Powers Need to Do More Damage

[El Mahdi]

...

Interesting ideas, but I'm not sure how this applies to D&D Next.

Nowhere has it been stated that the inherent Math and Structure of 4E is going to be the Mathematical and Structural Chasis of 5E.

Nor has it been stated that the inherent Math and Structure of any edition is going to be the Mathematical and Structural Chasis of 5E.

In fact, the ideas expressed by Monte and Company point very strongly to a Mathematical and Structural Chasis of 5E that's unique to 5E (though retaining the ability to have the feel of any edition through the use of optional add-ons).



The changes you propose might be an useful and workable modification to the rules of 4E, but your ideas are likely inaplicable to 5E.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Isn't this a 4e topic?

Pretty much.

 

[AeroDm]

Maybe to evolve this into a 5e discussion, we can debate the feasibility of a system that allows you to easily adjust the 'sweet spot' for wherever your given sweet spot happens to be. I think the trick to this would be to have stable base math and then make damage output the variable. Varying the base math (attack and defense) feels like it would have too many unintended consequences.

 

[keterys]

You don't add con mod to hp in 4E, so at least some of the OP is based on 3e math.

One takeaway of note is that you _easily_ do enough damage in 4E, but only if you know what you're doing and/or don't restrict particular sources. For example, someone who randomly picks their powers might do 20 damage per round while someone who knows very well does 100. That means that optimization is too effective - this is true in pretty much every edition of D&D, to varying degrees.

So, DDN should be less so. Unfortunately, if you do so by reducing customization, there will be objections. If you do so by making it harder for someone to sacrifice combat effectiveness for non-combat effectiveness, there will be objections. Hmm.

 

[innerdude]

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

If by "don't do enough damage" you actually mean, "the term 'powers' should never be used in conjunction with the D&D ruleset ever again, ever, and any designer that invokes the term in the future should be summarily beaten with a wet noodle," then yes, we're in complete agreement.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

If by "don't do enough damage" you actually mean, "the term 'powers' should never be used in conjunction with the D&D ruleset ever again, ever, and any designer that invokes the term in the future should be summarily beaten with a wet noodle," then yes, we're in complete agreement.

And if monsters aren't inflated with an overabundance of hit points, character attacks don't need to do more damage simply to compensate!

Win, win!

 

[keterys]

If you have a group of five PCs, how long should it take them to kill an encounter's worth of monsters in terms of number of rounds? Obviously, answers should vary between easy, normal, hard, very hard encounters...

Like, a fight against some orcs vs a fight against a dragon vs a fight against a dread knight riding a dragon

 

[frankthedm]

And if monsters aren't inflated with an overabundance of hit points, character attacks don't need to do more damage simply to compensate!

Everyone, not just the monsters, had too many HP in 4E.