Official Rules Updates (March 02, 2010)

[AbdulAlhazred]

Okay, not so much text as above.

5% extra probability does not mean 5% more outcomes.

If your chances to hit are 10 in 20 outcomes, then a 10% extra chance to hit means 2 extra outcomes, which is actually 20% more outcomes.

20% more hits.

20% more damage.

Yes, but you are missing a part of your analysis. Lets say a certain monster dishes out 20 DPR if it hits every single time it swings at you (nm 1's and 20's for now). For each one of those times it actually misses, it means it effectively dishes out less DPR. So if it has to get a 2 its now down to 19 average DPR and your 1 extra AC saved you 1 point of damage per round. If the monster hit you on only a 19 before it was doing 2 DPR. If it now hits you on a 20 only it does 1 DPR, still 1 point less damage per round per point of AC gained.

So YES, the change between a 19 and a 20 to be hit is a 50% reduction, but its 50% on a base that is 1/10th as big as the 5% reduction you got from being hit always to being hit on a 2, which is 1 point also.

So it SOUNDS like AC (or NADs) going up when they are already high is 'better' in the simple %-wise analysis, but the actual benefit is linear. In reality there is also a benefit of 'reliability' when a defense gets quite high. You can now COUNT on it not getting hit, so you can decide to go take on the big FORT bashing monster with a high confidence it won't stun you all over the place. That is a real tangible benefit in actual fights where you have to decide how best to defeat varying challenges. If different players focus on different defenses then SOMEONE can always be pretty resistant to any given problematic attack.

This is one reason cranking on one specific NAD can really be a good idea. Especially for the guy that has to go in and deal with stuff, like a melee ranger where maybe he's good against the FORT attacking monster and the rogue does better against the REF attacking monster.

 

[Elric]

Plenty of d20 rolls have nothing to do with attacking either.

That doesn't change how the probabilities work one bit.

Many people interpret these types of probabilities wrong in making decisions.

Suppose you currently get hit 10% of the time by AC attacks and 80% of the time by FRW attacks.

FRW attacks and AC attacks are equally common, equally damaging/status effect inflicting, and tend to come in equally difficult encounters.

(Edit: worded these conditions poorly before)
The equal FRW and AC targeting isn't because opponents are targeting you based on what your strengths and weaknesses are; it's essentially random. Likewise, you can't specifically target enemies that attack your FRWs instead of AC to kill first.

Opponents always hit you on a 19 vs AC (16 vs. FRW) and miss on a 1 without the natural 1s rule (messed up this condition the first time).

Which do you prefer: +1 to AC or +4 to all FRWs?

If and only if all NADs are targetted equally as often, then you have:
...
Therefore, it doesn't matter WHICH NAD you boost. All are just as good.

Otherwise, the only rational choice is to boost the one targetted most often, regardless if it is high or low.

There are more considerations that would go into a serious analysis of the issue. See above.

 

[illwizard]

Should we go 4E or stick with 1??

Go for it! At least give it a shot, You can always go back to first edition. But I think you need to make a new thread if you want to discuss it. Cheers

 

[Nymrohd]

Honestly the importance of increasing or decreasing returns leads to two conclusions:

Because your defenses face increasing returns, then if they are naturally high, every time you increase them you get more out of the increase. If I can only be hit if the enemy rolls a 16 or higher and suddently I get a +3 bonus on my defense, the enemy will need to roll 19 or higher to hit me. The return I got from that +3 bonus is not 15% (I had a 25% chance to be missed and now I have a 10% chance to be missed) but 60% (25-15/25). This means that feats or powers that provide bonuses to defenses are more valuable when you can stack them together. Inversely if your natural defenses were very low, it would not really be worthwhile to invest in increasing them because the returns would take some time to trump the sacrifice you'd make in getting an offensive advantage. This does not often happen in 4E because most classes have at least decent defenses by default.

Conversely, the return of a bonus in your chance to hit is great the higher your original chance to miss was. Take for instance the expertise feat at say the paragon tier, which gives you a +2 bonus. Let's say we have two characters, a dagger rogue with a very high original chance to hit who could get a hit at a roll as low as 6 against the average monster, and a battleraging fighter using a +2 prof weapon with a 16 starting Str who can only hit on rolls of 12 or higher on average. The +2 bonus from the expertise feat would be good for either ofc, but it would be a lot better for the fighter who gets a (55-45/45)=22% return against the rogue's return of (85-75/75)=13%. This means that if you have a class designed to get a significant bonus on damage dealt when it hits, that was balanced with a low hit chance, and you add some cheese like righteous brand, that class gets far more out of it than the low damage/high precision class.

Why is this useful to know? Well unless you are interested in optimization, it really isn't. If you want to optimize though, you need to understand that when you make a choice, you need to compare your options based on the return they will give you and not the face value. This can even be an argument for the expertise feats for instance; in an optimized group that can produce high hit chances naturally (and likely has methods of producing rerolls for critical powers) the expertise feats do not have amazing returns as feats (they are arguably still better than average). In a different group that can produce huge damage when it hits but keeps getting missing streaks, those feats are golden. At the same time, a scaling bonus to attack rolls, particularly one that can be made available easily like the one from righteous brand, is simply very broken when combined with low hit characters.

This nature of the d20 system forces the necessity of rolls of 20 always hitting (otherways you could potentialy cap defenses and be unhittable). At the same time we see how it breaks down in the monster system. Brutes have high damage combined with low chance to hit and low defenses. A player could handle this with synergies and make an effective character who can capitalize on the tradeoffs but monsters do not have access to those in general making brutes crappy NPCs.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I agree 100% with Nymrohd's post, but argue that it isn't always the best to up a high defence over a lower one - and this is due to status effects.

Lets say a monster has a daze effect (until beginning of the next turn). It hits you on a 11. You are therefore stunned roughly 50% of the time. So, in a 10 round fight, you get 5 turns. You can up your defence to a 13, making it 40% of the the time - giving you essentially one more turn that fight - or 20% more turns.

Or, lets say the monster hits you on a 3. You are stunned roughly 90% of the time - in a 10 round fight you get 1 turn. You can up your defence to a 5, making you stunned roughly 80% of the time, giving you 2 turns in a 10 round battle. Which is 100% more turns.


Certainly from a "having fun" perspective, I'd want to shore up that weak nad that attracts stun or other debiliating effects.

 

[Nymrohd]

There is obviously an argument on the importance of each defense. Wizards has not made it easy there either tbh; it would have been logical for many attacks that currently are damage+effect to be damage plus secondary attack to a more appropriate def so as to apply said effect. Attacks vs AC or Ref applying physical effects that should be defended against with fortitude for instance are ubiquitious. A design with higher verisimilititude in attack patterns would allow for defenses to be more predictable in what they defend against. I expect that the current design was conscious so that people could not pick and choose what to shore up (for instance you could have the tank who drops avoidance to make himself a good target (low AC/Ref) but makes sure that he can resist most any effect that would remove him from combat (high Fort/Will); this seemingly haphazard design prevents that, and removes the tactical choice from players (check for instance the gaming engine behind the Dragon Age game, which I consider a very intelligent way to simulate RPG combat). The concern is mainly in campaign design; is the DM expected to take note of what defenses his NPCs attack in combat and intentionally vary them?

 

[DracoSuave]

Yes, but you are missing a part of your analysis. Lets say a certain monster dishes out 20 DPR if it hits every single time it swings at you (nm 1's and 20's for now). For each one of those times it actually misses, it means it effectively dishes out less DPR.

I suggest to you if your analysis begins like this that you do not know what DPR is.


The simplest formula for DPR starts =

[average damage per successful hit] X [probability of chance to hit]

Of course, critical hits figure in there, etc. etc. but the above is pretty much the way to go for the most part.

Which means that if you're going 'But if the monster misses' you have forgotten we've already calculated that in. It would look like this:

[average damage per successful hit] X [1 - probability of chance to miss].

So... yeah.


Also, if you think any of my posts was advocating high defenses being made higher, again, math fail.

All other things being considered tho, raise the most commonly attacked defense, and you reduce the number of hitting outcomes.

While I accept the dazed argument, there's other methods to combat that, and I'm personally a fan of DGH-style utility powers to negate the occasional hit that leaks through. (DGH=don't get hit, either 'Effect: The hit misses' or powers that somehow make hits turn into misses.)

 

[Njall]

Yes, but you are missing a part of your analysis. Lets say a certain monster dishes out 20 DPR if it hits every single time it swings at you (nm 1's and 20's for now). For each one of those times it actually misses, it means it effectively dishes out less DPR. So if it has to get a 2 its now down to 19 average DPR and your 1 extra AC saved you 1 point of damage per round. If the monster hit you on only a 19 before it was doing 2 DPR. If it now hits you on a 20 only it does 1 DPR, still 1 point less damage per round per point of AC gained.

So YES, the change between a 19 and a 20 to be hit is a 50% reduction, but its 50% on a base that is 1/10th as big as the 5% reduction you got from being hit always to being hit on a 2, which is 1 point also.

So it SOUNDS like AC (or NADs) going up when they are already high is 'better' in the simple %-wise analysis, but the actual benefit is linear. In reality there is also a benefit of 'reliability' when a defense gets quite high. You can now COUNT on it not getting hit, so you can decide to go take on the big FORT bashing monster with a high confidence it won't stun you all over the place. That is a real tangible benefit in actual fights where you have to decide how best to defeat varying challenges. If different players focus on different defenses then SOMEONE can always be pretty resistant to any given problematic attack.

This is one reason cranking on one specific NAD can really be a good idea. Especially for the guy that has to go in and deal with stuff, like a melee ranger where maybe he's good against the FORT attacking monster and the rogue does better against the REF attacking monster.

It's true that, for the purpose of DPR, the benefit is, in fact, linear.
However, it isn't when you need to calculate what the MMO community calls "time to live" (TTL).
Say your opponent deals 30 damage per hit, on average, and hits you on a 11+.
You have 90 HP.
So, you're going to take roughly 15 DPR, and you'll be dead in about 6 rounds.
Now, assume your AC increases by 1 point: your opponent hits on a 12+ (45%), so his DPR becomes (30x45%)= 13.5.
Since it takes the monster 7 rounds to kill you, your TTL has increased by 16.6%.
Now, assume that the monster needs to roll a 19 to hit you: this means that you're taking 3 damage per round, on average.
You'll be dead in 30 rounds.
If your AC increases by one point, you'll take 1.5 DPR, and you'll live twice as much! (60 rounds)
So, while the DPR decreases linearly for every point of AC you gain, your survability increases far more dramatically .

 

[Truename]

Now, assume that the monster needs to roll a 19 to hit you: this means that you're taking 3 damage per round, on average.
You'll be dead in 30 rounds.
If your AC increases by one point, you'll take 1.5 DPR, and you'll live twice as much! (60 rounds)
So, while the DPR decreases linearly for every point of AC you gain, your survability increases far more dramatically .

Except that you're beating on this monster at the same time, and it has a time to live of 10 rounds (let's say). So the extra point of AC is worthless, because it will be dead first either way.

(Sorry. Re-engaging lurk mode.

Spoiler

Resource attrition, you say? Look, a seagull!

)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except that you're beating on this monster at the same time, and it has a time to live of 10 rounds (let's say). So the extra point of AC is worthless, because it will be dead first either way.

(Sorry. Re-engaging lurk mode.

Spoiler

Resource attrition, you say? Look, a seagull!

)

Yeah, that was what I was going to say in a nutshell. Its diminishing returns. Sure you live FAR longer than you need to if something hits on a 19+ and 2x more than that if it hits on a 20.

@DS: now now. You understood my argument and it was perfectly cogent. In any case my point was that there IS an advantage to having a high defense, its just that tactically its advantageous to know that you won't likely go down to a specific type of attack. Being 40% vulnerable to an attack on any NAD is worse in a lot of situations than being 60% vulnerable on two of them and only 10% vulnerable on the 3rd one, IF that 3rd one is the one that is being attacked NOW. A party with a diversity of different good and bad NADs is stronger than one with all evenly mediocre NADs across the whole spectrum of possible encounters.