Anatomy of the At-Will (V): Basic

Once upon a time, basic attacks were the simplest, weakest form of attack in D&D 4E. One step below proper at-will powers, basics were there for specific scenarios, rather than something characters were expected to spend actual standard actions for. Yet, as is too often the case, later books attempted to spice up these options with potent feats and magic items... and ended up overcompensating. Even without accounting for any charge silliness, basic attacks with appropriate support were already well above average at-wills by the time Martial Power 2 was released - thanks to a cycle of weapon-specific feats that obsoleted such reasonable and iconic powers as Piercing Strike. And then the Essentials line came out, along with a bunch of new subclasses designed to make basic attacks turn after turn...

In today’s article, I’ll go over the game elements that break basic attacks, discussing why they are bad for the game and how they could be improved. They are summarized in the following table:

So, what is wrong with them? I see the following issues:

• Obsoleting good at-wills - I have mentioned before the death of rogue stape Piercing Strike at level 11. To expand a bit on the topic, I strongly believe that allowing your basic attack to become your best at-will makes the game worse. The total increase in raw power for the character in question may not be all that bad, but the fact that you are replacing two at-will options with one clearly superior one definitely is. Given all the random advantages of being basic, your basic attack should always be slightly below a regular at-will when used as a standard action in order to be fair - or, even better, do cool stuff but only when NOT used as a standard action.
• Aggravate charge brokenness - Remember charges? It turns out that, if they weren’t bad enough, you can also make them extremely accurate for a mere feat (or two, if your class is not martial).
• Essential taxes - One of the most common complaints about 4E is the existence of “feat taxes”, bland feats providing simple yet extremely powerful stat bonuses, which make a huge difference between characters who take them and those who don’t. Expertise feats are classic examples of such taxes... and several of the feats in the above list provide an accuracy boost equivalent to (and stackable with) expertise, for basic-attack using classes.
• Obsoleting weapon types - Another downside of having an overwhelmingly good cycle of feats for certain classes is the fact that they are weapon-specific... and fail to cover all weapon types. This is particularly troubling because the excluded types cover some of the most iconic adventurer weapons, like swords and axes - so if you just want to play a level 11+ knight with a bastard sword, or slayer with an executioner’s axe, you are taking a huge penalty for the privilege.

I could name a few more problems, but the ones above are the ones I find the most pressing. With that in mind, how should we proceed to improve the state of basic attacks? I have opted for two main approaches:

• Keep the cool stuff, but not for standard actions. I don’t want these effects for the character’s main attack, but they are fine as a boost to opportunity attacks and the occasional interrupt. Note that I explicitly leave free attacks out of the deal because the basic-attack granting leader powers are a bit over the top and don’t really need the boost.
• Pay damage/accuracy for the cool stuff. AKA the Power Attack mechanic (sometimes in reverse) - you have the option to take a penalty to gain a bonus. If I have got them right, you won’t want to activate these abilities all the time, but they will be quite handy once in a while. The accuracy increases in particular will no longer be a straight increase in average damage (often the opposite will be true), but something you bring out against highly armored enemies, or ones that are close to death.

When all else fails, I’ll settle with a good old nerf. As usual, my target for power level is to keep everything playable, though not necessarily optimal.

Can no longer be used as a standard

Deft Blade – Paragon Feat, Martial  (MP2)
Fix: Replace “to make a basic attack” with “to make a basic attack as part of an immediate or opportunity action”.

Hammer Shock  – Paragon Feat, Martial (MP2)
Piercing Pick – Paragon Feat, Martial (MP2)
Fix: Replace “to make a melee basic attack” with “to make a melee basic attack as part of an immediate or opportunity action”.

Pinning Challenge – Paragon Feat, Fighter (Dra379)
Fix: Replace with “Whenever you make a basic attack with a two-handed weapon as part of an immediate or opportunity action, if the target is marked by you, on a hit it is also immobilized until the start of your next turn”.

Require sacrifices to activate

Impaling Spear – Paragon Feat, Martial (MP2)
Fix: Replace with “Before you make a melee basic attack with a spear, you can choose to take a -3 penalty to the damage roll for each [W] of the attack. If you do, the attack can target AC or Reflex”

Grazing Shot - Paragon Feat (PHB3)
Fix: Replace with “Before you make a ranged basic attack, you can choose to take a -2 penalty to the damage roll. If you do, and the attack deals no damage on a miss, the target takes damage equal to your Dexterity modifier. The penalty increases to -4 at 21st level.”

Deft Aim – Epic Feat (PHB3)
Fix: Replace with “Before you make a ranged basic attack with a bow or crossbow, you can choose to take a -3 penalty to the damage roll for each [W] of the attack. If you do, the attack can target AC or Reflex”

Lashing Flail – Paragon Feat, Martial (MP2)
Fix: Replace with when you make a melee basic attack with a flail, you can take a -2 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you can slide the target 1 square.

Other fixes

Primal Eye - Paragon Seeker Feat (PHB3)
Fix: Add to the prerequisite line “Seeker’s Bond class feature”.
Comment: This should really have been a seeker class feature. The damage boost it provides to Essentials ranged classes is far from reasonable.

Eagle Eye Goggles – Level 2 Uncommon Head Item (AV)
Fix: Change property to “Gain a +1 item bonus to your the attack roll for your first ranged basic attack in an encounter”.

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Anatomy of the At-Will (IV): Charging

The charge action in D&D 4E is a good idea that suffers from terrible implementation. In principle, there is nothing wrong with the idea of giving melee characters a method to close the distance, sacrificing the fancy options of their at-will and encounter powers for some added mobility attached to a basic but serviceable attack. When you look at it that way, adding a small accuracy bonus seems like a nice way to sweeten the deal. And, since we are talking about an unexciting and situational maneuver, there is no danger in providing a magic item or two to boost it when it does come up. Damage bonuses are usually typed so that they do not easily stack, but a small exception here or there is innocent enough, right? As we are on it, why not throw in a feat that adds a ton of damage on a charge, but only under rare conditions like having combat advantage, and while using crappy weapons like light blades and spears, to make it balanced? Yes, that should work just fine...

Due to a series of poor design decisions, charging has become an overpowered mess. The crux of the matter is this: what was originally conceived as a weaker attack that can be useful in specific circumstances can be easily engineered into an at-will wrecking ball that can be spammed for way more damage than your average encounter power. There are many items and feats that can be taken to improve a charge - and a lot of them are way above the power curve of conventional damage boosting options (like Weapon Focus), and easily stack with each other, to boot. This is only compounded by the interaction of charges with game elements that boost basic attacks (which are left for a future article) and the proliferation of Essentials subclasses based on melee basic attacks.

The rest of the article goes over the most offending charge options for charge enhancement, explaining what is wrong with them and attempting to rewrite them so that they are less disruptive but still playable. Of course, a DM could just look at the list and decide to ban those elements (which would be much more simple), but I’m always interested in the exercise of balancing problematic stuff.

For reference, these are the charge-related options that I found broken:

The challenge here is to bring down the power of a lot of elements that are individually strong to begin with, but also have amazing synergy when taken together - without making them worthless. This means that I need to prevent most of them from stacking together, so I have to change all that rolled extra damage into flat, typed bonuses. On the other hand, that risks making many of those effects too similar - I need to ensure that each item and feat can be differentiated from the rest.

Damage bonuses

Typically, a character can have up to 3 amazing options to improve charge damage: a head item (the almighty Horned Helm), a magic weapon (either Vanguard, Avalanche, or Thundergod), and, with the right class or multiclass, a feat (Surprising Charge). All of these provide a bunch of conveniently stackable extra dice, which you can apply to all your attacks. One possible approach to balance these is to convert the damage dice into a +1 untyped bonus (+2 at paragon, and +3 at epic), in line with the bonuses provided by feats like Spear Expertise (and Weapon Focus, of course). The downside of this approach is that it leaves little space for variation, and would leave us with a lot of very redundant options that are only interesting for characters that are always charging and want to take as many such boosts as possible.

For these reasons, I decided to try out something a little more radical: converting most of the continuous damage bonuses into one-shot boosts, and limiting the way they stack. With this change, the overall power level is decreased, and non-optimized characters that only charge on occasion are now able to make full use of one of these items. Getting and using multiples of these is still possible - though not trivial- so charge specialist can still get an edge this way.

These items and feats would change as follows:

Surprising Charge - Heroic feat
Change Benefit to: Once per encounter, when you hit with a charge attack with combat advantage using a light blade or a spear, you can gain a +4 power bonus to the damage roll. This bonus increases to +8 at 11th level, and to +12 at 21st level.

Horned Helm - Level 6/16/26 Uncommon item (Head)
Remove Property.
Add Power (Encounter). Free Action. Trigger: You hit with a charge attack. Effect: gain a +4 power bonus to the damage roll. Level 16: +8 power bonus. Level 26: +12 power bonus.

Vanguard Weapon - Level 3/8/13/18/23/28 Uncommon item (Weapon)
Change property to: You gain a +4 power bonus to damage rolls of charge attacks made with this weapon during the first round of an encounter. Level 13: +8 power bonus. Level 23: +12 power bonus.

Avalanche Hammer - Level 4/9/14/19/24/29 Uncommon item (Weapon)
hange property to: You gain a +1 power bonus to damage rolls of charge attacks made with this weapon. Level 14: +2 power bonus. Level 24: +3 power bonus.

Thundergod Weapon - Level 13/18/23/28 Uncommon item (Weapon)
Change property to: Damage dealt by this weapon on charge attacks is thunder damage. The first time you hit with a charge attack with this weapon each encounter, you gain a +8 power bonus to the damage roll. Level 23: +12 power bonus.

Note that most of them are still strong options. Notably, casual chargers should find them more potent than before, provided they only charge about once per encounter and were not trying to stack these.

Accuracy bonuses

In 4E, any reliable bonus to hit (outside of Expertise) is a highly valuable and rare boon. Charge spamming characters had access to multiple of these, which could be combined with ease. My goal is to make them work less often (though still often enough to be legitimate options), and cut stacking altogether.

Reckless Charge - Heroic Feat
In Benefit line, replace “a +1 bonus to the attack rolls” with “a +1 power bonus to the attack rolls”.

Charger’s Headdress -  Level 12 Uncommon item (Head)
Change Property to : “When you make a charge attack, if you moved 5 or more squares as part of the charge, you gain a +1 power bonus to the attack roll.”

Aspect of the Ram - Item set, benefit for 2 pieces
Change Benefit to: “When you make a charge attack, if you moved 4 or less squares as part of the charge, you gain a +1 power bonus to the attack roll.”

Notice how the combination of Charger’s Headdress and Aspect of the Ram provides the same effect as any single one of them, in their original verson.

Defensive bonuses

Though charging is mostly an offensive option, there are also some nice defense and mobility benefits attached to it. The cheap  Badge of the Berserker let chargers completely ignore opportunity attacks, and a Marauder’s Armor provides some very serious defensive boost. I wanted to lower these to more reasonable levels, too.

Badge of the berserker - Level 2/7/12/17/22/17 Uncommon item (Neck)
Change Property to: “When you charge, you gain a +4 bonus to all defenses and resist 5 against opportunity attacks provoked by the charge’s movement. Level 12: Resist 10. Level 22: Resist 15”

Marauder’s Armor - Level 7/12/17/22/27 Uncommon item (Armor)
Change Property line to: “When you charge, you gain a +1 item bonus to AC until the end of your next turn.”
Remove Level 12/17/22/27 updates in property line.

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My impressions on D&D Next

Well, it’s been an intense weekend! These days I’ve been too busy absorbing all that information about D&D Next and posting about it, with little time to stop and think how these changes will affect the game. Until now. In today’s post, I’m sharing my initial impressions on the new game – from my personal perspective as a 4E fan considering whether or not to switch editions when Next comes out.

4E features I need

To begin with, I originally had a list of must-have features that were key to my enjoyment of 4E, and I expected the new edition to keep. Given how much the designers like to emphasize the old school flavor and mechanics in D&D Next, I was pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of modern concepts introduced in this last edition are making the cut – including most of my favorite ones!

Here is the feature list, with comments on how they are getting implemented:

Tactical gameplay – A battle map and lots of mechanics that care about movement and positioning. It seemed difficult to actually have this in a game that was also aimed at folks who hate minis and squares, but they are including it as an option – the so-called “tactical rules module”. So far, it looks good to me.

At-Will attacks – Variety of at-will attacks will be available to both casters and non-casters. It’s unclear whether you will have them by default, or you’ll need to spend feats for them, but that’s fair game. Also, martial at-wills seem to be stronger than those of casters, which seems like a good mechanical niche for these classes.

Complex non-magical characters – The ‘dumb fighter’ archetype will exist in the game, but will not be the only way to play that class. The devs have promised more complex martial maneuvers will be available for those interested.

Non-magical healing – Little is known about this issue at this point, but it looks like at least some warlord builds will be able to heal without resorting to wands, gods, or other sorts of magic. I’d also like to see a second wind rule and something like healing surges in 4E, but that is more dubious.

Easy DM preparation – From what we have been told, the new game will be as easy to prepare for the DM as 4E, if not more! Monsters don’t follow the same detailed rules as PCs, and can be created in 5 minutes.

All classes are viable – This is the weakest point of the new edition, in my opinion. Obviously it’s too early to tell, and I haven’t even read a single character sheet, but some of the stated design principles will make it very difficult to have all character classes remain at as close a power level as I’d like. With the use of Vancian magic and, more generally, the eschewing of a common class framework, class balance should be hard to implement but still not impossible. What worries me more is the notion that non-combat class abilities can compensate for combat deficiencies (and vice versa) – I’d be willing to accept small deviations (say, classes that are 20% more or less efficient at combat/non-combat encounters), but I’m afraid that we will end up seeing something far more exaggerated.

New features I like

Though keeping the cool parts of the previous edition is a great thing, I wouldn’t bother trying out a new game unless it brought something new to the table. So far, it looks like there are a few nice ideas there, but nothing that moves me to immediately pre-order the books:

Lower bonus scaling – Attacks and defenses will grow at a slower pace in the new edition. I think this will improve the game, as it will let me play with wider ranges of levels for players and monsters - previously it was pretty hard to have parties of different-level adventurers, or encounters where the monsters had more than 3 levels of difference with the party.

Monster longevity – Thanks to the previous point, monsters will have a much longer useful life than the ~5 levels they had in 4E. If we are to believe the initial hype, a humble orc will still be a relevant threat to high level adventurers (though you will need lots of them to fill an encounter!). Conversely, we can assume that a single high level monster can be dropped on a low level party without the game breaking. I think this should make encounter design even easier and more fun. We can also expect minions, elite monsters and solos to be partially or completely replaced by monsters of very high or very low levels, in this model.

Skill system – I am moderately optimistic about the skill system, from what we have seen so far. Relying more heavily on ability scores and having many simple checks succeed automatically sound like great ideas, to me. The open-ended skill list might end up too fiddly and full of highly specific bonuses, but the fact that you can ignore that module reduces the risk.

Flexible multiclass – Not that we know much about the actual multiclass rules, but the stated goals of making them easy and flexible are something I fully agree with.

Emphasis on exploration – You won’t often hear me criticizing 4E, but if there is one thing that game was terrible at, it was exploration. Since this happened outside of combat encounters, the risk was usually reduced to losing a healing surge or two, and there was little excitement or fun. I have been toying around with some house rules to address this, but I’m glad that having proper exploration mechanics is going to be a priority for D&D Next

Faster mechanics – This is not a stated goal, but a consequence of streamlining the game for fans of earlier editions. Many of the changes point towards a faster-paced game, which is something I approve of. The option to resolve less important fights quickly without resorting to a map is also an interesting one, as much as I enjoy the full-fledged tactical combat.

Priest class – This may be a minor detail, but there were comments about splitting the cleric into two divine spellcasting classes: the classic D&D armored cleric, and the priest, a divine caster and healer wearing robes and with less emphasis on weapon use. Oddly enough, the priest archetype, though barely supported on previous D&D editions, is the more iconic fantasy character, even on D&D fiction like the Dragonlance series – and one I personally prefer.

Stuff I’m wary of

Though my opinion of D&D Next is mostly favorable at this point, there are a few things that might spoil the game for me, depending on how they are implemented. They are the following:

Ability-boosting items :  I don’t like them, and I don’t think they contribute anything good for the game. I hope they kill them, or severely limit their effectiveness.

3 Pillar balance : The three pillars of the game will be combat, roleplaying and exploration. A class may be more focused on one of these over the others. I think this is an error, and prefer to clearly separate combat and non-combat features.

Vancian magic balance : Having Vancian magic that is well balanced with other resource management systems is not impossible, but will require a lot of effort.

Rollling abilities by default : I shouldn’t be bothered by this, since the option to use point buy still exists. Nevertheless, I’m afraid that this as a default may make for a poor game experience for starting players.

Saving throws instead of attacking vs defenses : I loved attacking vs Fortitude, Reflex and Will in 4E, and don’t particularly enjoy the move back to saving throws. I’ll probably houserule this in my games to have attacker roll against static values.

Roleplaying to use different saving throws: This sounds like a good idea in theory, but can get old very soon. Unless there are heavy limitations on this, you’ll end up with bard players trying to justify using their Charisma based for every attack.

Return to the old cosmology : Again, I shouldn’t mind something that is easy to ignore in my games, but I really liked some aspects of 4E cosmology (like the feywild and other new planes), and I’d wish they were still supported.

Are combat roles dead? : This is speculation, but we have heard nothing about combat roles in the new edition. Knowing it is a very delicate issue with old school fans, chances are we won’t be seeing them, at least in an explicit way.

Verdict

I’m not sold yet, but I’m moderately interested. Let’s see how the playtest turns out.

So, what do you think? Did you like the previews, or have you decided the new game is not for you?

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D&D Experience: Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores

The final D&D Experience seminar previewing game mechanics for D&D Next is called “Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores”. Along with the major changes to ability scores and the brand-new, open-ended skill system, there is talk about other topics, including equipment, themes, and the use of battle maps.

Ability Scores

• When characters reach certain ability scores, they can automatically succeed at some checks without need to roll. This can vary depending on being in or out of combat or stressful situation.
• Races change ability scores (both with bonuses and penalties!). Likely a +1 bonus to a single stat.
• Classes give ability bonuses. Also looks like they will use a +1 to a single stat.
• By default, abilities are generated by rolling! Roll 4d6, choose 3 highest.
• Point buy generation will also be included as an option.
• They want to have ability-boosting magic items (like Gauntlets of Ogre Power). There is talk of capping how much they can increase ability scores, though.
• Ability scores will not increase as much [as in 4E] as you level up.

Saving throws

• Saving throws are now directly associated with ability scores - the game now has six types of saving throws, rather than three defenses (Fortitude, Reflex, Will).
• These six saving throws plus AC should make up all of a character’s defensive stats.
• As an example, Charisma saves vs fear and charm.
• If you justify it and provide a good description, you can use a different ability for a save.

Skills

• The main means of interaction is the ability roll.
• Skills are basically modifiers to ability rolls.
• You may still be trained in a skill, and gain specific bonuses (e.g. moving faster while using stealth).
• Since skills are now secondary, they can afford to include niche skills. Skills as flavorful options, rather than something with a lot of mechanical importance.
• Skills are a module that can be ignored (in favor of just using ability scores).
• There is mention of “open-ended” skills. This likely means that the game doesn’t actually have a closed skill list. Classes, themes and other options can add as many new skills as the designers feel like.
• There is a bonus called “advantage” that a DM can provide for players giving good descriptions. This should be the non-combat equivalent for “combat advantage”, in 4E.
• Skill challenges were considered a failure. They are not coming back.

Equipment

• The standard coin will be silver, rather than gold.
• Some mundane gear will be out of reach for lower level characters. No plate mail at first level.
• Implements are still in the game, including non-magical ones.
• Weapons can have different damage and accuracy. Weapon damage types (slashing, piercing, bludgeoning) are being considered.

Themes

• In addition to race and class, characters can pick a theme, representing their background before they go adventuring. The same basic concept as 4E themes.
• Theme examples they mentioned include potion-maker, blacksmith, commoner, noble, knight, apprentice, planetouched.
• Themes can also be used to replace niche classes from previous editions. For example, Avenger will be a theme.
• They are also considering themes for certain races, like deva.
• No theme is restricted to specific classes.
• Themes are an optional module.

Battle map

• The use of a battle map is included as an optional module in the initial book: the “tactical rules module”.
• Character options specifically useful with a battle map (such as abilities that push enemies) will be flagged for convenience. They will still be usable even without that module.

Other

• Adventure preparation time will be quick, 4E style. Monsters use different rules as PCs, can be built in 5 minutes.
• They seem to be looking for a middle point for lethality - not as much as earlier editions, but more than 4E.
  

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D&D Experience: Class design, from Assassins to Wizards

Yesterday we had the second D&D Experience seminar about the future of the game. With the title “Class design: From Assassins to Wizards”, this one covered a very important aspect of D&D we had yet heard very little about. What exactly were the designers planning to borrow from each edition of the game? As it turns out, it appears that they really want to follow the aesthetics and presentation of 3.5 and older games, while borrowing some great ideas introduced by 4E, including at-will powers, a well defined mathematical framework, and an interest in balance.

On complexity:

• Different levels of complexity for classes: There will be some clear choices for beginners, and more sophisticated stuff.
• There was talk of labeling each class as common, uncommon or rare. This will be a function of how iconic a D&D class is (Fighters and Wizards are commons, Assassins are rare), and may also be tied to complexity (with higher rarities getting more difficult stuff).
• Different levels of complexity within each class. Once again, the example of the fighter was given: A very easy to run fighter build will exist, but adding options and complexity to it will still be possible. The wizard is also explicitly mentioned as a not so complex starting build.
• Buying complexity. By default, classes can get simple yet effective stuff when leveling up, like more damage or bonuses to hit. Players would have the option of trading these bonuses for new powers or features.

On balance:

• Balance is  on their radar, and they seem to have put a lot of thought into it. They have a framework with estimates of average length of adventuring days and encounters, and at several times they mention figures for damage expectations of different classes.
• That said, their approach to balance will be quite different from 4E. Whereas that edition had a common resource management system for all classes, this will no longer be the case for D&D Next. Expect wide differences in how each class handles its powers. Old school vancian magic for wizards and clerics has been mentioned as a prime example.
• Another big change: It is no longer expected that all classes have to be equally effective in combat. Some classes may be weaker in combat but stronger in exploration or role play. More than anything else mentioned in these seminars, this seems to me to be the most dramatic change from the previous edition - though it remains to be seen how they will finally implement it.

What to include:

• Initial goal is to have “Everything that has been in a Player’s Handbook I” from the start.
  Regarding classes, this means: fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard (of course), but also assassin, ranger, druid, paladin and bard, as well as barbarian, monk and sorcerer (from 3E) and the more recent warlords and warlocks. That’s a lot of stuff!
  Psions are explicitly mentioned as being left for later.

On Magic

• Vancian magic (the daily spell system used in all editions before 4E) is returning, and confirmed as the resource system for wizards and clerics.
• No details have been provided, but I strongly believe that the system will mimic the classics in that there will be 9 levels of arcane spells and 7 levels of divine spells, and spell progression should look very much like this.
• The main challenge for Vancian magic is preventing the “linear fighters, quadratic wizards” syndrome. The designers are aware of this, and are trying to deal with it.
• One of the solutions implemented consists in removing spell scaling. As an example, Fireball (a 3rd level spell) will deal 5d6 damage regardless of caster level (when previous versions dealt 1d6/caster level, up to 10d6). The only way to gain stronger effects will be to use higher level spells.
• For high level casters, instead of having dozens of lower level spells as in older systems, these slots will be replaced with higher level stuff. It is not clear if this will be the default behavior, or just an option, though.
• Also, they are looking at average duration of encounters and adventuring day, and balancing around that.
• Another crucial point: despite the Vancian system, casters will have access to at-will spells (so no more crossbow-wielding wizards!). However, these at-will attacks will be significantly weaker than their martial counterparts. Spells available per encounter also appear to be in the plans.
• Ritual magic (useful but non-combat spells, like crafting, scrying or teleporting) is back. It looks like it will be open-ended and not as strongly tied to the wizard class as before.

On Aesthetics

• The designers are carefully avoiding many 4E specific terms and definitions, in favor of older style wording.
• Notably, there is no mention of “powers” for classes.
• For the wizard class, at-will attacks are being called “magical feats”.
• Power sources will no longer be explicitly mentioned.
• Explicit class roles are very likely also gone (though this is speculation!)

Other

• Clerics are (finally!) getting split into two archetypes: the classic D&D holy warrior with heavy armor, mace and shield, which will be called cleric, and an unarmored divine character more focused on spellcasting, called the priest.
• Magic items will be more rare, and no longer expected to be a part of character progression.
• For multiclassing, they want it to be very easy and flexible, 3E style.

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D&D Experience: Charting the course (for D&D Next)

This weekend we have the Dungeons & Dragons Experience, where WoTC is expected to reveal some interesting information about the next edition of the game (also known as D&D Next, for now). As usual, I haven’t been able to attend, but that doesn’t mean I can’t provide some coverage! The transcript for the first seminar, titled “Charting the Course” is available at wizards.com, and I have taken some notes of the highlights.

On leveling up:

• For all editions, the game suffers important changes at a certain level
• They consider 4E highlights this high level change the best [through explicit paragon and Epic tiers and mechanics]
• They are looking at options that characters unlock at certain level. They mention castles and followers as examples.

On power increase as you level up:

• They are discussing how power and number of options should be affected by level.
• They want monsters to be relevant for a wider level range. The way to do this is to slow the rate at which attacks and defenses advance!
• Ideally, you should be able to drop a random orc at a high level party and have it be relevant. Building encounters by taking any iconic monsters from the manual should be easy.
• Your characters are still becoming badass heroes. At high levels, you’d be killing lots of those orcs in an encounter...

On the modular system:

• They acknowledge the variety of tastes, including contradictory positions. They intend to take all of these into account - but no specifics as to how, yet.
• A player suggests going for a freeform classless system. That doesn’t seem to be in the plans - They are commited to the class system, and consider the feeling of D&D classes very important. Wizards and Rangers are mentioned as examples.

On multiclassing:

• They want it to be simple
• Iconic class features are important
• Packages to grant certain features or qualities

On randomness:

• Some DMs like random generation of stuff. There will random tables for those who want them.

On switching modules:

• The goal is that switching can be done very easily, from one encounter to the next. Turning on and off stuff like minis/grid is mentioned.
• Players can add (and presumably remove) modules to adjust complexity of their characters as they level up.
• An example is provided for two fighters at the same table with very different complexity levels: a classic “hit with my sword” basic fighter, and an advanced one focusing on “combat maneuver options”.

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Game Math: Attack of the average adventurers

How hard does an adventurer hit? The underlying math behind monster stats in D&D 4E is well known by this point, but working out the numbers for player characters is a much trickier proposition, due to the insane amount of customizability that the game offers. Indeed, if one looks to the most extreme build options and loopholes available out there, we come up with characters that can one-shot standard monsters of their level, and it’s even possible to engineer wizards capable of dealing hundreds of damage in a single turn... while charging with a melee weapon.

Since the optimized scenarios present so much variability, I want to focus on the most basic builds. What kind of numbers should you expect from characters of a certain level, provided they have the essential options and gear, but nothing else to boost their attacks? The answer is in the table below:

Note that this builds on some previous articles, like my study on basic attacks, and on character survivability. Damage Per Round, or DPR, is defined here.

I will devote the rest of the article to analyze these numbers, and explain how I came up with them. For now, keep in mind that although it is possible to have characters with attack stats slightly below these, it won’t be a common scenario - in most games, you can expect PC attacks to deal at least as much damage as shown in the table, if not considerably more.

Building our baseline adventurer

My philosophy for building the reference character was to give it all the offensive resources that can be considered essential - and nothing more. Any character built without particular attention to damage dealing should have attack stats very similar to those of the reference character, whereas damage-focused PCs (even if not particularly optimized) should easily outperform it. For reference, I also added damage numbers for a baseline striker (adding just the striker extra damage class feature), though in practice you will very rarely see a striker character which doesn’t devote feats, powers and equipment to improve his attacks.

Following these ideas, the character was build under these assumptions:

• For simplicity, we only examine the character at certain critical levels: 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, 30.
• Starting 18 on primary ability score, with the usual boosts for levelling up. At epic, the PC gains a +2 to his ability score from an epic destiny .
• At-will attacks are implement vs For/Ref/Will or weapon (with +2 proficiency) vs AC (same hit rate), and on a hit deal 2d4 + primary ability modifier damage (4d4+mod at level 21).
• Encounter attacks are like at-will, but on a hit they deal 4d4+mod damage (levels 1,3,7), 6d4+mod (levels 11, 13,17) or 8d4+mod (levels 23,27).
• Magic weapons/implements by level: Level 6 (+2), Level 11 (+3), Level 16 (+4), Level 21 (+5), Level 26 (+6). Extra crit damage is 4 per plus (rounded for convenience).
• Only two feats are considered: Weapon/Implement expertise, and Weapon/Implement focus. Both are gain at level 6.
• Magic items granting item bonus to damage (like Iron Armbands of Power or Rod of Ruin) are assumed. Item bonus to damage by level is: Level 6 (+2), Level 16 (+4), Level 26 (+6).
• For the striker damage numbers, a class damage bonus of +4/tier is added.
• Character themes are not considered.

Most of these points represent very common choices. The use of 2d4 for attack damage is unusual, but I chose it because the most common damage dice are d8s and d10s, so this is an intermediate point between those, with the advantage of averaging an integer value ( 5), allowing for much cleaner results. The starting 18 ability score is more or less standard (though 20s are also common). Likewise, the magic weapon/implement progression and use of expertise feats are pretty much universal. The most controversial points are probably the addition of weapon/implement focus and item bonuses to damage. Focus feats are often ignored at lower levels (though usually because players take superior weapons instead, wich are roughly equivalent), but tend to become too tempting to pass on by paragon tier. As for item bonuses to damage, virtually every character who can take them does so, though certain builds (i.e. implement PCs not using staves) have a hard time acquiring them. I have come to accept that game math works better with them, to the point of giving them for free as a house rule.

Note that attack powers (both at-will and encounter) have been greatly simplified. Non-damaging effects of the attacks are ignored, and we assume that the attacks themselves don’t provide extra damage, above that of a basic attack (for at-wills) or a basic attack plus extra damage dice (for encounters). Power damage shows great variance, though a very common implementation for attacks with extra damage consists on adding a secondary ability modifier to the damage roll, which can be roughly approximated as an extra 3 damage per tier (or about 25% more damage than the attacks in the table).

A look at the numbers

A spreadsheet with the calculations used for the stat table can be found here.

Some quick facts that can be derived from the table and spreadsheet:

• Hit rate against same level monsters averages 65%.
• Base damage of strikers is about 30% more than that of non-strikers.
• Average base damage actually decreases a bit between level levels 26 and 30.
• Interestingly, crit damage is almost exactly twice the normal damage for most levels.

One very interesting parameter that can be calculated from these attack stats is the average time it takes for a PC to kill a monster, which allows us to estimate how many turns combat encounters usually last:

And for striker PCs:

These tables show the number of turns that the reference character would need, on average, to kill a skirmisher monster. The PC first uses all his encounter powers, and then attacks with his at-wills. Daily attacks were not considered because they are hard to characterize and not always available. Action point usage is also ignored - for the purposes of this table, using an action point is equivalent to taking an extra turn.

In the tables and spreadsheet, we see that:

• Non-strikers take 4-6 turns to kill a monster at heroic, 7-8 at paragon, and 8-10 at epic.
• Strikers take 25% less turns.
• Very challenging encounters can take almost twice as long.
• The contribution of encounter attacks amounts to about 1 turn of saved time.

An important point about these numbers is that they suggest that combat at paragon and epic tiers takes too long. In my opinion, easy encounters (between level and level +1) should last about 4 turns at heroic and 5-6 turns at paragon and epic, to allow characters to use all their attacks without requiring them to spend a long time spamming at-wills. However, it should be noted that the deviation between the stats of our base character and actual damage-focused PCs increases with level - in my experience, it is perfectly possible to build a party of characters that end fights in reasonable times with little or no optimization effort.

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