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<blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 3750653" data-attributes="member: 1645">According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_Square_Law" target="_blank">Lanchester's Square Law</a>, the power of force is proportional not to the number of units it has, but to the square of the number of units.&nbsp; Thus, two orcs should have four times the fighting power of a single orc.The EL system asserts that doubling the number of units in a force adds two to its EL, which is, at its core, a measure of the level of the units involved.&nbsp; If doubling the number of units quadruples a force's fighting power, and that's equivalent to increasing the units' level by two, then each level should double a unit's power.As I said earlier: What confuses this is that D&amp;D level includes multiple measures of offensive stength (to-hit and damage) and defensive strength (AC and hit points); it's not a single linear measure.&nbsp; For instance, in going from first to second level, an NPC fighter might multiply his to-hit chance by 1.1, his damage by 1.0, his avoid-a-hit chance by 1.0, and his hit points by 2.0, for a total quality factor of something like 2.2.&nbsp; As you can see, at lower levels, without better equipment, it's almost entirely about improved defense through extra hit points.&nbsp; As characters accumulate magic weapons, armor, etc., they can improve across all four of those dimension, and a 10-percent improvement in everything isn't a 10-percent improvement in fighting ability; a 10-percent improvement across four factors is a 46-percent improvement.&nbsp; Now compound that over multiple levels.It looks like Fighters and other &quot;brutes&quot; do increase at the meteoric pace the EL system assumes at lower levels, but they need magical bonuses to make up for the slower increase in hit points at higher levels.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mmadsen, post: 3750653, member: 1645"] According to [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_Square_Law"]Lanchester's Square Law[/url], the power of force is proportional not to the number of units it has, but to the [i]square[/i] of the number of units. Thus, two orcs should have four times the fighting power of a single orc. The EL system asserts that doubling the number of units in a force adds two to its EL, which is, at its core, a measure of the level of the units involved. If doubling the number of units quadruples a force's fighting power, and that's equivalent to increasing the units' level by two, then each level should double a unit's power. As I said earlier: [Indent]What confuses this is that D&D level includes multiple measures of offensive stength (to-hit and damage) and defensive strength (AC and hit points); it's not a single linear measure. For instance, in going from first to second level, an NPC fighter might multiply his to-hit chance by 1.1, his damage by 1.0, his avoid-a-hit chance by 1.0, and his hit points by 2.0, for a total quality factor of something like 2.2. As you can see, at lower levels, without better equipment, it's almost entirely about improved defense through extra hit points. As characters accumulate magic weapons, armor, etc., they can improve across all four of those dimension, and a 10-percent improvement in everything isn't a 10-percent improvement in fighting ability; a 10-percent improvement across four factors is a 46-percent improvement. Now compound that over multiple levels.[/Indent]It looks like Fighters and other "brutes" do increase at the meteoric pace the EL system assumes at lower levels, but they need magical bonuses to make up for the slower increase in hit points at higher levels. [/QUOTE]

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