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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 8:15AM
#211
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Kronos is incapable of grasping those important facts: 1) you need to compare the variance between optimized and casual PCs. If the game breaks down at any point due to optimization something is wrong with the games basics. If optimized 20 Con warriors have 3 to 4x the HP of casual 10-12 Con rogues and wizards then we have a big problem.
That simply is not true. I'm not sure if you are getting tired and making misteaks or intentionally trying to mislead people, but a plain 20 con warrior doesn't have 4X the hp of ANY casual 12 con rogue or wizard. Period. Even with your abuse of durable, it was only over near 3X the hp of an 8 con worst case scenario character.
Here is a clue: a 12 con rogue or wizard gets 5 hp per level. 4X that would be 20 hp per level. If you can show me a fighter who averages 20 hp per level, I'll shut up. Hint #2: you can't, no fighter gains 20 hp per level.
Also, I have corrected you before on my name. I have to assume you are intentionally doing it as a personal attack on me, and I'm going to start reporting your posts to the mods. I don't care if you write my name, but spelling it wrong on purpose is just plain insulting.
>2) Players should not be forced to put a 14 into their Con score. D&D should
>allow for a wide range of character archetypes.
I agree, yet you are forcing them to do just this! Your system gives everyone the same hp over time, such that they ALL have the hp of a 14 Con character. You could just save a ton of wasted space by saying "set Con as 14, to appease players such as lawolf who can't handle 6 ability scores".
3) Even not fully optimized PCs have way too much HP when compared to casual PCs. Ex. Take a 10 Con elf rogue, use static HP gain per level, compare to a 15 Con elf fighter. Rogue has 6 starting HP and gains 4 HP per level. Fighter has 12 starting HP and gains 8 per level. This fighter is not even close to optimized for HP (human would have 16 Con, dwarf would have a larger hit die, and no toughness feat), but he has 2x as much HP as the rogue. This HP disparity only increases with level as the fighter increases his Con score. Basically, the only way Con to HP woks out is if you don't roll HP, ban dwarfs and barbarians, ban toughness and durability feats, mandate that low HD PCs put a 14 in Con and mandate that high HP PCs can't raise Con above 16.
So did you lie in your OP also, or are you lying now?
Remember this? "For me, an ideal situation is one where a low HP class like the wizard goes down in 2-3 hits from equal "challenge level" foe. A high HP class like the fighter should survive 3-4 hits from such an enemy."
Your level 5 Fighter has 52 hp and your level 5 rogue has 26 hp.
Monster hits for 14 damage: rogue goes down in 2 hits, fighter survives 3 (goes down on the 4th hit) exactly as you said.
Monster hits for 11 damage, rogue goes down in 3 hits, fighter survives 4 (goes down on 5th hit), again exactly as you said.
You really didn't think this through, did you? Your example of what is a terrible hp disparty falls right into your "ideal situation". MAKE UP YOUR MIND! You claim you want something and then you claim that it's a terrible thing when you actually get it.
Real curious about what happened to the original poster. I have unrefuted proof here that his whole argument is based on bad data, and he suddenly stops posting.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 8:35AM
#212
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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Here's the full text of that paragraph from the How to Play document:
Your hit points represent a combination of several factors. They include your physical durability and overall health, your speed and agility to avoid harm, and your overall level of energy. They also account for luck, divine favor, and other mystic phenomena. In short, hit points are an abstraction.
(emphasis mine)
Nope, can't say I agree.
You are house ruling to remove factors explicitly mentioned as being part of hit points..
but nothing in the packet supports the idea that normal hp gained through leveling have anything to do with luck.
They say hit points include factor X and have said so since E1... and you seem in denial.
They are not talking methods for restoring hit points nor reducing hit point loss.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 8:38AM
#213
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Karnos (sorry about the name, blame auto correct), put you on ignore because you keep making stuff up.
That being said, ideally fighter has 50% more HP than the wizard, not 100% more. That was my premise in the OP.
That way a wizard goes down in 2 hits from a powerful attack and a fighter goes down in 3 from a powerful attack. If a regular attack is being used wizard goes down in 3 and fighter goes down in 4.
Also, look again at the "unoptimized" fighter. By level 4 his Con is 16 for 9HP per level. If he slightly optimized and took toughness his HP is 10 per level. Compare that to the casual wizard with 4 HP per level at level 6.
Wizard has 26 HP, fighter has 64 HP. So a high damage monster averages 13 damage a hit can drop the wizard in 2 hits. It needs 5 hits to take down the fighter though. That is way too much of a difference considering how little optimizing the fighter did. (He could be a dwarf or human, a barbarian, taken durability, started with a higher Con etc).
Again though you keep not grasping a key point here: you must compare an optimized PC to an casual one. We are playtesting to see where the game falls apart. We must look at the outliers. Sure everything is fine and dandy if all rogues and wizards are forced to have a 14 Con minimum, all fighters and paladins are forced to only have a 16 Con at maximum, we remove dwarfs and barbarians, and we gut the toughness and durable feat. But that ruins diversity and player freedom. Con is a big part of the issue and a 10 Con PC and a 20 Con PC should be able to play at the same table without the game falling apart. Removing Con mod to HP per level gives us fighters who are 50% tougher than wizards without causing all the games math to crumble when the wizard chooses a 10 base con and the fighter decides to pump con every chance he gets.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 9:18AM
#214
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Karnos (sorry about the name, blame auto correct), put you on ignore because you keep making stuff up. That being said, ideally fighter has 50% more HP than the wizard, not 100% more. That was my premise in the OP. That way a wizard goes down in 2 hits from a powerful attack and a fighter goes down in 3 from a powerful attack. If a regular attack is being used wizard goes down in 3 and fighter goes down in 4.
Except one big problem, this is what you wrote in the first post and this is what everything after that has been based on:
For me, an ideal situation is one where a low HP class like the wizard goes down in 2-3 hits from equal "challenge level" foe. A high HP class like the fighter should survive 3-4 hits from such an enemy. This will keep combats relatively quick and deadly.
>a wizard goes down in 2 hits from a powerful attack and a fighter goes down in 3
>the wizard goes down in 2-3 ... fighter should survive 3-4
Do you know the difference between "survive" and "go down"? They do not mean the same thing!
I'm not making anything up, it's all recorded in your post for eternity. If you messed up and wrote the wrong information in your first post, that isn't my fault!
We are playtesting to see where the game falls apart. We must look at the outliers. Sure everything is fine and dandy if all rogues and wizards are forced to have a 14 Con minimum, all fighters and paladins are forced to only have a 16 Con at maximum, we remove dwarfs and barbarians, and we gut the toughness and durable feat. But that ruins diversity and player freedom. Con is a big part of the issue and a 10 Con PC and a 20 Con PC should be able to play at the same table without the game falling apart. Removing Con mod to HP per level gives us fighters who are 50% tougher than wizards without causing all the games math to crumble when the wizard chooses a 10 base con and the fighter decides to pump con every chance he gets.
The game hasn't fallen apart. Have you read any of the DM session transcripts from players who actually played the game? Sounds to me like the game is functioning fairly well. If there is any problem, it is that PCs are very strong right now and even supposedly hard or tough monsters are killed very quickly. That said, I have seen no evidence at all that the game is "falling apart" because of differing hp.
There is nothing wrong with a character having 50% more or even 100% more hp than another character. HP is just one of many variables.
They say hit points include factor X and have said so since E1... and you seem in denial.
They are not talking methods for restoring hit points nor reducing hit point loss.
You think so, I don't agree, whatever. It's not a game mechanic and it's really completely unimportant. Hp could signify the number of bunnies your character has living back at home on a farm, it wouldn't change the actual game mechanic which is that Con largely determines hp. The definition of hp and Con greatly overlap, and the actual in game mechanic says Con gives hp. There is no game mechanic that says because of luck you gain hp, and no game mechanic that says you gain hp through divine or "mystical" means, outside of the Aid spell.
Description is just fluff anyway.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 9:43AM
#215
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Date Joined:
Mar 26, 2007
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However, hit points very explicitly do include luck (and other non-tangible stuff that isn't represented by any of your ability scores). In other words, hit points include factors that are not represented by constitution; saying that constitution = HP and vice versa simply isn't supported by the actual rules at all.
Of course, I totally agree, as it has been since 1st Ed.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 10:02AM
#216
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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Constitution hasnt been allowed to be anything much except for a hit point modifier or base hit points and it has a large impact either being your base hit points in 4e or a bonus that is as a big or bigger than the difference gained because of class ie.. Its a more significant part of your hit points mechanically than it is "flavor text" implies. A d10 is 3 more than a d4... thats much less than the difference between a low constitution and a high constitution by quite a factor... more so in Next or 3e than in 4e actually.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 12:22PM
#217
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Date Joined:
Jan 21, 2004
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Well I've done my first playtest with PCs where I've halved their attribute bonus to attack rolls and added an extra +1 to all PCs attack rolls to make up for it. So far with all the PCs their attack rolls are only 1 - 2 points apart but as a comparison the elf fighter/mage/thief used to use a longsword in 2e he would now get +6 to attack with a magic short sword or +3 to hit with a magic longsword (compared to +7 / +2 in the standard rules). I think that narrowed gap makes for a better game where the PCs won't feel so completely gimped if they have to depart from the norm.
I've used the front loaded Con score and increased minumum hp method for hit points and I'm not unhappy with the results. It's hard to do a direct comparison because the three characters are levels4, 6, and 8 but they've turned out as a human Fg 4 hp43 (a henchman with Con10 rolled on 3d6 in 2e), a level 6 dwarf Rog/Fg hp71 (with toughness and Con18), and a level 8 grey elf rog/Wz/Fg with Hp48 (Con13).
I'm feeling inclined to add half the Con bonus to hp rather than just increasing the minimum rolled but gernerally so far I'm happy with the attack rolls andf hit points - although at these levels you would not expect the gap to be all that wide.
Armour class is a bit samey but with the different defensive and healing options available I think that's a minor quibble. And PC damage is very obviously too high but they're already aware of that.
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