Low Damage, High HP ... How is this "Faster"?

[Surgoshan]

From what I can gather, that was the point.

If you look at wizards, the power curve for 3.5 was exponential. They start out absurdly weak, then ramp up rapidly in power until by the end they're altering the substance of the universe five times before breakfast. Fighters start out mostly weak, then ramp up in power... until they hit level 6/7 then they sort of plateau.

What they're doing is starting all the classes out stronger and making them gain power more slowly, so that instead of an exponential growth you get a more linear growth. That way you still end up quite powerful, but not game-breakingly powerful at any time.

 

[glass]

IOW, you are judging the Wizard by what you see at 1st-level.

And one example at first level, at that. We have no idea how many options those powers were selected from, or what those options look like.


glass.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

its still exponential... but power seems to double every 4 levels. And you start more poweful, so that:

2 lvl 1 = 1 Lvl 4
4 Lvl 1 = 1 Lvl 8
8 Lvl 1 = 1 Lvl 12
16 Lvl 1 = 1 Lvl 16
32 Lvl 1 = 1 Lvl 20

where in 3.x
1 Lvl 19 = 512 Lvl 1

so although both are exponential, a linear regression for the 4th edtion model would give a good result...

 

[Puggins]

Your analysis is correct, but level 1 seems to have received a disproportionate boost. While we don't know the exact power level of higher level characters, by comparing lower and higher level monsters you can see that damage seems to scale more slowly, and characters eventually end up doing less damage than 3e counterparts of similar level.

Essentially, things seem more frontloaded at level one, but with smaller boosts per level.

There's more than one variable when comparing monsters, though. Yes, they do reduced damage, but the PCs have significantly fewer hit points. The 20 con dwarven fighter has 149 hp at 20th level in 4e (I think someone worked out 6hp/lvl, right?), whereas he had 275hp in 3.5e. That's a huge difference in survivability- though healing surges make the whole thing a bit complicated, I'll admit.

My primary point is that we simply don't know how the paradigm has shifted yet. For all we know the fighter gets multiple attacks later on, or gets encounter powers that cause 3x[w] and dailies that cause 5x[w]. Even extrapolating monster damage is of limited value, because what we define as "speeding up combat" may be completely different to what they define. If, for example, any one combat take the same amoutn of time but gave each character triple the number of actions, is that speeding combat up?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

My primary point is that we simply don't know how the paradigm has shifted yet. For all we know the fighter gets multiple attacks later on, or gets encounter powers that cause 3x[w] and dailies that cause 5x[w]. Even extrapolating monster damage is of limited value, because what we define as "speeding up combat" may be completely different to what they define. If, for example, any one combat take the same amoutn of time but gave each character triple the number of actions, is that speeding combat up?

We haven't seen much in terms of solid proof yet, but my recollection from the early discussions of 4e after GenCon was that the fighter would not be getting multiple attacks, but instead would end up with a large static amount of bonus damage that scales with level. So in 3.5 where a 16th level Fighter would get four separate attacks doling out weapon damage, plus strength, plus magic weapon, plus feats, a 4e 16th level Fighter might get a single attack dealing weapon damage, plus strength, plus magic weapon, plus feats, plus a "level bonus" of an additional 15 points of damage (number is a complete guess).