in a very dramatic and explosive fashion. As a DM, it took me a bit to find the fun in that (forgot not to love my "supposed-to-be-recurring-NPCs and just roll with it), but after I got with the program : it's was very satisfying.

The phases where tactical choices matter a great deal were slightly less fun for me (on average) since I had to down-play some creatures' tactical options (some synergies are very, very, very (and a couple extra "very" after that) powerful) as they could completely shutdown some of my players (and that's no fun for anyone), but the players found them engaging and were quite proud when they managed to pull off cool "combos".

Well... this turned out rather long... and not quite on topic to boot! Bah! I'm leaving it.

 

[the Jester]

My epic game is getting to high-epic levels (the top level pcs are 27th). There are two things that I've noted that really effect how combat plays out. Both are related to party composition.

IF the party is striker heavy, they can rip through far more hps than expected.

IF the party is equipped with a leader who can give other pcs extra attacks- especially a warlord- the same thing applies.

IME, higher level parties are more capable of ending fights quickly, as long as the DM doesn't use a "fight to the death" mentality for all the bad guys.