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Bjarkmundur
2019-04-08, 04:06 AM
I am sick and tired of HP and Damage scaling.

This arbitrary scaling of HP has nothing to do with the game and only results in higher level characters and spells dealing massive amounts of damage to keep up with health pools.
At this point I feel 90% of upcast spells are simply there to try to keep up with some silly HP scaling that only makes the game more complicated.

It reduces the options for the DM significantly, both in terms of monsters used and playable adventure modules. Levels should add options, not remove them.

Is there any precedent for reduced HP and Damage Scaling. Has anyone done some recalculating?

I'm this close to reducing HP scaling by half for players and recalculating all damage dealt to follow, just so I can use whatever monsters and whatever module I feel like playing.

Starting the game with a higher amount of HP and reduce the scaling no longer means that I have to recalculate entire encounters between levels. I'd love for each challenge to be relevant for at least 3-5 levels.

In my current group I can see this not even being an issue. These are the only damage scaling my group has seen for 3 levels:

Great Weapon Master Feat
1d6 Sneak Attack increase
+3 Eldritch Blast damage

This hardly justifies their HP having doubled over the course of 2 levels.

DeTess
2019-04-08, 04:43 AM
In my current group I can see this not even being an issue. These are the only damage scaling my group has seen for 3 levels:

Great Weapon Master Feat
1d6 Sneak Attack increase
+3 Eldritch Blast damage

This hardly justifies their HP having doubled over the course of 2 levels.

Have you also looked on how the monster damage and hp scales wrt player ability? And since you're talking about hp doubling over two levels, I assume you're talking about the very low levels, where quite a few monsters could one-hit-ko a player with a lucky crit?

Bjarkmundur
2019-04-08, 05:01 AM
Have you also looked on how the monster damage and hp scales with player ability?
Yes, I have an entire study of it in my signature.

And since you're talking about hp doubling over two levels, I assume you're talking about the very low levels, where quite a few monsters could one-hit-ko a player with a lucky crit?
There's a reason why myself and many other DMs don't introduce monster crits until level 3 or 5.

My problem is mainly players out-scaling threats. If the entire difficulty spectrum would be reduce by half, each threat would stay relevant longer. Starting within higher HP and have lower scaling would've made the entire game more enjoyable, to me personally.

Then I realized I can just talk to my players and explain to them that the module I'm playing is lower level, and ask them if it would be OK to reduce some of their HP and Damage, based on the module we're playing. If they don't like, i think we'll still have fun :)

Greywander
2019-04-08, 05:05 AM
I am sick and tired of HP and Damage scaling.
You an me both. I've considered this issue, and the conclusion I came to was that it could be done, sort of, but would require a lot of work rebalancing damage. Rebalancing HP is the easy part.

For HP, what I would do is have it scale with proficiency bonus instead of level. That way, you start with, say, 2d8 + 6 HP (with a CON mod of +3) average 15, and max out at 6d8 + 30 (if you raise CON to 20), average 57. A little more HP at level 1, a lot less at 20. This also works fine for monsters, too, since you can extrapolate their hit die size from their HP and their proficiency bonus from their skills. Monster CON is already given to you.

Damage is the hard part. You have to rebalance spells, and you have to do them individually, since even spells of the same level don't deal the same damage. Extra Attack and dual wielding have to be tweaked. Many martial classes get bonuses to damage, such as fighting styles, smites, sneak attack, martial arts, etc. And that's not even getting into monster abilities that deal damage, of which there are an awful lot.

You could come up with a generic formula for dealing with spells, that can then be applied to monster abilities. For example, AdB becomes XdY. So 3d6 might become 2d8, while 6d8 might become 4d6. It's a tricky thing. I'd suggest starting by coming up with an "expected damage per level" for spells, you can find one in the DMG under the section on creating spells. Once you've established a baseline for how much damage a spell should do, you can figure out a formula that converts from the DMG values to your values, and apply it to the existing spells.

noob
2019-04-08, 05:39 AM
The problem with that is that it makes monster swarms even more excessively deadly.
Also it is quite weird if you have to stab for 32434243545 years the dragon to kill it because it got like 600 hit points and that meanwhile your barbarian which is utterly legendary and which killed a dozen of gods just have 60 hp(of course if you went that far it means you probably had some defences that were not hit points).
Furthermore it empowers moon druids and abjuration wizards and temporary hit points massively: full casters becomes better at tanking with hp than other classes.

DeTess
2019-04-08, 05:40 AM
Have you also looked on how the monster damage and hp scales with player ability?
Yes, I have an entire study of it in my signature.

And since you're talking about hp doubling over two levels, I assume you're talking about the very low levels, where quite a few monsters could one-hit-ko a player with a lucky crit?
There's a reason why myself and many other DMs don't introduce monster crits until level 3 or 5.

My problem is mainly players out-scaling threats. If the entire difficulty spectrum would be reduce by half, each threat would stay relevant longer. Starting within higher HP and have lower scaling would've made the entire game more enjoyable, to me personally.

Then I realized I can just talk to my players and explain to them that the module I'm playing is lower level, and ask them if it would be OK to reduce some of their HP and Damage, based on the module we're playing. If they don't like, i think we'll still have fun :)

Alternatively, you could also add more of the low-level creatures, or refluff higher CR monsters as lower CR creatures. If your party is already past the level where 4 goblins are relevant, but you absolutely needs goblins there, why not use the stats for a goblin boss or a kobold dragonshield or whatever else fits.

I mean, if you want to redo all of the game math that's fine, but I think there are easier solutions for your problem of: ' I need players to fight traditional low-level enemies while they are higher level'

noob
2019-04-08, 05:43 AM
Alternatively, you could also add more of the low-level creatures, or refluff higher CR monsters as lower CR creatures. If your party is already past the level where 4 goblins are relevant, but you absolutely needs goblins there, why not use the stats for a goblin boss or a kobold dragonshield or whatever else fits.

I mean, if you want to redo all of the game math that's fine, but I think there are easier solutions for your problem of: ' I need players to fight traditional low-level enemies while they are higher level'

Well alternatively you could just interpret level as meaning you really got stronger and that what was dangerous for you no longer is and that now the goblins that threaten you are the ones with bows or the ones wearing full plates and with extreme swording skills.

DeTess
2019-04-08, 06:00 AM
Well alternatively you could just interpret level as meaning you really got stronger and that what was dangerous for you no longer is and that now the goblins that threaten you are the ones with bows or the ones wearing full plates and with extreme swording skills.

Well yeah, but if you're using the hobgoblin chief stats and call it a goblin, that's effectively a goblin in full plate with better swording skills, now is it? I'm just pointing out the path of least resistance.

monworkbench
2019-04-10, 05:26 PM
So something I have done in my games which seemed to work out well and no one complained was a tier system.

So for a goblin, let's say he attacks for 1d6 on paper, which is nothing for a higher level group. Break it into a tier. Roll a d6

1-2 (1d6)
3-4 (1d8)
5-6 (1d10)

or for his HP

1-2 (7HP)
3-4 (12HP)
5-6 (20HP)

That way some of them will hit hard and other will just be regular meaningless attacks. You could do this for anything really. If they question it, just say the goblin who hits for 1d10 worked out alot. I mean if there are 20 goblins in a pack they will not all be exactly the same strength, height and weight.

Man_Over_Game
2019-04-10, 05:40 PM
The big concern I have for any kind of "scaling" reduction is that:


Hit Dice are often ignored, and making them smaller will exacerbate that fact.
Constitution is directly tied to HP.
Reducing HP scaling would be a hassle to calculate per class.
Reducing overall survivability would create even more risk at lower levels.

My recommendation is to enhance the starting HP, and then making it so that each level afterwards only provides 50% more maximum HP than normal, keeping Hit Die as their default values.

A good example of a decent enough level 1 HP buff would be adding an extra Hit Die on top of their maxed out Hit Die. So a Barbarian would start out with 12 + 1d12 + Con in HP, compared to their normal 12 + Con HP.

Every level afterwards, that Barbarian would earn (1d12+Con)/2 in maximum HP (round up to prevent too high of a change).

With a Constitution of +3, here are the comparisons:

Standard:


15
24.5
34
43.5
53
62.5
72
81.5
91
100.5


Changes:

21.5
26.5
31.5
36.5
41.5
46.5
51.5
56.5
61.5
66.5


This means the Barbarian drops from 8.5 HP per level to 5 HP per level, or about 40% less HP per level.

To determine how severe this is, we can take a look at the Rogue at higher levels, and determine how long it would take to kill a character with these rules as a Rogue (who gains 1d6 damage every 2 levels, or 1.75 per level).

A level 1 Rogue deals about 2d6 + 3 damage, or about 10 damage. He'd kill most standard level 1 characters in 2 turns, or a revised character in 2-3.
A level 10 Rogue deals about 25 damage (1d6 + 5d6 + 4). He'd kill the standard character in 4 turns, or a revised character in 2-3.
A level 20 Rogue deals about 43 damage. He'd kill a standard character (200 HP) in about 5 turns, or the revised character (117 HP) in about 2-3.



All-in-all, it seems pretty consistent.

My main concern is spellcasting. The burst damage available on spellcasting can be a bit extreme, and even my example of the highest HP character possible only has 117 HP, barely above the threshold for Power Word: Kill. Now, since you're the DM, you could just CHOOSE not to use many lethal-style of spells (opting to use enemy casters as controllers or manipulators) but otherwise, it seems fine.

Bjarkmundur
2019-04-11, 02:24 AM
This is something one would have to play around with to get used to, but I think double HP at level 1 and half HP increase per Level is definitely the way to go.

mesc
2019-04-11, 02:54 AM
Funny, in our group we practice maximizing the HP from hit die.

Fnissalot
2019-04-11, 03:32 AM
The big concern I have for any kind of "scaling" reduction is that:


Hit Dice are often ignored, and making them smaller will exacerbate that fact.
Constitution is directly tied to HP.
Reducing HP scaling would be a hassle to calculate per class.
Reducing overall survivability would create even more risk at lower levels.

My recommendation is to enhance the starting HP, and then making it so that each level afterwards only provides 50% more maximum HP than normal, keeping Hit Die as their default values.

A good example of a decent enough level 1 HP buff would be adding an extra Hit Die on top of their maxed out Hit Die. So a Barbarian would start out with 12 + 1d12 + Con in HP, compared to their normal 12 + Con HP.

Every level afterwards, that Barbarian would earn (1d12+Con)/2 in maximum HP (round up to prevent too high of a change).

With a Constitution of +3, here are the comparisons:

Standard:


15
24.5
34
43.5
53
62.5
72
81.5
91
100.5


Changes:

21.5
26.5
31.5
36.5
41.5
46.5
51.5
56.5
61.5
66.5


This means the Barbarian drops from 8.5 HP per level to 5 HP per level, or about 40% less HP per level.

To determine how severe this is, we can take a look at the Rogue at higher levels, and determine how long it would take to kill a character with these rules as a Rogue (who gains 1d6 damage every 2 levels, or 1.75 per level).

A level 1 Rogue deals about 2d6 + 3 damage, or about 10 damage. He'd kill most standard level 1 characters in 2 turns, or a revised character in 2-3.
A level 10 Rogue deals about 25 damage (1d6 + 5d6 + 4). He'd kill the standard character in 4 turns, or a revised character in 2-3.
A level 20 Rogue deals about 43 damage. He'd kill a standard character (200 HP) in about 5 turns, or the revised character (117 HP) in about 2-3.



All-in-all, it seems pretty consistent.

My main concern is spellcasting. The burst damage available on spellcasting can be a bit extreme, and even my example of the highest HP character possible only has 117 HP, barely above the threshold for Power Word: Kill. Now, since you're the DM, you could just CHOOSE not to use many lethal-style of spells (opting to use enemy casters as controllers or manipulators) but otherwise, it seems fine.

The alternative is to just stop adding con to hit points after the first level and do the same for monsters. This also makes con a less powerful stat. It would no longer be the secondary attribute for pretty much all classes.

No con scaling

15
21.5
28
34,5
41
47,5
54
60,5
67
73,5





Damage is the hard part. You have to rebalance spells, and you have to do them individually, since even spells of the same level don't deal the same damage. Extra Attack and dual wielding have to be tweaked. Many martial classes get bonuses to damage, such as fighting styles, smites, sneak attack, martial arts, etc. And that's not even getting into monster abilities that deal damage, of which there are an awful lot.

You could come up with a generic formula for dealing with spells, that can then be applied to monster abilities. For example, AdB becomes XdY. So 3d6 might become 2d8, while 6d8 might become 4d6. It's a tricky thing. I'd suggest starting by coming up with an "expected damage per level" for spells, you can find one in the DMG under the section on creating spells. Once you've established a baseline for how much damage a spell should do, you can figure out a formula that converts from the DMG values to your values, and apply it to the existing spells.

Decreasing weapon damage would then just be to no longer add the +dex or +str to the damage dice.

As some of you have mentioned, the big task is still to balance all spell damages and abilities like sneak attack. The problem with the DMG table is that the spells in the PHB don't follow it. Meteor swarm does 40d6 damage on a failed save but the table says that it should do 14d6. That said, if all spells were exactly equal, you wouldn't be able to do interesting tactical decisions.

Edit: Slightly off-topic rant...
I continued looking through the DMG and found how severe damages should be at different levels as they designed it. Cross referencing it with the spell damage and stuff is widely inconsistent... A 3rd level spell should kill a full health level 1-4 character and a 6th should kill a 5-10 character. But a 9th level spell should only do around 80% at 11-16 and less than half at 17- 20. There is no linear logic to these tables... Setbacks are between 20-45% of deadly, and dangerous are between 40-75% of deadly. The difference between the survivability between a level 1 and a level 4 character is huge by RAW but these tables just clump them together.

Bjarkmundur
2019-04-11, 08:05 AM
Spells will be the simplest to be honest. You don't need to balance all the spells in the game, just those in your group.

Making sure all martial characters scale right is probably more difficult.

I have a rogue, a fighter and two Warlocks. We are at level 3, here is how our damage has scaled:

Great Weapon Master
Battlemaster Maneuvers
Sneak Attack
Eldritch Invocation
Upcast Spells

Some scaling is OK, but it can be minimised in many cases.

GWM is out
Battlemaster Maneuvers reduced to 1d4
Sneak attack scaling removed, or dice size reduced
Upcast spells removed
Eldritch invocation is fine as is.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-04-15, 08:15 PM
Normally I'm all for screwing with game mechanics, but... the whole point of a level-based system like D&D is to get stronger and fight scarier things. It doesn't have to be the point of an RPG, but that sort of growth is arguably *the* single most fundamental aspect of the Dungeons and Dragons system. It's the philosophy that informs every other design choice. If you cut it out, you're left with nothing.

Different editions have handled it in different ways, but in 5e, damage scaling is really the only thing that distinguishes a level 1 character from a level 20. Apart from a few utility spells, and some noncombat abilities that function the same at every level (skills, feats like Actor, etc), every class feature, every feat, every spell is dedicated towards either dealing or withstanding more damage. So, like... you're correct, high level damage abilities are just canceled out by high hit points, but that's just... part of the system. It's baked in so deeply that significantly changing it means essentially rewriting the entire game. (Which doesn't have to be a bad thing, mind, but be honest with yourself about what you're doing.)

The best you can do and keep the game recognizable is a Vitality and Wound Points system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm), where you keep effective health totals the same but draw a distinct line between "HP as meat" and "HP as plot armor." Beyond that...?

Play another system.

I know that's not great advice and it's not what you want to hear, but seriously-- you're not tired of one part of the game, you're tired the fundamental thing that makes D&D D&D. If you want to be able to tell whatever stories and use whatever monsters at any time, switch to a system with a flatter power curve. Savage World, Fate, STaRS, Dungeon World, Ars Magicka, GURPS... there are a thousand systems out there that will be a better fit.

noob
2019-04-15, 11:01 PM
you could also cap level in 5e and reduce xp gain rates: it is equivalent to reducing hp and damage scaling in 5e for everyone but casters(those are hit harder in high level spell access)

Black Jester
2019-04-18, 12:09 AM
During the Gold Age of D&D, Hit Dice only increased until level 9 to 10, and then the curve of additional hit points flattened considerably to +1/+2/+3 per level for mages/rogues and priests/wariors without adding the Constitution modifier any more.

And yes, this also means that it is quite nonsense to assume that slowing down the HP advancement would make it "less D&D". To the contrary: It would make it more alligned with arguably the best era of the game's life cycle as a whole.

You could probably use a very similar approach - using the system as is until level 10, than turn to a flat bonus from then on. Ideally, that flat bonus is simply the Constitution modifier.

For monsters, I would scale these with size, mostly because it is ridiculous that a human-sized creature could ever take as much punishment in combat as an elephant-sized one. 10 HD max for small and medium creatures (like, for instance PC races), then +5 or +10 maximum hitdice for every size category larger.

noob
2019-04-18, 03:58 AM
During the Gold Age of D&D, Hit Dice only increased until level 9 to 10, and then the curve of additional hit points flattened considerably to +1/+2/+3 per level for mages/rogues and priests/wariors without adding the Constitution modifier any more.

And yes, this also means that it is quite nonsense to assume that slowing down the HP advancement would make it "less D&D". To the contrary: It would make it more alligned with arguably the best era of the game's life cycle as a whole.

You could probably use a very similar approach - using the system as is until level 10, than turn to a flat bonus from then on. Ideally, that flat bonus is simply the Constitution modifier.

For monsters, I would scale these with size, mostly because it is ridiculous that a human-sized creature could ever take as much punishment in combat as an elephant-sized one. 10 HD max for small and medium creatures (like, for instance PC races), then +5 or +10 maximum hitdice for every size category larger.

Except that other scaling values and new class features made adventurers really great at solving problems heck an army and a castle were a class feature for fighters while wizard and priests kept getting more spells(up to level 6 spells for priests(+ crusade spells but it is optional)).
And some of the high level spells were a lot stronger(for example you did not need tricks for having the right to make multiple simulacrums)

Also the monsters were comparably frail so it was not asymmetrical knowing you could explode in a single spell a demon lord (with a lot of luck maybe but it was a thing)

I think if you halve hit points for adventurers you should do the same for monsters.
I mean 600 hit points for a monster is just plain idiotic.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-04-18, 06:28 AM
I think if you halve hit points for adventurers you should do the same for monsters.
I mean 600 hit points for a monster is just plain idiotic.

There is exactly 1 MM monster with 600+ HP. The Terrasque. The Demon Lords cap out at about 400 and change. Only the Ancient Red and Ancient Gold dragons come close, at about 550.

If you're routinely fighting those kinds of creatures, you're way outside the guidelines.

Changing health this dramatically is approximately like increasing the CR by a factor of 1.5, because the offensive DPR standards (half of CR) are set by what can, in one good round, knock a "squishy" character to 0 HP from full. Specifically, a CR X creature can knock a d6 HD character of level X - 1 (with +2 CON) to zero in one good round.

CR is designed to be a warning threshold. If offensive CR > level, you can expect some sudden knockdowns or other highly swingy events. If defensive CR > level, you can expect the fight to drag on, assuming roughly equal action economy. The last part is critical. Judging anything by solo monsters is a problem. Because the system is balanced around Boss + minions or hordes of minions, not solo encounters. Those are the spice, not the staple. They're the 1/campaign (or 1/arc) type of capstone fight, not the bread and butter. Those have to have grossly-inflated HP so they don't just evaporate when you point a full-strength paladin at them. And even then, judging from reports and from my players in the past (who are not optimizers), it's not enough.

I've done a lot of work with monster statistics. This kind of project is basically akin to completely rewriting the monster manual as a start. And then balancing it. You're also removing one major avenue of progression, as Grod_the_Giant said.

Knaight
2019-04-18, 09:58 AM
During the Gold Age of D&D, Hit Dice only increased until level 9 to 10, and then the curve of additional hit points flattened considerably to +1/+2/+3 per level for mages/rogues and priests/wariors without adding the Constitution modifier any more.

And yes, this also means that it is quite nonsense to assume that slowing down the HP advancement would make it "less D&D". To the contrary: It would make it more alligned with arguably the best era of the game's life cycle as a whole.


Saves, attacks (THAC0 or the matrices), and usually magic item quality all scaled during those editions. The dramatic scaling was still very much present, just distributed a bit differently - and 9 levels of hit point scaling is still pretty dramatic by general RPG standards.

The Kool
2019-04-18, 10:10 AM
Yeah I was going to point out AD&D HP scaling. Consider: Start with max HP for all of Tier 1. Roll for Tier 2. Gain 1+con for Tier 3-4.

Bjarkmundur
2019-04-18, 08:12 PM
Normally I'm all for screwing with game mechanics, but... the whole point of a level-based system like D&D is to get stronger and fight scarier things. It doesn't have to be the point of an RPG, but that sort of growth is arguably *the* single most fundamental aspect of the Dungeons and Dragons system. It's the philosophy that informs every other design choice. If you cut it out, you're left with nothing.

Different editions have handled it in different ways, but in 5e, damage scaling is really the only thing that distinguishes a level 1 character from a level 20. Apart from a few utility spells, and some noncombat abilities that function the same at every level (skills, feats like Actor, etc), every class feature, every feat, every spell is dedicated towards either dealing or withstanding more damage. So, like... you're correct, high level damage abilities are just canceled out by high hit points, but that's just... part of the system. It's baked in so deeply that significantly changing it means essentially rewriting the entire game. (Which doesn't have to be a bad thing, mind, but be honest with yourself about what you're doing.)

The best you can do and keep the game recognizable is a Vitality and Wound Points system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm), where you keep effective health totals the same but draw a distinct line between "HP as meat" and "HP as plot armor." Beyond that...?

Play another system.

I know that's not great advice and it's not what you want to hear, but seriously-- you're not tired of one part of the game, you're tired the fundamental thing that makes D&D D&D. If you want to be able to tell whatever stories and use whatever monsters at any time, switch to a system with a flatter power curve. Savage World, Fate, STaRS, Dungeon World, Ars Magicka, GURPS... there are a thousand systems out there that will be a better fit.

This answer was very helpful, thank you for taking the time to reply.

I found the answer I was looking for by saying "Hit points at level 1 are doubled, and hit point increase when levelling is halved (rounded up)".

Example (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nWseE1mdpTm1qAX-2WfkdMoVH7S8WphXEStexXF9tX4/edit?usp=drivesdk)

Since I almost solely play on levels 1-10, this serves my needs perfectly. Seems that I was more annoyed by how big of a percentage the HP increase over the early game, and small the challenge window was at these levels at a result. I just smoothed out the curve a little, and it has worked perfectly so far.