The Death of the D20?

I was looking over the existing monster math (from the previous draft of the rules) and I realized things were a bit off.

Specifically, for each PC in the encounter, your budget can include two Standard monsters -- which each having about as much HP as one PC (24-32 HP). In order for this to work within the goal of having combat last 3 rounds, the damage per round (DPR) for a PC needs to be 1/3rd of that total HP, for both of the Standard monsters. This works out to nearly 20 DPR. So what does this mean in practical terms?

Well, the way DPR is calculated, is by taking the average damage you can do on your turn (i.e. using class dice) and multiply it by your chance to hit; with a DC10, that means a d20 roll would hit 55% of the time. To make a long story short, this means you only deal about half of the average damage your dice would deal -- so to average out to 20 DPR, your dice need to average closer to 40 damage per round.

This is obviously way too high.

Oddly enough, the first solution that came to mind was simply axing attack rolls; this would mean taking your actions and simply dealing your damage, using your class dice. This quickly gets around the halving that results from permuting damage through an attack roll, meaning the monster math can remain (roughly) the same as it was. The alternative would be to simply lower the monster HP guidelines -- probably making it so Standard monsters and PCs are at a 1:1 ratio, instead of 2:1.

The third idea that came up in discussion would be to increase DPR by moving the class designs more in line with 4th Edition D&D, adding in encounter and daily powers (or something similar) to help boost damage. My assessment is that it would be a lot easier to implement and balance that, in the paradigm of weapon damage dice, rather than that of class dice.

In any situation where the attack rolls are kept in the game, what would need to happen for damage to increase, is for the hit chance to increase. This would mean using things like advantage, or the minor and major bonuses (using class dice.) I'm not sure I really want these bonuses to become so ubiquitous, though -- essentially making them a math tax.

As such, probably the solution is to make sure that bonuses from abilities, as well as from conditions and positioning, are well defined, meaningful, and readily accessible. For example, if there is a significant boost to hitting a prone target with a melee attack, then there needs to be worthwhile options for knocking enemies prone in the first place -- without further diminishing DPR, by spending your turn setting that up, rather than just dealing damage.

I really think this is the tack to take, since it encourages the players to be tactical, and likewise encourages me to build the system to facilitate that. It also reinforces the sort of 4e paradigm of "damage + effect" on abilities; your powers needs to always bee dealing damage to keep DPR consistent, but they should also be creating opportunities for your allies to combo off of, on their turns, in order to boost DPR.


---

As mentioned before, I'm hoping to get another post in before the end of August, so look for that on Sunday the 30th.