4E Math Fix - Masterwork Gear - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

4E Math Fix - Masterwork Gear

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
EmpactWB
May 01, 2011 2:52:02 Okay, so those familiar with the Fourth Edition math will be entirely unsurprised when I say that it is a tad messed up (even if they happen to disagree). This is acknowledged by the developers and simple to prove.

The problem is scaling. Monster attack and defenses increase 1 per level, a total of +29 from 1 to 30. PC attacks increase by 1/2 level, plus enhancement bonuses and ability score increases, for a total of +25 from the standard leveling process. AC increases by 27 with heavy armor or light armor if you are an Int/Dex based class (or can afford to bump one of them consistently), but by only 24 with light armor and a lack of focus (sometimes due to other stats being required by certain classes). Your non-AC defenses (NADs) increase by 25 for your best, and by 22 for your worst. The gap here is obvious.

Well, I have a solution. To be fair, Wizards gave me this solution, they just didn't implement it widely enough in the system. The reason that AC increases by up to 27 when attacks and NADs increase only by up to 25 is because of Masterwork armors. Masterwork light and heavy armors still exist, and in the original PH added +1/+3 AC per tier once you hit paragon (i.e., paragon got +1/+3, epic got +2/+6, on top of the existing armor bonus). Note how this accounts for the ability score increases that the Heavy Armor users don't get. So, we have our solution: masterwork equipment.

The first problem is on the armors themselves: the increase falls short by two at the end of your career. To make it work for AC, the bonus has to increase by +2/+4 per tier (i.e., increase them both by one per tier). That not only gives you the overall bonus you need, it gives you slightly more levels where you are ahead of the NPC curve than behind.

Next up, the Adventurer's Vault introduced Armor Bonuses to NADs. So here we find ourselves invited in paragon to tack on a +2 per tier masterwork bonus to NADs, which shores them up entirely. That +4 by Epic gives you the bonus you need to be fully competitive with at-level enemies.

Finally, masterwork weapons. At paragon and epic, a weapon's proficiency bonus should increase by +2 per tier. This makes using weapons you are proficient in progressively more rewarding than using non-proficient weapons, knocking the crazy high-damage superior weapons (cough Execution Axe cough) further down the list of "best weapons" if you don't take the feat.

So, this introduces a slight new problem: there were new masterwork armors made available in the AV. Well, any of the paragon light armors get +1 AC and +2 NADs, epic get +2 AC and +4 NADs, while paragon and epic heavy armors get +4 AC/+2 NADs and +8 AC/+4 NADs, respectively, and keep all of their other nifty bonuses. Easy peasy. Does this make them overpowered? No, it makes them finally balanced. You might want to kill or nerf the various Expertise and Epic Defense feats after this, though, as they become not only unbalanced but unnecessary.

Now, at this point I feel I should plug someone else's thread, who did something entirely unlike this but with the same goal: mplindustries' Heroes Don't Need Special Gear to Be Heroes. One of his other goals was to remove magic item dependency, which I don't personally have any problem with. But if you're one of those who do, by all means check out his thread. It's pure brilliance and a completely elegant solution to both problems.

EDIT: Heh, totally forgot the other minor fix. At 4th, 8th, 14th, 18th, 24th, and 28th levels, instead of increasing two attribute scores by 1, increase three attribute skills by 1. This let's you increase all three NADs, or deliberately sacrifice one NAD in order to improve something else. Lessens the NAD impact of single-defense primary attributes, and eliminates NAD problems with dual-defense primaries. I had thought about simply increasing all stats at all increase levels, but that gets stupid-good quickly, imo.
#2
the_yakk
May 05, 2011 12:44:20 Light armor AC from level 1 to 30:
+4 stat (+5 if demigod or other similar epic destiny), +15 level, +6 enhancement, +2 masterwork, +0-1 feat
= +27-29

Heavy armor AC from level 1 to 30:
+15 level +6 enhancement +6 masterwork +0-1 feat +0-1 paragon path boost
= +27-29

On top of this, you can pull off some situational boosts and make them pretty universal (defensive curse, defensive advantage, concealment, defensive two-weapon defence rhythm blade, etc) from various feats and items.

In short: AC does fall a bit behind if you don't work on it (by 2 points), but keeps up if you work on it.

NADs:
+4/4/1 stat (+5/5/1 if demigod esque), +15 level, +6 enhancement, +0-4 feat, +0-4 non-feat bonus feat
= +25/25/22 to +34/34/30

Here the variation is much larger. You can see that you can "break" your non-AC defences easier than your AC -- most of the situational modifiers to AC apply to NADs, and you can pick up others (ie, thunder NAD boosts instead of defensive advantage).

Attacks:
+4(5) stat, +15 level, +6 enhancement, +0-3 feat
= +25-29

The easy choice is the expertise feats.

To hit "full patch" of +29 to everything (non-situation), you need to spend by end-epic:
1 expertise feat
1 armor specialization feat (or 1 armor upgrade feat/defensive fighting feat)
epic destiny that boosts your AC-stat if light armor
paragon path/epic destiny that boosts your AC if heavy armor (or an extra feat)
-- or a situational defence bonus, plus a way to enforce that situation
3-4 feats spent on boosting your non-AC defences.

At epic, you have 18 feats to spend. 5-6 of them end up being spent on shoring up boring mechanical properties.

The "new expertise" feats are better, in that they at least has some interesting flavour and are not just mechanically powerful feats.

Note that enhancing masterwork makes characters even more dependent on gear, especially heavy armor characters.

#3
EmpactWB
May 05, 2011 13:05:34 My personal opinion (and it is only that) is that the opportunity cost for taking a feat should put you ahead of the curve, not keep you on it. I believe the same of PP and ED features. Thus, by "fixing" the base math, someone who chooses to focus on flavorful but suboptimal options doesn't suffer a decrease in efficacy, while those who choose to moderately optimize actually experience an increase in efficacy. High-optimization would then have a few feats freed up (since Expertise and Epic Defenses are recommended to be cut altogether) without any loss in efficacy.

I'm okay with characters being fairly gear-dependent. The best real-world sniper still needs a gun, after all. I did forget to add a +2/+4 bonus to implements though. Consider that added in. ;)
#4
the_yakk
May 05, 2011 14:43:57 Except you have 18 feats? Someone who (say) spends 18 feats on boosting accuracy ends up with a broken amount of accuracy, in theory, if each one is significantly large, and similarly for defences.

So if you want to ignore their impact, you need to seriously bound their impact so it isn't out of line.

In some senses, it doesn't matter what the "baseline" is if you simply move it. If level 30 monsters are 3 points ahead of the attacks/defences compared to level 1 monsters, or if they aren't 3 points ahead -- that matter little to the relative experience of PCs, because DMs will notice this as you gain levels and stop using level+3 encounters against your party.

On the other hand, if you can reach 3 points above the level 30 monster in all your defences, that just makes the new level 30 baseline "level 33" for people who work at it, and people who pick flavourful feats are level 30 (instead of level 30/27 under the current system).

What is worse about masterwork systems is that, sure, your characters are equipement dependent -- but rather that they grow increasingly equipment dependent at high levels. A level 1 axe fighter stripped of her armor and weapons loses ~3 points of accuracy, ~6 points of AC and ~4 points of damage.

A level 30 character already loses ~11 points of accuracy, ~15 points of AC, ~6 points off each other defence, and ~16-30+ points of damage. Of these, the only thing that "scales linearly" (roughly) with level is damage.

A level 1 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 1 fighter goes from 1/3 chance to hit to 2/3 chance to hit. The fighter goes from 2/3 chance to hit to 1/2 chance to hit. The fighter goes from dealing 1/3 of the monster's HP in a blow to 1/4 of the monster's HP in a blow.

A level 30 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 30 goes from a 1/4! chance to hit to a 100% chance to hit. The fighter goes from a 2/3 chance to hit to a 1/10 chance to hit. Damage falls off about as much as a level 1 characters does, maybe a bit more.

With masterwork applied to everything else, the effect gets even worse.

---

Despite this, I've tried something similar. What I did was roll in "item bonuses" to your non-primary items.

Head: +1 item bonus to will per tier
Belt: +1 item bonus to fortitude per tier
Feet: +1 item bonus to reflex per tier
Bracers/Shields: +1 item bonus to damage rolls per tier
Gloves: +1 item bonus to attack rolls per tier

Items that already grant an item bonus to the above (except damage) grant (tier + 1) item bonus at least. Ie, a paragon tier belt that grants a +2 item bonus to saves now grants a +3 item bonus to saves.

Damage item bonuses that are currently granted are floored at (tier*2) if no enhancement on the item, or (enhancement) if the item has an enhancement bonus. So armbands of power remain unchanged, while a sword that grants a +3 item bonus fire damage boost is now a +6 item bonus fire damage boost. Radiant Weapon remains unchanged.

Expertise feats are reduced to a +1 bonus to attacks. Epic Will/Fort/Reflex is eliminated. I'd leave in the armor specialization feats, and improved defences/superior will/fort/reflex. Possibly I'd boost Scale Armor Spec and Plate Armor Spec to a +2 feat bonus.

With the above we get:
ATK: +15 + 4 + 6 + 3 = +28 over 29 levels (+29 with Expertise or Demigod, +30 with both)
LAC: +15 + 4 + 6 + 2 = +27 over 29 levels (+28 with demigod or spec feat, +29 with both)
HAC: +15 + 6 + 6 = +27 over 29 levels (+29 with spec feat)
NAD: +15 + (4/4/1) + 6 + 3 = +28/28/25 over 29 levels, +31/31/28 with Improved Defences, +32/32/29 with Superior Fort/Reflex/Will.

The expected investment now becomes 1 expertise feat, 1 armor feat, and 1 non-AC defences feat, and even if you didn't get it you'd be not that badly off.

The downside to this is similar to the masterwork downside: with items removed, epic characters are reduced to barely stronger than paragon-tier characters.

I'd be even happier if I managed to eliminate all "static" feat bonuses, and made all situational bonuses granted by feats "feat bonuses" to prevent possibly abusive situational bonus stacking.
#5
EmpactWB
May 06, 2011 1:16:07
Except you have 18 feats? Someone who (say) spends 18 feats on boosting accuracy ends up with a broken amount of accuracy, in theory, if each one is significantly large, and similarly for defences.

So if you want to ignore their impact, you need to seriously bound their impact so it isn't out of line.

Most accuracy boosting feats do not stack anyway, since they provide feat bonuses. Others are situational, and the very few that are neither typed nor situation are recommended to be removed.

In some senses, it doesn't matter what the "baseline" is if you simply move it. If level 30 monsters are 3 points ahead of the attacks/defences compared to level 1 monsters, or if they aren't 3 points ahead -- that matter little to the relative experience of PCs, because DMs will notice this as you gain levels and stop using level+3 encounters against your party.

On the other hand, if you can reach 3 points above the level 30 monster in all your defences, that just makes the new level 30 baseline "level 33" for people who work at it, and people who pick flavourful feats are level 30 (instead of level 30/27 under the current system).

Except that in terms of damage, HP, and XP, they are not actually of that level, so you get lesser rewards for an encounter that is more challenging than the level suggests. Level 30 creatures who have the defenses of level 33 creatures relative to the PCs are a system error when both have followed the basic advancement rules set forth.

What is worse about masterwork systems is that, sure, your characters are equipement dependent -- but rather that they grow increasingly equipment dependent at high levels. A level 1 axe fighter stripped of her armor and weapons loses ~3 points of accuracy, ~6 points of AC and ~4 points of damage.

A level 30 character already loses ~11 points of accuracy, ~15 points of AC, ~6 points off each other defence, and ~16-30+ points of damage. Of these, the only thing that "scales linearly" (roughly) with level is damage.

A level 1 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 1 fighter goes from 1/3 chance to hit to 2/3 chance to hit. The fighter goes from 2/3 chance to hit to 1/2 chance to hit. The fighter goes from dealing 1/3 of the monster's HP in a blow to 1/4 of the monster's HP in a blow.

A level 30 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 30 goes from a 1/4! chance to hit to a 100% chance to hit. The fighter goes from a 2/3 chance to hit to a 1/10 chance to hit. Damage falls off about as much as a level 1 characters does, maybe a bit more.

Actually, this is a bad example. We've both established that, with arms and armor, a level 30 monster tends to have a greater chance to hit a level 30 character than a level 1 monster has of hitting a level 1 character. The numbers you give assume a significant reversal of this (the 30th level monster having a 25% chance to hit versus the level 1 monster's 35%).

A level 1 monster will have either a +4, +6, or +8 vs AC and a +2, +4, +5, or +6 vs Reflex. Let's give our hypothetical level 1 Fighter Scale Armor and a light shied for an AC of 18, and a Dex of 14 for a Reflex of 13. The L1M has between 35-55% chance to hit AC, or 50-65% of hitting Reflex. Removing the equipment makes that 65-85% vs AC, and 55-70% vs AC.

The level 30 monster has +33, +35, or +37 vs AC, but the Fighter's AC is only 45. That means 55-75% chance vs AC from the start, already worse than on-level enemies started out. Unequipped, the fighter's AC is 28-31, depending on how Dex was pumped. That's a 95% chance for any on-level enemy to hit. That's 95% chance for Soldier or Artillery role enemies six levels lower than the character to hit.

And that's the system as it stands. Increasing the benefit of equipment does not increase the threat of doing without it: you are completely screwed as is. That's why I recommend mplindustries' thread if you want to do away with item dependency.

With masterwork applied to everything else, the effect gets even worse.

No, it doesn't. The armed and armored characters now fit the expected baseline with their gear before adding in feats. They drop *at worst* to the same plateaus the default system leaves you at without gear.

Despite this, I've tried something similar. What I did was roll in "item bonuses" to your non-primary items.

Head: +1 item bonus to will per tier
Belt: +1 item bonus to fortitude per tier
Feet: +1 item bonus to reflex per tier
Bracers/Shields: +1 item bonus to damage rolls per tier
Gloves: +1 item bonus to attack rolls per tier

I like the look of this, but I felt I should roll them into the typical items so that my players didn't feel required to grab a little bit of everything. Some of them oddly don't want to be decked out in magic gear from head to toe.

Items that already grant an item bonus to the above (except damage) grant (tier + 1) item bonus at least. Ie, a paragon tier belt that grants a +2 item bonus to saves now grants a +3 item bonus to saves.

Damage item bonuses that are currently granted are floored at (tier*2) if no enhancement on the item, or (enhancement) if the item has an enhancement bonus. So armbands of power remain unchanged, while a sword that grants a +3 item bonus fire damage boost is now a +6 item bonus fire damage boost. Radiant Weapon remains unchanged.

These are interesting, but I'm not sure of the reasoning behind them.

Expertise feats are reduced to a +1 bonus to attacks. Epic Will/Fort/Reflex is eliminated. I'd leave in the armor specialization feats, and improved defences/superior will/fort/reflex. Possibly I'd boost Scale Armor Spec and Plate Armor Spec to a +2 feat bonus.

Pretty close to what I'm thinking.

With the above we get:
ATK: +15 + 4 + 6 + 3 = +28 over 29 levels (+29 with Expertise or Demigod, +30 with both)
LAC: +15 + 4 + 6 + 2 = +27 over 29 levels (+28 with demigod or spec feat, +29 with both)
HAC: +15 + 6 + 6 = +27 over 29 levels (+29 with spec feat)
NAD: +15 + (4/4/1) + 6 + 3 = +28/28/25 over 29 levels, +31/31/28 with Improved Defences, +32/32/29 with Superior Fort/Reflex/Will.

The expected investment now becomes 1 expertise feat, 1 armor feat, and 1 non-AC defences feat, and even if you didn't get it you'd be not that badly off.

Not a bad deal at all. Kudos!

The downside to this is similar to the masterwork downside: with items removed, epic characters are reduced to barely stronger than paragon-tier characters.

mplindustries solved that brilliantly, if you're willing to implement all the changes he proposed.

I'd be even happier if I managed to eliminate all "static" feat bonuses, and made all situational bonuses granted by feats "feat bonuses" to prevent possibly abusive situational bonus stacking.

That one could take a while, I think. I'm not sure it's quite worth it unless you have heavy optimizers at your table. (Conversely, my attempts to house-rule the system to work with minimal optimzation is easily rationalized by my complete lack of optimizers at the table.)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 EmpactWB May 01, 2011 2:52:02	Okay, so those familiar with the Fourth Edition math will be entirely unsurprised when I say that it is a tad messed up (even if they happen to disagree). This is acknowledged by the developers and simple to prove. The problem is scaling. Monster attack and defenses increase 1 per level, a total of +29 from 1 to 30. PC attacks increase by 1/2 level, plus enhancement bonuses and ability score increases, for a total of +25 from the standard leveling process. AC increases by 27 with heavy armor or light armor if you are an Int/Dex based class (or can afford to bump one of them consistently), but by only 24 with light armor and a lack of focus (sometimes due to other stats being required by certain classes). Your non-AC defenses (NADs) increase by 25 for your best, and by 22 for your worst. The gap here is obvious. Well, I have a solution. To be fair, Wizards gave me this solution, they just didn't implement it widely enough in the system. The reason that AC increases by up to 27 when attacks and NADs increase only by up to 25 is because of Masterwork armors. Masterwork light and heavy armors still exist, and in the original PH added +1/+3 AC per tier once you hit paragon (i.e., paragon got +1/+3, epic got +2/+6, on top of the existing armor bonus). Note how this accounts for the ability score increases that the Heavy Armor users don't get. So, we have our solution: masterwork equipment. The first problem is on the armors themselves: the increase falls short by two at the end of your career. To make it work for AC, the bonus has to increase by +2/+4 per tier (i.e., increase them both by one per tier). That not only gives you the overall bonus you need, it gives you slightly more levels where you are ahead of the NPC curve than behind. Next up, the Adventurer's Vault introduced Armor Bonuses to NADs. So here we find ourselves invited in paragon to tack on a +2 per tier masterwork bonus to NADs, which shores them up entirely. That +4 by Epic gives you the bonus you need to be fully competitive with at-level enemies. Finally, masterwork weapons. At paragon and epic, a weapon's proficiency bonus should increase by +2 per tier. This makes using weapons you are proficient in progressively more rewarding than using non-proficient weapons, knocking the crazy high-damage superior weapons (cough Execution Axe cough) further down the list of "best weapons" if you don't take the feat. So, this introduces a slight new problem: there were new masterwork armors made available in the AV. Well, any of the paragon light armors get +1 AC and +2 NADs, epic get +2 AC and +4 NADs, while paragon and epic heavy armors get +4 AC/+2 NADs and +8 AC/+4 NADs, respectively, and keep all of their other nifty bonuses. Easy peasy. Does this make them overpowered? No, it makes them finally balanced. You might want to kill or nerf the various Expertise and Epic Defense feats after this, though, as they become not only unbalanced but unnecessary. Now, at this point I feel I should plug someone else's thread, who did something entirely unlike this but with the same goal: mplindustries' Heroes Don't Need Special Gear to Be Heroes. One of his other goals was to remove magic item dependency, which I don't personally have any problem with. But if you're one of those who do, by all means check out his thread. It's pure brilliance and a completely elegant solution to both problems. EDIT: Heh, totally forgot the other minor fix. At 4th, 8th, 14th, 18th, 24th, and 28th levels, instead of increasing two attribute scores by 1, increase three attribute skills by 1. This let's you increase all three NADs, or deliberately sacrifice one NAD in order to improve something else. Lessens the NAD impact of single-defense primary attributes, and eliminates NAD problems with dual-defense primaries. I had thought about simply increasing all stats at all increase levels, but that gets stupid-good quickly, imo.
#2 the_yakk May 05, 2011 12:44:20	Light armor AC from level 1 to 30: +4 stat (+5 if demigod or other similar epic destiny), +15 level, +6 enhancement, +2 masterwork, +0-1 feat = +27-29 Heavy armor AC from level 1 to 30: +15 level +6 enhancement +6 masterwork +0-1 feat +0-1 paragon path boost = +27-29 On top of this, you can pull off some situational boosts and make them pretty universal (defensive curse, defensive advantage, concealment, defensive two-weapon defence rhythm blade, etc) from various feats and items. In short: AC does fall a bit behind if you don't work on it (by 2 points), but keeps up if you work on it. NADs: +4/4/1 stat (+5/5/1 if demigod esque), +15 level, +6 enhancement, +0-4 feat, +0-4 non-feat bonus feat = +25/25/22 to +34/34/30 Here the variation is much larger. You can see that you can "break" your non-AC defences easier than your AC -- most of the situational modifiers to AC apply to NADs, and you can pick up others (ie, thunder NAD boosts instead of defensive advantage). Attacks: +4(5) stat, +15 level, +6 enhancement, +0-3 feat = +25-29 The easy choice is the expertise feats. To hit "full patch" of +29 to everything (non-situation), you need to spend by end-epic: 1 expertise feat 1 armor specialization feat (or 1 armor upgrade feat/defensive fighting feat) epic destiny that boosts your AC-stat if light armor paragon path/epic destiny that boosts your AC if heavy armor (or an extra feat) -- or a situational defence bonus, plus a way to enforce that situation 3-4 feats spent on boosting your non-AC defences. At epic, you have 18 feats to spend. 5-6 of them end up being spent on shoring up boring mechanical properties. The "new expertise" feats are better, in that they at least has some interesting flavour and are not just mechanically powerful feats. Note that enhancing masterwork makes characters even more dependent on gear, especially heavy armor characters.
#3 EmpactWB May 05, 2011 13:05:34	My personal opinion (and it is only that) is that the opportunity cost for taking a feat should put you ahead of the curve, not keep you on it. I believe the same of PP and ED features. Thus, by "fixing" the base math, someone who chooses to focus on flavorful but suboptimal options doesn't suffer a decrease in efficacy, while those who choose to moderately optimize actually experience an increase in efficacy. High-optimization would then have a few feats freed up (since Expertise and Epic Defenses are recommended to be cut altogether) without any loss in efficacy. I'm okay with characters being fairly gear-dependent. The best real-world sniper still needs a gun, after all. I did forget to add a +2/+4 bonus to implements though. Consider that added in. ;)
#4 the_yakk May 05, 2011 14:43:57	Except you have 18 feats? Someone who (say) spends 18 feats on boosting accuracy ends up with a broken amount of accuracy, in theory, if each one is significantly large, and similarly for defences. So if you want to ignore their impact, you need to seriously bound their impact so it isn't out of line. In some senses, it doesn't matter what the "baseline" is if you simply move it. If level 30 monsters are 3 points ahead of the attacks/defences compared to level 1 monsters, or if they aren't 3 points ahead -- that matter little to the relative experience of PCs, because DMs will notice this as you gain levels and stop using level+3 encounters against your party. On the other hand, if you can reach 3 points above the level 30 monster in all your defences, that just makes the new level 30 baseline "level 33" for people who work at it, and people who pick flavourful feats are level 30 (instead of level 30/27 under the current system). What is worse about masterwork systems is that, sure, your characters are equipement dependent -- but rather that they grow increasingly equipment dependent at high levels. A level 1 axe fighter stripped of her armor and weapons loses ~3 points of accuracy, ~6 points of AC and ~4 points of damage. A level 30 character already loses ~11 points of accuracy, ~15 points of AC, ~6 points off each other defence, and ~16-30+ points of damage. Of these, the only thing that "scales linearly" (roughly) with level is damage. A level 1 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 1 fighter goes from 1/3 chance to hit to 2/3 chance to hit. The fighter goes from 2/3 chance to hit to 1/2 chance to hit. The fighter goes from dealing 1/3 of the monster's HP in a blow to 1/4 of the monster's HP in a blow. A level 30 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 30 goes from a 1/4! chance to hit to a 100% chance to hit. The fighter goes from a 2/3 chance to hit to a 1/10 chance to hit. Damage falls off about as much as a level 1 characters does, maybe a bit more. With masterwork applied to everything else, the effect gets even worse. --- Despite this, I've tried something similar. What I did was roll in "item bonuses" to your non-primary items. Head: +1 item bonus to will per tier Belt: +1 item bonus to fortitude per tier Feet: +1 item bonus to reflex per tier Bracers/Shields: +1 item bonus to damage rolls per tier Gloves: +1 item bonus to attack rolls per tier Items that already grant an item bonus to the above (except damage) grant (tier + 1) item bonus at least. Ie, a paragon tier belt that grants a +2 item bonus to saves now grants a +3 item bonus to saves. Damage item bonuses that are currently granted are floored at (tier*2) if no enhancement on the item, or (enhancement) if the item has an enhancement bonus. So armbands of power remain unchanged, while a sword that grants a +3 item bonus fire damage boost is now a +6 item bonus fire damage boost. Radiant Weapon remains unchanged. Expertise feats are reduced to a +1 bonus to attacks. Epic Will/Fort/Reflex is eliminated. I'd leave in the armor specialization feats, and improved defences/superior will/fort/reflex. Possibly I'd boost Scale Armor Spec and Plate Armor Spec to a +2 feat bonus. With the above we get: ATK: +15 + 4 + 6 + 3 = +28 over 29 levels (+29 with Expertise or Demigod, +30 with both) LAC: +15 + 4 + 6 + 2 = +27 over 29 levels (+28 with demigod or spec feat, +29 with both) HAC: +15 + 6 + 6 = +27 over 29 levels (+29 with spec feat) NAD: +15 + (4/4/1) + 6 + 3 = +28/28/25 over 29 levels, +31/31/28 with Improved Defences, +32/32/29 with Superior Fort/Reflex/Will. The expected investment now becomes 1 expertise feat, 1 armor feat, and 1 non-AC defences feat, and even if you didn't get it you'd be not that badly off. The downside to this is similar to the masterwork downside: with items removed, epic characters are reduced to barely stronger than paragon-tier characters. I'd be even happier if I managed to eliminate all "static" feat bonuses, and made all situational bonuses granted by feats "feat bonuses" to prevent possibly abusive situational bonus stacking.
#5 EmpactWB May 06, 2011 1:16:07	Except you have 18 feats? Someone who (say) spends 18 feats on boosting accuracy ends up with a broken amount of accuracy, in theory, if each one is significantly large, and similarly for defences. So if you want to ignore their impact, you need to seriously bound their impact so it isn't out of line. Most accuracy boosting feats do not stack anyway, since they provide feat bonuses. Others are situational, and the very few that are neither typed nor situation are recommended to be removed. In some senses, it doesn't matter what the "baseline" is if you simply move it. If level 30 monsters are 3 points ahead of the attacks/defences compared to level 1 monsters, or if they aren't 3 points ahead -- that matter little to the relative experience of PCs, because DMs will notice this as you gain levels and stop using level+3 encounters against your party. On the other hand, if you can reach 3 points above the level 30 monster in all your defences, that just makes the new level 30 baseline "level 33" for people who work at it, and people who pick flavourful feats are level 30 (instead of level 30/27 under the current system). Except that in terms of damage, HP, and XP, they are not actually of that level, so you get lesser rewards for an encounter that is more challenging than the level suggests. Level 30 creatures who have the defenses of level 33 creatures relative to the PCs are a system error when both have followed the basic advancement rules set forth. What is worse about masterwork systems is that, sure, your characters are equipement dependent -- but rather that they grow increasingly equipment dependent at high levels. A level 1 axe fighter stripped of her armor and weapons loses ~3 points of accuracy, ~6 points of AC and ~4 points of damage. A level 30 character already loses ~11 points of accuracy, ~15 points of AC, ~6 points off each other defence, and ~16-30+ points of damage. Of these, the only thing that "scales linearly" (roughly) with level is damage. A level 1 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 1 fighter goes from 1/3 chance to hit to 2/3 chance to hit. The fighter goes from 2/3 chance to hit to 1/2 chance to hit. The fighter goes from dealing 1/3 of the monster's HP in a blow to 1/4 of the monster's HP in a blow. A level 30 monster attacking an unarmed and unarmored level 30 goes from a 1/4! chance to hit to a 100% chance to hit. The fighter goes from a 2/3 chance to hit to a 1/10 chance to hit. Damage falls off about as much as a level 1 characters does, maybe a bit more. Actually, this is a bad example. We've both established that, with arms and armor, a level 30 monster tends to have a greater chance to hit a level 30 character than a level 1 monster has of hitting a level 1 character. The numbers you give assume a significant reversal of this (the 30th level monster having a 25% chance to hit versus the level 1 monster's 35%). A level 1 monster will have either a +4, +6, or +8 vs AC and a +2, +4, +5, or +6 vs Reflex. Let's give our hypothetical level 1 Fighter Scale Armor and a light shied for an AC of 18, and a Dex of 14 for a Reflex of 13. The L1M has between 35-55% chance to hit AC, or 50-65% of hitting Reflex. Removing the equipment makes that 65-85% vs AC, and 55-70% vs AC. The level 30 monster has +33, +35, or +37 vs AC, but the Fighter's AC is only 45. That means 55-75% chance vs AC from the start, already worse than on-level enemies started out. Unequipped, the fighter's AC is 28-31, depending on how Dex was pumped. That's a 95% chance for any on-level enemy to hit. That's 95% chance for Soldier or Artillery role enemies six levels lower than the character to hit. And that's the system as it stands. Increasing the benefit of equipment does not increase the threat of doing without it: you are completely screwed as is. That's why I recommend mplindustries' thread if you want to do away with item dependency. With masterwork applied to everything else, the effect gets even worse. No, it doesn't. The armed and armored characters now fit the expected baseline with their gear before adding in feats. They drop at worst to the same plateaus the default system leaves you at without gear. Despite this, I've tried something similar. What I did was roll in "item bonuses" to your non-primary items. Head: +1 item bonus to will per tier Belt: +1 item bonus to fortitude per tier Feet: +1 item bonus to reflex per tier Bracers/Shields: +1 item bonus to damage rolls per tier Gloves: +1 item bonus to attack rolls per tier I like the look of this, but I felt I should roll them into the typical items so that my players didn't feel required to grab a little bit of everything. Some of them oddly don't want to be decked out in magic gear from head to toe. Items that already grant an item bonus to the above (except damage) grant (tier + 1) item bonus at least. Ie, a paragon tier belt that grants a +2 item bonus to saves now grants a +3 item bonus to saves. Damage item bonuses that are currently granted are floored at (tier*2) if no enhancement on the item, or (enhancement) if the item has an enhancement bonus. So armbands of power remain unchanged, while a sword that grants a +3 item bonus fire damage boost is now a +6 item bonus fire damage boost. Radiant Weapon remains unchanged. These are interesting, but I'm not sure of the reasoning behind them. Expertise feats are reduced to a +1 bonus to attacks. Epic Will/Fort/Reflex is eliminated. I'd leave in the armor specialization feats, and improved defences/superior will/fort/reflex. Possibly I'd boost Scale Armor Spec and Plate Armor Spec to a +2 feat bonus. Pretty close to what I'm thinking. With the above we get: ATK: +15 + 4 + 6 + 3 = +28 over 29 levels (+29 with Expertise or Demigod, +30 with both) LAC: +15 + 4 + 6 + 2 = +27 over 29 levels (+28 with demigod or spec feat, +29 with both) HAC: +15 + 6 + 6 = +27 over 29 levels (+29 with spec feat) NAD: +15 + (4/4/1) + 6 + 3 = +28/28/25 over 29 levels, +31/31/28 with Improved Defences, +32/32/29 with Superior Fort/Reflex/Will. The expected investment now becomes 1 expertise feat, 1 armor feat, and 1 non-AC defences feat, and even if you didn't get it you'd be not that badly off. Not a bad deal at all. Kudos! The downside to this is similar to the masterwork downside: with items removed, epic characters are reduced to barely stronger than paragon-tier characters. mplindustries solved that brilliantly, if you're willing to implement all the changes he proposed. I'd be even happier if I managed to eliminate all "static" feat bonuses, and made all situational bonuses granted by feats "feat bonuses" to prevent possibly abusive situational bonus stacking. That one could take a while, I think. I'm not sure it's quite worth it unless you have heavy optimizers at your table. (Conversely, my attempts to house-rule the system to work with minimal optimzation is easily rationalized by my complete lack of optimizers at the table.)