MM3 on a business card, improved

[Yakk]

Inspired by this:
https://dmg42.blogspot.ca/2012/02/boot-on-face-of-level-1-damage-forever.html



Base per level
AC: 14 +1
NAD: 12 +1
ATK: +5 +1
HP: 24 +8

Damage:
Minion Low Med High Limit
1 5 1d6+3 1d8+5 1d12+6 1d10+10
2 6 1d6+5 1d8+7 1d12+8 1d10+13
3 7 2d6+3 2d8+5 2d12+5 2d10+11
4 8 2d6+4 2d8+6 2d12+7 2d10+13
5 9 2d6+6 2d8+9 2d12+10 2d10+16

+5: +5 +2d6 +2d8+1 +2d12 +2d10+4

AKA: 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% (PC HP per hit)

Encounter power: +1 or +2 columns
Brute: +1 column
Multi-target: -1 column

Roles:
Soldier: +2 AC
Brute: -2 AC, +2 HP +2*Level HP
Artillery: -2 AC, -3 HP -2*Level HP
Lurker: -3 HP -2*Level HP

Categories:
Minion: only 1 HP (does not take damage on a miss), Minion damage
Elite: x2 HP, +1 column damage
Solo: x4 HP, +1 column damage, action economy compensation

Thoughts? Am I on crack here?

The AKA row displays the percent of a player's HP that a blow of that strength will cause. It matches what monsters do at level 1, roughly. Players gain more tactical options for dealing with monster damage and hits as they gain levels, so they should still have a power edge over monsters that scale this way. And being hit remains scary with these damage expressions; being crit can be deadly.

Limit is designed to do more average damage than High, but not on a crit (max damage of Limit and High is nearly identical). A crit of a High/Limit blow is basically the max HP of a 5 HP/level character.

[obryn]

You know, I came up with something similar. The 1st Level Damage Forever calculations are really, really good - and completely necessary IMO at the high Epic levels we're currently at. It's no longer a business card, more of a cheat sheet. We're at the high 20's (28th now) so that's where my focus is.



Level Low DC Med DC High DC Avg AC Avg FRW Low HP Med HP High HP Minion Low Damage Medium Damage High Damage Limited Damage
20 18 25 34 35 33 139 184 230 20 5d8+8 (30.5) 3d12+21 (40.5) 3d12+35 (54.5) 6d12+28 (67)
21 19 26 35 36 34 145 192 240 20 5d8+10 (32.5) 3d12+23 (42.5) 3d12+38 (57.5) 6d12+31 (70)
22 20 27 36 37 35 151 200 250 21 4d10+11 (33) 4d12+18 (44) 4d12+33 (59) 5d20+20 (72.5)
23 20 27 37 38 36 157 208 260 22 4d10+13 (35) 4d12+19 (45) 4d12+36 (62) 5d20+23 (75.5)
24 21 28 37 39 37 163 216 270 23 4d10+14 (36) 4d12+21 (47) 4d12+38 (64) 5d20+26 (78.5)
25 21 29 38 40 38 169 224 280 24 5d10+10 (37.5) 5d12+16 (48.5) 5d12+34 (66.5) 5d20+29 (81.5)
26 22 29 39 41 39 175 232 290 25 5d10+11 (38.5) 5d12+18 (50.5) 5d12+36 (68.5) 5d20+32 (84.5)
27 22 30 39 42 40 181 240 300 25 5d10+12 (39.5) 5d12+20 (52.5) 5d12+38 (70.5) 5d20+35 (87.5)
28 23 30 40 43 41 187 248 310 26 4d12+15 (41) 6d12+15 (54) 6d12+34 (73) 5d20+37 (89.5)
29 23 31 41 44 42 193 256 320 27 4d12+16 (42) 6d12+17 (56) 6d12+36 (75) 6d20+30 (93)
30 24 32 42 45 43 199 264 330 28 4d12+18 (44) 6d12+18 (57) 6d12+39 (78) 6d20+33 (96)
31 24 32 42 46 44 205 272 340 29 4d12+20 (46) 6d12+20 (59) 6d12+42 (81) 6d20+36 (99)
32 25 33 43 47 45 211 280 350 30 4d12+22 (48) 6d12+21 (60) 6d12+44 (83) 6d20+39 (102)
33 25 33 44 48 46 217 288 360 31 4d12+24 (50) 6d12+23 (62) 6d12+46 (85) 6d20+42 (105)
34 26 34 45 49 47 223 296 370 32 4d12+26 (52) 6d12+25 (64) 6d12+48 (87) 6d20+45 (108)
35 26 35 45 50 48 229 304 380 33 4d12+28 (54) 6d12+27 (66) 6d12+50 (89) 6d20+48 (111)

d6=3.5 d8=4.5 d10=5.5 d12=6.5 d20=10.5
3d6=10.5 3d8=13.5 3d10=16.5 3d12=19.5 3d20=31.5
4d6=14 4d8=18 4d10=22 4d12=26 4d20=42
5d6=17.5 5d8=22.5 5d10=27.5 5d12=32.5 5d20=52.5
6d6=21 6d8=27 6d10=33 6d12=39 6d20=63

[Yakk]

Things I don't like about mine: too many dice. I don't want a huge table, but I want a way to eliminate rolling 12d to determine damage on every attack.

Things I don't like about yours: bonuses are too large, dice too small. Not enough variance.

I believe that Limited expression damage needs to have its crit kept more under control than high damage expressions, just to avoid the one-hit problem.

I could go back to first principles.

Minion: 5+Level
Low: 1.5 minion
Medium: 2.0 minion
High: 2.5 minion
Limit: 3.0 minion

At level 11 your damage should be:

Minion: 16
Low: 24
Medium: 32
High: 40
Limit: 48

Ah, I have an idea. Starting at paragon, start roling 10* 1d6 and the like.

It keeps variance up, math easy, and # dice low.

[Yakk]

Ok, here is an attempt to factor that in, yet keep it business-card sized.

First, I used 20%/30%/40%/50%/60% of (Level+3)*5. Real characters are more like (Level+4)*5. This means that the damage scales up by an extra 20% over 30 levels; players get better at surviving death and healing, so damage should go up as well.



Heroic Damage
Minion Low Med High Limit
1 4 1d6+2 1d10+2 1d12+3 3d6+0
2 5 1d6+4 1d10+4 1d12+6 4d6+0
3 6 1d6+5 1d10+6 1d12+9 5d6+0

+3 +3 +1d6+1 +1d10 +1d12+1 +2d6+2

Paragon and Epic Damage
10 13 10d3 10d4 10d6 10d6+5
15 18 10d4 10d4+10 10d8 10d8+10
20 23 10d6 10d6+10 10d10 10d10+15
25 28 10d6+5 10d8+15 10d12+5 10d12+20
30 33 10d8+5 10d10+15 20d6+15 20d6+30

+1 +1 +1 +2 +2 +3

Roll 10d6 as "1d6*10". Roll 20d6 as "2d6*10".

Heroic is divided into 3 parts of 3 levels: 1-3, 4-6, 7-9. There is a 3 level table, and a way to add +3 levels.

Only "Limit" ends up with buckets of dice.

At level 10+, we switch to "10x some die, plus a modifier". This keeps rolling and math simple and quick, and variance high.

The dice at level 10+ are updated every 5 levels. We could do another one at level 35, but I don't care enough to. The intended scaling of Low and High include a half-point a level, but because we update every 5 levels this only results in it falling 2 points behind. To make up for it, when the roll isn't a plain 10d6+0, I added +1 damage.

Then I rounded the 10+ damage expressions to the nearest 5. Because easier to remember. The per level add is still non-round.

[MwaO]

Things I don't like about mine: too many dice. I don't want a huge table, but I want a way to eliminate rolling 12d to determine damage on every attack.

I'd just use an increasing base+larger dice size.

So 50 damage(on average) can be represented by 10d6+15, but can also be done with 2d12+37+crit of +2d12. You get roughly the same numbers - ~75 damage on a critical hit, 50 on a normal, but one is easier to roll than the other

[Yakk]

I'd guess that the variance on 2d12+37 is tiny compared to 10d6+15.

VAR(d12) = 143/12
VAR(2d12) = 143/6 = 28.83...
VAR(d6) = 35/12
VAR(10d6) = 175/6 = 29.16...

Hmm, not much different. So I'm wrong there. (smaller dice don't add up variance that fast)

But if you replace 10d6 with 1d6*10, we get a lot of variance
VAR(1d6*10) = 100*VAR(1d6) = 1750/6 = 291.66...

SD(2d12) =~ 5.37...
SD(1d6*10) =~ 17.08...

That is more than 3 times the standard deviation. Which means 2d12+37 is *actually* 39 to 61 damage in 95% of cases, an effective range of 22 points or 44% of the average damage. (2 standard deviation radius is a 95%+ interval)

1d6*10 + 15 is 25 to 75, an effective range of 50 points or 100% of the average damage.

In one case, rolling for damage is almost pointless. In the other, rolling for damage generates lots of information.

At low levels, rolling for damage has lots of information. 1d8+3 has an average of 7.5 and a range of 93% of the average damage. 1d4+5 has a range of 40% of the average damage. In one case, that damage roll really matters -- in the other, replace it with the average of the roll and nobody would really notice.

[obryn]

Things I don't like about yours: bonuses are too large, dice too small. Not enough variance.
I'd love to take credit, but I just expanded what I found in the 1st Level Damage Forever blog post. :smallsmile:

So far, I have liked limiting the dice to 6 per damage roll; it works fairly well. Of course, more d6's could be faster to calculate than half as many d12's.

The format got garbled, but I put in a cheat sheet for the average values of XdY down at the bottom for easier swaps/conversions.

[Yakk]

So, I did another iterative simplification of level 10+ damage.

Level 10+ damage calculation

The damage track is:
d3*10 d4*10 d6*10 d8*10 d10*10 d12*10+5 2d6*10+10 2d8*10+15

Start at d3*10.

Move 1 right for every damage expression type above low.
Move 1 right for every 5 levels above 10.

Add +2 damage for every extra level leftover (over and above the multiples of 5) except low damage, which adds only +1 per extra level.

So level 27 high damage is:
med high (d3 d4 d6)
15 20 25 (d8 d10 d12+5)
+2 levels leftover (+4)
so 1d12*10+9

And that is it.

This tracks 30%/40%/50%/60% of expected player HP surprisingly well.

[Beoric]

It's worth noting that, using DMG 42's assumptions regarding hit point gain, you get a similar effect on average damage as a fraction of PC hit points if you reduce average hit point gain from 5/level to 3/level.

Here is the spreadsheet (https://www.dropbox.com/s/ibjg8wjlho0kyk7/Monster%20Damage.xlsx?dl=0). You're gonna want to look at sheet 2.