Non scaling damage

[Nikosandros]

So far, beyond a single "playtest" session, I've only run a single adventure that brought the group to 2nd level.

However, I've been wondering about some instances in which the damage inflicted by character doesn't scale with level. At the moment, I'm thinking specifically about a barbarian's building frenzy and a paladin's smite evil. There is the possibility of some slight scaling on this powers, but only by expending feats, otherwise their damage bonus remains constant. Wouldn't that make their damage less relevant as a character increases in level?

 

[Blue]

Talents and other bonus damage don't seem to scale with level. Both of the examples can scale up with feats by tier. Note that ability modifier to damage also scales by tier.

 

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

The fact that you deal a die of weapon damage per level means that you outstrip the impposrtants of 'smite' attacks quickly... heck at level 6 you deal 6d8+str mod x2... that is insane.

 

[Dragonblade]

The fact that you deal a die of weapon damage per level means that you outstrip the impposrtants of 'smite' attacks quickly... heck at level 6 you deal 6d8+str mod x2... that is insane.

Smite scales with level in that you do half damage even on a miss with a smite attack. That's not just half of your Smite damage, that's half of ALL the damage you would normally do on a hit. Including all smite bonus damage, damage from your level, strength, magic, etc.

Its not as sexy as barbarian rage, but it does give paladins a pretty impressive minimum base damage with any Smite attack.

 

[Manabarbs]

Yeah, Smite is in a weird position of being a feature that's much better than it looks, and arguably much better than it feels. Upping your minimum damage by a lot isn't glamorous, but it makes a pretty big difference in terms of how much damage you're doing.

 

[NinjaPaladin]

I think the expectation is that if you like the Talent, you'll be spending the feats to improve it. So by third or fourth level, you've at least taken the Adventurer Feat to move the damage dice to d6s, and you likely take the Champion feat at 6th or 7th (assuming most people take the Barbarian Rage Champion feat at 5th) to increase the damage to d10s.

It's not like Barbarians suffer from too many different places to sink their feats, after all.