Math That "Just Works"

[Lago PARANOIA]

Frank, for your example hit points and damage lists:

1) How well does it adapt to the effect of being able to plow through hordes of minions without caring?

I've DMed 4E plenty of times and I can say that minions are actually a huge hit with players. It makes PCs feel badass when they chew through three of them at once and when they face an encounter where they're outnumbered 4-to-1 and win.

Unfortunately, because 4E has a really shitty damage and hit point progression and no monster/PC transparency they have to resort to something as artificial as the 1-hit point thing in order to have that effect. I really do not like it; it's simulation-breaking once players figure out ways to cheese it such as dropping a mass unavoidable fixed-damage attack. I believe that monsters should become one-shot kill trash after a certain point (say, about 5 levels)

2) How well can PCs conform to the chart? And following that, how well does Monster vs. Monster perform?

I don't mind the thought of PCs occupying a different spot on the chart relative to their level (such that at 1st level, they're actually built like level-3 monsters) but I am somewhat depressed at the thought of having a 'PC-specific' value on the chart that has no transparency with other monsters.

Why's that? Because it always creates internal stupidness when you want to run mirror matches or Psycho Rangers. 4E can't have the trope of 'two barbarians fight each other to the death for leadership of the tribe' without having it turn into either A) a cripple-fight B) a laughably anti-climatic one-round kill or C) ridiculousness like having PC-exclusive or monster-exclusive attacks. Now mind, in the interest of simplicity I believe that NPCs should on the whole have monster-exclusive attacks (that are simpler in effect and execution than PC effects) but I also believe that the game shouldn't fall apart if the PCs get access to a ridiculous monster basic attack or a monster gets access to Blade Cascade or Stinking Cloud.

[Username17]

Frank, for your example hit points and damage lists:

1) How well does it adapt to the effect of being able to plow through hordes of minions without caring?

I've DMed 4E plenty of times and I can say that minions are actually a huge hit with players. It makes PCs feel badass when they chew through three of them at once and when they face an encounter where they're outnumbered 4-to-1 and win.

Well, those were numbers I pulled directly out of my ass and only included the PC hit points and DR and monster damage outputs. So the question of how they interact with how PCs chew through monsters is effectively unasked. If you assume the PCs have the same assumed damage outputs as elite monsters (certainly possible), then the average damage output of a 10th level character would be 27 points and a low end 5th level character has 25 hit points and 2 points of DR. But the relationship doesn't maintain at a 1 level per level way. It's closer to 1 per 2. So the 15th level elite averages a bit better than one-shotting a low-end level 7, and a 20th level elite is just short of averaging a one-shot face punch on a level 10. If the players have any asymmetric bonuses by level 20, then they'd be on schedule for one shotting fragile enemies of half their level.

So you could basically have minions grow their hit points at half speed from the PCs (or a bit less), and things would work out the way you wanted them too. It's not really that big of a deal.

2) How well can PCs conform to the chart? And following that, how well does Monster vs. Monster perform?

As explained above, you could throw PCs in at the elite end of the pool if you wanted, that would be OK.

Why's that? Because it always creates internal stupidness when you want to run mirror matches or Psycho Rangers. 4E can't have the trope of 'two barbarians fight each other to the death for leadership of the tribe' without having it turn into either A) a cripple-fight B) a laughably anti-climatic one-round kill or C) ridiculousness like having PC-exclusive or monster-exclusive attacks. Now mind, in the interest of simplicity I believe that NPCs should on the whole have monster-exclusive attacks (that are simpler in effect and execution than PC effects) but I also believe that the game shouldn't fall apart if the PCs get access to a ridiculous monster basic attack or a monster gets access to Blade Cascade or Stinking Cloud.

I am in full agreement here.

It's also seriously not an issue. Monster attacks and PC attacks can be drawn from the same pool if you want. It's also perfectly acceptable if you have a "giant slug power list" that doesn't have a lot of transparency with the PC ability lists. But yeah, the game should, and easily can support an enemy black knight being made as a PC knight.

4e decided early on as a design motif that they wanted the monsters having an ass tonne of hit points and swinging for piddly shit damage like they were in a JRPG. That was a deliberate decision that it was more important to have the feeling of a JRPG grind fest in boss battles than to have PC/Monster transparency. If you don't make that decision, the world does not fall apart.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

4e decided early on as a design motif that they wanted the monsters having an ass tonne of hit points and swinging for piddly shit damage like they were in a JRPG. That was a deliberate decision that it was more important to have the feeling of a JRPG grind fest in boss battles than to have PC/Monster transparency. If you don't make that decision, the world does not fall apart.

Why'd they put PCs and monsters on different hit point and damage schedules though? Why couldn't both just have a level-based damage reduction/damage bonus structure? That way, if the PCs are fighting level-appropriate enemies it won't come up much but if they wanted to fight a 'boss' monster or fight a bunch of chaff mobs they could do that without having 700+ HP monsters or Ssasz Tam being able to one-shot a horde of level 20 ogre minions but be unable to kill a 5th-level kobold soldier in less than three rounds.

It just doesn't make any sense. The way they decided to do things slowed things down, destroyed internal consistency, and required extra effort. I could see why they would sacrifice two of speed/consistency/effort in order to supplement the other one, but I see NO advantage to why they did things the way they did other than to wow people with 'this dracolich has over 1000 hit points!'

[Username17]

Why'd they put PCs and monsters on different hit point and damage schedules though? Why couldn't both just have a level-based damage reduction/damage bonus structure? That way, if the PCs are fighting level-appropriate enemies it won't come up much but if they wanted to fight a 'boss' monster or fight a bunch of chaff mobs they could do that without having 700+ HP monsters or Ssasz Tam being able to one-shot a horde of level 20 ogre minions but be unable to kill a 5th-level kobold soldier in less than three rounds.

You missed their "math is hard" essay, didn't you? I think it was Mearls who wrote the essay about how once you were varying hit points and damage and DR you had three variables and you couldn't solve the equation. I'm pretty sure that went in to the miss chance thing. Only two variables: To-hit vs. AC; or damage vs. hit points. Because even though that's 4 variables, apparently if the designers try to think about more than 2 at a time they can't make it work.

Now the real question you have is why they decided to go for a system where enemies simply had wildly different numbers from allies and team monster had way more hit points and did way less damage. That's pretty much because "Dave Noonan likes computer games" as near as I can tell. There are reasons that JRPGs work like that, but they are not particularly good reasons. And those reasons fall down completely if you try to use the system for non-computer generated world building.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Because even though that's 4 variables, apparently if the designers try to think about more than 2 at a time they can't make it work.

I refuse to believe that it didn't at least cross their minds at one point. Almost every other TTRPG of note has some kind of damage reduction scheme built into the mechanics. Only D&D continues to use the model of 'damage sponge mobs with hundreds of hit points for a chaff enemy'.

There are reasons that JRPGs work like that, but they are not particularly good reasons.

As far as I can tell, the only reason to do things like that is because Final Fantasy did it. The first Dragon Quests, Psychic Wars, Wizardry, and Might and Magic did not have this problem despite being blatant wannabes of D&D.

But even so, it's not like Final Fantasy did it because they thought that huge numbers were cool (at first anyway). They did it because the game designers were bad at math and instead of stopping their numbers from spiraling out of control just let them do so.

[Roy]

Actually...

In most JRPGs, including the Final Fantasy series trash mobs (aka, anything not a boss) dies in 1-2 hits. The bosses are sometimes subject to the high HP low damage thing, particularly in the later Final Fantasy games, and the later Wizardry games. Dragon Quest actually does a good job of avoiding this. Even though the most recent game has monsters with 5 digit HP totals, you can also do enough damage to blast through said HP in a few rounds, and said enemies also do high damage to you in the meantime. And the non post game stuff has more reasonable stats, but still doesn't do the high HP low damage thing.

Really, it has more in common with an MMO than a JRPG. They're the ones who focus on grinding on mobs way too fucking much. This is also intended though.

[Manxome]

Lots of Final Fantasy games do a thing where trash mobs die in 1-2 hits, yet their max HP* is still higher than your party's, because the damage you do to them per attack is about ten times the damage they do to you per attack. The asymmetry doesn't really matter for most purposes, but it means dumb stuff happens when people switch sides--for example, if one of your characters get charmed/confused, they can often kill themselves or one of your other party members in 1-2 hits (depending on how much of the damage difference is based on attack and how much is based on defense).

There's a separate and more noticeable thing where bosses tend to have something like 3 times the damage output and 30 times the HP of trash mobs, which of course pushes the player towards "steady state" strategies, where they heal or otherwise nullify 100% of the boss's damage output while slowly whittling away at its HP. If anything, I think this trend is increasing, as the games become less about conserving resources through the dungeon and more about fights that each individually pose a threat to your existence, random encounters and boss fights are converging in terms of both damage output and difficulty, with bosses being distinguished only by the length of the fight. FF13 doesn't even have MP, though in practical terms I don't think MP has been a serious limitation on healing since FF4.

Dragon Quest 9 does this less than a lot of Final Fantasy games, but most bosses are still essentially hopeless without a powerful healing or defensive strategy (unless you're overleveled), and a single dedicated healer is still generally able to completely negate the boss's damage output (and has enough MP to do it for longer than the probable length of the boss fight).

Didn't you comment on your solo run that the classes without good self-healing are unplayable against anything but trash enemies? When the Priest is a better solo class than the Gladiator, that seems a solid indication that healing is mandatory. Measured as "the number of rounds you can survive without healing", bosses have way more HP than you. I mean, the mere fact that a healing spell is worth casting mid-battle when you're fighting solo means that 1 round of healing negates more than 1 round of boss attacks.


* Practically speaking, "max HP" is actually a totally different statistic for players than it is for monsters in these games: for monsters, it represents the amount of damage required to kill them, while for PCs it means the amount of damage you need to do in a single round in order to force them to cast Raise instead of Cure. The PCs' "max HP", in the monster sense, arguably includes all the healing they can do until they run out of MP and items, by which standard the party has orders of magnitude more HP than any enemy they face.

[Roy]

Lots of Final Fantasy games do a thing where trash mobs die in 1-2 hits, yet their max HP* is still higher than your party's, because the damage you do to them per attack is about ten times the damage they do to you per attack. The asymmetry doesn't really matter for most purposes, but it means dumb stuff happens when people switch sides--for example, if one of your characters get charmed/confused, they can often kill themselves or one of your other party members in 1-2 hits (depending on how much of the damage difference is based on attack and how much is based on defense).

In most Final Fantasy games this is true. In Wizardry games the final boss probably has less HP than you. At least for 1-5. In DQ 1 the final boss has only slightly more HP than 2. Same for 2. 3, about double (remakes don't count).

And yes, players in any game tend to have high offense, low defense. They also tend to suicide on Iron Maiden. Doesn't always involve HP though.

There's a separate and more noticeable thing where bosses tend to have something like 3 times the damage output and 30 times the HP of trash mobs, which of course pushes the player towards "steady state" strategies, where they heal or otherwise nullify 100% of the boss's damage output while slowly whittling away at its HP. If anything, I think this trend is increasing, as the games become less about conserving resources through the dungeon and more about fights that each individually pose a threat to your existence, random encounters and boss fights are converging in terms of both damage output and difficulty, with bosses being distinguished only by the length of the fight. FF13 doesn't even have MP, though in practical terms I don't think MP has been a serious limitation on healing since FF4.

This is true. But then again, D&D, and any tabletop RPG in which you are expected to play the same characters for an extended period has Iterative Probability. Which is the same thing, except over campaigns instead of individual fights.

Dragon Quest 9 does this less than a lot of Final Fantasy games, but most bosses are still essentially hopeless without a powerful healing or defensive strategy (unless you're overleveled), and a single dedicated healer is still generally able to completely negate the boss's damage output (and has enough MP to do it for longer than the probable length of the boss fight).

Didn't you comment on your solo run that the classes without good self-healing are unplayable against anything but trash enemies? When the Priest is a better solo class than the Gladiator, that seems a solid indication that healing is mandatory. Measured as "the number of rounds you can survive without healing", bosses have way more HP than you. I mean, the mere fact that a healing spell is worth casting mid-battle when you're fighting solo means that 1 round of healing negates more than 1 round of boss attacks.

It actually depends on when and what you are fighting. When I said that, I was speaking main game. And it's absolutely true there.

I did say this, and it's true. Enemies will likely kill you before you kill them if alone, and without healing (a party without healing has more DPS, and will also survive longer due to random targeting and more HP collectively). Post game, you need mitigation with your healing. Having a party, and therefore more targets for attacks is mitigation. Defensive abilities are mitigation. The easiest post game boss can easily 1 round a single character, either by a critical hit for > the maximum possible HP you can possibly have, and that only one character can be immune to, or by spell or breath spam since your max HP are around 810-900, and 999 with seeds and there's 3 of them a round doing > 300 each, with possible combos.

As such, the solo tactic is to basically cast Reflect, and every time he casts a spell that's 525 or 700 damage to him instead of 300 to you, block the crits, take the physical hits for 150/180/225 or avoid them (about 20% chance). Frost Fource (+65% damage), then Falcon Slash with the Miracle Sword (800 damage/200 heal) if you need healing or Falcon Blade (around 1,200 damage) if you don't. If you need healing Care Prayer + Midheal for 350. Note however these can still be out DPSed, you need mitigation, and luck doesn't hurt either (for once). If you can get your limit break, yay 3 turns of complete invincibility. But don't count on it. If your HP drops to the yellow though spam Defending Champion (1/10th damage taken, can't attack) and hope the invincibility procs, because you don't really have a choice but to hope it won't be an instance of Turtle Fail. Also, some items increase limit break procs. Have one equipped any round you do not attack.

In a party, it's easier, and faster, but he can still just flat out one round people. If he doesn't though, you cast Omniheal, and everyone goes back to full. And remember, that's the easiest postgame boss. But yes, healing is mandatory for a solo run (there actually are some people that use 4 Gladiators, and just two round the boss before it kills them).

[Slade]

Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.

It rewards the dwarf and punishes the Rogue if you remove Dex bonus/racial bonus.

The only way to reduce it would be removing being trained in the skill or removing skill focus.

Even 2E had racial bonuses for climb/etc for rogue.

How would you tighten it?

[Manxome]

Roy: You seem to be missing my point. Of course if you bring enough raw power to bear on a weak enough boss, you can kill him with essentially any strategy. But in DQ9, judging from my experience, a "steady state" strategy can beat a boss with a weaker party than any other.

Giving bosses hugely inflated HP increases the attractiveness of a defensive strategy relative to other strategies. If you do it enough, it makes a defensive strategy best. As you grow more powerful, more strategies start working, but that doesn't mean they're equally good, it just means that you have a big enough intrinsic advantage to still win with an inferior strategy.

The point being, don't give bosses hugely inflated HP in your games unless you want to encourage players to pursue a strategy focusing on defense and healing.

But then again, D&D, and any tabletop RPG in which you are expected to play the same characters for an extended period has Iterative Probability. Which is the same thing, except over campaigns instead of individual fights.

And I don't have the faintest idea what point you are trying to make there. I was saying that the easiest way to get a favorable damage ratio on the boss is by reducing the boss's average net damage output to zero (or very close) rather than increasing your own. That...has no relation whatsoever to iterative probability that I can see.

[RobbyPants]

How would you tighten it?

There are different ways. One is to simply reduce the modifiers so that they fit better onto a d20. If the high Dex halfling rogue has a +5 Hide and the dwarf has a -1 Hide, that's not so bad on a d20.

Another option is to divorce your modifiers from things like ability scores to make life more simple for reigning in modifiers. So, a rogue would be inherently more sneaky by virtue of the class, and maybe the halfling gets some racial sneak bonus, but not in a way that grants a simple +X to Hide.

Alternately, you make your RNG bigger (d100 or something), but conceptually, that's the same as the first approach. You just need the total span of your modifiers to fit neatly within whatever RNG you're using, with enough wiggle room on either side so as not to make rolling nearly pointless for either the dwarf or halfling.

[cthulhudarren]

I realized that the 4E DC mechanics were retarded when I realized that a level 16 wizard, 80 years old with a strength of 8, can kick down a door better than a strapping young fighter with a high strength.


I agree with what is being said here, but I don't understand why a d100 system isn't better. I'm not getting it. Maybe it's a just a product of how my lizard brain works. There is more wiggle room in 100 than in 20. for example, in d20, there is a 5% chance of an automiss, failed save, or an autocrit. d100 you can do 1,2,3,4, or 5. To me this extra granularity is desirable.

They only thing that d20 has over d100 is that it's more fun to roll a d20.

[Username17]

A d100 is essentially exactly the same as a d20. The bonuses are bigger, the DCs are bigger, the penalties are bigger, but it's still just a linear RNG. It responds exactly the same way to bonuses and penalties of the same size relative to the size of the RNG.

Or to put it another way: let's say you just rolled the tens place d10 on your percentile dice. Nine times out of ten, that would tell you everything you needed to know about whether you succeeded or failed. The other one roll in ten, you'd need to roll a second d10, and then that die would have some chance of providing success or failure. You could handle d20s the same way, the only real difference is that your second "roll" that you'd use one time out of 10 would be a coin flip. And even then, at least 5 times out of ten that coin flip would be essentially identical in potential results to the d10.

Flat RNGs are flat RNGs. What is considered "enough" granularity is open to interpretation, but you aren't gaining a lot of difference once you get down to d10s or so.

-Username17

[cthulhudarren]

A d100 is essentially exactly the same as a d20. The bonuses are bigger, the DCs are bigger, the penalties are bigger, but it's still just a linear RNG. It responds exactly the same way to bonuses and penalties of the same size relative to the size of the RNG.

Or to put it another way: let's say you just rolled the tens place d10 on your percentile dice. Nine times out of ten, that would tell you everything you needed to know about whether you succeeded or failed. The other one roll in ten, you'd need to roll a second d10, and then that die would have some chance of providing success or failure. You could handle d20s the same way, the only real difference is that your second "roll" that you'd use one time out of 10 would be a coin flip. And even then, at least 5 times out of ten that coin flip would be essentially identical in potential results to the d10.

Flat RNGs are flat RNGs. What is considered "enough" granularity is open to interpretation, but you aren't gaining a lot of difference once you get down to d10s or so.

-Username17

Okay, that makes better sense now, thanks Frank. I guess I'm on the side of liking the added granularity.

[RobbyPants]

Yeah. It's a subjective choice between being able to add more tiny modifiers that "matter" and having to think a bit more when you do the math. Personally, I prefer d20, but what ever.

[hogarth]

I realized that the 4E DC mechanics were retarded when I realized that a level 16 wizard, 80 years old with a strength of 8, can kick down a door better than a strapping young fighter with a high strength.

Is that true? I thought that some or most DCs in 4E scaled to the PC's level.

[Red_Rob]

The biggest problem with a D100 is you can only roll one at a time. With horde monsters or creatures with multiple attacks it can really slow things down

[RobbyPants]

I never thought about that. I suppose you could if you color-coded your d10s, or if you actually had real d100s (which I hear never stop rolling).

[Kaelik]

Okay, that makes better sense now, thanks Frank. I guess I'm on the side of liking the added granularity.

The thing to do with any d100 syste, is to ask yourself "How often am I rolling against DC 97 or 92 or anything else that isn't a 5 or 0?"

If the answer is "less than one out of 20 times" than you might as well just be rolling a d20 anyway.

Most percentile systems only have multiples of 5 anyway, thus rendering them completely inferior to D20s.

[tzor]

I never thought about that. I suppose you could if you color-coded your d10s, or if you actually had real d100s (which I hear never stop rolling).

I remember there was this thing that was a die within a die, so you basically had a d10 inside a d10 getting you the d100 ... ah here they are Double Dice

[RobbyPants]

Those are cool. The seem weird, but it does solve a lot of issues.

[cthulhudarren]

I realized that the 4E DC mechanics were retarded when I realized that a level 16 wizard, 80 years old with a strength of 8, can kick down a door better than a strapping young fighter with a high strength.

Is that true? I thought that some or most DCs in 4E scaled to the PC's level.

The door should not care what level you are. In 4E RAW I think that same door does know that you are higher level and toughens itself accordingly. I still think it'd be an easy DC at higher levels though since at 18th levels you should be facing up against "unobtainium gates of demon-forged super-excellentness" instead of simply a stuck door.

[hogarth]

I realized that the 4E DC mechanics were retarded when I realized that a level 16 wizard, 80 years old with a strength of 8, can kick down a door better than a strapping young fighter with a high strength.

Is that true? I thought that some or most DCs in 4E scaled to the PC's level.

The door should not care what level you are. In 4E RAW I think that same door does know that you are higher level and toughens itself accordingly.

I agree that it's totally ass-backwards, but adding the same (level/2) modifier to the PC's ability check and to the target DC is equivalent of adding nothing to the PC's ability check and using a fixed DC. So the sliding DC skill/ability checks are supposed to represent checks where the PCs don't improve much over time (e.g. opening a stuck door).

[cthulhudarren]

Is that true? I thought that some or most DCs in 4E scaled to the PC's level.

The door should not care what level you are. In 4E RAW I think that same door does know that you are higher level and toughens itself accordingly.

I agree that it's totally ass-backwards, but adding the same (level/2) modifier to the PC's ability check and to the target DC is equivalent of adding nothing to the PC's ability check and using a fixed DC. So the sliding DC skill/ability checks are supposed to represent checks where the PCs don't improve much over time (e.g. opening a stuck door).

I can see that logic, but because the top end of the curve is so much more difficult at high levels, I'd expect the easier obstacles to "fall off the bottom" of the DC chart.

[Swordslinger]

I realized that the 4E DC mechanics were retarded when I realized that a level 16 wizard, 80 years old with a strength of 8, can kick down a door better than a strapping young fighter with a high strength.

All depends on how you flavor it. I'd think a level 16 wizard would be using a bunch of buff spells to aid him. It's just that 4E tries to simplify things by not worrying about having a balance sheet of buffs, and just giving you a final modifier. How you flavor it is up to you.