Non-AC Defenses

[eamon]

Damage only increases by 4 over 30 levels, that's easy to account for.

But, yes, entire subsystems like masterwork armor were made due to stat increases. It'd require some cleanup.

I still think it would be better than what we have

It may have an advantage in a hypothetical clean-slate redesign. However, within the context of 4e as it stands, removing stat boosts is a far more complex change than raising all stats equally. It's not just damage, it's feat, item, and power interactions, prerequisites, secondary effects, etc.

A rules fix that requires adapting every class in the book and a large number of item and feat rules isn't a fix, it's a redesign.

Right now, you have published content you can use. After such a fix, you would need to house-rule almost every ability. That'd be a lot worse than what we have now - unless you can convince WotC to release D&D 4.5 with those changes.

 

[KarinsDad]

If they didn't you would have to have another mechanism to increase character's damage, FRWs, etc.

I'm not saying it would be worse, but you can't get rid of stat increase without introducing another mechanic.

There are several such possibilities.

One is that without stat increase, monsters increase offense and defense by 1 per level and PCs increase by 3/4s per level. That way, PCs would drop by 7 over 30 levels, but +6 items would make up a fair chunk of that. Feats could then improve, but not blow out defenses or offenses.

As for damage, not increasing stats means an adjustment to higher level hit points. The problems are not unsurmountable at the designer level with a redesign, but they are problematic without a redesign and for normal players using the rules as written. Feat solutions are at best, a bandaid and a poor one at that. Game mechanics correction at a price for the players.


Ability score increases are part, but not all, of the issue. Another solution is to allow all 6 ability scores to increase. The hero is not just a strong fighter, but he is much wiser and quicker than other mere mortals as well. 15 for half level, 4 for ability scores (and/or x for masterwork armor), and 6 for items. Unfortunately, this solution is still shy some, hence, the +1 for levels 5/15/25 for NADs (not for light armor if masterwork is used).

I'm sure other solutions would work, with or without stat increases.

 

[Infiniti2000]

If I had used the standard array, my STR and CON would have been 11 and 12 (or vice versa), which would have given me 1 (one) more in Fort defense. I fail to see how that would make much of a difference...

I didn't suggest using a standard array, either, but simply commented that a one-trick pony doesn't get a lot of sympathy. Maybe you didn't actually go down that one-trick pony path, but IME when you start with an 18 stat that's what generally happens. The example of this is any thread that is along the lines of "What's the highest AC..." You've seen these types of threads I'm sure. If your character does not have every possible feat/power/race/class option to make sure his attack/damage is as high as possible, and has a generally balanced approach to your items/choices (balanced regarding offense/defense), then I have sympathy for your plight because you're not a one-trick pony.

 

[eamon]

The problem with raising all stats is that you leave out choices.

Although the smoothing of skill bonuses is VERY nice.

Do you think there's much player choice in the stat raises at levels 4/8 now? You basically are forced to raise your primary and secondary stats at almost all times to make a viable character.

Real player choices aren't the stat raises, they're the power, feat, class(+build), race, and item selection, and to a lesser extent the starting stats. Even the starting stat distribution, however - for a given race/class/build combo there tends to be hardly any wiggle room. If you use the standard array like Jhaelen does, you've no relevant choice at all - your primary and secondary stats are going to be fixed by your build for you.

The more I think about it, the better simply raising all stats sounds. You get rid of the skill and FRW chasm that opens up as levels rise, and that lets you fix the underlying math problem in a balanced fashion - for instance by FRW/to-hit raises at levels 5/15/25.

 

[keterys]

It may have an advantage in a hypothetical clean-slate redesign.

Fair, I tend to think of an entirely different picture

But, yes, increasing every single ability score at 4/8/11/etc would have much the same effect. You'd potentially want to address all of the classes that assume you're not getting a bonus to certain ability scores, like Barbarians and Monks that get +1 per tier bonuses to certain FRWs, and probably look at the skill DCs.

But, people like their cake, so getting more cake is generally an easier sell. Even if it's less elegant system design.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Not to mention the fact that some builds have primary+secondary stats that boost the same NAD - these guys are screwed no matter what, and will have low NADs.

So, bad class design? If bad class design is the root cause then any fix that does not start with an adjustment to the class or the base rules that the class relies upon is inherently a wrong design change.

I suspect that the advantages of "one-trick ponies" are an intentional design aspect to encourage role distinction: trying to be good at everything risks stepping on other party-members turf and thus disrupting intra-party balance. By constrast, currently it's attractive to have a bunch of "one-trick-ponies" in a party - but unique ones that benefit from working together.

I hope it's not an intentional design aspect, but I also don't agree that there are only two shades here. I'd also not have sympathy for a character that tries to be good at everything. That's probably even worse than a one-trick pony because it's unachievable. Can we just try to get a character who's good at one or two things (though not super awesome best-in-the-world good at one thing) and just doesn't suck at everything else? You know, average? Instead, the "one trick pony" is awesome at one thing and sucks at everything else.

Btw, as an analogy, I refer you to Champions. It was easy to make a character with one truly awesome attack power that was unstoppable. Go first? Win!

You seem to dislike the notion of point-buying an 18. Why?

I thought this was answered in my post. IMO, it "is the beginning concept of a one-trick pony." It may not HAVE to be, but it usually is.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Should it be 50% against a Defenders best defense? This is an honest question; what is a resonable rate of success for average monsters? So far, I've assumed that the target number of most d20 rolls should be between 5 and 15. But now at level 16, I find that both monsters and heroes hit a lot better than that.

This is a problem which was there in 3.x too. Defenses were neclected to raise your attack just a little bit. The results are: both monsters and characters hit better than the system assumes and gets much more binary.

Though i agree with eamon, that 18/14/11 is a viable array, especially if you chose a race, which boosts at least the 14 (if it boosts the 18 and not the 14 you are often better advised to use 16/16 array), and if primary and secondary don´t boost the same NAD.

But keterys is right with his observation: the main flaw is stat increase. But of course, you need to think about some feats then. Another flaw is monsters doing no damage on a miss.

If monsters had more miss lines and delivering status effects only with hits. So hit rate should be much lower than -2 compared to AC attacks. And then you would get rid off 2 problems:

a) too many status effects on PCs

b) too low FRW defenses

 

[eamon]

So, bad class design? If bad class design is the root cause then any fix that does not start with an adjustment to the class or the base rules that the class relies upon is inherently a wrong design change.

The problem lies not with the classes alone, but with the interaction between those classes and the ability raises. I'd argue that the fundamental problem is not the class design, it's the diverging stat bonuses. To put it another way: that any fix that does not start with an adjustment to the ability modifier divergence or to the base rules that the ability modifiers rely upon is inherently a wrong design change .

In any case, builds that "share" stats start off at a disadvantage; and that's a viable choice - it's OK. What's not OK is that these effects become so overwhelming as the game progresses.

On the topic of one-trick pony's...

I hope it's not an intentional design aspect, but I also don't agree that there are only two shades here. I'd also not have sympathy for a character that tries to be good at everything. That's probably even worse than a one-trick pony because it's unachievable. Can we just try to get a character who's good at one or two things (though not super awesome best-in-the-world good at one thing) and just doesn't suck at everything else? You know, average? Instead, the "one trick pony" is awesome at one thing and sucks at everything else.

Personally, I don't see the attraction in playing one trick pony's in the first place. But some of my players do. They'll come up with amusing builds with odd tricks, and bore of them quickly, and then switch character (though, this hasn't been much of a problem in 4e yet, to be honest).

These PC's are generally not problematic in actual game-play. They're usually quite fun and spicy precisely because they're not ordinary and not bland. I think maybe we're not talking about the same thing here - I'm not talking about rule-bending cheese (maxed out to-hit with storm of blades, orbizards that make saving virtually impossible). I'm talking about focused characters that know what they're good at.

I thought this was answered in my post. IMO, it "is the beginning concept of a one-trick pony." It may not HAVE to be, but it usually is.

An 18 is the default stat distribution of any auto-built character builder character. It's hardly a one-trick pony, rather, it ensures that at the very least, the character will not be terrible at hitting. It does not much impact your FRW defenses. Rather, a character with an 18 tends to be less one-sided than others: If you're into char-op, raising a few other stats for specific feats' prereqs may be wise, but a basic 18 character won't have access to a few specialized feats (e.g. polearm gamble in heroic tier). Really, as long as it's not disrupting gameplay, what business does a DM have micromanaging the PC's choices like that? And really, a stat distribution is like the least disrupting game element I can imagine in 4e. We're not talking about a barbarian with iron armbands and a bloodclaw weapon abusing storm of blades here...

 

[Tuft]

If your character does not have every possible feat/power/race/class option to make sure his attack/damage is as high as possible, and has a generally balanced approach to your items/choices (balanced regarding offense/defense), then I have sympathy for your plight because you're not a one-trick pony.

No, I definitely am not interested in combat optimization - I want to do as much stuff outside combat as possible. Having to sacrifice "fun" for "optimal" is.. well... depression attack territory.


Feats and Items at level 16:

Feats:
Pact Initiate (warlock multiclass)
Jack of All Trades
Warrior of the Wild (ranger multiclass)
Sly Dodge (rogue multiclass)
Ritual Quickening (homebrew)
Skill Specialization: Nature
Skill Specialization: Arcana
Familiar: Sprite
Melee Training
-undecided-

Items:
Appx 60 rituals of levels 1-14 (my one major expense)
Boots of the Fencing Master, lvl 7
Wand of Fst Friends
Communal Weapon +2, lvl 9
Flute of the Dancing Satyr, lvl 6
Dynamic belt +2, lvl 9
Hat of Disguise, lvl 10
Displacer Armor +3, lvl 14
Medallion of the Mind +3, lvl 14
Winged Brooch, lvl 9 (homebrew variant of Ebony Fly)
Ring of Feather Fall, lvl 14
Sword of Sin: Lust (artifact - all PC:s have their own individual sin)

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

If a PC has a 4 difference between two defenses at level 1, they shouldn't have a 9 difference at level 30.

I agree. I'm experimenting with cutting the ability mod contribution in half (and adjusting monster attacks accordingly) to cut down on the variance. I'm also removing all but the paragon-level +2 FRW boosting feats (which I've reduced to +1).