Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 bayuer Mar 31, 2009 21:08:27	MONSTERS MATH
#2 gregt_314 Mar 31, 2009 21:25:59	I'm assuming (hoping) that English isn't your first language. It looks like you've done some worthwhile maths here, but I'm not able to understand from your post what your assumptions are, what problem you're attempting to fix, or how it should be fixed. Could you possibly walk us through these numbers, how you've derived them, and what you say they show?
#3 vebrandsson Mar 31, 2009 21:42:25	Implement/Weapon expertise and paragon defenses, problems solved. That being said I think the monsters should be a little more powerful than the players, without that there is no challenge. Also on the armor, I think light armor should be inferior to Heavy armor else heavy armor wouldn't be worth the feats to gain proficiency in them. If the barbarian in hide armor has the same AC as the paladin in heavy armor I would think there was a problem with the system
#4 bayuer Apr 01, 2009 6:47:37	I'm assuming (hoping) that English isn't your first language. It looks like you've done some worthwhile maths here, but I'm not able to understand from your post what your assumptions are, what problem you're attempting to fix, or how it should be fixed. Could you possibly walk us through these numbers, how you've derived them, and what you say they show? No it isn't :D I don't speak or write in english offten so there could be mistakes. Well, many mistakes:D Anyway tha math shows some things. I will update the first post and explain all there.
#5 Nyronus Apr 01, 2009 8:32:45	Implement/Weapon expertise and paragon defenses, problems solved. That being said I think the monsters should be a little more powerful than the players, without that there is no challenge. Also on the armor, I think light armor should be inferior to Heavy armor else heavy armor wouldn't be worth the feats to gain proficiency in them. If the barbarian in hide armor has the same AC as the paladin in heavy armor I would think there was a problem with the system Except that its nigh-impossible for the barbarian to get respectable AC at level 1 or at any level without dumping his feats into armor or losing out on all his cool attack riders. Wizards, Sword Mages, and Averngers can have as good as or better AC than paladins, but they have to work at it and they are already punished by their low HP. Having low AC is the worst thing you can do to a character as it essentially means that they will take far more damage over time than any other character. It didn't matter that Ragebloods had retarded amounts of HP, they died far more often than anyone else because the average damage of a hit completely overshadows the extra hit-points.
#6 lady_ishtar Apr 01, 2009 8:33:20	while i agree with your math, many of the thing you bring up are not an issue. the two issues i agree that need to be looked at are to hit bonuses and your low NADs. difference between light and heavy armor is ok, after all out of 17 classes there is one class that gets plate, one gets scale, and three get chain, all others get light armors. even than they can get pretty close to the bonus of heavy armor. not a big deal overall. bonuses to hit are fixed by weapon/implement expertise, which i just gave all my players for free. now i do agree that your lowest defense needs some help. while i could give random bonuses to NADs, some sort of masterwork neck item might be a more interesting idea.
#7 jlaurhughes_dup Apr 01, 2009 8:39:16	While I can somewhat understand where you're getting your numbers, are you factoring in Feats? Why ban the two Expertise feats?
#8 bayuer Apr 01, 2009 11:24:35	This math crunch was to show us the gap with appears on higher levels when we are trying to hit the monsters and when the monster are trying to hit our NADs. The armor math crunch was just to show us that with AC everything works ok. I think the light and heavy armors are just fine as they are now. The feats are not calculated into this. Feats shouldn't make our characters on average level, they should make it above average. The raw math shows that the feats are indeed needed to make tha math work ok, they are not as optional as they should be. The Expertise is too strong in current form. Maybe if you make it just flat +1 bonus and use my house rule it will be ok. In current form it's not. It will be still broken.
#9 Stuntman Apr 01, 2009 11:57:43	How would various powers and monster abilities factor into this? At higher levels, players get more powers that they can use and probably more that gives players bonuses or monsters penalties. I figure monsters may have some as well. If there are more powers at higher levels that allow players bonuses and monster penalties that even things out, then the math should even out even though the raw hit bonuses may be slightly to the monsters' advantage.
#10 vebrandsson Apr 01, 2009 12:46:21	Once again I'll say it. The point of the monsters is to challenge the characters in combat, if the characters are designed to be perfectly on par with the monsters there is no challenge there. You aren't trying to fix the system here you're trying to remove the challenge and thus ruin it.
#11 bayuer Apr 01, 2009 16:31:50	@Vebrandsson Well, look on monsters on epic tier. They have plenty hit points. Devastating attacks and are just as challanged as they were after my solution. If there was no problem with the math, why on earth we have Weapon/Implement Expertise feats? The problem is even bigger couse we offten fight with monsters that are on higher level. Now the gap makes the game boring, long and unfun. Monsters still hit PC offten and make them feel the rush of battle. Nothing have changed. That's all simple facts you can't just ignore. @Stuntman Well that doesnt realy matter. I just pointed that the math is wrong on higher level. If you play withou leader your party sucks and can eat dirt, couse they will have hard times hitting monsters. So without warlord or STR based cleric your party is just weak. I don't want to play such a game. Anyway. I was playing on paragon and epic, and made this math crunch, couse I saw that there is something wrong. When PHB2 comes out I was now sure there is a problem. I don't want to punish my players to make the must-have feats. That's the worst solution ever made.
#12 lucifernietzsche Apr 01, 2009 18:10:43	I kind of agree with Verbrandsson. The PCs base numbers should, IMHO, be a bit lower than those of monsters. Monsters are one-shot deals. They get one encounter, and that's it. Their use of resources is irrelevant, which is why they don't really get Dailies. They only exist for a single encounter unless they're the BBEG...and then they're an NPC, not a monster. Since monsters don't get the flexibility and range of options that PCs get, they should have slightly higher base math. At that point, the purpose of the options of Feat and Power choice are for the PCs to determine in WHICH manner they want to meet and exceed the monster's numbers. Then it all comes down to the dice. I've actually been curious for sometime if it would be worthwhile to instead have one side with low base values rolling a d20, and the other side with high base values rolling a d10. But that's just a random thought I have now and then. Ultimately, the real trick is to have monsters fall within a given target range...and have the PCs abilities render them capable of hitting the middle of that range on average, with the dice allowing for variance of success or failure outside it. Since monsters are one-shots and PCs are continuous...that's sometimes not so easy as it seems.
#13 bayuer Apr 01, 2009 18:46:56	You forgot one simple thing. Well two. When you fight against higher than you level monster you hit chance is even lower (-1 for any monster level above yours). So if you fight against a monster 5 lvl higher you can hit him when you roll 18 on dice! (thats the math for 30 lvl PC, 35 lvl monster, couse you hit chance is +31, and his AC is 49). If you say to me that this is ok, I will say you don't look at facts, thats just your opinion take out of space. Monster on higher levels have more HP and better powers (at-will domination that hit on 2 on dice - Yeah, that sounds really challenging to me, and that just a single monster). They don't need autohit and ultimate dodge options, at top of that. Look at the numbers they don't lie. Prove me that my math crunch is wrong and I can argue with you. If you say "I think the monster need to be challenging and that's why the number ara as they are" I say it's not a proof of anything. Anyway I think I made some deeper analisys... I think that the fair solution will be also (as addition to previev solution) to give just players for free one Epic defense feat (Epic Wiil/Reflex/Fortitude). That will make your lowest DEF at +4 (of monster adventage) - he must roll 6 on die to hit. This also will give options to players which defense feats to take and none will be banned. Another approch is to just give players feats for free. One Weapon/Implement Expertise on 5 lvl. Paragons Defenses at 11 level (or another paragon defense feat). Robust Defenses (or any other epic defense feat) and one Epic FRW feat at epic tier. That will make the math work as intended (well almost as intende) and will be easy to make with Character Builder.
#14 twobeef Apr 02, 2009 0:41:55	Do these things ever factor in the increasing availability of magic items owned by the PCs? Y'know, when I hit level 28, I'd hope I'm at least holding a +4 implement.
#15 bayuer Apr 02, 2009 5:46:22	Do these things ever factor in the increasing availability of magic items owned by the PCs? Y'know, when I hit level 28, I'd hope I'm at least holding a +4 implement. The key atribute is rainsing at 8,14,21,28 (full +1) With DEF low it only rises on level 21, couse we rise primary and secondary stats. Enchament bonus goes on level 2,7,12,17,22,27. Hide Armor gives masterwork +1 on level 22.
#16 toshihito Apr 03, 2009 12:54:18	Once again I'll say it. The point of the monsters is to challenge the characters in combat, if the characters are designed to be perfectly on par with the monsters there is no challenge there. You aren't trying to fix the system here you're trying to remove the challenge and thus ruin it. This. If you make it so your PCs hit every time, why make them make attack rolls besides to see if you roll a 20? Just give them an encounter power where once every 20 attacks they can make it an autocrit. :p
#17 lurker37 Apr 05, 2009 23:11:05	This. If you make it so your PCs hit every time, why make them make attack rolls besides to see if you roll a 20? Just give them an encounter power where once every 20 attacks they can make it an autocrit. :p Don't threadcrap, please. Nobody is arguing for autohits. The OP has posted math that demonstrates that, all else being equal, a character with level-appropriate gear and optimised stat progression will find it progressively harder to fight a level-appropriate foe as they increase in level. Given that the absence of any such problem was repeatedly stated by the designers as one of the key selling points of 4E, the fact that they appear to have failed in this objective is alarming. Ideally, the chance of hitting an opponent the same level as you should be the same at level 30 as at level 1. Granted, a PC will have more tricks to shift the odds, but so should any well-designed encounter. The OP suggests that there will be a 20% drop in accuracy over the course of an adventurer's career. That's easily enough for any player to notice it by the time the game reaches mid-epic tier. In fact, in my opinion as a potential DM this math divergence could be a disaster. Instead of throwing larger and more epic encounters at my players as they level, I may instead need to reign things in and make the encounters smaller because each individual monster will pose more of a threat to the PCs. Thus I risk the game becoming less and less fun for them as they face less interesting fights, and if I know my players (and I've been with this group over a decade) they'll enjoy the actual combat less if they miss more often with their shiny new powers. I'd much rather a base 50-50 chance, with the players using tactics and teamwork to increase their chances while their foes use the same (plus pull dirty tricks, home ground advantage etc) to hinder them, than have the core system stack the odds against the players. After all, killing a PC as the DM is trivial. I want a game system that can deliver a close and exciting battle that they talk about months later, without me having to spend hours adjusting encounters beforehand to compensate for flawed system math.
#18 lucifernietzsche Apr 06, 2009 15:55:47	Don't threadcrap, please. Nobody is arguing for autohits. The OP has posted math that demonstrates that, all else being equal, a character with level-appropriate gear and optimised stat progression will find it progressively harder to fight a level-appropriate foe as they increase in level. Given that the absence of any such problem was repeatedly stated by the designers as one of the key selling points of 4E, the fact that they appear to have failed in this objective is alarming. Ideally, the chance of hitting an opponent the same level as you should be the same at level 30 as at level 1. Granted, a PC will have more tricks to shift the odds, but so should any well-designed encounter. The OP suggests that there will be a 20% drop in accuracy over the course of an adventurer's career. That's easily enough for any player to notice it by the time the game reaches mid-epic tier. In fact, in my opinion as a potential DM this math divergence could be a disaster. Instead of throwing larger and more epic encounters at my players as they level, I may instead need to reign things in and make the encounters smaller because each individual monster will pose more of a threat to the PCs. Thus I risk the game becoming less and less fun for them as they face less interesting fights, and if I know my players (and I've been with this group over a decade) they'll enjoy the actual combat less if they miss more often with their shiny new powers. I'd much rather a base 50-50 chance, with the players using tactics and teamwork to increase their chances while their foes use the same (plus pull dirty tricks, home ground advantage etc) to hinder them, than have the core system stack the odds against the players. After all, killing a PC as the DM is trivial. I want a game system that can deliver a close and exciting battle that they talk about months later, without me having to spend hours adjusting encounters beforehand to compensate for flawed system math. A valid point. If the gap is THAT big, then yeah it should probably be adjusted (the math-heads can figure that out). But generally I see no problem with the ability of the PCs to hit monsters being just under 50/50. Having said that, I have a question. Have any of us (since I know I haven't) actually played through to epic level, let alone to its end? After all, one has only to look around the boards, especially the CharOp forums, to see that what is mathematically sound does NOT always equate to functional gameplay. Things happen, players and DMs both employ options and tactics that are not easily quantified numerically. While I agree that it's worth looking into, I just think some actual play experience through to the end of epic will be far more valuable and informative than simply crunching numbers.
#19 bayuer Apr 06, 2009 17:23:28	I was playing. Players can go an epic fine, but the fights takes forever. Thus the real problem is the this feats are must-have if you want make some better things in actual game (not being stunned, dominated, weakend etc.).
#20 matthewswift Apr 06, 2009 18:42:04	Hmmm... what about the effect this mod will have on healers and the leader roles? The battle will be over much more quickly and the pcs aren't likely to take as much damage or need as much buffing to be effective in combat. This fix could seriously nerf an entire role. though it is agreed the fights do take forever...
#21 bayuer Apr 07, 2009 11:42:09	If you don't play with leader your team will be dead in few rounds even with feats. This fix isn't big. It's minor but have crucial impact on game. It makes tha fights faster, and players aren't hitted by 2 on die, what will be broken to me not mather what designers intended. You see. The fights want be now easier. They will be still as they are. The players wil just feel much epic. The role of leader is to heal (what not concerns us) and to give saving throws. But we still lose at least one round becouse of nast effects and on epic leaders run out fast from they giving save options.