Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 5206030" data-attributes="member: 3586">RC, you're probably right: I'm overreaching.Mind you, what we certainly got was a lot of talk about extending the &quot;sweet spot&quot; of 3e to all levels of 4e.&quot;One of our goals in designing 4th Edition was to extend the &quot;sweet spot&quot; across all 30 levels of play. There's a general sense among 3rd Edition players that the game hits a sweet spot around level 5 and stays good up to level 12 or so. Below level 5, characters are too fragile, and above level 12 they're too complicated. But I contend that another reason for that sweet spot is that, utterly by coincidence, that's the range of levels where a mostly arbitrary system of damage, hit points, and attack and saving throw numbers align to make the game work reasonably well. One of the ways we extended the sweet spot across all 30 levels was by replacing that arbitrary math with a system that's consistent and coherent throughout the whole game.&quot;And some of that math is reflected on this table. We have a pretty good idea what character ability scores look like across 30 levels. Every character uses the same progression of attack and defense bonuses. We have targets for monster attack and defense numbers, based on what we have found is a good hit rate for character and monster attacks. And we've done the same math for character and monster hit points. All that math lets us build a table showing target DCs and damage numbers for improvised challenges.&quot; - <a href="http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drdd/20080630&quot;" target="_blank">James Wyatt</a>The jump from that to a more &quot;standard&quot; length - especially with having experienced 4e in play - is not a particularly hard one to make. Exactly if it was a goal or side-effect I won't comment further on, though I have my suspicions.Cheers!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MerricB, post: 5206030, member: 3586"] RC, you're probably right: I'm overreaching. Mind you, what we certainly got was a lot of talk about extending the "sweet spot" of 3e to all levels of 4e. "One of our goals in designing 4th Edition was to extend the "sweet spot" across all 30 levels of play. There's a general sense among 3rd Edition players that the game hits a sweet spot around level 5 and stays good up to level 12 or so. Below level 5, characters are too fragile, and above level 12 they're too complicated. But I contend that another reason for that sweet spot is that, utterly by coincidence, that's the range of levels where a mostly arbitrary system of damage, hit points, and attack and saving throw numbers align to make the game work reasonably well. One of the ways we extended the sweet spot across all 30 levels was by replacing that arbitrary math with a system that's consistent and coherent throughout the whole game. "And some of that math is reflected on this table. We have a pretty good idea what character ability scores look like across 30 levels. Every character uses the same progression of attack and defense bonuses. We have targets for monster attack and defense numbers, based on what we have found is a good hit rate for character and monster attacks. And we've done the same math for character and monster hit points. All that math lets us build a table showing target DCs and damage numbers for improvised challenges." - [url='http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drdd/20080630"']James Wyatt[/url] The jump from that to a more "standard" length - especially with having experienced 4e in play - is not a particularly hard one to make. Exactly if it was a goal or side-effect I won't comment further on, though I have my suspicions. Cheers! [/QUOTE]

Verification