The swinginess of low levels.

[Mercutio01]

I want an end to "Well, you got hit once by a kobold; that's it for today's fun because a second hit will kill you!" that plagues low-level D&D adventuring.

I don't. In fact, I want exactly that. Combat should be dangerous and life-threatening, at all levels of the game. Surviving should be an accomplishment, not an expectation. At least, that's how I prefer to play the game.

 

[Croesus]

Something that plagues low-level D&D is the swinginess of combat due to the d20 attack roll. A handful of exceptionally poor rolls can easily turn an encounter from a cakewalk to a slaughterhouse (or vice-versa). I'm fine with some degree of swinginess--it helps build tension, after all--but I find that low-level D&D is too swingy for my tastes.

Another issue that I have been trying to solve is the issue of Constitution and hit points. Adding a character's Constitution modifier each level to his hit points creates hit point bloat at later levels. Even a measley +2 bonus translates to +80 HP later on, at least in the world of 3e, and when you're dealing with monsters that have a +6 Constitution bonus...well, it just creates an arms race between damage and hitpoints while cementing Constitution as one of the most important ability scores. The solution to this one is fairly straightforward, exactly as 5e has done: add your Constitution score to your hit points at first level and leave it at that.

But this simple solution comes with a price, and that is that combat is no longer so dangerous at low levels. Even on a critical hit, a PC need not fear so greatly. An ogre--an ogre!--does a piddling 10 damage on a critical hit. A minotaur does 16. A kobold chieftain does 7.

Hmm, if I understand, you want some protection from swinginess, but you think adding the entire Con score at 1st level goes too far. At the same time, you don't want to mess with Con bonus to hit dice (I agree, this was very problematic in 3.x).

Instead of changing damage output, how about simply giving 1/2 Con score at level 1 and the other half at level 2 (or 3, or whenever)? If half is too much, consider giving 1/3 Con score each of the first three levels, or 1/4 each of the first 4 levels. By the time the characters have their full Con score added to their hit points, they're taking on more powerful creatures who can threaten them.

All that said, I don't believe this is the problem you say it is. Based on what we've seen so far, the game is not designed so that characters will always have full hit points in every battle. Healing is rather limited (at least in the rules we've seen), so those extra hit points will be whittled away in time. And that's exactly when player choices get interesting: do we press on just a bit further, or fall back and rest? If we press on, one bad encounter could wipe us out. If we fall back, our opposition might be better prepared for us, or even worse, simply slip away completely. Those are the kinds of interesting choices I like to have as a player.

Original D&D made low level characters so fragile, they died in droves. I remember many times taking parties of 6-8 characters and henchmen into a dungeon and coming out with just two or three. It worked at the time, but the hobby has changed and most players I know today wouldn't care for a game with such attrition. Give the low level characters their Con score at 1st level, then see how often the players still put themselves in a position where one swing can take them out - I guarantee many players will do so, and that's okay.

 

[n00bdragon]

Or you could just give level PCs more HP. That makes them not die in one hit. Did everyone just forget that 4e characters start with 20-30HP or are you willingly ignoring it or what?

 

[Lanefan]

Or you could just give level PCs more HP. That makes them not die in one hit. Did everyone just forget that 4e characters start with 20-30HP or are you willingly ignoring it or what?

In my case, willingly ignoring it; as the immediate problem becomes if commoners have 3 h.p. and the average 1st-level shlub has 25 how do you explain (or fill) the gap? If 4e ever did fix this I missed it, and it was one of its glaring problems right from day 1.

Lanefan

 

[GhostBear]

Something that plagues low-level D&D is the swinginess of combat due to the d20 attack roll. A handful of exceptionally poor rolls can easily turn an encounter from a cakewalk to a slaughterhouse (or vice-versa). I'm fine with some degree of swinginess--it helps build tension, after all--but I find that low-level D&D is too swingy for my tastes.

You can also consider changing your dice.

As we all know, the d20 will give you a 1 just as often as a 20. At low levels, when your bonuses to anything tend to be smaller, the character matters far, far less than the roll of the die itself. You're at the mercy of the dice. It's a little frustrating.

You may want to consider using 2d10 or 3d6 instead. These both help produce more average results. My guys prefer the 2d10 because it still allows for natural 20s (and what is more D&D than a natural 20?), but I think 3d6 could work just as well (if not better).

Average roll on a d20 is 10.5; average roll on 2d10 is 11; average roll on 3d6 is 10.5. But, the 2d10 / 3d6 are far more likely to produce numbers in the middle, and very high or low rolls become more rare.

The result is that things are a little more predictable; if you run the numbers on a specific combat scenario you can be reasonably assured that things will end up the way you modeled them. It also helps the players as well. They can depend more on their skill / attribute bonuses more than praying that the dice won't screw them 5% of the time.

If you go this route, you should consider altering critical threat ranges for certain weapons as well. Not only are higher numbers more scarce, but in the case of 3d6, you can't roll a 19 or 20 (or a 1 or a 2 - we rule that rolling all 1s is an auto-miss).

Aside from fiddling with critical threat ranges on weapons, we haven't had to change anything else so far.

An idea I've toyed with is allowing the player to choose which dice to roll whenever he does something. If he's reasonably confident that his character can perform a task given an average result, roll the 2d10. If he really needs that 19 or 20, he can pray to lady luck and roll the d20 instead - which also carries a greater risk of a 1 or 2.

 

[Rhenny]

I kind of like the way combats swing in the playtest. My players have been sufficiently frightened of combat so now they always try to avoid larger numbers of foes, avoid combat when possible, try to ambush vulnerable foes, or find advantages in combat. I think the swinginess (and the lower hp) make players play smarter (and more like heroes in the novels I read). I like it.

 

[ComradeGnull]

"Combat swinginess" to me is one of the fundamental things that needs to be module-able for D&D NeXt to satisfy people.

People who invest a ton of time in developing level one characters or who want a run-and-gun style of play don't want to die every time they tear off a hangnail. People who want the 1e style of cautious exploratory play don't want mindlessly charging a pack of orcs to be a valid survival strategy. Some people (myself included) will want a middle ground, where combat has risks but every hit is not a potential kill.

The playtest seems to be aiming for that middle ground- HP totals are lower than 4e, but higher than 1/2e. We've been told that damage is going to scale up more at higher levels for everyone- casters and non-casters, PC's and NPC's.

Seems then that tweaking starting/per level HP would make more sense as being the 'dial' that can be used to tune combat danger, rather than trying to ad-hoc change elements of combat without knowing how it will affect future damage scaling.

You could have:
Super dangerous/swingy: Random lvl 1 HD + Con bonus
Slightly Swingy: Max HD @ lvl 1 + Con Bonus
More Survivable: Con Score + lvl 1 HD
Super Survivable: Con Score + max lvl1 HD

That determines how dangerous combat is at level one, which probably has the most immediate impact on the 'feel' of the game- the survival is success vs. expectation. Scaling- do you gain a maxed die, a random die, a bonus, a fixed number of HP, etc.- can determine whether you preserve that feel at higher level or move into a more or less deadly combat regime as you advance.

If you look at 1/2/3/4e, Pathfinder, E6, etc., there have been variant HP starting and development schemes for nearly all of them. Provides a significant change in how dangerous combat is, especially at lower level, without really changing much else about the game.

 

[B.T.]

Or you could make it so the player always hits for max damage and the monsters only hit if it advances the story. That way you never have to worry about hit point bloat or characters dying. Just be sure not to give the monsters more than 1 hp per die.

Cool strawman, bro.

You normally play 3e up to 40th level? That'd sure make your group unusual...

No, I just can't do math.

 

[Stalker0]

I think a simplier solution we would simply to give crits more oomph, like simply add a d6 on top of the max damage.

 

[kitsune9]

My own personal stake is that I like swingy combat, pretty much at all levels. I like the traditional feel that at low levels, the risk of death was higher than at higher levels, but is offsetting in that to gain levels, you don't need to fight as much.

My take on tweaking combat is basically only four approaches to dealing with risk:

1. Keeping hp and damage the same (neutral position)
2. Increasing hp and damage remains the same (less risk)
3. Increasing hp and lowering damage (even more less risk)
4. Decreasing hp and damage remains the same (greater risk)
5. Decreasing hp and increasing damage (deadly risk)

Things like AC affect damage (if I fiddle with increasing AC, I'm lowering the average damage, whereas if I decrease it, then I'm increasing average damage). I can introduce other cool mechanics like hero points, action points, negation rolls, etc. but they all pretty much affect damage output (for averages and probability).

So the question is what level of risk do one want to play? If one prefer their games more focused on story-telling and narrative where the players are destined saviors of story, then lowering risk is probably a good choice here so that bad dice rolls don't ruin a fight between a party and band of mooks. If one wants to play in a game where the world is a cruel place and nothing is guaranteed, then increase the risk. Bad dice rolls in a mook fight can be really disastrous. For me, I'm experimenting with Option 5 (At 1st level, I should be scared from the kobold hitting me even once!).