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Is 4th edition getting soft? - edited for friendly content :)
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<blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 3834450" data-attributes="member: 40961"><p><em>No.</em> I believe I was quite clear. A system for creating balanced encounters does not play well with a system in which one roll takes a character from "goin' strong" to "dead as a doorknob."</p><p></p><p>Think of how we balance something like an attack. It has an attack bonus and a damage roll. We can look at our benchmarks for player characters, and immediately work out a number of mathematical details. We can solve for expected damage, and we can solve for standard deviation of expected damage. Based off our character benchmarks, we can work out the likely number of rounds it will take for this monster to kill a typical PC of each level of each character class, compare that to what pcs its likely to face, and in general work out how tough the monster is.</p><p></p><p>You can't do that for "save or die." The only thing to compare in save or die is the DC of the save with the bonus of the character's roll. How can you balance that? Is a 10% chance of dying instantly balanced at level 2, but too weak for level 10? What chance of dying instantly is balanced for level 14? For level 9?</p><p></p><p>An attack that does 2d6+12 damage might be balanced for level 8, but too strong for level 1. At level 1, it auto kills if it hits. At level 8, it does damage the players can absorb, maybe easily, maybe with difficulty, but that they can at least absorb. Auto kill spells are like attacks which do exactly your hit points in damage plus ten. There's no way to balance them because they intrinsically scale just faster than you can keep up with.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cadfan, post: 3834450, member: 40961"] [I]No.[/I] I believe I was quite clear. A system for creating balanced encounters does not play well with a system in which one roll takes a character from "goin' strong" to "dead as a doorknob." Think of how we balance something like an attack. It has an attack bonus and a damage roll. We can look at our benchmarks for player characters, and immediately work out a number of mathematical details. We can solve for expected damage, and we can solve for standard deviation of expected damage. Based off our character benchmarks, we can work out the likely number of rounds it will take for this monster to kill a typical PC of each level of each character class, compare that to what pcs its likely to face, and in general work out how tough the monster is. You can't do that for "save or die." The only thing to compare in save or die is the DC of the save with the bonus of the character's roll. How can you balance that? Is a 10% chance of dying instantly balanced at level 2, but too weak for level 10? What chance of dying instantly is balanced for level 14? For level 9? An attack that does 2d6+12 damage might be balanced for level 8, but too strong for level 1. At level 1, it auto kills if it hits. At level 8, it does damage the players can absorb, maybe easily, maybe with difficulty, but that they can at least absorb. Auto kill spells are like attacks which do exactly your hit points in damage plus ten. There's no way to balance them because they intrinsically scale just faster than you can keep up with. [/QUOTE]
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