[4e] Subtleties of Balance, Part 1: Accuracy

[Edge of Dreams]

So, I've been playing 4e since it came out and I finally think I've begun to understand some of the more subtle details of the balance between the options available for characters so far. I think I may end up doing a series of threads on this topic. For my first entry: The balance of Accuracy.

I am going to examine the potential accuracy of level 1 characters The following rules and assumptions are in play:

1) All characters take an 18 in their primary attack stat, regardless of race or class.
2) The party only faces level 1 monsters
3) AC of level 1 monsters averages about 15.
4) Other defenses of level 1 monsters average about 12.
5) All characters are optimizing only for accuracy. Maximum, average, and per round damage are not to be taken into consideration right now, or at least at first. This means melee characters use weapons with +3 proficiency bonus.
6) Only at wills are to be examined, leave encounter and daily powers out of this, for now.
7) Combat Advantage (CA) and the variations in defense scores will be considered toward the end.
8) Buffs from allies are to be ignored since all classes theoretically can benefit from them equally (to be examined further later, maybe?)

First up, attack bonuses.

Fighter and Rogue: 3 (prof) + 4 (stat) + 1 (class) = +8. Hits on rolls of 7 or up, 70% chance to hit.
Fighters and Rogues both get an additional +1 bonus on all attack rolls with their favored weapons, making them immediately

Ranger (both styles), Swordmage, Warlord, Cleric (melee), and Paladin: 3 (prof) + 4 (stat) = +7. Hits on 8 and up, 65% chance.

Cleric (ranged), Wizard, Warlock: 4 (stat) = +4, hits on 8 and up, 65% chance.

So far, looks like fighter and rogue are in the lead. But wait! We must consider the effect of at-will powers (only considering ones that affect accuracy):

Fighter:
1) Sure Strike: +2 to hit. In terms of damage output this at-will is mathematically bad, but it can put the fighter at 80% chance to hit, which is very nice.
2) Reaping Strike: Guaranteed damage against any non-minion. File this one under "to be further investigated"

Rogue:
1) Piercing Strike: One of only two at-wills that gets weapon proficiency against a non-AC defense (reflex in this case). Assuming normal AC to not-AC differences, this puts the rogue at 85% chance to hit. CA makes that everything except a natural 1. That seem unfair to anyone else?

Ranger:
1) Careful Attack: See Sure Strike above, 75%.
2) Twin Strike: Needs math. 65% on each attack. .65 + .35*.65 = .8775
87.75% chance to get A hit, not to mention the possibility of hitting twice. Looks like the ranger can give the rogue a run for his money. With CA this becomes .75 + .25*.75 = .9375 That's 93.75% chance to get a hit. Wow.

Warlord:
1) Furious Smash: Attacks with weapon versus Fort. Compare Piercing Strike. Puts warlord at 80% to hit with a low-damage ally-buffing attack.

Paladin:
1) Valiant Strike: Gets a +1 to the roll per adjacent enemy. At a minimum, gives 70% chance to hit, like fighter and rogue. Can scale to as awesome as an extra +8, which would only miss on a 1, and then only because of critical failure rules. Actual expected bonus from this is around +2 to +3 on average, I'd guess. Allows the Paladin to compete for most accurate, sometimes.

Wizard/Swordmage aoe at-wills:
Scorching Burst, Thunderwave, and similar attacks can have as many as 8 or 9 enemies in their area, although 2-3 is much more common and 5-6 is considered a lucky break. Against anything more than 2 targets, these beat Twin Strike for the chance to get A hit.



So, what can we conclude from all this? I'll tell you what I think:

In the kinds of fights most likely to be encountered by level 1 players in a normal game, Wizard and Swordmage clearly win the Get-At-Least-One-Hit competition just by the virtue of rolling two or more attacks almost every round (assuming they are played this way). So, let's push them aside and consider the other classes.

Reaping Strike allows the Fighter to win the Do-Some-Damage-Every-Round competition no matter what he rolls. This is nice for average damage, but I'd rather see who has the best chance to hit.

Paladin gets a situational buff through Valiant Strike, but it's just not big enough or consistent enough to win a prize. Clerics and Warlocks, on the other hand, are just out of luck entirely with no special way to boost their own accuracy. This bothers me, and I might discuss it more in the future.

What's left is Warlord, Rogue, and Ranger. Furious Smash is great in a party, but the Rogue's automatic +1 with daggers edges it out ahead for the purposes of this thread since Piercing Strike is strictly more likely to hit. Fort scores tend to be slightly higher throughout the monster manual than Reflex, as well, so the Warlord loses out.

So, the final round comes down to Rogue versus Ranger, and the math doesn't lie: Rangers are more likely to get a hit with Twin Strike than a Rogue is with Piercing Strike when neither has CA (87.75% versus 85%). Strangely enough, CA swaps these positions and puts Rogue ahead, though, which means this is where the Archery Ranger drops out of the running. The tie breaker really is CA, and by my experience, a melee Rogue is significantly more likely to get CA than a melee Ranger due to Artful Dodger, the encouragement of sneak attack to take risks for CA, and the number of Rogue powers that provide CA.



So, my final rankings are thus:
1) Melee Rogue wielding daggers and using Piercing Strike
2) Melee Ranger using Twin Strike
3) Archer Ranger using Twin Strike
4) Warlord using Furious Smash
5) Fighter using Sure Strike/Paladin using Valiant Strike (which is better is situational)
6) Fighter/Rogue not using their special at-wills
6) Warlord/Paladin not using their special at-wills, Cleric, Warlock, Wizard using single-target attacks

And the special cheater prize goes to Wizard, of course, for using aoe.

What do you think?

EDIT: Sorry folks, I forgot about Prime Shot for Archery Rangers and Warlocks. Prime Shot pushes Warlocks just the tiniest bit ahead of Cleric, single-target Wizard, etc., but for both classes that get it, the actual number of times Prime Shot actually comes into effect is extremely small. Prime Shot also encourages unnecessary risk for two classes that are designed to stay out of harm's way.

[Yakk]

This isn't that useful, because of your choice to eliminate variables instead of isolating them. :-)

To make it more useful, you can do things like:
1> Deal with monsters and players from level 1 through 30.
2> Deal with enemies that vary in level slightly compared to players.
3> Don't ignore damage output.

But ya, this is about where things stand at level 1.

[Mad Wizard]

I'd agree that this isn't all that useful until you take into account what you're hitting with. Several of these abilities are sub-par in terms of damage (ie piercing strike), so you may end up doing less average damage than you would using something else. Basically, you may have HIT, but was it really useful?

[quillbreaker]

Based on the way point buy works it seems better to have higher stats overall and stop at 16 than get the 18. Except for wizards, who are still SAD (or more SAD than anyone else) for some reason. My warlord has 16 str, 16 int, and 14 cha before racial bonuses without dumping the other stats completely, and I think I'd take that over an additional +1.

[Yakk]

He's presuming the character picks a class with a primary stat option that it can get a bonus in.

[Lord_Ventnor]

I think you forgot to factor in that there are no implement based powers that target AC (with the exception of 1). This is also a balance choice, since without a weapon proficiency bonus to those powers, hitting AC would be much more difficult.

[Tuataralad]

Hmm...interesting.

I agree that this study would benefit from deeper exploration of various builds, levels, etc. I never knew that rogues got the best accuracy overall, at least at level 1. I currently am playing a rogue who holds a rapier in one hand and a dagger in the other, but I have never noticed the good accuracy, mainly because I always roll really badly in combat, but really well outside of it. This actually seems a tad unfair, because when rogues have combat advantage (and if you play one right, they usually will) they also get crazy extra damage from sneak attack. Best damage (at least in my party) and accuracy seems kinda rigged.

[Kletian999]

Some points:
Fort is often higher than reflex, sometimes even higher than AC on Brutes. Enworld has the thread that breaks it all down.
Cloud of daggers does guarenteed damage like Reaping Strike but it even kills minions (unless the monster is moved out of that square before their turn starts).
Most encounters are against monsters 1 or 2 levels higher than party.
Ranged classes can get combat advantage from stealth checks or condtions like Daze.

[Edge of Dreams]

This isn't that useful, because of your choice to eliminate variables instead of isolating them. :-)


Hey Yakk. I've seen you around, and I know you're good with teh maths...
Anyway, I know I limited myself to a very small subsection of the overall game, but I think my conclusions actually hold up pretty well anyway. Let me address your concerns:



1> Deal with monsters and players from level 1 through 30.

This actually doesn't make as much difference as you'd think. The relative values of monster AC to player attack bonus do change as the players level, but the relationships of the classes to each other never changes. The actual % to-hit wasn't what I cared about so much as which class is going to hit more often in general. At any level, Rogues and Fighters still get a strict +1 bonus, Rangers still get Twin Strike, and Wizards still do aoe.

There are a few things that affect to-hit in the higher levels such as the choice of paragon path and epic destiny (Kensei and Demigod for examples of each), but many of those choices are available to most or all classes. Yes, I'm ignoring non-at-wills. That's a topic for later.



2> Deal with enemies that vary in level slightly compared to players.

This isn't a big deal for the same reason as number 1 - the actual numbers mean less than the relative numbers for the type of conclusion I care about here.



3> Don't ignore damage output.

There's two reasons I ignored damage output for this analysis. The first is that I intend to analyze damage output later, and I wanted a baseline understanding of accuracy first. The second reason is that for actual players, one of the most frustrating things in the game is not hitting. I first had the idea to analyze this when I noticed the rogue in a game I'm DMing hitting way more often than anyone else, and the Warlock, Cleric, and non-optimized fighter getting really frustrated with their consistent missing. I wanted to see if that was really just my game or if there's an actual class imbalance, and behold, the classes are not perfectly balanced for accuracy (not that that is necessarily a bad thing)



Based on the way point buy works it seems better to have higher stats overall and stop at 16 than get the 18. Except for wizards, who are still SAD (or more SAD than anyone else) for some reason. My warlord has 16 str, 16 int, and 14 cha before racial bonuses without dumping the other stats completely, and I think I'd take that over an additional +1.

This is a valid idea, and yes, certain classes and builds can benefit a lot from trading in +1 attack/damage for significant boosts to their other stats. I chose 18 for this discussion for a couple reasons. One is that I wanted to see what happens when the players optimize for accuracy, and an 18 is possible for every race/class combo to be able to get. Secondly, I've been running a game in which the Rogue has 18 or 20 dex, uses daggers, and gets combat advantage almost every turn, while the fighter has 16 strength, is using a waraxe (only +2 prof), and has CA about half the time. I was astounded by how much more often the Rogue seemed to be hitting, so I wanted to see how much of that was the differing levels of optimization versus the difference between the classes.

[Erk]

You've got fortitude and reflex values switched: fortitude tends to be higher than reflex for most monsters. Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the math thread where a dude summed up the totals either, but a quick flipthrough will back me up.

In my experience, it's the ranger that benefits from the most accuracy, because twin strike is a highly accurate ability that also inflicts very high damage. I'm getting so annoyed by my player-ranger only using twin strike, often in preference to encounter abilities, that in my next game I'm going to rule that it can only be used to target multiple opponents.

[Edge of Dreams]

You've got fortitude and reflex values switched: fortitude tends to be higher than reflex for most monsters. Unfortunately I didn't bookmark the math thread where a dude summed up the totals either, but a quick flipthrough will back me up.

You're right, sorry. Will fix that in the original post.



In my experience, it's the ranger that benefits from the most accuracy, because twin strike is a highly accurate ability that also inflicts very high damage. I'm getting so annoyed by my player-ranger only using twin strike, often in preference to encounter abilities, that in my next game I'm going to rule that it can only be used to target multiple opponents.

That's a very interesting idea. I do think that at-wills should never be so good that you ignore your encounter powers. The only serious balance problem I see with your suggestion is that it penalizes the ranger when dealing with a solo or when the party really needs to focus-fire, but I'm not certain how big a deal that is.

[Erk]

That's a very interesting idea. I do think that at-wills should never be so good that you ignore your encounter powers. The only serious balance problem I see with your suggestion is that it penalizes the ranger when dealing with a solo or when the party really needs to focus-fire, but I'm not certain how big a deal that is.

It goes hand-in-hand with some other mods that I haven't fully thought through yet. Ranger's Sure Strike, whatever it is called, will probably get a damage equal to str mod or dex mod on a miss, or will confer a bonus to the ranger's next attack against the opponent as well, and fighter's Sure Strike will get a bonus to some defense(s) on a hit [currently thinking maybe +wis mod to AC and Reflex, maybe], to make them both more utility than they currently are. I have a few other changes, like this at-will that currently doesn't have a home but might find its way to warlord or perhaps even be available to multiple classes. If I decide to add str mod bonus to the damage, I'll replace the currently rather wimpy Valiant Strike with it.

Formation Attack
XXXXX attack 1
at-will * melee, weapon
std. action, 1 creature
Str +1 per adjacent enemy vs. AC
Hit: 1[w] damage, +1 per adjacent ally.

[Saintjebus]

I was astounded by how much more often the Rogue seemed to be hitting, so I wanted to see how much of that was the differing levels of optimization versus the difference between the classes.

I was running a game with a rogue, a fighter, a cleric, and a swordmage, and in the 3 sessions we had before the rogue left for some reason, he missed an attack only once. On the other hand, he was also getting CA almost every round, just as someone else said. I definitely agree; the rogue has the most accuracy, all other things being equal.