Powers Need to Do More Damage

[ren1999]

Combat is too long because weapons and powers don't do enough damage. Here is my awkward math.

Current 4th Edition Rules and my House Rules
Increase 2 abilities by +1 every 5 levels.
Increase all abilities by +1 at 11th and 21st level.

If a character has a natural 18 constitution and adds +8 at 30th level then the character has a maximum possible constitution of 26.
Add 12 hit points for every fighter level to 30th and that is a maximum of potential hit points of 360+26=386 maximum hit points.

Another 30th level character that does maximum damage could reduce 386 hit points in 5 moves. Which means we need powers that can do 77 points of damage in 1 turn.

That means a 1d12 weapon should do 6[w] at 30th level -- 6d12+26(if the strength modifier is maxed)+15(1/2 of 30th level)=113 possible points damage.

So powers should do +1[w] every 5 levels to reduce combat time.

Many powers are listed as 2[w] at 11th and 3[w]. I think those powers are too weak.

Also, a fighter type should be able to attack adjacent targets at higher levels during one standard action if spell casters can attack multiple targets with burst at higher levels.

 

[Sunseeker]

4e's problem isn't that it's powers don't do enough damage. It's that the things you're attempting to damage have too much health.

 

[ren1999]

We'll either reducing everyone's hit points when leveling up, or increasing the damage will solve the problem of encounters that are too long.

 

[GreyICE]

77 average DPR at late epic?

Easy enough for pretty much any striker.

 

[Incenjucar]

4E was built to make every level a "sweet spot" level with full blown rights. They failed to realize that the "sweet spot" was not the same for everyone, and that not every fight should be a "real" fight. They started figuring this out over time, but people cling to their first impression, and since the edition was given up on really really REALLY early, they've only done a small amount of number fiddling.

Just reduce HP by a percentage until you feel comfortable with it, and run with that.

 

[trancejeremy]

There has been a constant hit point inflation as the editions increased. I think that's the real problem.

 

[GreyICE]

Well HP numbers don't matter so much, because you could multiply everything by 10 and it would be the same.

The key is relative HP/Damage ratio. 4E was much closer to AD&D, because of the casting time issue in AD&D. 3E, thanks to casters gaining so much relative power, became much more rocket-tag oriented. Monsters typically went down fast. So did PCs.

4E probably pushed the durability too far in the other direction, at least in the MM1 incarnation. The MM3 direction was much more solid.

In general, I think a Standard should go down in 2.5 rounds from a single striker damage. Elites, 5. Again, single striker. The party will have a multiplicative effect on this. Overall I'd say the entire party should do a standard+ per round.

 

[Darkthorne]

HP for critters are FAR too high, add in if my LIMITED kewl powerz don't connect I'm down to at wills and it draaaaaaaaaaags on. The rather strong focus on "Team combat" doesn't help, if one person misses an attack that provides a perk to someone else against a more powerful target in a battle, things go downhill fast. Ideally I think that missed encounter/daily powers should have had an recharge ability. Possibly by a cumulative factor, maybe every other round to a set maximum. 6-6 1st round, 5-6 3rd round, and finally 4-6 on the 5th round

 

[the Jester]

Combat is too long because weapons and powers don't do enough damage.

Combat is too long because each turn takes too long, and because the numbers are ridiculously inflated these days.

The solution isn't to turn some numbers up even more, it's to go back to a sane number of hit points, a sane defense level and a sane amount of damage for everyone, as well as reducing the time it takes for someone to take his or her turn.

I assert that you should be able to get through 12 or more combats in one combat-focused session.

 

[Mattachine]

Isn't this a 4e topic?
Why post on this forum?