D&D, multiple attacks, and an alternative

[JonSetanta]

True, my math IQ is 90, and I have an active life outside of RPGs.
But I have been taking advice to heart, implemented it, and found that it wasn't what I wanted as time passed.

Edit: And to add, I do value everyone's review and advice. I have been making changes and comparing my design to other classes.
But why 5 damage per level?
Maximize Spell.
That's my comparison.

I'm busy right now, but I'll get to the benchmarks later.

[Foxwarrior]

True, my math IQ is 90, and I have an active life outside of RPGs.

If you can't/don't want to really understand the mathematical nuances of dpr by level, all your attempts at making a class based on doing large but specific amounts of damage with the option of metastrikes that change the amount of damage you do in unpredictable ways are going to end in disaster. Similarly, your feats for ability scores idea is also very sensitive to mathematical nuance.

However, there are lots of things in RPGs that aren't very mathy. Why not go for content that barely interacts with the mathy parts of the game? Like simple save-or-suck attacks and abilities for interacting with the scenery, moving around, investigation and social interaction?

[JonSetanta]

Good points. I am considering expanding the debuff options, but I think by removing any "Empower", "+1d6 energy", and similar Metastrike options I can limit the damage output.

The "Vorpal" option is going to come online at the same level as Slay Living. Hence, Fort save, since it's going to be a copy of the spell, once per round.

I also plan to put in some defense options such as Parry (reduce enhancement bonus to apply as Shield or maybe Deflection for 1 round) and some imitation buff effects that would match a Cleric in some ways at the expense of enhancement to attacks.

[Kaelik]

The "Vorpal" option is going to come online at the same level as Slay Living. Hence, Fort save, since it's going to be a copy of the spell, once per round.

This very bad design that surely many people have told you is bad design before on other things.

The "maximize spell" version of the same thing was something that deaddm already told you was a bad idea.

[JonSetanta]

The "Vorpal" option is going to come online at the same level as Slay Living. Hence, Fort save, since it's going to be a copy of the spell, once per round.

This very bad design that surely many people have told you is bad design before on other things.

Actually, no.

[Kaelik]

Well for future reference: "I'm going to give my class at will the thing casters get at the same level they first get access to it" is something that has to be carefully managed and not applied to "the general concept of being good at combat."

[JonSetanta]

Look at "Barbarian Smash".
That's a level 1 attack.

viewtopic.php?t=57041

[erik]

Barbarian Smash is using up a finite resource. Your comparison is not valid. Kaelik's criticism, well... one of them, was of giving something at will at the same time casters get it, with the implicit understanding that casters are not getting it at will.

True, I am bad at game design, and I have no will to change this.

That's how I read it. That's fundamentally why you continue to walk headlong into mistake after mistake, and as you self diagnosed- are just repeating the errors of others.

Game design is pretty math intensive, not respecting that and blundering along means that not only will you get a lot of stuff wrong (as in, undesirable outputs), but you won't be able to tell what's right and wrong.

What you want is bad and how you want to do it is worse.

The reason for iterative attacks isn't to just clean up mooks. It's to allow damage to scale up at a rate that is not linear. The reason for the iterative attack penalty is to smooth that curve to keep it from increasing too drastically. It's true that 3e probably did too good a job of slowing down that exponential curve such that melee fighters do not compete with brute monsters on their own CR.

Having iterative attacks allows for more variety of combat builds. If you reduce everything to just wizards, then that's a less diverse game. It might still be a fun game if done correctly, but some people really do like to play beat sticks that don't have to figure out where to lay area damage templates or track their save DCs.

Is there a way to achieve a similar output as iterative attacks by using a single attack mechanic? Almost certainly. Will you figure out how to do it by blundering about without the ability to check your work? Almost certainly not. Will the process benefit by changing attacks into spells? No.

*sigh* I don't want to beat up on you too badly since I cannot imagine anything effecting a change after all these years. I'm just disappointed that I got bored to the point where I read this, already knowing what it was gonna be.


edit: I'm sorry I'm a dick in this thread and the other one. But I mean, you've been on this forum for over a decade. The necessity of doing the math has surely been beaten in by this point. You can't fix something if you don't grasp how it is broken, and what effect your changes will have.

[JonSetanta]

Eh, you're more polite and self aware than, say, Frank.
It's actually been at least 14 years for me here.
I joined for the honesty, stayed for the jokes, and gradually learned from those better in math than I that D&D in any form is NOT balanced and that you can't trust the book writers just because they are in a higher position than the rest of us.
Illusions were shattered, insults were slung, and now here we are in 2021 trying to Frankenstein the dead corpse of an old edition.

[JonSetanta]

I've had all day in the back of my mind to process Kaelik's advice about the Level 10 damage output of 35 vs 50, and as it stands right now it'll turn out more like +3 damage every odd level if a Paragon reduces their enhancement bonus by 1 per +3. That's 15 at level 10, and 30 at level 20.


OK. Benchmarks.

Level 1:
(1 Metastrike)
(+1 attack enhancement, as if every attack the Paragon makes were with a +1 Magic Weapon)
(ability to reduce +1 attack and damage for +1 Shield bonus to AC for 1 round, each round, or +3 damage with no hit bonus)
Unsure if there should be a Fighter Feat here or not, but for now I'll say... no.
Pseudo-Stand Still Feat. I'll call it "Halt".
Paragons will be able to swap out their Metastrike abilities one at a time, per 8 hour rest.
Capabilities:
(ability to emulate magic weapon special abilities appropriate to the +1 equivalence of the class ability)
Ghost Strike
Delayed Strike
Reach Strike
Sculpt Strike
Elemental Strike (doesn't add more damage, just makes the +3 per odd level into an energy type of playey's choice)
Thundering Strike
Peaceful Strike
Invisible Strike

Level 5:
(3 Metastrikes)
(+3 enhancement)
(ability to reduce up to +3 attack and damage for +3 Shield bonus to AC for 1 round, each round, or up to +9 damage with no hit bonus)
2 Fighter Feats
Capabilities:
Explosive Strike
Lunge Strike (allows flight in a straight line if desired)
Impaling Strike
Burial Strike
Concussive Strike (should be able to destroy Force effects)

Level 10:
(5 Metastrikes)
(+5 enhancement, maximum bonus to hit and damage, all enhancements past this are for emulating magic weapon abilities or powering Metastrikes)
(ability to reduce up to +5 attack and damage for +5 Shield bonus to AC for 1 round, each round, or up to +15 damage with no hit bonus)
Capabilities:
Quicken Strike
Teleport Strike

Level 15:
(8 Metastrikes)
(+8 enhancement, or up to +24 damage with no hit bonus)
Possible defenses include Parry Magic, some kind of Iron Heart Surge effect, immunity to Death/Petrify/Polymorph/unwanted Teleport
Vorpal Strike

Level 20:
(10 Metastrikes)
(+10 enhancemen, or up to +30 damage with no hit bonus)
Yeah... I'm at a lost past Level 15 beyond just grabbing Tome feats. Other than Gate, can't think of what else a warrior might do just by enhancing a weapon.
Reduce all damage from attackers with no more than half CR compared to BAB down to -1 HP per successful physical attack.

This is all in addition to Full BAB, gaining up to 5 attacks (melee or ranged) with the enhancement bonus included or more if using TWF, if a player chooses not to use a Metastrike for that round.
Exchanging the enhancements for +3 damage per odd level with iterative attacks might be too much.


As for Tier ranking, basic Fighter is... what... TIer 5? 4?
I think these options will increase that by at least 1.

[deaddmwalking]

Those don't really look like benchmarks.

When you make a character at different levels, you'll have an attack progression. It includes some variability and questions about optimization, but let's talk about a Fighter for the sake of simplicity.

A 6th level Fighter has a BAB of +6/+1. Assume a +6 bonus for +12/+7; 1d8+9/19-20x2.
At 11th level the Fighter has a BAB of +11/+6/+1. Assume a +11 bonus for +22/+17/+12; 1d8+1d6+14; 18-20x2.

Let's say that we have an opponent with an average AC of 19 at 6th level, and an average AC of 22 at 6th level.

Please note - these numbers LOOK reasonable to me, but they are an ass-pull. The best way to get good numbers are make a variety of characters at these levels with the appropriate abilities and incorporate the abilities they have.

Okay - with these examples at 6th level we have to roll a 7 or better to hit on our primary attack, and a 12 or better to hit on our secondary attack. To hit on our primary attack we have 6 numbers that miss (1-6) and 14 that hit (7-20). Our odds of hitting are 14/20=70%. We can multiply average damage by .70 to get a DPS for expected damage from that. We do the same thing with our secondary attack; we need a 12 or better so we miss on a 1-11 and hit on a 12-20. 9/20=45%. The average damage is 13.5 (4.5+9). Average damage x percentage chance to hit = expected damage.

13.5 x .70 = 9.45 damage; 13.5 x .45 = 6.075. The average damage is ~16. But Wait - sometimes we score a critical hit. We already figured the base damage, so we only need to worry about the extra damage. If I roll a 19 or a 20 (10% of the time), I have to confirm the critical. If it's my first attack it is 70% likely I confirm; if it's my second attack it is 45% likely I confirm. I multiply average damage by each chance.

13.5 x .10 x .70 = .945. 13.5 x .10 x .45 = .60. Added to the original damage, I'm expecting to do about 17.5 damage per round.

Doing the same thing for 11th level. We need a 2 or better on our first attack (95%), a 5 or better on our second attack (80%), and a 10 or better on our third attack (55%). Our average damage on a hit is 4.5+3.5+14 for a total of 22.

First Attack + Second Attack + Third Attack = (22 x .95) + (22 x .80) + (22 x .55) = (20.9) + (17.6) + (12.1) = 50.6 average damage.
We have to include the critical damage with his the same numbers above multiplied by 15% (the odds of rolling a critical in the first place).
Extra Critical Damage = (20.9 * .15) + (17.6 * .15) + (12.1 * .15) = (3.14) + (2.64) + (1.82) = 7.60.

Our 11th level fight is doing an average of 58.2 damage per round.


Keeping in mind that these are theoretical numbers we see that damage didn't increase in a strictly linear fashion. If I did x damage at 6th level and 2x damage at 12th level, that'd be a linear progression. If you looked at the 6th level character, decided that 17.5 is close to 18, and you just decided that every round you do 18 points of damage that wouldn't be crazy... That'd be extrapolating the damage and just making it automatic. Players might not be happy because while applying the average every round mathematically works out to rolling each round, players LIKE to gamble, and think that they're going to get lucky and do more damage. Of course, sometimes they'll get unlucky and do NO damage. BUT if you assume that 3 damage/level is correct, that'd be 33 damage at 11th level. That is far short of what our DPS calculations show. That's 25 points of damage LOWER than expected. It's closer to 5 points of damage per level. So what if we say 5 points of damage is the magic number????

Well, at 6th level, 30 points of damage is almost 2x what we expect.

It sure looks like we'd have to scale damage in some way - it has to increase FASTER than a linear increase would indicate.

Let's assume that we were implementing my prior suggestion and you got a +5 with your iterative attack and could take a -1 penalty for +1d6 damage.

At 6th level you could have a single attack at +12 that deals an extra +5d6. We've already done most of the math - we have a 70% chance of hitting and our average damage is weapon (13.5) plus dice (17.5) for a total of 31. Average damage (31) x Percentage Chance to hit (.70) = 21.7. And since we don't multiply dice of damage, we can add in our critical calculation from before (~1) for a total of 22.7.

Compared to our example fighter, this character is doing really close to the same amount of damage!

Let's do the same for our 11th level fighter. We've got +10 to hit for our iterative attacks, and we're converting it all into a damage bonus. We hit on a 2+ (95%). Weapon Damage (22) + Damage Dice (35) = 57 x .95 = 54.15 average damage. Since we're only making one attack we only add the critical damage from the first attack (3.14) for a total of 57.29 average damage (let's call it 57).

Turns out that's ALSO very close to our 11th level Fighter example.


That's how you compare two things to determine whether they're similar or different. We're still comparing different things - the example character we're looking at is using a Standard Action instead of a FULL ATTACK. Since there are times you can't make a Full Attack, but you can move and attack, this character would do MORE damage than a standard character of his level, depending on how often full attacks are viable or not. Additionally, this character puts it all into a single attack, which potentially makes it less useful against multiple weak targets. An ability like CLEAVE would make it more valuable (but that'd mean rolling multiple attacks), and anything that allows you to apply it to more enemies would ALSO make it more valuable.

Of course, reducing the damage as you split it over more targets would make it less valuable; giving opponents a save for reduced damage would also make it less valuable.

So what you're trying to decide is if the ability is BETTER, EQUAL TO, or WORSE than another ability. Now what ability you benchmark against makes a difference. I used a Fighter; fighters suck. If you benchmark against a Fighter and decide that you need to be WORSE than a Fighter, your class is also going to suck. If you decide to make it BETTER there's definitely a point where it is too good. Instant-death effects are one of those things that are scary - what would happen if an NPC enemy was walking around Vorpally slicing off PCs heads? Would they feel it was 'fair' if everyone within melee combat had to make a Fortitude save every round or die instantly?

[JonSetanta]

On linear vs quadratic damage: so you're saying every 5 levels the output has to leap?

The problem with +5d6 every 5 levels with no increase between is the inability on those waiting periods to keep up with equal-CR challenges.

On Vorpal: the item ability does this on a Crit. No save.
If I put an encounter resource limit on it, would it be fair?

[Kaelik]

On linear vs quadratic damage: so you're saying every 5 levels the output has to leap?

The problem with +5d6 every 5 levels with no increase between is the inability on those waiting periods to keep up with equal-CR challenges.

On Vorpal: the item ability does this on a Crit. No save.
If I put an encounter resource limit on it, would it be fair?

He's saying you should figure out what you want the damage to do before you figure out what rules you want to use, instead of the other way around.

In particular by comparing to other classes PCs might use and/or monsters that might need to be killed by someone with these class levels, and how well that works.

[deaddmwalking]

Kaelik is exactly right.

Whatever formula you choose is unlikely to produce the outputs you want by random chance. Even if it did, you won't know that those are good outputs if you haven't determined in advance what those outputs should be.

In a sense your mechanics are the tools to achieve genre emulation. If people are supposed to kill dragons, attack bonuses and damage need to scale in a way to make it feasible. You have to have a sense of what those numbers need to be to see if you're on target. Comparing against existing classes that you know perform correctly is a relatively easy way to determine if you're on track - but relatively still means you need to do the work.

You need to establish where the ballpark is to know if you're in it.

[JonSetanta]

Well, I'm doing lots of Tome re-reading, as well as TGD community contributions, design articles, Tome of Battle maneuver comparison, and similar research.

[JonSetanta]

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread. ... each-level

"in the 1-5 level you generally want about 4-5 damage x Level. as that's about where you're 2-shotting the lower level ones and 3-4 shotting the stronger ones

beyond that at around 6-11 you want 6-7 per level. 70 damage per round at level 11 should net you in the solid 2-shot territory in the weaker ones while, again, 3-4 shotting the stronger ones.

Finally from 12-20 you want to start doing about 8-11 damage per level, per round. as monsters can have hundreds upon hundreds of HP if you want to 2-hit kill even the average monster and not drag the fight VS stronger ones for more then 5 rounds "

[JonSetanta]

I also found the expected damage output for Warblade at level 17.

http://therafimrpg.wikidot.com/strike-o ... ct-clarity

[deaddmwalking]

I don't think that link is what you think it is.

But the numbers you've listed (4-5 x level at level 1-5; 6-7 x level at level 6-11; and 8-11 x level 12-20) would be benchmarks. I'm not going to quibble about whether they're GOOD or not - using SOMETHING is a net improvement - but we do need to talk about some common pitfalls.

Let's say you look over this and you decide that a Paragon (or whatever name you decide on) get 3 damage x level at levels 1-5 from their ability, and that it increases to 6xlevel at level 6 (ie 15 at Level 5; 36 at level 6). It LOOKS like your damage is exactly in line with expectations. But that assumes that they deal damage EVERY ROUND. If you rely on an attack roll that has a 50% chance of hitting, you will only deal HALF the expected damage you calculated. You'd have to double the damage dealt in order to deal the right amount of average damage.

But if you hit at more than 50%, you need a smaller increase. If you hit at less than 50%, you need a larger increase. THERE WILL BE VARIABILITY HERE. Someone with a higher strength (improving chance to hit and total damage) will do better than someone with a lower strength. Some enemies have a very high AC and some enemies have a very low AC. If you have a 30% chance of hitting the hardest to hit enemies but a 70% chance of hitting the easiest to hit enemies, it might average to a 50% hit rate, but these calculations will be sensitive to these fluctuations.

An Colossal Animated Object (CR 10) has an AC of 11; a Fire Giant (CR 10) has an AC of 23. Against one of those enemies your class will do MORE than your 'benchmark' or LESS, depending on which AC you've balanced to.

[Foxwarrior]

AC numbers in 3.5 are usually set up that if you don't sacrifice any of your fight guy attack bonus, you quickly start to approach 95% hit chance (with crits bringing expected damage/attack to a bit over 100% potentially). What I'd be more worried about is writing a metastrike that accidentally dramatically changes the expected damage, or leaving open a hook for a feat or magic item to buff the character too much, if you set your baseline damage values to be equal to your full target values.

[JonSetanta]

As for "best AC" in higher levels, there's...

BALOR
Large Outsider (Chaotic, Extraplanar, Evil)
Hit Dice: 20d8+200 (290 hp)
Initiative: +11
Speed: 40 ft. (8 squares), fly 90 ft. (good)
Armor Class: 35 (–1 size, +7 Dex, +19 natural), touch 16, flat-footed 28


PIT FIEND
Large Outsider (Evil, Extraplanar, Lawful)
Hit Dice: 18d8+144 (225 hp)
Initiative: +12
Speed: 40 ft. (8 squares), fly 60 ft. (average)
Armor Class: 40 (–1 size, +8 Dex, +23 natural) touch 17, flat-footed 32


TARRASQUE
Colossal Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 48d10+594 (858 hp)
Initiative: +7 Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares)
Armor Class: 35 (–8 size, +3 Dex, +30 natural), touch 5, flat-footed 32



For low levels there is of course... The Crab. It's an outlier, and probably a glitch, but the AC is ridiculous.


Providing a Metastrike that renders a single hit as a Touch Attack is possible.
I had also planned early on to provide AoEs that use Reflex saves, bypassing AC entirely.
Both would have to be restricted to medium to higher levels of the class.

[Foxwarrior]

+20 from BAB, +10 from Strength, +5 from magic weapon, voila you're hitting the Balor and Tarrasque on a 1.

[Kaelik]

+20 from BAB, +10 from Strength, +5 from magic weapon, voila you're hitting the Balor and Tarrasque on a 1.

Fox come on, we both know you are better than this. You are hitting that balor and tarrasque on a 2! You just said 95% hit rate earlier in the thread!

[Foxwarrior]

Oh no, I'm so sorry! I guess I've forgotten how to do math

[JonSetanta]

I don't see anything wrong with that.
Monsters will be hitting on almost every attack too, due to massive stats.

Actually, with further thought, it's just an arms race of Displacement miss chance vs. whether or not the attacker has Truesight.

So, it always ends up 50/50, unless you have the right spell to guarantee 95% hit chance.

[deaddmwalking]

You're getting closer!

Debuffs matter a lot. If you blind your opponent, they're not going to be hitting you with 95% accuracy. If you stun your opponent, they're not going to hit you at all.

How much damage is a 1 round stun worth? Or put another way, if you were 100% certain that you would deal x damage or stun your opponent for one round (but not both), how big would x have to be before you might choose the damage option. It's okay to answer as a percentage of the opponent's hit points rather than a fixed number.