Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Assumptions
1) Baseline success rate is 50% (11+ on d20). At any given character level, we assume that the PC has a 50% chance to succeed against the typical opponent, and vice versa.
2) +/- 5 is the new +/- 4. In a 50% baseline system, a shift to 16+ means the success rate is halved; a shift to 6+ means the success rate gains 50% (150%).
3) “Quality” is equal to attack power (ap, measured in points of damage) multiplied by defensive power (hp, hit points). This is a very basic abstraction.
4) Party size is five PCs.
The Wizard
We begin this design process with the “baseline” wizard.
1) We’re stretching 20 levels across 30 levels, so caster level advances at a 2/3 rate. Column A is character level; column B is caster level using the formula INT(A*2/3)+1.
2) Our baseline wizard is capable of firing off an arcane blast, at will, that deals 1d6 damage per caster level to a single target. This attack assumes the 50% success rate (either due to a caster attack roll, saving throw, etc.)
Column C tracks the average damage done at each character level, or attack power (ap).
3) Our baseline wizard begins the game with 3 maximum HD of 1d6 each—I’ve rounded it up to 20 hit points—and gains 4 hit points per level. Column D tracks hit points across 30 levels.
4) Column E tracks the wizard’s Quality (ap x hp).
5) Column F tracks “Party Quality.” This number is derived by the number of party members squared, multiplied by the average Quality. (Lanchester’s Law).
6) The baseline wizard defines the curve for everything else.
WIZARD
The Fighter
1) For the fighter, we start with his hit points. We give the fighter 3 maximum HD of 1d10 at 1st level, and 8 hit points per level afterwards. Column G tracks the Fighter’s hit points.
2) The Fighter should have the same power as the wizard across all levels. Column H shows Quality / Hit Points to derive “ap req.” This is the minimum amount of offensive power the Fighter would require to remain on the same power curve as the Wizard.
For example, at 1st level, the wizard has 20 hp and does 4 damage, for a Q of 80. If the fighter has 30 hp, he needs to do 2.67 damage. As you can see, this column starts out too low. We know the fighter will "overachieve" 2.67 damage per attack.
3) Column I shows “ap actual.” For this column, we assume the fighter wields a martial weapon; he has a +3 damage bonus from STR (or otherwise); and he receives a damage bonus of ½ his BAB in lieu of iterative attacks.
4) Column J is included for comparison purposes only. On average, using the old system of iterative attacks, a fighter’s base damage was multiplied by 1.75 upon gaining the second iterative attack; by 2.25 for the third iterative attack, and by 2.5 for the fourth iterative attack. Using 8 as our baseline damage, you can compare iterative attacks vs. damage bonus based on ½ BAB, and you can see they actually compare favorably.
5) Column K shows the different between ap req. and ap actual. At 1st level, a Fighter is actually doing more damage than we require to keep apace of the Wizard’s quality. However, starting at 8th level and up, he starts to fall behind. Column K is the number of damage points differential.
6) Column L looks at the damage differential and starts to award the fighter “1d6 bonus dice” in order to play “catch up” with the wizard. Where do these bonus dice come from? Flaming. Holy. Anarchic/Axiomatic. Bane weapons. Perhaps even special maneuvers. We really don’t care where they come from—the bottom line is that the fighter has to have them if he’s going to remain competitive in damage-dealing vs. the wizard.
7) Column M tracks the fighter’s new damage totals, with average damage from those bonus dice added in.
8) Column N now calculates the fighter’s Quality based on these numbers. (Column G x Column M).
Column O shows the fighter's Quality without those "catch up" bonus dice.
FIGHTER
9) The blue line shows the wizard’s Quality from 1st to 30th level; the yellow line shows the fighter’s Quality (without any bonus dice); and the pink line shows the fighter’s Quality (with bonus dice).
The Brute
1) A “brute” is a creature designed to tackle the party in equal numbers. If there are 5 party members, use 5 brutes. (Again, we know this is not WoTCs definition of the term, we’re just borrowing it.)
2) We want the party to “win” most encounters. We’re targeting ½ the party’s total quality (which, in the case of the Brute, is also ½ the quality of any given PC on a 1:1 basis). Column P shows our target quality.
3) Now we’re looking to derive the (ap) and (hp) of our brute at each level.
To determine our damage at each level, we refer back to the Wizard and Fighter, and take the lesser (ap) of either entry. It’s completely arbitrary, but it gives us some nice looking numbers. A 1st level creature with 10 hp, doing 4 points of damage, tracks remarkably close to existing CR1 creatures; and so on through 30 levels. (See rycanada's DMs Helper spreadsheet to get a look at the attack and hit point spread of all 3.5 monsters.)
BRUTE
The Mooks
1) Mooks are designed to tackle the party in a 2:1 ratio. Their total Group Quality must be equal to the Brutes (because the encounter difficulty is the same). Per Lanchester’s Laws, this means that individual Mooks have ¼ the quality of individual Brutes.
2) Determining our (ap) and (hp) for this series was a little more complicated. First, we looked for matching Quality entries on the Brute and Mook table. The most notable (Brute:Mook) matches are (40:39), (176:175), (504:506), (840:840), and (1260:1258). At each of these locations on the Mook table, we used the (ap) value from the Brute table.
3) Column AA was set to calculate the hit points by dividing Quality/(ap). We move down the AA column and fill in the values in between the benchmarks we found above, massaging the (ap) values as necessary to make sure that the (hp) column was constantly increasing as well.
MOOK
Modifying Creatures Off the Baseline
At any given level, increasing a creature's AC by +5 over the expected value effectively doubles that creatures hit points; and increasing a creature's hit bonus by +5 over the expected value increases its attack power by 50%.
Of course, the same holds true for PCs. Our baseline comparisons of quality work because, relatively speaking, PCs and Monsters hit each other at an equal rate.
I would take it as a design imperative that neither PCs nor Monsters should ever deviate more than +/-5 off the baseline. (Meaning, among other things, drastically curtailing the amount and types of bonuses.)
Experience Point Values
My thoughts on fixed XP values are still in flux-- looking for a workable (not perfect, but workable) answer to XP, Encounter Design, and Lanchester's Laws. (Help wanted.)
1) Baseline success rate is 50% (11+ on d20). At any given character level, we assume that the PC has a 50% chance to succeed against the typical opponent, and vice versa.
2) +/- 5 is the new +/- 4. In a 50% baseline system, a shift to 16+ means the success rate is halved; a shift to 6+ means the success rate gains 50% (150%).
3) “Quality” is equal to attack power (ap, measured in points of damage) multiplied by defensive power (hp, hit points). This is a very basic abstraction.
4) Party size is five PCs.
The Wizard
We begin this design process with the “baseline” wizard.
1) We’re stretching 20 levels across 30 levels, so caster level advances at a 2/3 rate. Column A is character level; column B is caster level using the formula INT(A*2/3)+1.
2) Our baseline wizard is capable of firing off an arcane blast, at will, that deals 1d6 damage per caster level to a single target. This attack assumes the 50% success rate (either due to a caster attack roll, saving throw, etc.)
Column C tracks the average damage done at each character level, or attack power (ap).
3) Our baseline wizard begins the game with 3 maximum HD of 1d6 each—I’ve rounded it up to 20 hit points—and gains 4 hit points per level. Column D tracks hit points across 30 levels.
4) Column E tracks the wizard’s Quality (ap x hp).
5) Column F tracks “Party Quality.” This number is derived by the number of party members squared, multiplied by the average Quality. (Lanchester’s Law).
6) The baseline wizard defines the curve for everything else.
WIZARD
Code:
A B C D E F
Level CL 2/3 (ap) (hp) QUALITY Party Quality
1 1 4 20 80 2000
2 2 7 24 168 4200
3 3 11 28 308 7700
4 3 11 32 352 8800
5 4 14 36 504 12600
6 5 18 40 720 18000
7 5 18 44 792 19800
8 6 21 48 1008 25200
9 7 25 52 1300 32500
10 7 25 56 1400 35000
11 8 28 60 1680 42000
12 9 32 64 2048 51200
13 9 32 68 2176 54400
14 10 35 72 2520 63000
15 11 39 76 2964 74100
16 11 39 80 3120 78000
17 12 42 84 3528 88200
18 13 46 88 4048 101200
19 13 46 92 4232 105800
20 14 49 96 4704 117600
21 15 53 100 5300 132500
22 15 53 104 5512 137800
23 16 56 108 6048 151200
24 17 60 112 6720 168000
25 17 60 116 6960 174000
26 18 63 120 7560 189000
27 19 67 124 8308 207700
28 19 67 128 8576 214400
29 20 70 132 9240 231000
30 21 74 136 10064 251600The Fighter
1) For the fighter, we start with his hit points. We give the fighter 3 maximum HD of 1d10 at 1st level, and 8 hit points per level afterwards. Column G tracks the Fighter’s hit points.
2) The Fighter should have the same power as the wizard across all levels. Column H shows Quality / Hit Points to derive “ap req.” This is the minimum amount of offensive power the Fighter would require to remain on the same power curve as the Wizard.
For example, at 1st level, the wizard has 20 hp and does 4 damage, for a Q of 80. If the fighter has 30 hp, he needs to do 2.67 damage. As you can see, this column starts out too low. We know the fighter will "overachieve" 2.67 damage per attack.
3) Column I shows “ap actual.” For this column, we assume the fighter wields a martial weapon; he has a +3 damage bonus from STR (or otherwise); and he receives a damage bonus of ½ his BAB in lieu of iterative attacks.
4) Column J is included for comparison purposes only. On average, using the old system of iterative attacks, a fighter’s base damage was multiplied by 1.75 upon gaining the second iterative attack; by 2.25 for the third iterative attack, and by 2.5 for the fourth iterative attack. Using 8 as our baseline damage, you can compare iterative attacks vs. damage bonus based on ½ BAB, and you can see they actually compare favorably.
5) Column K shows the different between ap req. and ap actual. At 1st level, a Fighter is actually doing more damage than we require to keep apace of the Wizard’s quality. However, starting at 8th level and up, he starts to fall behind. Column K is the number of damage points differential.
6) Column L looks at the damage differential and starts to award the fighter “1d6 bonus dice” in order to play “catch up” with the wizard. Where do these bonus dice come from? Flaming. Holy. Anarchic/Axiomatic. Bane weapons. Perhaps even special maneuvers. We really don’t care where they come from—the bottom line is that the fighter has to have them if he’s going to remain competitive in damage-dealing vs. the wizard.
7) Column M tracks the fighter’s new damage totals, with average damage from those bonus dice added in.
8) Column N now calculates the fighter’s Quality based on these numbers. (Column G x Column M).
Column O shows the fighter's Quality without those "catch up" bonus dice.
FIGHTER
Code:
G H I J K L M N O
Level hp ap ap iter bonus w/ Q w/ Quality
req actual d6 req bonus bonus (actual)
1 30 2.67 8 8 -5 -2 8 240 240
2 38 4.42 9 8 -5 -2 9 342 342
3 46 6.70 9 8 -2 -1 9 414 414
4 54 6.52 9 8 -2 -1 9 486 486
5 62 8.13 10 8 -2 -1 10 620 620
6 70 10.29 10 8 0 0 10 700 700
7 78 10.15 10 8 0 0 10 780 780
8 86 11.72 11 14 1 0 11 946 946
9 94 13.83 11 14 3 0 11 1034 1034
10 102 13.73 11 14 3 0 11 1122 1122
11 110 15.27 12 14 3 0 12 1320 1320
12 118 17.36 12 14 5 1 16 1829 1416
13 126 17.27 12 14 5 1 16 1953 1512
14 134 18.81 13 14 6 1 17 2211 1742
15 142 20.87 13 18 8 2 20 2840 1846
16 150 20.80 13 18 8 2 20 3000 1950
17 158 22.33 14 18 8 2 21 3318 2212
18 166 24.39 14 18 10 2 21 3486 2324
19 174 24.32 14 18 10 2 21 3654 2436
20 182 25.85 15 18 11 3 26 4641 2730
21 190 27.89 15 18 13 3 26 4845 2850
22 198 27.84 15 18 13 3 26 5049 2970
23 206 29.36 16 20 13 3 27 5459 3296
24 214 31.40 16 20 15 4 30 6420 3424
25 222 31.35 16 20 15 4 30 6660 3552
26 230 32.87 17 20 16 4 31 7130 3910
27 238 34.91 17 20 18 5 35 8211 4046
28 246 34.86 17 20 18 5 35 8487 4182
29 254 36.38 18 20 18 5 36 9017 4572
30 262 38.41 18 20 20 5 36 9301 47169) The blue line shows the wizard’s Quality from 1st to 30th level; the yellow line shows the fighter’s Quality (without any bonus dice); and the pink line shows the fighter’s Quality (with bonus dice).
The Brute
1) A “brute” is a creature designed to tackle the party in equal numbers. If there are 5 party members, use 5 brutes. (Again, we know this is not WoTCs definition of the term, we’re just borrowing it.)
2) We want the party to “win” most encounters. We’re targeting ½ the party’s total quality (which, in the case of the Brute, is also ½ the quality of any given PC on a 1:1 basis). Column P shows our target quality.
3) Now we’re looking to derive the (ap) and (hp) of our brute at each level.
To determine our damage at each level, we refer back to the Wizard and Fighter, and take the lesser (ap) of either entry. It’s completely arbitrary, but it gives us some nice looking numbers. A 1st level creature with 10 hp, doing 4 points of damage, tracks remarkably close to existing CR1 creatures; and so on through 30 levels. (See rycanada's DMs Helper spreadsheet to get a look at the attack and hit point spread of all 3.5 monsters.)
BRUTE
Code:
P Q R S
Level Qual. ap hp Group Quality
1 40 4 10 1000
2 84 7 12 2100
3 154 9 17 3850
4 176 9 20 4400
5 252 10 25 6300
6 360 10 36 9000
7 396 10 40 9900
8 504 11 46 12600
9 650 11 59 16250
10 700 11 64 17500
11 840 13 65 21000
12 1024 14 73 25600
13 1088 15 73 27200
14 1260 16 79 31500
15 1482 17 87 37050
16 1560 18 87 39000
17 1764 19 93 44100
18 2024 21 96 50600
19 2116 21 101 52900
20 2352 23 102 58800
21 2650 25 106 66250
22 2756 25 110 68900
23 3024 27 114 75600
24 3360 29 116 84000
25 3480 30 116 87000
26 3780 31 122 94500
27 4154 31 134 103850
28 4288 32 134 107200
29 4620 34 136 115500
30 5032 36 142 125800The Mooks
1) Mooks are designed to tackle the party in a 2:1 ratio. Their total Group Quality must be equal to the Brutes (because the encounter difficulty is the same). Per Lanchester’s Laws, this means that individual Mooks have ¼ the quality of individual Brutes.
2) Determining our (ap) and (hp) for this series was a little more complicated. First, we looked for matching Quality entries on the Brute and Mook table. The most notable (Brute:Mook) matches are (40:39), (176:175), (504:506), (840:840), and (1260:1258). At each of these locations on the Mook table, we used the (ap) value from the Brute table.
3) Column AA was set to calculate the hit points by dividing Quality/(ap). We move down the AA column and fill in the values in between the benchmarks we found above, massaging the (ap) values as necessary to make sure that the (hp) column was constantly increasing as well.
MOOK
Code:
Y Z AA AB
Level Qual. ap hp Group Quality
1 10 3 3 1000
2 21 4 5 2100
3 39 4 10 3850
4 44 4 11 4400
5 63 6 11 6300
6 90 7 13 9000
7 99 7 14 9900
8 126 9 14 12600
9 163 9 18 16250
10 175 9 19 17500
11 210 10 21 21000
12 256 10 26 25600
13 272 10 27 27200
14 315 10 32 31500
15 371 11 34 37050
16 390 11 35 39000
17 441 11 40 44100
18 506 11 46 50600
19 529 11 48 52900
20 588 11 53 58800
21 663 12 55 66250
22 689 12 57 68900
23 756 12 63 75600
24 840 13 65 84000
25 870 13 67 87000
26 945 13 73 94500
27 1039 14 74 103850
28 1072 14 77 107200
29 1155 15 77 115500
30 1258 16 79 125800Modifying Creatures Off the Baseline
At any given level, increasing a creature's AC by +5 over the expected value effectively doubles that creatures hit points; and increasing a creature's hit bonus by +5 over the expected value increases its attack power by 50%.
Of course, the same holds true for PCs. Our baseline comparisons of quality work because, relatively speaking, PCs and Monsters hit each other at an equal rate.
I would take it as a design imperative that neither PCs nor Monsters should ever deviate more than +/-5 off the baseline. (Meaning, among other things, drastically curtailing the amount and types of bonuses.)
Experience Point Values
My thoughts on fixed XP values are still in flux-- looking for a workable (not perfect, but workable) answer to XP, Encounter Design, and Lanchester's Laws. (Help wanted.)
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