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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7486353" data-attributes="member: 4937">The more I think about it, the more it may be the case that MR and not breath weapon damage has to depend on HD.&nbsp; One of my key complaints about the 1e design was that breath weapon damage scaling with hit points didn't work because player character hit points don't truly scale with level.&nbsp; But the ability to penetrate MR does scale with level.&nbsp; Further, higher level PC's have to face higher levels of MR precisely because the cost to the monster of failing a saving throw increases over time (this is similar to the reason PC saves must get absolutely better over time, unlike 3e broken saving throw DC design).&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm struggling to scale MR to age category because different species have such different HD across age category, and thus relatively different expectations of what level PCs are facing them.&nbsp;&nbsp; That level to challenge tie in is not as strong as in later editions, but it's still there.But MR to age category is so darn elegant.&nbsp; If I scale it to HD, it's going to be a mess to calculate and produce messy results.&nbsp;&nbsp; Oh well, I guess I already introduced that problem when I nerfed white and black dragons to deal with the HD vs. MR contradiction.UPDATE: Arrrgggh.&nbsp; And if we switch from age category to HD for MR, then I have to rethink how I wrote 'multi-headed' as a way to extend the challenge of a dragon out over even higher levels.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7486353, member: 4937"] The more I think about it, the more it may be the case that MR and not breath weapon damage has to depend on HD. One of my key complaints about the 1e design was that breath weapon damage scaling with hit points didn't work because player character hit points don't truly scale with level. But the ability to penetrate MR does scale with level. Further, higher level PC's have to face higher levels of MR precisely because the cost to the monster of failing a saving throw increases over time (this is similar to the reason PC saves must get absolutely better over time, unlike 3e broken saving throw DC design). I'm struggling to scale MR to age category because different species have such different HD across age category, and thus relatively different expectations of what level PCs are facing them. That level to challenge tie in is not as strong as in later editions, but it's still there. But MR to age category is so darn elegant. If I scale it to HD, it's going to be a mess to calculate and produce messy results. Oh well, I guess I already introduced that problem when I nerfed white and black dragons to deal with the HD vs. MR contradiction. UPDATE: Arrrgggh. And if we switch from age category to HD for MR, then I have to rethink how I wrote 'multi-headed' as a way to extend the challenge of a dragon out over even higher levels. [/QUOTE]

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