Making Everything More Accurate - Repercussions?

[fuzzlewump]

I'm working on a homebrewed conversion of Gamma World/4E to a new setting. It's based on an RPG video game, and in this video game, flat-out missing is a lot more rare than it is in D&D. What would happen if I just add, for example, +5 to everyone and everything's attacks, including Monsters, NPCs, and PCs, etc? Would that be relatively balanced since its on both sides of the screen?

What are some balance issues? Here is some I can think of:

• Classes like the Avenger, or anything that lets you reroll is relatively less useful.
• Powers with effects and miss effects aren't weighted as heavily.
• You will quickly and easily get to a point where you hit on a 2 with barely any optimization. (+5 inherent +5 stat, +3 weapon, +1 expertise, at level 1, for example.)
• Classes with bonuses to attack, and tactical things like CA, might be less good (or useless) and combat less interesting (since you don't care about positioning if you hit on a 2+ w/out CA) if you hit that cap.

Would there be any problem with assigning the same bonus to both players and monsters? Increasing damage, for example, should be different on monsters and pcs because of the huge differences between monster HP and player HP. But I can't think of a similar problem with a flat attack bonus.

Is combat more boring if you almost always hit? Or does every other attack missing make that every other 'hit' more than doubly as fun? As a player, I love hitting on a 2+, I have no problems with that, I love owning monsters even if I'm not 'challenged.' That's why I optimized my character is to wipe floor with encounters since that's fun to me. Of course, Monsters will reap just as much benefit, so the challenge level shouldn't really be affected. I don't know. What do you think?

 

[Fanaelialae]

I expect it would speed up combat significantly, but I think it's something you'd have to be really careful with. Conditions would be virtually guaranteed, so the rare creature with an at-will stun would be potentially game breaking (because it could stun-lock a PC with very little chance of escape). If you did this, I'd suggest making the meanest conditions (stun, dominate) very rare or nonexistent, and annoying conditions (immobilized, dazed, etc.) uncommon.

Really though, the first thing that I would ask myself is whether there's any practical benefit in attempting to import things like rarely missing from the video game in question. Games like that tend to a lo of "auto-attacks" (attacks which usually just cause damage like a basic attack) with the occasional special attack interwoven into that pattern. So if you really want to mimic this game, the first thing you might have to do is reduce the number of powers that PCs and monsters get and give everyone a decent basic attack. Admittedly, that largely solves the condition issue...

 

[S'mon]

IME in 4e PCs are hitting on a 6 and monsters on an 8 vs AC, often less vs NADs, that seems pretty accurate to me already. My E-Thief usually hits on a '2'.