D&D 5E No ascending bonuses: A mathematical framework for 5e

[mmadsen]

It seems like the best way to handle that kind of thing would be in the encounter design. If there was an emphasis on multiple victory or failure conditions, not every fight need end in death for either side.

I agree completely that encounter design plays a vital role, but it's far from independent of how the game models combat. You can play out the "same" encounter in OD&D, 3E, 4E, GURPS Fantasy, and Fantasy Hero and get totally different results.

Imagine a game where most attacks hit and do lethal damage. If someone gets the drop on you, you do what they say, or you die. If, on the other hand, attacks rarely hit and rarely do lethal damage, then the first attack isn't so valuable, hostages aren't in great danger, ranged attacks can't stop a charge, etc.

Furthermore, such a failure need not just mean that the campaign is not derailed; it could even spur the campaign on by throwing in a twist. Even a victory could complicate things (in a good way).

Historically, D&D had a problem, if you didn't want a loss to derail the campaign, because of the fine line between low hit points and death. You can improve the game by making it easier for characters to stick around without winning. That's why raise dead became a bit too common for many people's taste; it served a useful purpose, even if the flavor irked people.

 

[Rune]

I agree completely that encounter design plays a vital role, but it's far from independent of how the game models combat. You can play out the "same" encounter in OD&D, 3E, 4E, GURPS Fantasy, and Fantasy Hero and get totally different results.

Imagine a game where most attacks hit and do lethal damage. If someone gets the drop on you, you do what they say, or you die. If, on the other hand, attacks rarely hit and rarely do lethal damage, then the first attack isn't so valuable, hostages aren't in great danger, ranged attacks can't stop a charge, etc.

Sure, but it wouldn't be that hard for the system to support both styles, simply by sliding the scale of damage output or hit point gain (kind of a little changes with big flavor type of adjustment).

Historically, D&D had a problem, if you didn't want a loss to derail the campaign, because of the fine line between low hit points and death. You can improve the game by making it easier for characters to stick around without winning. That's why raise dead became a bit too common for many people's taste; it served a useful purpose, even if the flavor irked people.

Yes, but there are other, more mundane options (other than getting taken prisoner each time, which would get old, fast!). Maybe your group gets forcefully driven off. Maybe you needed to rescue a hostage before s/he is taken away. Maybe the foes are just taunting with you. The victory conditions would each have a failure condition attached. And they wouldn't need to be well-defined, either, just possible.

 

[mmadsen]

Sure, but it wouldn't be that hard for the system to support both styles, simply by sliding the scale of damage output or hit point gain (kind of a little changes with big flavor type of adjustment).

Thanks for the link, Rune, but sliding the scale of damage output or hit point gain goes beyond a little change, I'd say, because it has so many knock-on effects. (Surprise! Magic missile is the most powerful spell in the game now!)

Yes, but there are other, more mundane options (other than getting taken prisoner each time, which would get old, fast!). Maybe your group gets forcefully driven off. Maybe you needed to rescue a hostage before s/he is taken away. Maybe the foes are just taunting with you. The victory conditions would each have a failure condition attached. And they wouldn't need to be well-defined, either, just possible.

I love all those ideas, and I'd love for the new DM's Guide and sample adventures to give plenty of similar examples. I just don't think that we can ignore that the design of the combat system profoundly affects how they'd play out.

For instance, think through how the game would play if we eliminated the notion of hit points and made all ordinary attacks save-or-die -- with a low DC. Similarly lethal combats would feel very, very different.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If a natural 20 always hits, you already have an effective cap.

not really, it just means you always have a 5% chance to hit at worst.


lets look at 2e, My fighter has a thac0 of 1 at 20th level, and weapon spec +1/+2, and a +3 sword, and +3 to hit from str, and the cleric cast bless +1

that means I have +8 thac0 1... so if I roll a 5, I add 8 for a 13, then I hit a -12 AC.

in 3e this would look like a +27 to hit. you hit a 30 AC on a 3, but AC could be 45, and need a 18 to hit. Having that limit meant sonner or latter you always hit.

 

[Thraug]

I love this thread. A friendly and intelligent discussion on a topic I consider a route the new D&D should take. I hope WOTC's playtest is open enough to accommodate ideas such as this, without dismissing them as killinh the sacred cow. My biggest fear for the upcoming edition is using rules and ideas from previous editions because they are tradition and feel like D&D, not because they were good and loved rules.

Another benefit of this proposal is improving ease of play, something I pray is more prominent in 5e. Has anyone else played/run Epic 4e? Uhg, the numbers are high and the math just seem unnecessary. "I rolled a 17, add that to my +34 attack bonus, -5 for being blind, +2 for flanking.....". Easy math, but why go through this every attack? It's just not needed when better options exist.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the idea has merit, but I want to look at the math a bit closer.

So:

To hit: +1/5 levels
Defenses: +1/5 levels

Hit points: +x / level
Damage: +y / level

I think this is viable, but there are some areas where abuse could come in. First off is feats. Feats should never never never give an unconditional bonus and even conditional bonuses should be rare. Game designers have an itchy little trigger finger when it comes to bonuses via feats that they would need to control. Ditto for racial abilities. Class abilities should probably have small bonuses, but the moment you make it feat plus race plus class (plus item/inherent) plus powers plus plus plus it gets out of hand.

Assuming a base 50% chance to hit (as a starting point for discussion) and assuming the +1/5 doesn't kick in until level 6/11/16/21/26 (because I think that +6 in a D20 system is way too large, even for a high Epic PC), this means that the 26th level PC has a 75% chance to hit and his 5th level foe has a 25% chance to hit back.

Now, damage and hit points become the issue. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that we are talking 3 hit points per level for hit points (to more or less follow a 3 hits to wipe out a same level foe model or 3 times as many hit points as increased damage). The 1st level PC has 20 hit points, the 5th level PC has 32 hit points, and the 26th level PC has 95 hit points.

For damage, let's assume the first level PC does 8 points of damage (3- hits to wipe out a same level foe) and that each level adds 1 point of damage. The 5th level PC does 12 points of damage and the 26th level PC does 33 points of damage.

To hit: +1/5 levels
Defenses: +1/5 levels

Hit points: +3 / level
Damage: +1 / level

The 26th level PC does 33 points of damage, so he wipes out a 32 hit point 5th level NPC on every swing (ignoring for the moment the fact that it might be a 29 to 37 point damage range). In 20 rounds, he kills 15 5th level foes. In that same 20 rounds at one foe attacking per round, his 5th level foes hit him 5 times for 12 points or a total of 60 points.


In earlier editions of the game system, these 5th level foes all needed to roll a 20 to hit this 26th level PC which means a single shot out of 20 hit. The 26th level PC would have taken a single scratch and not be almost 2/3rds damaged.

If one ups the hit points and hence the damage (in order to stay in the 3- hits to take out a same level foe model), the 26th level PC will be even more damaged percentage-wise.


So although I think the idea has merit and should have some serious investigation by WotC as an option, I do think that ideas that sound good on the surface do not necessarily result in game mechanics that work in practice.

Your original idea (without the +1 per 5 levels modifier) would have been even "less heroic" for the 26th level PC where the 5th level NPCs would be hitting 50% of the time and killing him in 16 rounds (~3 rounds if 5 foes were on him each round).


If one decreases the extra damage per level, then one also needs to decrease the number of hit points per level, otherwise it takes 3 hits to kill a same level foe at first level, but a lot more than 3 hits to kill a same level foe at 30th level. This is also known as grind.

If one increases the extra damage per level, then one also needs to increase the number of hit points per level, otherwise it takes 3 hits to kill a same level foe at first level, but only 1 or 2 hits to kill a same level foe at 30th level. This is also known as swinginess.


All in all, I'm not quite convinced that someone can get the math to work, but I'm willing to consider that I could be mistaken. I do think that Epic level Avatar God-like beings shouldn't necessarily be wiped out in 5 rounds if the DM sends a steady stream of 6 NPCs 21 levels lower at him every single round (where he won't be able to kill more than one of them back each round shy of special powers), but then again, I might be biased as to what I think the power level of a 26th level PC should be based on earlier versions of D&D.

Yeah, its a reasonable analysis. There could be a number of possible fixes. One would be that higher level PCs can get multiple attacks vs lower level opponents for instance. Your setup is an edge case where that wouldn't really matter, but in general it would solve any such problems.

Also I'm not entirely sure that the results are all that bad. The level disparity is large, but there are ways to deal with the whole thing. For instance if you factored in surges then the issue is far less serious.

Other possibilities exist too. Higher level PCs are likely to be dishing out effects of various kinds, which would tend to blunt the lower level guys. You can also increase the spreads a bit more with say some kind of item or whatnot. NPCs can also be slightly less potent than a PC, which tips the math some more.

So I think there is room to shift it so that for instance the high level guy takes only half his hit points in damage in your example, and has an equal amount of surge healing he can recover from (heck, a 26th level 4e fighter is north of 200 hit points, has 8 surges (at least) and a surge value means essentially he's got 600 hit points in his battery. Scaling that to your example for the reasons you gave, that works out to around 300 total hit points he can take in damage per day.

I'd note too that clearly there would in practice have to be 'synergy' benefits to a party of that level working together that would count for a lot. This is already clearly true for 4e PCs where 5 of them working together are MUCH tougher than each fighting a separate foe. This means that in practice the poor 5th level dudes would put hardly a dent in the party as a whole.

And really that might be a kind of cool way for things to go. It certainly works with a lot of literature and even myth. Getting caught alone by a bunch of local goons in an ally is potentially dangerous whereas when you're cruising around with your bro's looking for it you aren't going to be much phased by those same guys.

Anyway, that was about the way I figured it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Also I'm not entirely sure that the results are all that bad.

I'm not convinced that the results are all that bad either, but I do see the potential for problems. I suspect that when WotC printed 4E, they didn't see bad results either, but later on, there were some serious fixes, especially for heavy armor, for NADs, and for monster damage (the Expertise fix is probably not quite as required due to synergies).

The idea is to not just jump on the "this is a great idea" bandwagon without having some data to indicate whether it will work, or whether it will be the math foobar of 5E.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not convinced that the results are all that bad either, but I do see the potential for problems. I suspect that when WotC printed 4E, they didn't see bad results either, but later on, there were some serious fixes, especially for heavy armor, for NADs, and for monster damage (the Expertise fix is probably not quite as required due to synergies).

The idea is to not just jump on the "this is a great idea" bandwagon without having some data to indicate whether it will work, or whether it will be the math foobar of 5E.

Yup! You're probably dead on there. I'd expect as it is currently formulated it would be lucky to be as good as the existing 4e math actually, lol. But then the 4e math really isn't too bad, now that they've tweaked monster stat blocks anyway.

I really like the way this system would get rid of the need for solos and elites (at least in terms of having specific special rules for them, they'd probably still exist notionally). While monster types are not really a bad thing they are one of those rather gamist concepts that tend to lead to strangeness. Level 8 PCs being able to tussle with a big level 15 or 20 dragon would be cool, and then having it show up again with the same stat block at level 20 and really be a regular monster just feels more elegant somehow.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the idea has merit, but I want to look at the math a bit closer.

That was a great analysis!

That said, I actually don't think that is too bad myself. An person taking on 20decently strong people in a 2 minute brawl that results in the one person standing triumph sounds pretty darn good to me, worthy of Conan.

 

[KarinsDad]

While monster types are not really a bad thing they are one of those rather gamist concepts that tend to lead to strangeness. Level 8 PCs being able to tussle with a big level 15 or 20 dragon would be cool, and then having it show up again with the same stat block at level 20 and really be a regular monster just feels more elegant somehow.

There is definitely some serious potential behind the idea in quite a few metagame and monster design areas.

But, the to hit delta is the big equalizer on high level vs. low level fights in 4E and earlier versions. This concept broadens and smothers that a lot.

In 4E, any monster 5 levels above the PCs is going to pretty much slam the PCs with it's +5 to hit, +5 damage and +5 to defenses.

In this system, a monster 5 levels above the PCs is going to be +1 to hit, +5 damage (presumably, possibly as much as +10), and +1 to defenses. Fights with a monster 5 levels above the PCs will be very swingy because the penalty to hit for the PCs is only 1.

I can easily see a fight where the PCs get surprise and the big tough dragon goes down before it can even flee with this model. The dice are nice to the players and everyone hits and hinders the dragon into submission in 2 or 3 rounds before the DM can necessarily pull out the Dragon's big guns (e.g. the PCs drop a bunch of effects on the Dragon).

Sure, the dragon will have a lot of hit points, but dragons have a lot of hit points now. Except for an extra round or so of fighting (because the dragon has more hit points), the dragon 5 levels above the PCs will be almost as easy to take down as the dragon the same level as the PCs and not much harder to take down than a dragon 5 levels below the PCs.

This swinginess will work against the players as well. Lower level foes that in 4E only hit one time in 3 now hit half of the time. The DM's dice get hot and lower level foes (which are rarely brought to the table in 4E, but might be a regular staple with this model) start kicking PC butt nearly as well as same level foes might.


If one ups the amount of damage and hit points every single level has to attempt to compensate for the lack of to hit and defense, then hit points and damage start becoming large numbers. For example, a PC of 40 hit points starting out at first level so that he can handle the 15 points of damage that a normal sword swing does. Hit points increase by 10 a level and damage increases by 3 a level.

Note: the ratio of hit point increase to damage increase has to be at whatever hit ratio that the game designers want a given PC or NPC to fall. For example, if the game designers want an average PC or NPC to fall if hit 3 times by a foe like in 4E, than this ratio should be approximately 3 to 1 (which I find reasonable). Less than that becomes swingy, much more than that becomes grindy.


Although WotC might consider this model, one sacred cow that I don't think that they are going to be giving up is the D20+x to hit and D6+y or D8+y damage at level one. So whatever level of hit points and damage works best here, I cannot believe that a longsword swing is going to be that much different than D8+4 damage in 5E. Using a D8 for a sword has been around since day one (IIRC, swords might have been D6+x in the real early days, I don't have my old books available at the moment) and I suspect that there would have to be an awesomely good reason for that to change.

 

[KarinsDad]

Having thought about this for a while, I think that the OP's model probably won't work. Combats will be too swingy with considerably higher level foes taken out too easy and considerably lower level foes taking out the PCs too easily.

But what might work is a hybrid model.

Instead of monsters getting +1 to hit and defenses every single level like 4E and +1 to hit and defenses every 5 levels like in this model, what if they only got +1 to hit and defenses every other level?

Using first level 4E PCs and monsters as a baseline, this would mean that a foe 10 levels higher than the PCs would only be +5 to hit and +5 defenses compared to the PCs (plus the ton of extra hit points and damage). PCs could then get a +1 to hit and defenses every 3 levels.

30th level monsters would be +15 and defenses to hit over 1st level monsters (assuming the bonus comes in on even levels). 30th level PCs would be +10 to hit over 1st level PCs (assuming the bonus comes in on levels 3, 6, etc. for simplicity). The other +5 at level 30 comes from either inherent bonuses, or magical items (+1 inherent levels 5, 10, 15, etc.).

Note: on the concept of inherent bonuses vs. magic items, I think the plus to hit of both should be the same. But, I think that magic items should also get the bonus to damage that inherent bonuses should not.

As an example (with PCs gaining 1 points of damage per level, similar to what most PCs might gain in 4E). 30th level NPC vs 30th level PC:

PC has a normal non-magical weapon. PC is +15 to hit over first level and +29 damage over first level.

PC has a +2 magical weapon. PC is +15 to hit over first level and +31 damage over first level.

PC has a +4 magical weapon. PC is +15 to hit over first level and +33 damage over first level.

So, the magical weapons are still coveted for their increased damage (and other abilities), but there is no actual requirement to hand them out at all. The PC fighting with the normal non-magical weapon at level 30 still does some serious damage (say 38 points) compared to the PC at level 30 that has a +5 magic weapon (say 43 points). Give or take.

A 30th level PC could pick up a chair and fight with it and would still be doing some serious damage. This resolves one of the 4E issues without having the swinginess that the OP's system introduces.

From the current model, monsters change from +1 to hit and +1 defense once per level to every other level. PCs change from +1 to hit and +1 defense every other level plus magic plus ability score changes plus feats, to +1 to hit and +1 defense every third level plus magic/inherent. It drops ability score boosts, feat boosts, masterwork armor boosts, a plethora of other boosts out of the equation.

As a rough idea:

	PC		hit		magic	Monster		hit
level	to hit	AC	points	damage	damage	to hit	AC	points	damage
1	4	18	25	9	9	5	15	25	9
2	4	18	31	10	10	6	16	31	11
3	5	19	37	11	11	6	16	37	12
4	5	19	43	12	12	7	17	43	14
5	6	20	49	13	14	7	17	49	15
6	7	21	55	14	15	8	18	55	17
7	7	21	61	15	16	8	18	61	18
8	7	21	67	16	17	9	19	67	20
9	8	22	73	17	18	9	19	73	21
10	9	23	79	18	20	10	20	79	23
11	9	23	85	19	21	10	20	85	24
12	10	24	91	20	22	11	21	91	26
13	10	24	97	21	23	11	21	97	27
14	10	24	103	22	24	12	22	103	29
15	12	26	109	23	26	12	22	109	30
16	12	26	115	24	27	13	23	115	32
17	12	26	121	25	28	13	23	121	33
18	13	27	127	26	29	14	24	127	35
19	13	27	133	27	30	14	24	133	36
20	14	28	139	28	32	15	25	139	38
21	15	29	145	29	33	15	25	145	39
22	15	29	151	30	34	16	26	151	41
23	15	29	157	31	35	16	26	157	42
24	16	30	163	32	36	17	27	163	44
25	17	31	169	33	38	17	27	169	45
26	17	31	175	34	39	18	28	175	47
27	18	32	181	35	40	18	28	181	48
28	18	32	187	36	41	19	29	187	50
29	18	32	193	37	42	19	29	193	51
30	19	33	199	38	43	20	30	199	53

So, the magic damage column is the damage if the PC has gets a +1 increasing bonus item at levels 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 (no inherent or magic bonus at level 30).

This isn't a perfect model. The damage column for the PCs and monsters are a rough idea based on the fact that there will be extra synergies at higher levels. For example, monsters with claw, claw, bite; or PCs with multiple attacks per round or AoE attacks, or striker damage. Auras, Ongoing damage, etc.

I sort of took that into account with the monster damage (which for any given attack would only probably be +1 damage per level like in the current 4E model), but would be more overall. I didn't do that for the PC damage column, just to give a rough idea of what a single PC attack might do (without bonus striker damage or without AoEs, etc.).

The PC's to hit and AC get a 2 jump at level 15. +1 for every 3rd level and +1 for inherent/magic bonus.


But, the rough idea is here. A 9th level PC fighting a 19th level NPC is +8 to hit AC 24. He needs a 16. Doable, but still extremely tough.

Course, this like any other model, only works if the game designers stick to it and don't start handing out offensive and defensive bonuses like candy via feats and class (paragon class, epic destiny) abilities like in 4E. Granted, part of the extra bonuses in 4E are to fix the math problem, but they really have to curb that tendency to have stackable bonuses scattered throughout the game system.

 

[mmadsen]

Having thought about this for a while, I think that the OP's model probably won't work. Combats will be too swingy with considerably higher level foes taken out too easy and considerably lower level foes taking out the PCs too easily.

How so? As I understand the proposal, it's to increase damage and hit points, rather than to-hit and AC, with level, so that everyone retains the same to-hit probabilities throughout their progression. So, the Fighter typically hits, say, 75 percent of the time, and gets hit, say, 25 percent of the time, while the Wizard faces the inverse -- more or less regardless of level.

If the Fighter also does three times as much damage and can take three times as much damage, then he doles out nine times as much damage and has a life expectancy nine times a long.

But it's not especially swingy. As their damage and hit-point numbers go up, combat shouldn't get any swingier, should it?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Although WotC might consider this model, one sacred cow that I don't think that they are going to be giving up is the D20+x to hit and D6+y or D8+y damage at level one. So whatever level of hit points and damage works best here, I cannot believe that a longsword swing is going to be that much different than D8+4 damage in 5E. Using a D8 for a sword has been around since day one (IIRC, swords might have been D6+x in the real early days, I don't have my old books available at the moment) and I suspect that there would have to be an awesomely good reason for that to change.

Right, I know I thought this all through a while back and tinkered with it. I think the thing is with a system like this you become more focused on individual challenges vs gauntlets. That is to say you fight your dragon, but that's the thing you do that day, vs the 4e sort of concept where you fight 4 other attrition battles first. If you ARE going through a gauntlet (raiding the orc lair) then you're dealing with lower level foes.

I think after thinking about that one rather elegant solution would be 'restoration'. Whereas in 4e you have HS and hit points, why not just make this simpler? You fight a battle, and if you win you get back say 80% of whatever damage you took. Now the style of fights will be either the big bad dragon knock down where all that matters is if you can hang on and win, vs your 'attrition' fights where you'd rather not take damage, but as long as you can avoid being swarmed or cornered you can mow through a slew of enemies. You could also have a Second Wind that would restore say 25% of your lost hit points pretty much like now. So hit points become more of a pacing mechanic that still has a limiter effect on your overall endurance but the two aren't so closely slaved together. Your magical healing can now be used to break that rule and is distinctive, where your shouty warlord guy can just trigger some recovery within those limits.

It certainly seems possible to work out a set of tweaks that would make it work, but I agree, WotC would never do it in D&D. I think we can fully expect the resource management of 5e to look a lot like say 1e and you'll be using a d20 and d8's etc (and yeah, White Box did use d6 for all weapons, even daggers). Still, it is fun to dream up cool stuff, lol. Maybe someone will get bored of being lectured on how horrible a betrayal of all that is sacred 4e is and read it and get some ideas, lol!

 

[KarinsDad]

How so? As I understand the proposal, it's to increase damage and hit points, rather than to-hit and AC, with level, so that everyone retains the same to-hit probabilities throughout their progression. So, the Fighter typically hits, say, 75 percent of the time, and gets hit, say, 25 percent of the time, while the Wizard faces the inverse -- more or less regardless of level.

If the Fighter also does three times as much damage and can take three times as much damage, then he doles out nine times as much damage and has a life expectancy nine times a long.

But it's not especially swingy. As their damage and hit-point numbers go up, combat shouldn't get any swingier, should it?

So, what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

If you can supply me with this information, I can extrapolate out whether it will work or not.


As an example:

Level 1 PC has 20 hit points, does 7 damage against 20 hit point monster.
Level 2 PC has 30 hit points, does 10 damage against 30 hit point monter.
...
Level 11 PC has 110 hit points, does 37 damage against 110 hit point monster.

Ok, so you've increased damage by 3 points per level and hit points by 10 points per level. The 1st level PC has a 50% chance to hit the 11th level PC (he's -2 to hit). The 11th level PC has a 60% chance to hit the 1st level PC.

Since the damage and hit points were significantly increased (more so than in my earlier examples), a battle between the two of them will last about 2 rounds where the 1st level PC is insta-killed. No problem with that per se, but what was gained here? One still cannot fight a foe 10 levels higher. They'll wipe you out even faster than in the current system.

So far, so good.

The 30th level PC is doing 94 average points of damage.

How do you roll that?

Is it 3D8+82?

How do you make this part of the game easy.

In order to increase damage significantly enough, you need to use bigger damage dice, more damage dice, or much larger modifiers.

In 4E, a lot of the extra damage is done via rolling a lot of extra dice for the Striker classes. I've seen strikers roll 8 dice. Are normal Epic level PCs now going to roll 10 or 15 dice? How much will that slow up the game?

Granted, the solution is to make the damage modifier big instead like 3D8+82. No problem. Course, that creates feel problems of it's own. At that point, you might as well not even roll and just take the average cause it ain't gonna matter to much too often.

The piddly +4 for strength damage that the PC has is a mere drop in the bucket at Epic level. Bonus damage for a magic weapon? Mostly worthless. It shifts the damage portion of the game somewhere where nothing matters except that mega-level +3 damage per level bonus


Course, I could be mistaken here. So, you tell me what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

 

[mmadsen]

So, what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

I was assuming that both hit points and damage were proportional to level, the way hit points are now, via hit dice.

In order to increase damage significantly enough, you need to use bigger damage dice, more damage dice, or much larger modifiers.

Right, we have any number of ways to increase hit points and damage. The tried and true D&D way is to increase hit points by giving one hit die per level. We could mimic that on the damage side: whatever damage you would roll, you now roll once per level.

It doesn't matter too terribly for a back-of-the-envelope analysis.

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

It clearly depends on what "working" means. I cringe at the notion of high-level Fighters not hitting orcs any more often than low-level Fighters -- without a special orc-smiting feat.

But, if all you care about is (relative) damage per round remaining stable, then keeping to-hit probabilities static and increasing both damage and hit points at the same rate should achieve that.

 

[Hassassin]

Course, I could be mistaken here. So, you tell me what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

Let's start from something close to 4e math, like:

PC: 25 + 5/level hp, 6 + 2/level damage
Monster: 24 + 8/level hp, 8 + 1/level damage

PCs hit two times out of three, monsters once in three. PC vs. PC and monster vs. monster would be 50% I guess.

Are there problems with this?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So, what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

If you can supply me with this information, I can extrapolate out whether it will work or not.


As an example:

Level 1 PC has 20 hit points, does 7 damage against 20 hit point monster.
Level 2 PC has 30 hit points, does 10 damage against 30 hit point monter.
...
Level 11 PC has 110 hit points, does 37 damage against 110 hit point monster.

Ok, so you've increased damage by 3 points per level and hit points by 10 points per level. The 1st level PC has a 50% chance to hit the 11th level PC (he's -2 to hit). The 11th level PC has a 60% chance to hit the 1st level PC.

Since the damage and hit points were significantly increased (more so than in my earlier examples), a battle between the two of them will last about 2 rounds where the 1st level PC is insta-killed. No problem with that per se, but what was gained here? One still cannot fight a foe 10 levels higher. They'll wipe you out even faster than in the current system.

So far, so good.

The 30th level PC is doing 94 average points of damage.

How do you roll that?

Is it 3D8+82?

How do you make this part of the game easy.

In order to increase damage significantly enough, you need to use bigger damage dice, more damage dice, or much larger modifiers.

In 4E, a lot of the extra damage is done via rolling a lot of extra dice for the Striker classes. I've seen strikers roll 8 dice. Are normal Epic level PCs now going to roll 10 or 15 dice? How much will that slow up the game?

Granted, the solution is to make the damage modifier big instead like 3D8+82. No problem. Course, that creates feel problems of it's own. At that point, you might as well not even roll and just take the average cause it ain't gonna matter to much too often.

The piddly +4 for strength damage that the PC has is a mere drop in the bucket at Epic level. Bonus damage for a magic weapon? Mostly worthless. It shifts the damage portion of the game somewhere where nothing matters except that mega-level +3 damage per level bonus


Course, I could be mistaken here. So, you tell me what is the starting damage at level one, what is the starting hit points at level one, and how much do both of these increase per level for both PCs and monsters?

What set of numbers works across the board and has no real issues to them?

My proposed answer was level multiplier for damage. You are level 1 and have a sword and a STR of 18 you do 1d8+4 damage. You're level 10 and have a sword you do (1d8+4)*10 damage. This will probably be too swingy, but some degree of compromise can be made here, like you roll an extra die (with STR modifier) per half-tier and then multiply, so you might roll 1d8+4 at level one and (2d8+8)*5 at level 11. Lets see how big the jumps are using that progression.

level 1: 1d8+4 is average 8.5
level 2: (1d8+4)*2 is average 17
level 10: (1d8+4)*10 is average 85
level 11: (2d8+8)*5 is average 85

Well, what we see is basically it works, then you'd clearly use a linear progression of hit dice as well, so a level 1 figure would have say 25 hit points, and you'd increase by 25 per level.

I agree that the dice handling is somewhat awkward whatever way you cut it but some more noodling might work it out. I think its acceptable to have people rolling up to say 6 dice without it being horribly slow as long as things are otherwise pretty quick. It helps too if they are all d6.

So maybe you restructure things like there are 6 levels per tier, but instead of calling them levels 1-18 you call them levels 1-6 heroic, 1-6 paragon, and 1-6 epic. Now you can roll 1d6 per level and just multiply by either 1, 7, or 13 depending on tier. Still don't like that too well.

How about a simple chart? You just have a damage range that is determined by a d6 (or whatever) and you can keep those numbers in a fairly tight range, so you do say 6-8 damage with a sword blow, plus STR and each column on the chart is a level with the damage output specified, so no multiplying. That's getting close to being workable. You can even have low probability outliers. Heck, use 3d6 and you have your bell curve, which is pretty good, and the chart is just there to do the multiplication for you and scale the damage back to the 1-8 range so numbers don't get awkwardly big. I think that might work fine.

So basically hit points start at 3* average damage and go up by that amount per level. I think that works reasonably well overall. The 'squishy' guys are going to be pretty squishy against high level foes, but I'm not sure anyone would complain too much about that.

 

[Dragonblade]

Let's start from something close to 4e math, like:

PC: 25 + 5/level hp, 6 + 2/level damage
Monster: 24 + 8/level hp, 8 + 1/level damage

PCs hit two times out of three, monsters once in three. PC vs. PC and monster vs. monster would be 50% I guess.

Are there problems with this?

Right, pretty much what I had in mind.

So a level 1 PC might have 25 HP to start and do an avg of 8 damage per round. A level 30 PC would have say 170 HP on avg. and do 66 damage a round (or even more).

So higher level combat is more lethal in a straight up fight, but higher level PCs would naturally have more options in the way of abilities, feats, talents, powers, or whatever to help offset some of that lethality.

Then you can have a lethality dial. Want to make combats tougher and grittier, then up the hit percentage, or up damage, or lower HP, or reintroduce save or die. All sorts of ways to customize it.

 

[Roland55]

It's going to be awhile before I can give you XP ... although this Thread seems to have attracted plenty for you.

Sound thinking. I hope the designers are reading this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right, pretty much what I had in mind.

So a level 1 PC might have 25 HP to start and do an avg of 8 damage per round. A level 30 PC would have say 170 HP on avg. and do 66 damage a round (or even more).

So higher level combat is more lethal in a straight up fight, but higher level PCs would naturally have more options in the way of abilities, feats, talents, powers, or whatever to help offset some of that lethality.

Then you can have a lethality dial. Want to make combats tougher and grittier, then up the hit percentage, or up damage, or lower HP, or reintroduce save or die. All sorts of ways to customize it.

You could tweak it like this, but I don't even think you need to. High level monsters are going to have all sorts of abilities.

Lets think about the dragon. It is going to have a breath weapon, probably multiple attacks, etc. Maybe it has other magical type abilities that give it added ways to avoid or do damage, etc. High level PCs doubtless will as well.

Even with the straight linear system and no level bonus of any kind on to-hit there's bound to be a lot of other ways that level increases your power, that's just inherent to the concept of the game, so even though you don't gain a lot of your added power from stoked up defense numbers as you do now in 4e for instance, you'd certainly have a much less flat curve than the raw numbers indicate.