Lvling-Up Vs Flat Math

[Stalker0]

Another: 8th level fighter vs 1st level fighter. That's a big skill difference, and there should be a difference in the accuracy of the combatants as well as damage per hit. What if they're duelling to "first touch"?

We already know that a 2nd level fighter can get 2 extra attacks per day....and certainly higher level fighter's will get more types of abilities.

So in this case, the 8th level fighter gets 3 attacks on the first round if he chooses to. Even at the same attack bonus, he has a much much higher chance of getting that touch.

 

[fuindordm]

A good point, but it's the (potential) inability to channel your skill into not being hit at all that concerns me more. Lots of monsters have attacks that you really want to avoid, even if they do little damage.

 

[Campbell]

A good point, but it's the (potential) inability to channel your skill into not being hit at all that concerns me more. Lots of monsters have attacks that you really want to avoid, even if they do little damage.

That's pretty much classic D&D though. AC didn't scale. Once you were in plate and shield the only way to improve AC was with magic items. It's a feature that even high level characters would approach a group of wights with trepidation.

 

[El Mahdi]

...Well if the designers had explained that in the play-test material I would have been more willing to try it from the start. I'm going to remove 1/2 level bonuses just to test that part...

They did explain that...when they included the words "play test".

This isn't a free game solely for your playing enjoyment...though we likely will get some enjoyment from it. This is meant for us to test...AS IS.

We get to actually do the testing and provide our feedback on how the game AS WRITTEN works. We get to help form the final product by our impressions of this portion of the game rules.

If you go editing and changing the game they provided, your feedback will be useless to them. They need a common reference point from which to interpret the feedback, and that common reference is the game AS WRITTEN.

This also isn't all there will be. It's only a very small part of the rules, and likely not even a complete version of the base rules.

Right now you are a "playtester", not a customer, fan, or player/DM.
Just play it, as is, and provide your feedback about it to WotC.

 

[Meophist]

A good point, but it's the (potential) inability to channel your skill into not being hit at all that concerns me more. Lots of monsters have attacks that you really want to avoid, even if they do little damage.

HP Thresholds may alleviate this. It's possible they'll make it so that more dangerous side effects will only occur if you're a certain number of HP or less.

 

[Cadfan]

This is my expectation (based on the pre-gen characters' ability scores not changing up to 3rd Level)

Level 4: +1 to primary attribute (probably increases a stat to and odd number without a change to the mod.)
Level 8: +1 to primary attribute (probably increases a stat to an even number and increases the mod by +1)
Level 12: +1 to primary attribute (probably increases a stat to and odd number without a change to the mod.)
Level 16: +1 to primary attribute (probably increases a stat to an even number and increases the mod by +1)

So at level 16 the character has gained +2 to their primary attack modifier.

Someday, someone is going to figure out that granting bonuses to seed values that don't actually change the number they seed is a deeply pathological way of running an RPG.

 

[Minigiant]

Someday, someone is going to figure out that granting bonuses to seed values that don't actually change the number they seed is a deeply pathological way of running an RPG.

The is issue is not making the range between equals different, it is making the range between unequals different.

It's not that the 8th level fighter and the orge have similar attack rating.

It is that the 8th level fighter and the 1st level shiny armor both have +6 to hit.

It's that the master of the thieves guild and the guy who hasn't finished the initiation test both have +7 to Dex based Stealth.

Feels all kinds of weird that this could be a reality.

 

[B.T.]

Even if we drastically limit the scaling of attack bonuses, I want my fighter to have bigger numbers as he levels up because of what it represents in the game world. If a starting character in plate mail and a shield has 20 AC, then a low-level fighter doesn't have a great chance of injuring him. The playtest shows us a fighter with a +6 attack bonus, so he only has a 35% chance of hitting. By the time the fighter is high-level enough to slay dragons, I expect that he has a much greater chance of carving through a low-level knight's armor. At the least, I'd expect an 85% chance of piercing the armor.

If you're worried about AC getting too high, you wouldn't actually need to boost it from leveling. You could keep AC static (so a high level fighter would have 20 AC and a low-level fighter would as well) while gradually improving attack bonus (perhaps +1 per three levels for those leery of attack boosts). Thus, a level 20 fighter would have an attack bonus of +12. That would give him an entirely reasonable 65% chance of hitting AC 20, which I feel is not at all unreasonable.

 

[Falling Icicle]

All we've seen are the rules for levels 1-3, and just basic ones at that. It's possible that characters will improve with bonuses and that we just haven't seen it yet. A +1 per 4 or 5 levels would mean that characters improve, but at a very slow rate.

 

[Meophist]

I don't really think skill bonuses are going to be super-static. There'll probably be additional bonuses at higher levels. Something equivalent to a new background every 4-5 levels or so can keep numbers from getting too high, while giving the impression that your character is getting better at stuff.

Assuming they do what they said and have additional training only give something like +1 as opposed to what initial training gives you.