Increasing disparity between monster and player initiative

[S'mon]

It's in the DMG. Ability scores, or something. Scores start at around 13 (but primary attack score is 16), and then gain a half level. Perhaps it's in the chapter on NPCs, immediately after Customizing Monsters.

Hm, ok thanks - I found it on DMG page 184 'Monster Design Steps'. Ability scores ae not mentioned in the 'Monster Statistics By Role' table and they are unaffected by level up/down (page 174) so I never noticed this before! It says "Ability scores also help determine the monster's attack bonuses, ability and skill checks, and armour class" - but everywhere else attack bonus, damage, AC and NADs are simply a function of level, not derived from ability scores, so I never paid much attention to those scores.

So, after 3.5 years running 4e I've finally noticed that monsters are supposed to have a 16+1/2 level score in their primary attack stat and 13+1/2 level in their defence-setting stats, per DMG 184. If one of those 3-4 stats is Dexterity then the monster will have Init bonus = +level. Technically they could have Int-based AC & Ref, not have a Dex-based attack, and thus have an arbitrarily low Dex, though! Strange.

Edit: An obvious problem for having monster stats defined solely by level is that Minions get lovely high stats for their XPV while Solos have very low stats for their XPV. I noticed that running an adult green dragon last week that was a level 12 solo and only had STR 16, for a +9 Athletics check. Not keying the stats to the in-world reality (eg giants are very big & strong, but not too bright) seems to make them even more pointless.

 

[FireLance]

So, after 3.5 years running 4e I've finally noticed that monsters are supposed to have a 16+1/2 level score in their primary attack stat and 13+1/2 level in their defence-setting stats, per DMG 184. If one of those 3-4 stats is Dexterity then the monster will have Init bonus = +level. Technically they could have Int-based AC & Ref, not have a Dex-based attack, and thus have an arbitrarily low Dex, though! Strange.

Well, the half level bonus to ability scores gets halved again to determine the final modifier, so the Initiative bonus is actually closer to 3 + 3/4 level for a Dexterity-primary monster, plus role bonuses, if any.

 

[S'mon]

Well, the half level bonus to ability scores gets halved again to determine the final modifier, so the Initiative bonus is actually closer to 3 + 3/4 level for a Dexterity-primary monster, plus role bonuses, if any.

Ah, right, thanks!

So for a typical STR-primary monster it will be typically 1 + 3/4 Level + Role bonus. Although the OP's listed numbers look a bit higher than that to me.

 

[Ferghis]

Adding a PC's highest bonus just strikes me as another way to stop "penalizing" PCs for having variations from some optimized "norm".

I love that the basis of your argument is simply putting a couple of words in quotes: it's to highlight that you disagree with the establishment-based meaning of those words, right? Contextually, I can tell that the meaning you disagree with is the one I propose, but it's funny to me because one could easily think that I'm breaking with the establishment, since I am trying to point out an incongruity in the rules.

From the PCs' perspective, a warlord with the Combat Commander feat allows everyone in the party to add his Intelligence or Charisma modifier (whichever is higher) to initative checks.

That would span much of the gap, and would be cheaper than each character that doesn't have dex as a primary spending a feat of their own to boost initiative. Still, not every party has a warlord handy, and it's still a character-building investment that doesn't really yield an advantage, only shrinks a disadvantage (except for those characters whose primary ability score contributes to init, of course).

In a way, the disparity helps certain monsters to keep up with alpha strike oriented PCs. Now, it could be argued that the disparity between the PCs' initiative modifiers shouldn't be so great, but that's another seperate issue.

Actually, the point I'm making is not that there is a disparity, but that it widens considerably over the course of a character's career. I really don't have a problem with some characters having lower initiative than monsters, and losing initiative more often than winning it. It's just weird that it gets relatively worse, and worse, and worse, until most PCs have little chance (under otherwise unbuffed circumstances) to win initiative.

 

[Ferghis]

Although the OP's listed numbers look a bit higher than that to me.

They were off (I had eyeballed the monster numbers in the unedited post), but not by much. Here is my original post's numbers (and the explanatory text):

I must confess that I grabbed these numbers by simply looking at the initiatives of a lot of post-MM3 monsters in the compendium, so there could be sampling issues. Also, while lower level monsters have a plus or minus two variation, higher level monsters have a lot more range in their variation. Despite all this, these numbers are in line with the ones that I've seen here.

And here are the correct numbers (currently in the edited OP)

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Edit: An obvious problem for having monster stats defined solely by level is that Minions get lovely high stats for their XPV while Solos have very low stats for their XPV. I noticed that running an adult green dragon last week that was a level 12 solo and only had STR 16, for a +9 Athletics check. Not keying the stats to the in-world reality (eg giants are very big & strong, but not too bright) seems to make them even more pointless.

This bugged me as well, so I started using 'true' level to define my monsters' ability scores, skills and init. So a level 1 solo skirmisher would have a +10 init. (+5 for its 'true' 11 levels, +3 for its 'true' sub-tier, +2 skirmisher bonus.) So all solos get an edge in initiative, which is just the way I like it.

 

[Libramarian]

it's still a character-building investment that doesn't really yield an advantage, only shrinks a disadvantage

Why is it so important that boosting initiative makes you better at initiative than an equal level monster, rather than just reducing the gap? This line of thought seems to me to be irrational. Does it just bug you on an aesthetic level when numbers don't line up?

 

[Ferghis]

Why is it so important that boosting initiative makes you better at initiative than an equal level monster, rather than just reducing the gap? This line of thought seems to me to be irrational. Does it just bug you on an aesthetic level when numbers don't line up?

Really? You think that, as characters gain levels, they should get worse at doing stuff when compared to a monster of equal level?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Why is it so important that boosting initiative makes you better at initiative than an equal level monster, rather than just reducing the gap? This line of thought seems to me to be irrational. Does it just bug you on an aesthetic level when numbers don't line up?

You're probably familiar with the math hole issue in regards to attacks and defenses? Well, it's essentially the same issue.

 

[S'mon]

Really? You think that, as characters gain levels, they should get worse at doing stuff when compared to a monster of equal level?

Maybe they should get better at some stuff and worse at some stuff, maintaining general power parity?

Being a bit old-school anyway, I prefer to be able to use more low-level monsters vs high level PCs, and have higher level monsters get progressively rarer. Having monsters have an edge in a few areas helps with that.