So, about defenses aka. PHB2 defenses feats

[James McMurray]

I'm lookin at them now. Well, some extra save, spend healing surge... Anyway we going off topic. That don't change anything. Just minor add-ons.

Obviously we're looking at different things. Just in the PH alone:

Demigod: when you hit 0, heal to 1/2
Archmage: When you die you heal to full, become insubstantial, and gain phasing, but you get some limitations.

If you look outside the PH, things get nicer for many of the EDs.

The problem is not when you go to 0 HP, but with hitting monsters and monsters hitting DEFs.

Why is this a problem? Apart from "bad math = bad".

Barley? Without the Leader the game will crush PCs. Have you ever played withou Leader on higher leveles? Withou Leader the party will be dead in few simple encounters.

Um, please read what I wrote. That's exactly what I said. It won't bother them unless they don't have a leader.

Again. We don't talking about killing PCs and hit points.

I was replying directly to a post about Orcus's wand attack. A post which you made.

We talking about the math so stay on the topic please. About monsters challenge and how they powers are compared to PCs powers I was talking already.

So I have to stay on topic, but I'm not allowed to reply to your posts? How do I do that?

Yeah. And you are probably roleplayer who thinks we are all powergamers, and we just make our build better, and better... (Moto! Moto!)

Haha, yeah, that's probably it. ::

The math is everything. This are powers, auras, hitting, damage. Everything!

The math is a tiny fraction of "everything." Or does your group just take out their calculators when a fight starts and immediately determine who is going to win? No tactics. No weighing of which powers to use. No movement. None of the hundreds of other things that go into determining how a combat will end.

Sounds boring to me.

DMG - The Orcuc recharged his power.
Player - Yeah! Let's see if he can roll 1!

I thought Orcus's power was off topic?

I understand that many of you think it's a feature of Epic play. I could agree with you if there will not be feats from PHB2 that suddenly make everything work on 50/50 hit chance of everything. Anyway. This are facts. You only say, what if or maybe is should be that.

Actually, the fact is that Epic play works well with the current math. In fact, as others have said, there's not much challenge to it beyond the grind. Anything that lowers that challenge (such as increasing PC defenses) is a bad thing.

Skill Challanges was fine to? Stealth Rules? Many overpowered powers? We saw errata. Math was broken. We have PHB2 feats! Hurray!

You might want to try staying on topic in the posts where you demand that others stay on topic...

 

[KarinsDad]

Actually, the fact is that Epic play works well with the current math. In fact, as others have said, there's not much challenge to it beyond the grind. Anything that lowers that challenge (such as increasing PC defenses) is a bad thing.

Well, you do have more epic experience than I do. I thoroughly enjoyed your epic campaign read.

But, let me ask you some questions.

Would modifying the math decrease the grind of epic levels? Would the PCs hitting 15% more often and not getting hit 15% as often require that they use less resources per encounter, hence, increasing their chances to more quickly wipe out foes in every encounter?

Wouldn't that drop an encounter from 20 rounds to 15 rounds and improve upon the grind?

Isn't the math problem a part of the Epic Grind problem by definition?

Sure, part of it is monster hit points. But isn't it part math problem as well?

You seem to be arguing FOR Epic Level grind by arguing against the math problem fixes.

 

[James McMurray]

Making the PCs hit more often or harder would be great at reducing grind. Lowering monster hit points would work as well.

Making monsters hit less often would have much less of an effect on grind, except in the case where the monsters are stunning, dominating, or weakening since none of the other common status effects will stop you from dealing damage. The hit point damage the monsters do isn't a big portion of the grind, as it either has 0 effect on the character's combat worthiness, or is healed via a minor action and/or a side effect of another attack.

What increasing PC defenses would have done to our campaign is make the encounters that felt dangerous (but really werent) not even feel that way. The only times the players got worried was when a monster was able to do one of those. Weakening was just an annoyance, and didn't really scare them apart from "great, we'll never kill this thing." Even stunning was only scary because it meant you had to sit there and do nothing. The real fear came from domination, because it meant that they were now facing a real threat: another PC.

Upping defenses isn't the way to fix epic levels. The way to fix epic levels IMO is threefold:

1) Make PCs hit more often. The damage they can deal is fine, it's the whiffs that make a fight go from fast and furious to "when will this end".

2) Make monsters hit harder. This way the PCs have something to fear besides just themselves or boredom.

3) Fix problematic conditions. This could be a few separate lines, but they're all related so I put them under one heading.
a. Reduce the frequency of stunning attacks or their durations. This makes some monsters still scary, but it'll be because they're combining stunning with big attacks, not because they can chain stun you and make you go watch TV.
b. Make domination shorter duration. With monsters dealing more damage there's less of a need to turn the party against each other.
c. Never, never, never, ever put Insubstantial creatures in a fight alongside creatures that can weaken on a hit. (This includes ones that have both in the same package). Nothing slows a fight down faster than PCs doing 1/4 damage. Even stunning everyone over and over again isn't as bad as this, because at least when you're stunned your turn is on autopilot and goes by fast.

I've never seen it in play, though before I had epic experience I created a creature that did it... insubstantial + weakening + swarm. Just. Don't. Do. It.

 

[James McMurray]

I should also say that the previous post is all from the GM's perspective. In most fights grind wasn't a problem for me, because I've got something I have to be doing no matter whose turn it is. The players might have different ideas of what should and shouldn't be changed.

 

[KarinsDad]

Making the PCs hit more often or harder would be great at reducing grind. Lowering monster hit points would work as well.

Making monsters hit less often would have much less of an effect on grind, except in the case where the monsters are stunning, dominating, or weakening since none of the other common status effects will stop you from dealing damage. The hit point damage the monsters do isn't a big portion of the grind, as it either has 0 effect on the character's combat worthiness, or is healed via a minor action and/or a side effect of another attack.

But we are not talking AC here.

The problem defenses are Fort, Reflex, and Will.

Most monster attacks that affect those DO some type of condition.

The math fixes do not propose to decrease the number of successful monster attacks on AC (56% of the attacks in the MM). They propose to decrease the number of successful monster attacks on the other defenses (by 15% or so).


The issue of monsters being challenging is really non-sequitor to this discussion, although many people keep bringing it up.

To make monsters challenging, the DM has to go out of his way to create encounters that are interesting with monsters whose conditions do synergize with each other and to introduce interesting terrain to make the standard "go up and beat on the monsters" either less available or with a downside.

The Fighter who has to stand on a small ledge to fight the monster is vastly different than the one in the middle of the room. If there is a chance that the monster can knock the Fighter off the ledge, the player of the Fighter might feel dread, excitement, fear, whatever. That's what makes an encounter challenging.

Not "How many conditions can I put on the PCs?". Sure, conditions can make an encounter interesting, it's just that there are only so many Stun encounters the DM can introduce until it becomes less interesting and the players have set tactics to counteract it.

 

[James McMurray]

But we are not talking AC here.

Nor am I. Except for a few examples, all monster attacks deal damage. I'm suggesting that damage be increased. Not just damage for attacks vs. AC. Damage for all attack. You'll note I never mentioned Armor Class in my suggestions.

The problem defenses are Fort, Reflex, and Will.

They're not really problems though. It's the few boredom inducing effects that are typically tied to those defenses that are problematic.

The math fixes do not propose to decrease the number of successful monster attacks on AC (56% of the attacks in the MM). They propose to decrease the number of successful monster attacks on the other defenses (by 15% or so).

I don't know where you're coming from with the AC angle. I'm not talking about AC.

The issue of monsters being challenging is really non-sequitor to this discussion, although many people keep bringing it up.

I bring it up because it is a side effect of the feats in question. If you only want to talk about math, fine, but don't expect to get much headway on "fixing" a rules system.

To make monsters challenging, the DM has to go out of his way to create encounters that are interesting with monsters whose conditions do synergize with each other and to introduce interesting terrain to make the standard "go up and beat on the monsters" either less available or with a downside.

The Fighter who has to stand on a small ledge to fight the monster is vastly different than the one in the middle of the room. If there is a chance that the monster can knock the Fighter off the ledge, the player of the Fighter might feel dread, excitement, fear, whatever. That's what makes an encounter challenging.

All very true. But I'm not sure what this has to do with secondary defenses and broken math.

Not "How many conditions can I put on the PCs?". Sure, conditions can make an encounter interesting, it's just that there are only so many Stun encounters the DM can introduce until it becomes less interesting and the players have set tactics to counteract it.

That's exactly what I'm saying, and why one of my proposed fixes would be to limit the number of stunning attacks players see.

I get the feeling that we agree for the most part, but that one or both of us isn't really seeing what the other is saying and thinks that we don't. At least, I can say I agree with 90% of this post.

 

[Herschel]

So far, all I've seen are threads that claim that encounters of your level are too easy.

Then I see threads like this saying that the math is too far stacked in favor of your opponents just because feats exist to bolster certain aspects of your character, making encounters too difficult.

Either encounters are too easy, or encounters are too hard.

All this mathcraft ignores interactions between powers, how rogues synergize, tactics, etc, etc; things that can't be determined by a spreadsheet but which come up each and every encounter.

Not every feat is a bug fix in a game where chainstunning Orcus is a viable tactic.

This, and what AbdulAlhazred has been saying.

If Tiamat almost auto-hits a PC, GOOD! She should, she's a friggin' DEITY. Character interaction is a mighty powerful tool in the party's arsenal. I see a whole lot of 3e think still going on. PCs aren't solos any more. PCs have similarly powerful friends. Work together and think. It's amazing what an actual team of characters can accomplish.

 

[Elric]

This, and what AbdulAlhazred has been saying.

If Tiamat almost auto-hits a PC, GOOD! She should, she's a friggin' DEITY. Character interaction is a mighty powerful tool in the party's arsenal. I see a whole lot of 3e think still going on. PCs aren't solos any more. PCs have similarly powerful friends. Work together and think. It's amazing what an actual team of characters can accomplish.

A (level 18) Bodak Reaver can hit on a 2 using its death gaze attack vs. a dazed/weakened level 18 PC with weakest defense Fortitude (+22 to hit with CA, vs. weak Fort defense going by PH of around 24; 10 base + 9 levels + 1 ability + 4 magic). It's not just a higher level solo. More generally, to repeat what I said earlier:

We can pick some stronger tests of "the game's math doesn't work well" than "is the game too hard at high levels?" Suppose that FRW attacks were incredibly rare; then since AC scales well no amount of messing up FRW defenses would noticeably impact the game, yet the math could still break down.

Let's try the following hypothesis: "Attacks against FRW defenses becomes weaker over time compared to attacks against AC to compensate for the fact that FRW attackers scale better (and tend to be more likely to hit to start with)."

I'd definitely reject this hypothesis. There doesn't seem to be a weakening of FRW powers in general and the nastiest effects at higher levels all tend to target FRW (Bodak Reavers, Ghaele of Winter, Aboleth's Domination effects, etc.). Yet these monsters don't suffer much in their to-hit bonuses on these powers relative to monsters with much weaker attacks (compare the Death Hag to a Bodak Reaver, for example).

Lastly, the fact that we have the Epic X feats giving a +4 untyped bonus to these defenses is serious evidence in favor of the designers considering FRW scaling a problem.

Some monsters are too easy (e.g., Death Hags as level 18 soldiers go). However, the solution isn't to have monsters that attack AC and/or don't inflict status conditions be too weak, while monsters that attack FRW and/or inflict status conditions be comparatively much stronger at the same levels. That leads to large disparities between monsters of the same level and makes encounter design more difficult.

For example, the GM who sees his level 18 party crush 5 death hags with barely a scratch might respond by throwing 7 Bodak Reavers at them instead (still a level 18 soldier, right?). If FRWs scale appropriately, then a GM who finds that his AC attackers aren't strong enough to challenge the party will be much less likely to accidentally wipe them out with FRW attackers.

Edit- As can be see by WotC's errata to the MM, they've realized that some monster's damage is too low and increased it accordingly (Ogres, Death Giants, Hill Giants, and so on). So if this errata succeeds in making AC attacking primarily damage monsters more appropriately threatening, then there won't be any need to "balance out" average difficulty of encounters by including FRW attackers who are much more threatening by comparison.

 

[Bayuer]

@James McMurray
I don't forbid you to post, just to make it on topic. Anyway I don't replie on most of you text, couse it will make discussion stay not on topic. Btw Orcus was an example of another person, and I just pointed him, that his recharge power is deadly. The same wiht epic destinies features that gives you something when you drop to 0hp. We never discused it, you make it as an argument, but it is just not important. We talking still about feats from PHB2 and PCs defenses.

[The problem is not when you go to 0 HP, but with hitting monsters and monsters hitting DEFs. ]
Why is this a problem? Apart from "bad math = bad".

You say that you're fine with autohit from monsters, ok. That's your choice. But saying over and over, that it's what designers was thinkig about from beginnig is wrong:
1) The feats from PHB2 egzist. They are now in play. They are much stronger than anything before them (I'm talking about NADs feats) and they placed just fine to the math gap I'm still talking about.
2) When you look at the math with works ok with AC and scales with level, and compare it to NADs, you can see that ther's something wrong. Even worse, the NADs attack are better than AC attacks, becouse they offten do some damage, and place effects on PCs. Well, I gave you examples above, but treat MM as references here.

The math is a tiny fraction of "everything." Or does your group just take out their calculators when a fight starts and immediately determine who is going to win? No tactics. No weighing of which powers to use. No movement. None of the hundreds of other things that go into determining how a combat will end.

Sounds boring to me.

Ok. Player takes all def feats and expertise. You're saying now that he don't have options and is boring? One don't exculde other. With defense feats from PHB2 your player will not have less fun. He will have much more fun, couse he will know that Orcus will not hit him with his great power at 2 on die. He will have much more better combat experience when his attacks will hit offten (by offten I mean at almost 50% on roll). This is the same at heroic. Becouse you have better options characters wont die so offten as on heroic. Experience from game should be equal about chances to hit/being hit if the characters fight the same level monster.

Making monsters hit less often would have much less of an effect on grind, except in the case where the monsters are stunning, dominating, or weakening since none of the other common status effects will stop you from dealing damage. The hit point damage the monsters do isn't a big portion of the grind, as it either has 0 effect on the character's combat worthiness, or is healed via a minor action and/or a side effect of another attack.

Almost EVERY monster on epic have some effects with they attack powers. This was calculated to make monsters more challanging (that and better HPs) and the same philosopy is behind PCs powers. And, man. We don't talk about damage but hitting NADs and effects! You make more and more arguments about monster threat. What fights are we talking about. n, n+1, n+2? Thats easy fights, well designed can be dangerous but not at epic. Even n+3, n+4 fights can be easy to well equpied players, but then again: The feats are here, they are solution to math fix. Dot.

My and my players made a n+6 fight with Eladrins that give daze (end of encounter) and my barbarian was weakend (eoe). This fight was on 16 level if I remember it right. We have only 3 PCs (one was leader) and we win. Nobody died. But the fight takes about 3,5h! Becouse we are good tactic players we manage to win, but when you have such a boring fight, when monster hit you with nasty effects with no efforts and you have problems hitting enemies. That's boring!

Upping defenses isn't the way to fix epic levels. The way to fix epic levels IMO is threefold:
1) Make PCs hit more often. The damage they can deal is fine, it's the whiffs that make a fight go from fast and furious to "when will this end".
2) Make monsters hit harder. This way the PCs have something to fear besides just themselves or boredom.
3) Fix problematic conditions.

Ok so we agree. Epic levels are broken. Finaly! PCs can hit more often - Expertise! Problematic conditions? Yeah. Let's redesigne all monsters and ignore that they can hit you on 2 on die. That's much better solution. And let's just say. It's ok to them to autohit if his at-will attack will dominate player just for one round. That will not change anything and I'm now suer you know that. Sorry, but the solution is already here. The defense hits.

You maybe lost in all this off-topic. The problem is not that the math is bad, couse it was fixed by PHB2 defenses and expertise feats. They way that this repair to 4E math was done, is the major problem. Anyway, I don't have more arguments to you. If you still want to have last word, go ahead, but you just will have to ignore to many things, thus logic to me.

 

[Stalker0]

I think most of the defense feats are fine.

Lightning Reflexes etc and Paragon defenses seem fine to me. Its a good bonus, but not so good I consider it automatic. The epic robust defense is pretty strong, but imo there are a lot of epic feats I want to take.

The +4 feats I think are broken. They stack with everything else and provide such a large bonus that I feel they are a bit automatic, at least for your weakest defense.

I much prefer the other feats that are +2 feat bonus to a defense and then a secondary effect (like unyielding fort). A much more solid and interesting feat.