Evocation, Fighters, Rogues, Oh My

[JonSetanta]

Ah, the glory days of D&D, when everyone had their own XP chart, monsters didn't have stats, and, well, non-casters and Evokers could do some serious damage.

What are your thoughts on this?

Have things improved since AD&D, which was seemingly the end of such things (except Tome, and item abuse/use), or have they become worse?

[Schleiermacher]

Depends on your level of optimization and access to sourcebooks, as with everything else relating to Wizards - with enough metamagic abuse and the right spells to use it on they quite literally blow everyone else away, even when limiting themselves to direct damage.

Then again if we're only concerning ourselves with damage, uberchargers and rogues can put up quite respectable numbers as well -not mathematically equal but more than good enough to crush relevant opposition, which is basically equality. It's not a kind of equality which is good for the game though.

[CapnTthePirateG]

No.

4e and 5e are going the the direction of "more hp, less damage" so that you can have the authentic experience of wasting an hour fighting some melee bruiser. This in turn leads to crowd control being the way to go and the discovery that all you need is to stab people with a toothpick while locking them down for all time.

This is also the same experience as playing an unoptimized game of 3e, and seems to be the core combat vision of WotC D&D.

[PhoneLobster]

This poll is deeply flawed in wording and concept.

[Voss]

Obviously worse, which makes a poll rather silly. Ogres went from
2nd: 19 hit points (average) to
3rd: 29 to
4th: 111 and then
5th: 'back down' to 59

meanwhile, damage from longswords stayed constant (unless you used the d12 vs large in 2nd), as did 5th level fireballs at 5d6.

Now in third, there were at least several options to juggle damage output.

The big difference is despite their ridiculous number of faults, AD&D and other early D&D editions could handle assorted ranges of asymmetric fights. 3rd and beyond largely fall apart if it isn't a small party vs a roughly equal number of monsters, and this gets wildly worse in 4th and 5th, were a dozen mooks can swing into TPK territory ridiculously fast, even at higher levels.


However... I know this spawned off of my comments to you in the other thread, but this is pretty much the worst way to go about discussing it. Instead of a random topic presented with no explanation and suddenly referred to as 'a problem,' you've presented a completely non-controversial question with an obvious answer : Yes. You've framed it with no room or need for discussion.

[erik]

This poll is deeply flawed in wording and concept.

That's like his signature move. It wouldn't be a Setanta thread without those elements.

[JonSetanta]

This poll is deeply flawed in wording and concept.

Could you be more specific sugartits?

[JonSetanta]

You've framed it with no room or need for discussion.

But we're discussing it anyway so I don't see the problem.

[JonSetanta]

Obviously worse, which makes a poll rather silly. Ogres went from
2nd: 19 hit points (average) to
3rd: 29 to
4th: 111 and then
5th: 'back down' to 59

meanwhile, damage from longswords stayed constant (unless you used the d12 vs large in 2nd), as did 5th level fireballs at 5d6.

So where do we go from there?

In Tome, at least 3.5e, should monster HP be adjusted, or weapon and spell damage boosted?

[souran]

Defeating monsters by hit points needs to be both effective and fun. It has, however, been a cluster in every edition.

Those Ogres with 19 hit points are bullshit in 2E because if you fighter types don't have an 18 strength then they don't fucking exist assuming you have more than an 18/50 strength and weapon specialization you will be averaging 11 damage with 3 attacks every 2 rounds with well above a 50% chance to hit the ogre. An ogre dies every 2 attacks.

That is at 1st level, before we add in bless/chant/prayer/haste/strength and a decent magic weapon. In 1E and 2E the monsters didn't have enough hit points to survive standing next to the parties warriors for a whole round.

So they gave the monsters more hit points. To many hit points, and getting rid of the "large damage" effect also made characters who wield good weapons (Swords/Axes) do less damage to big nasties while everybody else got a boost.

While 2E wizards might have been the path to supposed real ultimate power the 2E path to "have the most fun at the table each time we sit down" seemed to always be to roll up the fighter/ranger/paladin with the best combat stats. In 2E it was almost always better to cast your buffs on that guy and then let him handle everything.

There are, of course, two ways of looking at that. If every encounter is solved by the magic-user casting haste and the fighter then attacking a shitload of times till everything is dead who really "won" the encounter? The wizard probably contributed the most, but the fighter probably had the most fun actually removing baddies from the table.

A typical D&D fight should last 4-6 rounds and a tough fight should last probably double that. If the game is going to have random encounters those need to last 2-3 rounds. Hit points need to be set up with that in mind.

[Kaelik]

A typical D&D fight should last 4-6 rounds and a tough fight should last probably double that. If the game is going to have random encounters those need to last 2-3 rounds. Hit points need to be set up with that in mind.

This is basically nonsense. If you were spending that many rounds actually stabbing something over and over, that is just way to many rounds, by a lot.

On the other hand, there is no reason a teleport stealth illusion devil shouldn't be fucking with the party for way the fuck longer by like a billion rounds, so many rounds that you don't track it in rounds at all.

Whether you meant for both those things to be true and were trying to average them, or if you just have dumb ideas about how fights should go, in either case an "average" of X rounds is worthless information.

[JonSetanta]

Those Ogres with 19 hit points are bullshit in 2E because if you fighter types don't have an 18 strength then they don't fucking exist assuming you have more than an 18/50 strength and weapon specialization you will be averaging 11 damage with 3 attacks every 2 rounds with well above a 50% chance to hit the ogre. An ogre dies every 2 attacks.

My DM told the Fighter players (2-3 usually in a group of 11-12) that "if you're a Fighter with 18 STR just bump it up to 18/00".
I always thought percentile strength was ridiculous but whatever.

I agree with you that combat should be calculated for expected number of rounds before defeat on the side of the monster, barring exceptional cases such as Kaelik's deviltrolling.

So I'll restate "Assuming the monster encounter has no spells..."

[PhoneLobster]

Could you be more specific sugartits?

More specifically YOU could be more fucking specific you ass.

Your "question" itself is worded such that it has no relevance to change between editions and just basically reads "Direct hit point damage. Better or worse [than... other things... in... games...]?"
Which is entirely different to what you are trying to "ask" once you attempt to elaborate on your point, which is EITHER "hit point damage, has it gotten worse over time?" OR "hit point damage HAS gotten worse over time, Is that good or bad?".

But you didn't even get that bit right as the way you worded it is more about damage being better or worse at the damage end rather than damage remaining constant while HP inflation occurred thus making damage relatively worse as HP inflated, which is you know, pretty much what happened.

The problem is your entire fucking stupid thing, after multiple layers of generous accounting for your inability to use fucking words amounts to "Hit Point Damage got relatively worse. It is probably bad. But is it?" Its a dumb fucking question presented in a dumb fucking way.

[JonSetanta]

I was in a rush to get out the door to the LGS. So sue me.

Now I can't edit the poll, and I'm not making another thread about it, so if you want a different poll, you'll have to make one yourself... or... something.

[Voss]

Those Ogres with 19 hit points are bullshit in 2E because if you fighter types don't have an 18 strength then they don't fucking exist assuming you have more than an 18/50 strength and weapon specialization you will be averaging 11 damage with 3 attacks every 2 rounds with well above a 50% chance to hit the ogre. An ogre dies every 2 attacks.

Ok.... assuming your math is at all accurate (and your '18/50 or does not exist' is not)... why is a fighter soloing an Ogre in two rounds a bad thing? (And it is two rounds, given that 3/2 attacks is a single attack on round 1 and 2 attacks on round 2)

One big thing that isn't present in your summary is that an encounter won't be (unlike some 3rd, 4th or 5th assumptions) a single ogre. These are group critters that can show up in groups of 2-20, or as brutes for orcs or a minion for a wizard or whatever.

I don't have any idea where your 2-3 or 4-6 or 8-12 rounds comes from.
8-12 rounds on a single combat is a 4e style chore most of the time.
In most pre-4th editions of D&D, 6+ rounds is a sign the DM over did it, or a sign the party is dangerously incompetent. (4th and 5th, it's just confirmation that Mearls and Co. are bad at math).

So they gave the monsters more hit points. To many hit points, and getting rid of the "large damage" effect also made characters who wield good weapons (Swords/Axes) do less damage to big nasties while everybody else got a boost.

Most of this comes directly from adding Con mods to everything, and just blindly assuming it won't affect how the game behaves- ogres, giants and whole swathes of critters kept the same hit dice from 2nd to 3rd, but got anywhere from 10-60 hit points on top of what they had. Given that the designers' expectation was that characters wouldn't really be hitting harder and would simply be doing the same old Fighter-Rogue-Cleric-Mage composition, with cleric as healbot, this is pretty terrible design.

On the other hand, 5e doubles down with more hit dice, con mods, and weird-ass damage bonuses all over the place, and specifically lacks most of the 3e ways of making competent characters. So monsters are both more of a bullet sponge and inexplicably hit harder... and weren't assigned CR in any sort of sane way. Ogres are aimed at level 2 characters, with nearly 60 hp and hitting for about 13 per hit.

2nd edition ogres are often a 2nd-4th level foe
Whereas 4e are aimed at 8th (which is damned late to be caring about ogres at all)
and 3e Ogres are aimed at 3rd, which is pretty key for the party to have that 2nd spell level.

[JonSetanta]

On the other hand, 5e doubles down with more hit dice, con mods, and weird-ass damage bonuses all over the place, and specifically lacks most of the 3e ways of making competent characters. So monsters are both more of a bullet sponge and inexplicably hit harder... and weren't assigned CR in any sort of sane way. Ogres are aimed at level 2 characters, with nearly 60 hp and hitting for about 13 per hit.

Whoever is writing those encounter pages in the DM packets seems to favor black puddings in the Underdark.

I swear to the fucking gods if I had to fight one more black pudding in a cramped dungeon....

Something like 85 HP, some immunities, splits into half when hit by a slashing weapon, and each part deals (negligible amount) bludgeoning damage + 4d8 Acid, it was just unfair to noncasters.
Every encounter with one ended in a near-TPK except for the PCs that fucking fled.

So there's that.

[souran]

Ok.... assuming your math is at all accurate (and your '18/50 or does not exist' is not)... why is a fighter soloing an Ogre in two rounds a bad thing? (And it is two rounds, given that 3/2 attacks is a single attack on round 1 and 2 attacks on round 2)

Its bad because that is a first level fighter with no buffs. The ogre is a boss monster for a level 1 party. That monster needs to last long enough for everybody in the party to get to do "their thing" AND to get to do his own thing to be remotely satisfying.

Now, I do agree that 2E is probably a little closer to the sweetspot with hit points than say 3E (and a LOT closer than 4E), but I have had to do max hp for all monsters since I was in the 5th fucking grade to make monsters last long enough to be memorable as more than fucking speed bumps.

One big thing that isn't present in your summary is that an encounter won't be (unlike some 3rd, 4th or 5th assumptions) a single ogre. These are group critters that can show up in groups of 2-20, or as brutes for orcs or a minion for a wizard or whatever.

2-20 ogres is the grouping is indeed what it says is the typical group for ogres in the 2E monster manual. 2E sucks because it doesn't tell you anything about when their are 2 and when there are 20 but whatever. When there are going to be 2-5 ogres the problem is that Greg's fighter kills one every 2 attacks (and if he gets hasted 6/2 rounds which the game never tells you if that turns out to be 3 a round or 2 one round and 4 the second because 1e/2e haste says its DOUBLES the number of attacks) while everybody else has to swing 4-5 times (assume a 1d6 weapon with a +1 strength damage bonus is not shabby for a 2E non-fighter [4.5 average damage]) to drag down an ogre. Further, all those other people are likely to miss a whole lot while fighting that ogre too.

By the time the DM is throwing groups of 20 ogres at you the fighter player shouldn't give a shit because he gets an attack against each one of them that is foolish enough to stand next to him anyway.

I don't have any idea where your 2-3 or 4-6 or 8-12 rounds comes from.
8-12 rounds on a single combat is a 4e style chore most of the time.
In most pre-4th editions of D&D, 6+ rounds is a sign the DM over did it, or a sign the party is dangerously incompetent. (4th and 5th, it's just confirmation that Mearls and Co. are bad at math).

If you are going to have random encounters they need to be fast enough that you can have several a night. Really if you are going to have random encounters they need to be resolvable at a nearly video game rate. A random encounter should play at the table similar to how long it takes to resolve random encounters in the pre-active battle Final Fantasy games. However, if they are resolved in 1 turn or less they tend to feel like a waste of every bodies time. That's why I say 2-3 rounds, 10 minutes of real time.

A set piece encounter needs to last long enough for the monsters to get to do their thing. Obviously, if the players have worked the situation to their advantage it should be different, but most of the time a planned encounter with a monster needs to last long enough for the monster to do whatever it does that justifies its screen time. Nobody would remember Medusa if her contribution to the legend of Perseus was that he ganked her before she could look at him. Medusa is also not the "boss monster" of that legend. If you are going to have a set piece encounter against a monster that monster needs to be durable enough to last until it gets to do its special thing. Because some monsters can take up to 3 rounds to really get going the fight should last at least 4. Similarly, if the players have not killed the monster by the second or third time it uses its big power they should probably either be running or dead. Additionally, this amount of time should be enough for at least 1 if not more of the players to pull their own special super trick. Really a set piece fight should be resolvable in between 15-45 minutes table time, depending on complexity.


An encounter that is the climax of a story needs to allow each of the players to do their special thing AND let the villain(s) do his special thing. Looking again, I don't necessarily think that 8-12 is accurate. I would say more like maybe 5-10 depending on the fight complexity. Players are often even more disgruntled about not getting to contribute to climatic encounters than they are at getting killed in encounters. Players who get left out of the boss fight often feel like their character sucks and that they don't enjoy role playing. This fight should last at least 20 minutes real time. Any fight that lasts over an hour will be a drag so it needs to be less than that. So 20-60 minutes table time.

Most of this comes directly from adding Con mods to everything, and just blindly assuming it won't affect how the game behaves- ogres, giants and whole swathes of critters kept the same hit dice from 2nd to 3rd, but got anywhere from 10-60 hit points on top of what they had. Given that the designers' expectation was that characters wouldn't really be hitting harder and would simply be doing the same old Fighter-Rogue-Cleric-Mage composition, with cleric as healbot, this is pretty terrible design.

I agree that most things in 3E have to many hitpoints. I think that most things in 2E have to few hitpoints. This is not an uncommon sentiment. Its part of the reason why there was some hp inflation in the first place. I also concur that the designers didn't think through the effects of a lot of 2e->3e changes. They clearly didn't always talk to each other enough. Clerics were made purposefully OP to make them attractive, at the same time they changed a lot of other system elements that made it so that self buffing was as good or better than tossing all the buffs on the fighter. The design needed to re-examine their central assumptions after seeing what was created to see if they still held.

On the other hand, 5e doubles down with more hit dice, con mods, and weird-ass damage bonuses all over the place, and specifically lacks most of the 3e ways of making competent characters. So monsters are both more of a bullet sponge and inexplicably hit harder... and weren't assigned CR in any sort of sane way. Ogres are aimed at level 2 characters, with nearly 60 hp and hitting for about 13 per hit.

What 5E really doubles down on is making changes by "feel" and then never doing any sort of performance testing to verify it actually does what it says it does. Everything has too many hit points, because nobody ever determined or thought it was important to know what the expected damage output of characters of different classes was at different levels. If you actually start from that knowledge and build your monsters/encounters from their then you can figure out what kind of hit points make sense.

But we can't possibly do that because 4E did that. There are fucking tables in the DMG in 4E that tell you this is how many hit points things should have, how much damage we expect them to do at each level.

However, among the many 4E miscalculations was that fights should last long enough for each player to use 1 daily power, 1 utility power, ALL their encounter powers, and then use their at wells 4-6 times. This means that even minor fights were expected to last 10 or more rounds. This is even worse when the table time to get through 10 rounds is probably at least an hour and could easily be 2.

You can't leave players waiting a long time for their next turn. If each player turn takes 5 minutes to get through then yes combat needs to take like 2 passes for an important fight and 3-4 for a boss fight. However, that means that monsters have to be designed to be interesting knowing they will do 1 thing then die immediately.[/i]

[JonSetanta]

I agree that most things in 3E have to many hitpoints. I think that most things in 2E have to few hitpoints. This is not an uncommon sentiment. Its part of the reason why there was some hp inflation in the first place. I also concur that the designers didn't think through the effects of a lot of 2e->3e changes. They clearly didn't always talk to each other enough. Clerics were made purposefully OP to make them attractive, at the same time they changed a lot of other system elements that made it so that self buffing was as good or better than tossing all the buffs on the fighter. The design needed to re-examine their central assumptions after seeing what was created to see if they still held.

My Elf Fighter/Mage in 2e had 1 HP since you divide your HP by the number of classes you have in addition to rolling for it. It was a joke session, and he died to a rat bite, but still... just an example of the extremes the edition went to with HP range.

[Voss]

A set piece encounter needs to last long enough for the monsters to get to do their thing. Obviously, if the players have worked the situation to their advantage it should be different, but most of the time a planned encounter with a monster needs to last long enough for the monster to do whatever it does that justifies its screen time. Nobody would remember Medusa if her contribution to the legend of Perseus was that he ganked her before she could look at him. Medusa is also not the "boss monster" of that legend. If you are going to have a set piece encounter against a monster that monster needs to be durable enough to last until it gets to do its special thing. Because some monsters can take up to 3 rounds to really get going the fight should last at least 4. Similarly, if the players have not killed the monster by the second or third time it uses its big power they should probably either be running or dead. Additionally, this amount of time should be enough for at least 1 if not more of the players to pull their own special super trick. Really a set piece fight should be resolvable in between 15-45 minutes table time, depending on complexity.

Your numbers are gibberish to me. I can't think of any monsters that need 3 rounds to 'set up,' and 30-45 minute fights are a 4e failure, not a normal experience. (or again, utterly incompetent parties that are allowed to hem and haw and stroke their dicks for 10 minutes between combat rounds) The only thing I can think of that takes that long pre-4e is a huge battle with dozens of critters and numerous npc allies for the players. And while those can be great for a climax of a campaign, they don't need to appear all that often.

I'm also just confused by the contradiction between min 4 rounds and not allowing bosses to use their 'trick' more than twice. If you force that minimum, they absolutely are going to do that- even that third time. Probably even with the bullshit recharge mechanics of 4e.

[Josh_Kablack]

The poll and numbers are nonsense to me, but the basic issues involved here are not hard:

1. If your RPG has HP damage and also also has other win conditions for combat (save or dies, morale, etc) - then HP damage needs to be the optimum path to victory some of the time but not all of the time.
2. Whether that has been true and just how big that "some" in "some of the time" slice of encounters has been has varied drastically between editions of D&D. (And even within a single edition depending on material allowed and degree of optimization )
3. On a related issue, fights need to last long enough to provide players with feelings of difficulty and accomplishment, but not so long as to feel grindy.

[Lokey]

There are many ways to DnD, so there's many answers to the question.

For 3.x example, if players book dive and the dm mostly uses stock everything, then hp is optimal for murdering things (almost everything is toast when it's out of hp) for chargers and arcanes (meta-magic orb spells to ludicrous). Doesn't come online at level 1, but you're not worse off than other level Xs anyway until you can one shot anything likely to be thrown at you.

[hyzmarca]

A set piece encounter needs to last long enough for the monsters to get to do their thing. Obviously, if the players have worked the situation to their advantage it should be different, but most of the time a planned encounter with a monster needs to last long enough for the monster to do whatever it does that justifies its screen time. Nobody would remember Medusa if her contribution to the legend of Perseus was that he ganked her before she could look at him.

But, Preseus did gank her before she could look at him.

He didn't roll well on his save vs petrify and tough it out. He hid behind a pillar and cut her head as she walked by.

[angelfromanotherpin]

He didn't roll well on his save vs petrify and tough it out. He hid behind a pillar and cut her head as she walked by.

That's the tense action version from Clash of the Titans. In the actual myth, Perseus CDGs Medusa while she's asleep, and he's invisible.

[Omegonthesane]

He didn't roll well on his save vs petrify and tough it out. He hid behind a pillar and cut her head as she walked by.

That's the tense action version from Clash of the Titans. In the actual myth, Perseus CDGs Medusa while she's asleep, and he's invisible.

I thought he used a mirror shield to avoid directly looking at her due to her death-on-sight effect being in full effect no matter what state she was in.

I mean, Nethack referenced it, it must be true...

[angelfromanotherpin]

I thought he used a mirror shield to avoid directly looking at her due to her death-on-sight effect being in full effect no matter what state she was in.

He also did that. Danaë didn't raise no gamblers.