What's appropriate damage for Brute area-effect attacks?

[S'mon]

This came up last night when I trashed the unfortunate 3-PC party with some Brute-7 hell hounds using their blast-3 fiery breath. I had upgraded their breath damage at some point (probably 4-5 months ago) in line with MM3 damage expression, but given their ability to overlap breath damage on multiple PCs I wondered if it was too much.

Standard damage is monster Level+8.

Area-effect should do less, -25%.

Limited use should do more - how much more? Sly Flourish suggests only +25%, looking at the older damage tables it looks more like +50% or more. Should that vary depending on whether it's an encounter power or rechargeable?

Brutes do more, +25% - but should that apply to area-effect attacks?

For a 7th level Brute, standard damage is 15x1.25= 18; how much would you give them for a rechargeable blast-3 fire breath attack?

 

[keterys]

For recharge 6 or encounter, +50% can be appropriate - feel free to use only +25% if the blast shouldn't be as important a tactic for it. For more likely recharges I'd suggest only +25%.

And yes, the brute's +25% should be added to all of its attacks, including its multitarget bursts, blasts, and double melee attacks.

So, for hellhound's I'd have made it deal maybe 18 or 18.5 (Ex: 3d6 + 8) damage with the blast (canceling out the +25% from brute and -25% for area, so just adding 25% for recharge 4-6), and I might have left it at only 15 damage depending what I did with the aura. Now that auras stack, I'd have probably mucked with its aura. And taken the roll out of it, cause that's silly

 

[the Jester]

Here's my quick-and-dirty fix for monster damage.

Typically I add +1/2 level for a one- or two-target attack.

For an attack that is multi-target, I instead add +1/4 level.

For a brute I take that 1/2 level or 1/4 level and increase by 25% again. All very approximately and tending towards a "round up" approach.

So for hell hounds, at level 7, I would figure "+2 damage, oh wait they're brutes, let's make it +3."

 

[Shroomy]

My math comes out to an average of 21 points of damage for a limited, multi-target brute attack.

 

[keterys]

Eh, it's recharge 4-6 - there's a fair chance hell hounds will make 75% or more of their attacks as fire breaths, so I don't think it deserves the +50%

 

[the Jester]

Looking at the stat block, my "quick and dirty" approximation would be 2d6+6- average 13 points, or a little low.

The expected damage for a lvl 7 monster with a multi-target attack is 2d6+4 (average 11). Going low on the bonus for limited damage expression (approx +25%) gives us 2d6+7. So my quick and dirty is essentially off by about one point.

I agree that +50% is too much for an attack that gets used every other round on average.

EDIT: D'oh, I left out the increase for being a brute in my calculations there... so it should actually be more like 2d6+10 by MM3 standards. My only condolence is that I also forgot to do the same thing for the hell hound quick-and-dirty calculation, so it should actually be more like 2d6+9- still within a point.

 

[keterys]

Random trivia... Recharge 4-6 is a bit meaner than 50%, cause it starts "pre-charged".

If we assume the hound lives for...
2 Rounds: 75%
3 Rounds: 66.7%
4 Rounds: 62.5%
5 Rounds: 60%

In my experience, hell hounds typically are either focus fired or controlled (ex: prone or immobilized away from someone) so the 75% is an honest estimation of my play experience of the attacks they make.

 

[S'mon]

My math comes out to an average of 21 points of damage for a limited, multi-target brute attack.

Mine did 4d8+4, average 22. Bite 2d8+4.

I think what I'm going to do is keep that for these hell hounds (since it came up in play when they burninated the PCs in the first round) but a recharge rate of 4-6 would clearly be excessive, I'll reduce that to recharge on a 6.

I guess I should also take away the Fire Shield aura?

For other hell hounds, I think if I keep the Fire Shield & the breath recharge 4-6 then the breath damage needs to be heavily reduced.

 

[S'mon]

For recharge 6 or encounter, +50% can be appropriate - feel free to use only +25% if the blast shouldn't be as important a tactic for it. For more likely recharges I'd suggest only +25%.

And yes, the brute's +25% should be added to all of its attacks, including its multitarget bursts, blasts, and double melee attacks.

So, for hellhound's I'd have made it deal maybe 18 or 18.5 (Ex: 3d6 + 8) damage with the blast (canceling out the +25% from brute and -25% for area, so just adding 25% for recharge 4-6), and I might have left it at only 15 damage depending what I did with the aura. Now that auras stack, I'd have probably mucked with its aura. And taken the roll out of it, cause that's silly

How about:

The aura-1 does 5 fire damage to those entering or beginning turn in it.
Bite is +12 vs AC for 2d8+4 fire damage
Breath is blast 3, +10 vs Ref for 3d6+4 fire damage, recharge 4-6.

 

[keterys]

If I were doing a Monster Vault-ish hellhound I'd probably do:
* Make the aura deal 5 fire for ending in it.
* Bite: +12A/2d8+3 plus 2d6 fire. (18.75 expected, dealing 19 some of which is easily resistable)
* Breath: +10R/3d6+8 fire. (18.75 expected, so 18.5 is close enough)
* I'd also probably up its defenses some, as Fort/Ref/Will are all currently low. Maybe something like Fort 18, Ref 19, Will 19