Sins of 4e

[Windjammer]

For the life of me, I have no idea why people don't get a damage bonus equal to their base level bonus. At epic levels, when grind is the worst it'd shave a round or two off of combat.

Yeah, that's a puzzling one. In February of 2008 I think it was, they released the Paladin preview where they talked about how [W] worked. And in that description, they straight up said firstly that you added your level bonus to damage, but secondly implied heavily that you multiplied that bonus by the umber of [W]s on your attack. That was just a few months from the finalization of primary writing for the book, so apparently if they ever playtested the Fighter's ultimate 7[W] attack at all - it was doing an extra 98 damage. Which would make it a lot more interesting and ultimate feeling.

This is an incredibly important claim and so I'd like us to try our best to verify it. I've chased down the article you mention, it appears here.

Pertinent bits (the authors compares Paladin smite attacks from level 1 to 30):

You'll no doubt see the pattern between these two smites. They mix a fair portion of damage (scaled up by level, but not necessarily the amount of dice) while giving an ally a much needed boost of hit points at the most opportune moments. Selfish paladins (typically those who serve more self-centered gods or just the occasional egoist who venerates Pelor) can even heal themselves with the strike, as you're considered your own ally unless the effect of a power states otherwise.

In binding smite you can see an example of how the effect of a smite goes up with level, while the numbers in their base form seem similar when not taking into account the accuracy and damage boosts that merely gaining levels (and having better weapons) affords. It just gets … well, better. Heck, it's epic, after all, so it has to be good, and you don't have to have 4th Edition books in front of you to realize line of effect denial is good. When you're fighting balor, ancient blue dragons, and sorrowsworn, it had better be good -- those critters don't fool around!

Emphasis added. Please link further discussion with the developers in which the bits I bolded get parsed as you claim. Thanks.

PS. The "Richard Baker" houserule which exists from June 2008 goes like this: "drop hit points by 50% and give a creature a bonus to damage equal to its level." I'm quoting Mike Mearls here (in the comments section here) in reply to this question:

Mike, last year there was an anti-grind house rule being talked about where folks in R&D were cutting monster HP, increasing monster damage - did that work out? I think some kind of formula like that is compelling - to increase the number of encounters in a night, and maintain a threat level - but I could see it increase the swinginess quite a bit too (suddenly monster crits become very threatening). Anyway, curious what are your thoughts

[Starmaker]

Lulzy bits from that article:

as you're considered your own ally unless the effect of a power states otherwise

Stephen is now a developer in RPG R&D where he doesn’t create the traps … he just makes them deadlier. He also teaches a class on roleplaying design for the Art Institute of Seattle, molding the minds of young and upcoming designers. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[Doom]

Why would monster crits become more threatening?

I really thought monster crits were just 'maximum damage'...adding level to damage would add, say 15 points for a level 15 monster, irrelevant of the crit.

Is there a house rule for monster crits somewhere? I've already houseruled 'add half level to damage', and it helps, although still way below what characters can heal.

Just had a battle last night, a behir. It swallowed the cleric round 1, even with my houseruling "free minor action to deal swallowed damage", and dealing over 200 damage to the cleric (45 a round from being swallowed, and another 10 from the aura, also 'houseruled' to double, since a 5 point aura is meaningless at this level, especially with Shifter regen), still wasn't enough, since between his healing word and bard 'multiclass' healing and healing powers he could just casually sit in the behir's belly.

Say, does anyone else thing that "Certain Justice" is a bit extreme for a power...it makes all other Paladin paragon paths irrelevant. As soon as the monster is hit with that, it's pretty much permanently dazed and weakened, making solo encounters irrelevant.

As an encounter power, that's just stupid; I guess I'll make every encounter have some way to deal with this one thing, but I sure don't see an errata anywhere.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If monsters are using a high-crit weapon then monster criticals become a LOT more deadly.

They don't just get high crit bonus dice, but they do dish out 3x their normal damage. These monsters are fairly rare, however, but they can shock the hell out of players when you first meet them.

Of course this just begs the question why every monster doesn't run with high crit weapons, but hey, exception-based design.

[Doom]

Yeah, high crit monsters are pretty good...but someone said 'add level to damage' would make the crits deadly, and didn't quite connect the dots.