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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elric" data-source="post: 4749580" data-attributes="member: 1139">Suppose we started from the premise that FRW attacks were fine as is, with their better scaling being an internal part of the system's math, and looked at my question "In particular, do you think that attacks against FRW become weaker over time relative to attacks against AC in a way that compensates for the better scaling of FRW attacks?  I maintain the answer to this is no.”  You haven't said whether you think the answer is no or yes here.  I think the answer is "no", and if you thought otherwise you'd have probably said so by now, so we'll go with that.  If I look at AC attacks and think "These AC attacks don't get anything versus FRW attacks to compensate for the fact that FRW attacks are way more likely to hit.  However, I think that FRW attacks are just right.  Clearly, AC scales much too quickly and this was a mistake!  It should lose 4-5 points over 29 levels instead of 2 points so that attacks against AC don't fall behind compared to FRW.  Scrap those Masterwork Armor fixes!"Now, I don't think that.  I think that WotC simultaneously messed up by making many epic monsters deal too little damage, and also messed up by making FRW scale so poorly.  From what I can see the DMG gives no guidelines on scaling AC attacks differently from FRW attacks- there's not a single mention about this in the "creating monsters" section.  There's nothing like "at higher levels, make AC attacks use a higher damage table than they would at lower levels given the attack and the monster's role."  WotC has also errata'd a number of MM monsters to increase their damage totals.  They messed up Masterwork Heavy Armor's progression (but not its overall scaling) in the PH and added more MW armors in AV and PH-II, solving the problem (this is a very strong indication that "AC is too high" wasn't on their minds).  They messed up the Death Giant on the first try, and they messed up FRW scaling on the first try and they messed up the fix on their second try, PH-II. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Do you think that the better scaling of FRW attacks was an intentional part of the game's internal balance between FRW and AC attacks?  The preponderance of the evidence suggests that WotC is trying to fix previous mistakes (if doing so in a terrible manner with the PH-II feats).Nitpick: the level 24 fighter's HP is badly off.  It's unreasonable to assume a +6 FRW item at level 24; level bonus is +12, though, so these cancel out.  As a Human with a Shield, he's much better off than most characters for their weakest FRW, so he's hit 80% of the time.  His HP are 153 + Con= 170.  The average DPR as a percent of HP goes down to 9% with these corrections.  Of course, the Great Flameskull also dazes the fighter for a round 80% of the time.  No more opportunity attacks or immediate interrupt attacks, you grant CA, and you're only going to get a standard action a round (you may have to do a lot of charging, and you're not going to get much out of stances without being able to keep enemies near you).  Your leader?  He can't do a thing to remove the daze.</blockquote>

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