One Way to Reduce HP Bloat

[ren1999]

Someone mentioned getting rid of the 1[w] 2[w] damage bonuses at later levels and just add the character's ability modifier and 1/2 his level. That certainly would reduce the need to have a monster or character's hit points so high.

But what about those powers that a character can use just once per day? How are those powers going to be better than powers that can be used every round?

Adding 5 feet to the range, 5 feet radius to the burst, 1 additional round, etc.. are all good but dealing more damage is the reason people chose some powers.

One thing for sure is we can't have some powers increase in damage every level while other powers just increase in damage about every 10 levels. Players will chose the higher damage dealing powers over the weaker ones every time.

If a 30th level character has 300 hit points, and does 3d10+25 damage, fighting another 30th level character with the same stats. Combat could be resolved in 5 rounds. 5 rounds is a good figure for an encounter according to the average opinions here.

In my opinion, the solution is to max a characters hit points every level and give all monsters and characters a max of 3[w]+ damage.

 

[RangerWickett]

My preference is to have light weapons deal 1 damage, normal weapons deal 2, and heavy weapons deal 3. A 1st level character has 5 hit points, and you get 1 additional per level. Every 5 levels, your light weapons deal +1, normal deal +2, and heavy deal +3.

A troll? 15 hit points. A dragon? 30.

That really cuts down on HP bloat.

 

[Gadget]

They have stated that hit points and damage are the two things that will automatically scale by level, whereas attacks and defences will not necessarily scale by level. This allows lower level threats to still remain in play for longer as they can still hit and their defences aren't too out of whack, while still crumbling like pie crust before the higher damage and superior endurance of high level heroes.

So I thing we will still have some form of HP bloat, as that (along with higher damage) will be the main distinguishing feature between levels (along with better and more feats, spells, exploits, etc). Hopefully, this will be 'balanced' by the damage maths to not feel as 'bloated'.

 

[am181d]

If the goal is to reduce the number of hit points creatures have relative to the amount of damage that can be dealt to them per attack, decreasing the amount of damage that can be dealt per attack isn't going to solve the problem.

Similarly, if you reduce the amount of damage dealt AND the hit point totals, you're not helping the situation.

You either need to INCREASE the amount of damage dealt or lower the hit point totals.

Personally, I think it's a good thing if martial characters get additional damage dice at higher levels.

 

[Stormonu]

I'd really like to see D&D scale back on the hp progression, much in the manner that it slowed greatly when hitting 10th level back in 1E/2E.

Generally, my preference would be that even a 30th level or above character should never want to ignore an opponent wailing on them - even if that foe is 1st level. I don't mind a little plot protection from being one-shotted by the "newbie", but still make it that completely ignoring or dismissing the low-level foe shouldn't be standard practice.

At 30th level, if you get surprised be an orc, they still ought to make you regret it.

 

[howandwhy99]

But what about those powers that a character can use just once per day? How are those powers going to be better than powers that can be used every round?

Abilities usable at most 1/day are simply likely to be more powerful. They aren't better than 1/round powers, but they are better in a particular way for one round. For combat we're probably talking potential hit point damage, but that's far from the only effect players seek in the game.

How do we reduce HP bloat? For one, you can lower the Hit Die. The average HD is d8 for most of D&D, but this can be lowered back to d6. Then your average weapon damage can be brought back down to d6. This isn't something I've gone with, but it does work for lowering hp totals.

Once per day are already still at d6 for every edition (I think). Those are usually about the force of artillery attacks anyways as seen on p. 109, where spells (typical 1/day stuff) are added in with siege engine attacks.

 

[Steely_Dan]

They have stated that hit points and damage are the two things that will automatically scale by level, whereas attacks and defences will not necessarily scale by level. This allows lower level threats to still remain in play for longer as they can still hit and their defences aren't too out of whack, while still crumbling like pie crust before the higher damage and superior endurance of high level heroes.

I have found removing 1/2 level from all character's and monster's attacks, defences and skills helps with this (I highly recommend anyone to try it out in a 4th Ed session).

 

[ren1999]

All of these are doable ideas but lets think about what that means.

If a weapon does static damage, that means every stab is equally lethal.

If we don't include some level calculation in the attack and damage, that means that level doesn't matter -- so why include character level in the game at all if it doesn't change anything?

I agree with one of you that we need to keep the damage scale of 1[w], 2[w] at a certain level.

What I mean by reducing bloat, I mean keeping all characters and all monsters below 400hp. The current editions mostly do that anyway.

But combat rounds last too long. To get the combat down to an average of 5 rounds, we've got to reduce hit points or increase damage.

 

[eamon]

All of these are doable ideas but lets think about what that means.

If a weapon does static damage, that means every stab is equally lethal.

If we don't include some level calculation in the attack and damage, that means that level doesn't matter -- so why include character level in the game at all if it doesn't change anything?

You can still have crits or something similar. I could live with fixed base damage and a rolled crit bonus. Even a fixed crit might be OK.


Just crits would be enough variation, really - it's already the case that I usually don't care much about the damage dice anyhow - do you? If you're rolling several damage dice (say, 3e fireballs) then you're very likely to roll near the average. In 4e you get a similar effect by virtue of needing several attacks to down an opponent. Additionally, the higher base modifiers are, the less the damage dice matter.

So why roll dice that just don't matter anyhow? They certainly do slow down the game; I notice lots of moments where people are just waiting for others to add up their damage dice.

It's actually rather counterintuitive (from a gamist perspective) that 4e's crits maximize damage dice - usually, you'd want to keep the standard outcome simple, and emphasize the special occurrence by letting it have a little more table time by allowing some more computations to be done.

In any case: damage dice should matter (i.e. HP must not be much larger than the die maximum) - otherwise, get rid of the die rolls.

What I mean by reducing bloat, I mean keeping all characters and all monsters below 400hp. The current editions mostly do that anyway.

400 is waaaaaay too much. Totally pointless tracking. I never want to see a triple digit hit point number (Not even for the Tarrasque); and I'd like to keep common hit points more in the area of no more than, say, 10-20 - the fewer the better (players are faster at calculation with smaller numbers due to habituation).

 

[DimitriX]

A good way to reduce HP bloat is to simply have fewer levels like they do in DCC RPG. By only having 10 levels, the numbers bloat of HP, AC, ability scores, and the rest is greatly reduced. Having 10 levels doesn't mean that the game is less epic. It just means that an epic monster doesn't have 445 hitpoints to get through during an encounter.