Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[erik]

what do you supposed a 10th level character should be dealing a round? I was always told that a good rule of thumb was about 4 or 5 HP damage per level a round is to be expected.

Who always told you this?

On its face you can tell it isn't a good rule of thumb as it is a linear progression and things do not scale linearly in DnD 3e. You should expect to get both more damage per attack and also have more attacks/area attacks as you level up. It may match up with some of the curve at lower levels but definitely not at higher levels.

If all you can do is deal damage then a better rule of thumb might be comparing to the closet troll monsters of your CR.

At CR 10 we've got:
• 11 headed hydra (+16) 11d10+66
• Gargantuan Scorpion (+21/16) 10d6+45 and (DC 23 Fort vs 1d8 Con dmg)

[edit: and this is fairly in line with a medicore level 10 rogue. Expect 3-5 attacks per round (BAB, TWF, haste). A couple +1d6 weapon properties and you have 3-5 attacks of 8d6+ dmg. That puts rogue, scorpion and hydra all around 100 avg damage/round on targets that they aren't likely to miss, or lower depending on ACs/defenses.]

[RadiantPhoenix]

PF monsters on the whole seem to have comparable to superior AC, saves and HP.

Apart from comparing the damage threshold to Rogue Sneak Attacking as a floor, what do you supposed a 10th level character should be dealing a round? I was always told that a good rule of thumb was about 4 or 5 HP damage per level a round is to be expected.

Let's assume you're in Tome, and start with 14 constitution at level 1, and increase it with evenly-spaced wishes and an item of +Con.

You go from 14 to 26 over the course of 20 levels, which is about 14 + 0.6*[L], and your HP is about ([L] + 1) * HD average + [L] * 0.5 * (CON - 10)

Thus, assuming d8 HP, the average damage needed to down an enemy in one hit is about 3.5 + [L] * (4.5 + 2 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + [L] * (6.5 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + 6.5*[L] + 0.3 * [L]^2

And, yes, this is about the amount of damage a damage character should deal per round to a single target. After DR, but before AC.

[Kaelik]

Thus, assuming d8 HP, the average damage needed to down an enemy in one hit is about 3.5 + [L] * (4.5 + 2 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + [L] * (6.5 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + 6.5*[L] + 0.3 * [L]^2

And, yes, this is about the amount of damage a damage character should deal per round to a single target. After DR, but before AC.

False.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Thus, assuming d8 HP, the average damage needed to down an enemy in one hit is about 3.5 + [L] * (4.5 + 2 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + [L] * (6.5 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + 6.5*[L] + 0.3 * [L]^2

And, yes, this is about the amount of damage a damage character should deal per round to a single target. After DR, but before AC.

False.

Okay, what is the right number?

[Kaelik]

Thus, assuming d8 HP, the average damage needed to down an enemy in one hit is about 3.5 + [L] * (4.5 + 2 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + [L] * (6.5 + 0.3 * [L]) = 3.5 + 6.5*[L] + 0.3 * [L]^2

And, yes, this is about the amount of damage a damage character should deal per round to a single target. After DR, but before AC.

False.

Okay, what is the right number?

For sure as fuck not one attack or one round of full attacks being enough to kill a monster of CR equal to character level from full to dead.

I can't tell if you meant the less stupid one round, or the way way way more stupid one attack, but either way, not that.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I did say per round.

...and it's equivalent to a save-or-die.

[Kaelik]

...and it's equivalent to a save-or-die.

No it isn't. For fucks sake I hate you people.

Save math actually fucking works, because it is on the RNG, are there are a few specific sources for buffs, compared to the absurd thousands of buffs to attack. A save or die most often (always in 3.5) requires the expenditure of a limited daily resource. Save or dies as well as save or loses, feature a host of immunities that can protect against them, and you have to play a game to guess the right one, and to use saves the monsters don't fucking automake.

If you think a character should just be able to pick up a goddam bow and instantly kill the average monster then you think people should be objectively like 50 times better than a Wizard in combat. And that is stupid.

But over and above that, the average HP damage to one round things is a terrible fucking system, because some entire classes of monsters have less HP than other classes, so having enough damage to kill the average means always having enough damage to kill anything that isn't a giant sack of too much HP.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Okay, so is there an appropriate amount of damage to do per round?

[Kaelik]

Okay, so is there an appropriate amount of damage to do per round?

Uh... why are you asking that like it is gotcha?

I mean, probably not, because the fact remains that a Lich is not a Dragon is not a Big Old Fat Elephant.

But if there is, it isn't one rounding people.

[Silent Wayfarer]

At what point can people stop focusing on damage and, confident in their ability to be useful party members, build up other things?

Or is the answer "it depends" because there are more monsters than bonuses and just because I can hurt one guy doesn't mean I can hurt another?

[erik]

A rogue's damage output is probably a good bar to measure by since their main job in a fight is to just deal raw damage. They get reliably more damage per attack as they level up and they get more attacks as they level up.

It is possible to go overboard, but a moderate amount of optimizing that you would expect most players to do for a rogue (i.e taking TWF/haste boots, but not being an octopus with 8 boot daggers or somesuch) and you have a decent metric for how much damage you should deal if that's your raison d'etre.

If you do other things in combat then it is okay to dip lower than that commensurate with what you bring to the table. For example if you boost everypony's DPR by 20% then you can sally forth with a much smaller contribution yourself.

Of course it depends as things are not always so cut and dry. You just have to wing it within expectations of other classes and monsters, and know that not every table is going to use each class and monster as effectively as each other.

[Kaelik]

At what point can people stop focusing on damage and, confident in their ability to be useful party members, build up other things?

Or is the answer "it depends" because there are more monsters than bonuses and just because I can hurt one guy doesn't mean I can hurt another?

No, if you are not an elementalist, if you can hurt one monster, you can hurt them all. Which is kind of the problem.

Now the actual answer to your question is: if you can make that choice, the game is garbage (or your class is garbage).

You shouldn't have the option to spend your resources on being more combat effective or more effective at other things, because you only stop picking combat when combat is a trivial cakewalk. Which is precisely the problem with all the bullshit martial classes. You are effectively choosing to not get other abilities, and therefore people think they should just be better than everyone else at combat, and that is garbage.

[Kaelik]

A rogue's damage output is probably a good bar to measure by since their main job in a fight is to just deal raw damage. They get reliably more damage per attack as they level up and they get more attacks as they level up.

It is possible to go overboard, but a moderate amount of optimizing that you would expect most players to do for a rogue (i.e taking TWF/haste boots, but not being an octopus with 8 boot daggers or somesuch) and you have a decent metric for how much damage you should deal if that's your raison d'etre.

Important point, this is totally fucking wrong. Rogues have to meet three or so key conditions to get that damage, so they have to play the same kind of game spellcasters do of working to get their damage, and working to compromise enemy defenses. This makes Rogues better damage dealers because they actually interact with the game in a non shitty way.

If you give a Rogue's damage to a fighter archer, then you just fucked the game, because that character never ever thinks with their brain, and instead could be played with a dice bot.

[DSMatticus]

It's definitional that for any given level X there is an amount of damage a character needs to be able to do to be as effective at removing appropriately CR'd opponents from battle as a wizard of the same level tossing out AoE save or sucks. For any X, that number exists. You could brute force calculate it or approximate it with representative sampling. Note that a wizard spends the entire game potentially one-rounding multiple opponents per spell, starting at "one spell per fight" and ending at "one or more spells per round," so it's pretty reasonable to assume that for any given X that number involves one-rounding a substantial number of appropriately CR'd opponents.

Hilariously, because D&D's attack bonuses, armor classes, damage, and hitpoints are so incredibly fucking wonky and inconsistent, I would not be surprised if by simple virtue of pure randomness certain CR's required more damage than that CR+1. If, for example, CR 12 happens to be heavy on squishy caster monsters while CR 11 happens to be heavy on brutish closet trolls, level appropriate damage by this measure might actually go down from 11 to 12. D&D be fucking crazy, yo'. But by definition such a number has to exist for every single level in the game.

Kaelik is just hating on dealing straight damage as a thing people do in combat because it is even more binary bullshit than casting spells. But honestly a character who could declare "that monster dies unless it has the Giant Bloated Hitpoint Sack special quality, no save" once per round is really only different from a caster in that the caster hits a bunch of enemies and defeats 1-2+ picked at random while that character could hit one enemy and defeat him for certain; that's not really any less balanced, it's just incredibly simplistic and deterministic. Unsatisfyingly so, to most.

[Kaelik]

It's definitional that for any given level X there is an amount of damage a character needs to be able to do to be as effective at removing appropriately CR'd opponents from battle as a wizard of the same level tossing out AoE save or sucks. For any X, that number exists. You could brute force calculate it or approximate it with representative sampling. Note that a wizard spends the entire game potentially one-rounding multiple opponents per spell, starting at "one spell per fight" and ending at "one or more spells per round," so it's pretty reasonable to assume that for any given X that number involves one-rounding a substantial number of appropriately CR'd opponents.

No, that isn't definitionally true, because it could very easily turn out to be the case that because the range of HPs is on a thin enough margin around the median, that there is no amount of average damage that can get you to the same level as a Wizard, and that the only choice is either too fucking much or too fucking little.

Hilariously, because D&D's attack bonuses, armor classes, damage, and hitpoints are so incredibly fucking wonky and inconsistent, I would not be surprised if by simple virtue of pure randomness certain CR's required more damage than that CR+1. If, for example, CR 12 happens to be heavy on squishy caster monsters while CR 11 happens to be heavy on brutish closet trolls, level appropriate damage by this measure might actually go down from 11 to 12. D&D be fucking crazy, yo'. But by definition such a number has to exist for every single level in the game.

That is basically impossible, since by definition any specific level encapsulates a three level range including one up and down, so 2/3rds of monsters are the same from one level to the next, and the only ones different are three levels apart.

Kaelik is just hating on dealing straight damage as a thing people do in combat because it is even more binary bullshit than casting spells. But honestly a character who could declare "that monster dies unless it has the Giant Bloated Hitpoint Sack special quality, no save" once per round is really only different from a caster in that the caster hits a bunch of enemies and defeats 1-2+ picked at random while that character could hit one enemy and defeat him for certain; that's not really any less balanced, it's just incredibly simplistic and deterministic. Unsatisfyingly so, to most.

Actually, there are a number of problems, and while the fact that such a character would be boring as shit is probably the biggest offender, several other problems exist, such as the fact that that character would one round without fail all boss monsters that aren't dragons, but would have problems with stupid waste of time elephants. And that is exactly the kind of thing that shouldn't fucking happen. To have fights with the BBEG always be the least tense fights in the game because you know they die in one turn without anyone trying is fucking garbage.

[RadiantPhoenix]

It sounds like what would be better would be to have two damage values: one for "reliable" damage, like a Warlock's laser, and one for "conditional" damage, like a Rogue's Sneak Attack.

[OgreBattle]

If you give a Rogue's damage to a fighter archer, then you just fucked the game, because that character never ever thinks with their brain, and instead could be played with a dice bot.

What if every warrior-type gets 'sneak attack', so everyone is encouraged to flank and find ways to catch foes flat footed?

[TiaC]

Then everyone uses TWF. (Or possibly double weapons so they can still THF in a pinch.)

[tussock]

In general, the party should barely win against a level+4 encounter. Typically that will be a couple monsters of a couple levels lower than the party per PC, and you have to survive some, but not all of those.

Which is to say, if all you have is damage, then you should do enough damage to stand up to roughly half of the same-game-test monsters. Which certainly does not mean 1-round kills against the toughest melee monsters in the game, very few of which can even 2-round kill a Fighter with a normal set of d20's.

You may be able to anyway, but it's not the normal balance point for a useful class.

[Kaelik]

If you give a Rogue's damage to a fighter archer, then you just fucked the game, because that character never ever thinks with their brain, and instead could be played with a dice bot.

What if every warrior-type gets 'sneak attack', so everyone is encouraged to flank and find ways to catch foes flat footed?

If every warrior has SA, then that poses problems because frankly, SA is not particularly robust as a system, so having more than half the game operate on SA is problematic. Better to create different interesting things for classes to do. So you could live in a world with Monks, Knights, and Rogues, and that would be a fine world, and you could try to design other characters with different conditional effects or damage.

[erik]

Important point, this is totally fucking wrong.

Not totally fucking wrong, just incomplete. I was only talking about setting the bar for damage, not about how to get it. If just handing out a pile of damage without any conditions that must be satisfied then that pile of damage should be smaller than more finicky systems like SA. Maybe an archer sniper would have to spend a move action taking aim first for bonus damage.

My presumption for SA is that it should be potentially viable against nearly every foe. The bullshit is of it not working on plants, undead, or constructs is garbage. I'm okay with it not working on a single niche like oozes, since that is consistent with those puzzle monsters; otherwise I regard grave/golem/steve strike as post hoc bandaid corrections of an error.

What if every warrior-type gets 'sneak attack', so everyone is encouraged to flank and find ways to catch foes flat footed?

Then that's fucking lazy design from someone who makes boring things. You don't want to only have one mechanic where everyone adds piles of bonus d6 damage. That is just one way to get there. There's plenty of ways to skin the cat where you deal roughly equivalent damage.

It's okay if people choose to play an all rogue party but don't hard-code that into a system.

[DSMatticus]

No, that isn't definitionally true, because it could very easily turn out to be the case that because the range of HPs is on a thin enough margin around the median, that there is no amount of average damage that can get you to the same level as a Wizard, and that the only choice is either too fucking much or too fucking little.

This is pretty god damn nitpicky. Yes, if hitpoints are clustered around the median so tightly the variance of the damage is significant, then you're going to get really drastic shifts. But damage almost always comes from a giant flat modifier or a giant pile of small dice that skew heavily towards their average while hitpoints are all over the place, so I have trouble believing that's actually worth considering for this problem.

That is basically impossible, since by definition any specific level encapsulates a three level range including one up and down, so 2/3rds of monsters are the same from one level to the next, and the only ones different are three levels apart.

Again, really fucking nitpicky. If we use a three level range instead of one, then instead of comparing (X) and (X+1) we're comparing (X-1,X+1) and (X,X+2) which is really just comparing (X-1) and (X+2). Could CR X-1 have a higher hitpoint average than X+2 simply by virtue of being unusually heavy on high hitpoint bullshit? Yeah, probably.

Here's a CR 10 colossal animated object's hitpoints: 256.
Here's a CR 13 lich's hitpoints: 74.

Average hitpoints for a given CR are going to depend a lot more on what happens to be in the MM at that CR than the CR itself.

To have fights with the BBEG always be the least tense fights in the game because you know they die in one turn without anyone trying is fucking garbage.

Yes, I said it would be unsatisfying. But as an aside, I have to ask; do you think 3.5 currently has satisfying boss fights? I guess you could say "poke the RNG until the dangerous man loses" can be tense, but I would not say it makes a satisfying showdown. I've never had a good BBEG fight that wasn't actually closer to a "big bag evil committee whose chairman is a slightly higher CR" fight. There's always a decent chance the BBEG is going to get taken out of the fight on round 1 (unless he has all the immunities!!1!, which is pretty fucking unsatisfying for its own reasons), so I find having fights that can survive that happening and still be noteworthy is about the only way to get consistently decent results.

[ishy]

Again, really fucking nitpicky. If we use a three level range instead of one, then instead of comparing (X) and (X+1) we're comparing (X-1,X+1) and (X,X+2) which is really just comparing (X-1) and (X+2). Could CR X-1 have a higher hitpoint average than X+2 simply by virtue of being unusually heavy on high hitpoint bullshit? Yeah, probably.

Here's a CR 10 colossal animated object's hitpoints: 256.
Here's a CR 13 lich's hitpoints: 74.

Average hitpoints for a given CR are going to depend a lot more on what happens to be in the MM at that CR than the CR itself.

Arguing in bad faith is not the same thing as nitpicking. a CR 10 colossal animated objects AC is fucking 11.

If you're fighting a monster who is designed to be power attacked at your full-bab, you are supposed to be doing way more than level appropriate damage to that monster.

[Insomniac]

what do you supposed a 10th level character should be dealing a round? I was always told that a good rule of thumb was about 4 or 5 HP damage per level a round is to be expected.

Who always told you this?

On its face you can tell it isn't a good rule of thumb as it is a linear progression and things do not scale linearly in DnD 3e. You should expect to get both more damage per attack and also have more attacks/area attacks as you level up. It may match up with some of the curve at lower levels but definitely not at higher levels.

If all you can do is deal damage then a better rule of thumb might be comparing to the closet troll monsters of your CR.

At CR 10 we've got:
• 11 headed hydra (+16) 11d10+66
• Gargantuan Scorpion (+21/16) 10d6+45 and (DC 23 Fort vs 1d8 Con dmg)

[edit: and this is fairly in line with a medicore level 10 rogue. Expect 3-5 attacks per round (BAB, TWF, haste). A couple +1d6 weapon properties and you have 3-5 attacks of 8d6+ dmg. That puts rogue, scorpion and hydra all around 100 avg damage/round on targets that they aren't likely to miss, or lower depending on ACs/defenses.]

I just remember being told that by some people and telling it to others. you cannot compare 1 person's combat output to something as potent and out of line as a hydra. Compare it to like a Hezrou or a Fire Giant or a Dragon Turtle or something. And keep in mind that it is not 1 on 1 it is a party. Most monsters do their CR times 5.

[DSMatticus]

a CR 10 colossal animated objects AC is fucking 11.

CR 13 beholder: 93 HP, 26 AC
CR 13 ghaele: 65 HP, 25 AC
CR 13 lich: 74 HP, 23 AC

CR 10 formian myrmarch: 102 HP, AC 28
CR 10 fire giant: 142 HP, AC 23
CR 10 monstrous scorpion: 150 HP, AC 24