The Pros and Cons of flat attack progression

[billd91]

Flat skills make more sense than needing to come up how the DC is 45 just because I'm compensating for a level 25 character. Getting at most a point or two in skills through all levels, and a couple stat boosts, is enough. You should be getting better at your "untrained skills" not making your primary skills pointlessly ridiculous. Getting tricks/utilities out of your skills would be better than just numbers anyways.

I think a good answer to that is - don't bump up the DC just because of the PC's level. Let advanced PCs who have invested in the skills be good at the skills.

But should you be getting better at untrained skills? It's an option, but if some of those untrained skills are unimportant, then why invest in them when something else is your bread and butter? Again, I'm not opposed to a flattening of the curve or even diminishing returns (higher skill levels are more expensive than lower ones). But getting rid of difference entirely would be unfortunate.

 

[jshaft37]

Regarding attacks and damage, I'd like to see Attacks scale at a slower linear incline (+1 every 3-5 levels maybe), and damage not scale at all or maybe very little (+1 every 10 levels).

After all, a martial character is going to get more accurate with their strikes, hitting more often, but a sword impaling an enemy should deal roughly the same amount of damage from a level 1 or level 20 character. Maybe the level 20 character knows how to twist the blade more likely dealing a mortal wound, as represented in the slow incline.

Edit: a caveat to this is the assumption that a kobold, goblin, etc would die from one hit of a level 1 fighter basic attack with a longswords average damage. (probably 1d8 + 2 (str bonus), or 6.5 HP)

 

[Gryph]

I think loss of differentiation between levels of ability is a pretty big con. And not just because of raw ability to hit a target at full bonus. I'm also talking about the ability to trade attack bonuses for other benefits like defense or damage.

One of the nice things about a fighter type's high BAB in 3e was that he could trade it for AC with Combat Expertise or for damage with Power Attack. As the character with the highest attack bonus, he could make use of this more than any PC with a lesser BAB progression. That was a nice benefit. Sure, you can still have abilities like that in a flat system, but with no differentiation between fighters and non-fighters, fighters lose a relative benefit. And you lose the ability for higher level characters to have that tool be more effective for them than their neophyte counterparts.

I'm not oppose to a flattening of the power curve. But I'm not in favor of getting rid of it completely.

With feats still part of DDNext, I'm not sure we need things like Combat Expertise to require a trade of BAB for Defense. If fighters have a stance or manuever type system (and it sounds like they do from the last rule of 3) then those old trading mechanics can be metered through stance mechanics. They can use any stance they have bought, but only one at a time. I like how I think that will work in combat better than the 3e style of BAB swapping.

Flattening the curve has an interesting effect on magic items. While I agree it removes dependancy from the numbers, it also heightens their importance to the player. If I don't get bonuses to my AC or my to hit rolls for my level, than Magic Items become one of the very few set of bonuses I do receive. Characters won't be crippled without them, which is good, but they may feel that way when +2 of their +6 to hit comes from their magic sword.

 

[StarFyre]

Dont see a purpose for keeping most creatures in the game longer.

My players get bored if they start seeing most of the same creatures again and again so i always try to mix it up. If it makes sense to have the same creature, fine, but it has to make sense.

Sanjay

 

[jshaft37]

Dont see a purpose for keeping most creatures in the game longer.

My players get bored if they start seeing most of the same creatures again and again so i always try to mix it up. If it makes sense to have the same creature, fine, but it has to make sense.

Sanjay

I like a more "heroic/gritty" campaign where humans and humanoids are the main threats. Much more interesting to me, personally. Let's me focus on story, motivations, intrigue rather than who's moving from plane to plane or using portals, etc. Fighting one or two epic enemies is awesome, but if that's all you fight it makes them just as mundane as the lowly kobold.

 

[Ratskinner]

Dont see a purpose for keeping most creatures in the game longer.

My players get bored if they start seeing most of the same creatures again and again so i always try to mix it up. If it makes sense to have the same creature, fine, but it has to make sense.

Sanjay

That varies a lot from Campaign to Campaign, IME. I played in world once where there were basically no monsters beyond humanoids and a few others. (Dungeons and Dragons...with no Dragons!)

 

[pauljathome]

Pros? Cons?

The flip side to Orcs being a danger to L20 PCs is that men at arms are a danger to Giants.

The feel of the world is going to change immensely. While now it is the case that (for all practical purposes) only high level characters are viable threats for high level monsters it will become the case that high level monsters will be able to be opposed by large, well organized forces of much lower level characters.

Whether this is a good or bad thing will largely be a matter of opinion.

My personal opinion is that a little of this will be good too much will be a disaster.

In 3.x games my favourite levels are about level 4ish to 10 ish. So if they flatten the power curve so that the game feels like L1 ish to L3 ish (which sounds like a very real risk) them I'll be unhappy.

I am very more concerned about skills being flat than I am about to hit numbers. I want characters to ACTUALLY get better as they advance (and yes, I'm willing to give up a little combat ability to achieve this). I want my 10th level acrobat to be able to sneer at almost all obstacles and only occassionally have to worry about the 1 inch wide beam covered in ice. I neither want flat skills nor do I want the 4th edition approach where (essentially) the numbers get higher but the actual chance of success remains static.

The other factor is magic. At some level the game HAS to make assumptions about magic weapons and armour OR flatten the weapon/armour magics immensely. Maybe all weapons/armour are only +1 or +2 with more valuable items being the extra enchantments (flaming, fortified, whatever)

 

[Harlekin]

So it is looking like there is no attack bonus progression like there was in past editions. Assuming this from the "leak" plus comments from the last rule of three. No defense progression either. No BAB like 3rd, no half level progression like 4th. At first I wasn't sure what to think about this . There are pros and cons for sure, but the more I think about it the more I like it.

The Pros
1. It keeps monsters in the game longer , the orc is still a threat at later levels ( granted you'll need more of them)
2. It removes magic item dependency.
3. Rather than a steep power curve you add more stuff they can do. The superhero effect looks different (more believable?)

The Cons
1. Not much different between a 1st and 10th level character . Boring?


Pros? Cons?

I see very little benefit in flattening the math curve. 4ed already flattened the curve from ~+1.5/lvl in 3ed to +1/lvl. That allows identical monsters to be viable for ~7 levels. At my pace, that's 1-2 years of a campaign. Not sure that I need to see the same monster more often than that.

A flatter math curve also does nothing to magic item dependency, if at all it makes +x magic items even more useful, as they are the only way to get ahead.

Adding more options rather than bonuses also runs against the idea of a simpler game. Both because you can introduce decision paralysis and because you need a more complicated game to actually differentiate all the abilities.

And realistic growth in a game of Hitpoints, Armor Class and Levels seems to be a wasted design goal.

However, you loose one of the defining features of D&D, the feature that you could use D&D for a fantasy game of any power level you may be interested in an even transition between the power levels. One of the defining characteristics of D&D for me was always that you were playing three types of games with the same characters. For the first levels you were WHFRP-like scrappers, for the next levels you were cinematic heroes as in Savage Worlds and for the upper levels you played essentially Exalted.
With a sufficiently flat curve, you will be stuck playing one of the three levels.

 

[Grazzt]

Flat attack and AC also might hurt characterization and indirectly encourage powergaming. If the progression is flatter then a few tweaks can shift the balance. A Str 18 cleric could have a better attack than a STR 14 fighter thoroughout the lives of both characters. Then the designers would have to put a balancing factor in somewhere. And it would have to be a good one since 5E would use niche protecting roles.

Already balanced. If the cleric favors Strength over other abilities (say Wisdom for example), then so be it. Fighter might be favoring Dex over Str, or may favor something else entirely. Nothing needs to be added to balance it..

I thought of another Con that comes in if flat progression also applies to skills as well. If skills are flat too, then higher level characters never get better and never increase their chances at harder DCs

If feats are still in, perhaps Skill Focus on whatever skill(s) you want to excel at. No need to scale skills/DCs to high numbers like before.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

So it is looking like there is no attack bonus progression like there was in past editions. Assuming this from the "leak" plus comments from the last rule of three. No defense progression either. No BAB like 3rd, no half level progression like 4th.

I'll believe it when I see it. Regardless of the merits of a flat system, I don't think the design team has the stones to take such a fundamental departure from the D&D tradition. Plus, as some posters have already hinted at, flat math puts a lot of extra pressure on them to create level-up goodies that require creativity and play testing. And nobody working a deadline wants that.