Edit: There was a mistake in my original post which led to an inaccurate conclusion!
The idea of "grindyness" has been talked about a lot recently, and I too have noticed some issues with the massive number of hitpoints monsters seem to have relative to player's damage. However, the effect didn't seem to be as noticable at 1st level, but at 7th, is now more so. I decided to apply a little math to try and answer the question of scaling...do player's damage keep up with monster hitpoints?
To model this easily, we have to make a great number of assumptions. Here are some that I have made.
1) Each character uses a bastard sword to start and will assume defenders only (as this seems to be the middamage between strikers and leaders).
2) At-wills do 1[w], encounters 2[w], and dailies 3[w].
3) A day of adventuring is 4 encounter of 5 rounds each (20 rounds per day).
4) Characters gain magic items at the normal rate of advancement (I assumed 2nd level for a +1, 6th for a +2).
5) The characters have a static 70% rate of hitting (I think this is a little high overall, but it helps to account for things like situational to hit bonuses, and other misc modifiers I have not entered into my calculations).
6) There will be 1 crit (over 20 rounds this makes perfect sense, I have also factored the chance of criting on an at-will, encounter, or daily in my calculations)
7) Characters will take weapon focus and some other feat at some point that gives them a +1 to damage.
8) Trying to account for the numerous other potential modifiers, I have chosen to grant the character a flat +1 damage/2 levels.
9) We will look at 1 attack per round. I have included 2 more at-will attacks per 20 round cycle to include action points. I am using at-wills because encounter and dailies are hard defined, at-wills are only limited by time.
I have attached my excel for review. Here is the results. Remember, the importance is not how much damage at any particular level, its the change in damage that is the importance.
So overall, a characters damage increases by roughly 1.23 damage per round per level or about 6 damage more per fight per level. Overall the party then will deal 30 damage more per fight per level. That means that an encounter at 10th level should have roughly 270 more hitpoints total in order to get it at the same length of a 1st level fight.
A 10th level basic monster often has 60 more hitpoints by itself, meaning the total encounter has about 300 more hitpoints, 30 more than our expected estimate. For 10th level characters, it takes 2 party members another round to take out the 30 hitpoints, so it would appears that hitpoints and damage do scale pretty well.
The idea of "grindyness" has been talked about a lot recently, and I too have noticed some issues with the massive number of hitpoints monsters seem to have relative to player's damage. However, the effect didn't seem to be as noticable at 1st level, but at 7th, is now more so. I decided to apply a little math to try and answer the question of scaling...do player's damage keep up with monster hitpoints?
To model this easily, we have to make a great number of assumptions. Here are some that I have made.
1) Each character uses a bastard sword to start and will assume defenders only (as this seems to be the middamage between strikers and leaders).
2) At-wills do 1[w], encounters 2[w], and dailies 3[w].
3) A day of adventuring is 4 encounter of 5 rounds each (20 rounds per day).
4) Characters gain magic items at the normal rate of advancement (I assumed 2nd level for a +1, 6th for a +2).
5) The characters have a static 70% rate of hitting (I think this is a little high overall, but it helps to account for things like situational to hit bonuses, and other misc modifiers I have not entered into my calculations).
6) There will be 1 crit (over 20 rounds this makes perfect sense, I have also factored the chance of criting on an at-will, encounter, or daily in my calculations)
7) Characters will take weapon focus and some other feat at some point that gives them a +1 to damage.
8) Trying to account for the numerous other potential modifiers, I have chosen to grant the character a flat +1 damage/2 levels.
9) We will look at 1 attack per round. I have included 2 more at-will attacks per 20 round cycle to include action points. I am using at-wills because encounter and dailies are hard defined, at-wills are only limited by time.
I have attached my excel for review. Here is the results. Remember, the importance is not how much damage at any particular level, its the change in damage that is the importance.
Code:
Level Relative Difference
1 9.2085 0
2 11.8265 2.618
3 12.68 0.8535
4 15.1055 2.4255
5 15.53225 0.42675
6 17.34175 1.8095
7 18.19525 0.8535
8 19.00375 0.8085
9 19.4305 0.42675
10 20.239 0.8085
Total Change 11.0305So overall, a characters damage increases by roughly 1.23 damage per round per level or about 6 damage more per fight per level. Overall the party then will deal 30 damage more per fight per level. That means that an encounter at 10th level should have roughly 270 more hitpoints total in order to get it at the same length of a 1st level fight.
A 10th level basic monster often has 60 more hitpoints by itself, meaning the total encounter has about 300 more hitpoints, 30 more than our expected estimate. For 10th level characters, it takes 2 party members another round to take out the 30 hitpoints, so it would appears that hitpoints and damage do scale pretty well.
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