Centauri: I absolutely get where you're coming from, as far as excess optimization. After playing the wizard a bit it just doesn't sit right, hence considering a character swap (something like an Executioner|Warlock, from messing with it it looks like it has alright damage & a little bit of control ability).
And I get where you're coming from with not wanting to sit back while others shred things. Social pressures can turn things into an arms race completely independently of what's going on in the game.
I really find this fascinating. It's not proof positive of what I've suspected, but it's an interesting anecdote about high-level play, which I myself have never really tried. My group started at 11th and just carved through everything. I was really getting to my wits end. Partway during that module, I started experimenting with alternate victory conditions for PCs and NPCs, generally something other than killing everything, which we'd already established they could do, even with some very tough encounters. The encounters weren't very much harder, but tended to be more dynamic, as there was much less incentive to get locked into one position if, say, the enemy wins by reaching a certain point. Now they're at level 16, and they lose, or gain only a partial victory on a regular basis.
Most video games have at least a mixture of non-kill-em-all scenarios. Most movie conflicts have alternate goals, because watching a slugfest can be boring. Speaking of slugfests, look at Rocky: He didn't even win the fight, but he achieved his goal of "going the distance.
Other games and stories do this. D&D should give it more of a try, especially at Epic play, when the usual assumptions about combat easily break down.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
I haven't DM'ed a lot of Epic play, just one 30th level 14 hr adventure, were the PCS encountered Ashardalon, a host of demons, an aspect of Dagon, torog and his tortured minions, an aspect of Tiamat and finally a throw down with the dragon queen herself. However, from that I learned a few things.
One, I customized all the monsters. Epic level monsters, even MM3 updates, don't hit hard enough and are two easy to hit. They are far weaker realtively than 1st level monsters. Have your DM check out the blog DM 42 for information about Epic level damage: dmg42.blogspot.com/2012/02/boot-on-face-...
Use lots of updated minions and make sure to use the advancement guides. My PC's had to travel to the Abyss to steal an artifact from Ashardalon. On they way there they were attacked by a horde of demons. I advanced goristros to level 29 minions and the PC's took on a horde of 20+ huge demons with some standard Balors (again advanced per the guidelines to level 32 standards) - pretty awesome stuff.
Use terrain and environmental effects. Have some that cause constant aura type damage (skill challenge to negate) or deprive the PCs of certain abilities (don't over use) such as free actions.
When the PC's got to Torog's torture den there was an aura of agony and torture that only allowed the PCs to take 1 free action per round and caused a constant 20hp of damage. That was a serious challend when Torog's thralls joined the attack and Torog himsled kept poping in and our of the various cells to attack and hide.
Have monsters do damage in healing surges - that usually makes the PCs take notice.
In the encounter with Tiamat her chromatic breath also caused the PC's to lose 2 healing surges (a long with a lot of other modifications to her stat block). That was serious business. By the end of the fight Tiamat had killed all but two of the PCs outright, one was making death saves and the final one landed the killing blow with only 6hp. They PCs started that fight at full strength by the way.
Other suggestions:
Throw in some new mechanics - like Next's advantage.
Use the "Combat Out," i.e a method to end encounters without killing everything.
Add time constraints, it is not good enough to defeat everyone, but you must do it in X rounds.
As said already, have goals other than destruction of the enemies.
I would also would suggest Mike Shea's 4e guide book, "Running Epic Tied D&D Games," slyflourish.com/epic/
It is full of good ideas for DM's. I would also suggest his blog ( slyflourish.com/ - lots of good epic tips on there as well.
Use terrain and environmental effects. Have some that cause constant aura type damage (skill challenge to negate) or deprive the PCs of certain abilities (don't over use) such as free actions.
When the PC's got to Torog's torture den there was an aura of agony and torture that only allowed the PCs to take 1 free action per round and caused a constant 20hp of damage. That was a serious challend when Torog's thralls joined the attack and Torog himsled kept poping in and our of the various cells to attack and hide.
Nice. Yes, skill challenge effects are open-ended, so even if it's a simple easy one, it can still be a major pain before it's dealt with.
Standard benchmark for charops is you have 1 round for setup (which is basically defined as movement and maybe getting the mob vulnerable to something).
Some classes need less than that. For example: Move into a flank Minor - Low Slash Standard - Knockout AP - Bloodbath.
On a op'd rogue, this will get you over 200 dmg around level 12, and it requires zero setup. There's something nice (and potentially game breaking) to kill an elite on the first round. Before he even goes. Yeah, i fully admit this is excessive for most games, but i'm just trying to prove that all it really takes is 2 dailies and an action point.
Epic level monsters, even MM3 updates, don't hit hard enough and are two easy to hit. They are far weaker realtively than 1st level monsters.
I keep hearing this.
There is some truth to it. Most pc's gain 5 hp every level. But the mob only gains +1 damage. Percents working the way they do, mean that every hit from a mob will take proportionately less of the pc's hp's as they both level. This is one instance where teh math of the edition breaks down, and sadly it is the only one that works out in the players favor.
As for them being too easy to hit, that is true at higher levels of optimization, and completely not true for unoptimized pc's. For a character that has taken a few basic steps to stay on the game's baseline math, they will have the relative same exact possibilty to hit a mob of at any level.
Feel free to call me out on it. I can prove it.
FWIW [4e designer] baseline assumption was that roughly 70% of your feats would be put towards combat effectiveness, parties would coordinate, and strikers would do 20/40/60 at-will damage+novas. If your party isn't doing that... well, you are below baseline, so yes, you need to optimize slightly to meet baseline. -Alcestis
The basic problem for epic is the way damage works. Building a striker who does enough damage to be proportionally effective to what they were at, say, level 6 by default means 80-90% of your character has to be bent towards that. But once you're at that point of equal effectiveness, making a striker who will obliterate everything in the books without breaking a sweat just requires a final little push. This is because you are able to improve on many, many axes (damage per attack, number of attacks, amount of status resistance, setup efficiency, etc. etc.) all of which compound with each other to make a character that's exponentially more effective the more optimized they are.
The same effect is simultaneously applying at the party scale, where the effectiveness of the strikers is compounding with the effectiveness of the controller and the leader and cetera to guarantee that the party is able to finish the enemy while still at full throttle nearly all the time.
What you need is monsters with similar degrees of synergy. LFR has been experimenting with "glory tier" guidelines for its own epic content for this exact reason, I'd suggest looking into that.
Yeah, i fully admit this is excessive for most games, but i'm just trying to prove that all it really takes is 2 dailies and an action point.
Fine. Cool. I'm happy for the characters to win that encounter easily so we can move on. But there's no reason every encounter can't have time challenges that require a 1 round win, and anyway mere damage output needn't solve ever one of them.
I'm not in favor of never allowing characters to shine, but players who demand to be challenged and won't challenge themselves should be open (perhaps in discussions prior to the game) to the DM creating challenges that overturn basic assumptions about how much time they have, how often they get to rest, and how many action points they get.
That last one is already something the rules give the DM direct control over. If an encounter was too easy for them, a DM is not obligated to count it toward a milestone. If an encounter was too hard, a DM is allowed to count it for more toward a milestone. I doubt a DM could really make such a decision without some player objection, but we're talking about players who want a little more challenge.
Epic level monsters, even MM3 updates, don't hit hard enough and are two easy to hit. They are far weaker realtively than 1st level monsters.
I keep hearing this.
There is some truth to it. Most pc's gain 5 hp every level. But the mob only gains +1 damage. Percents working the way they do, mean that every hit from a mob will take proportionately less of the pc's hp's as they both level. This is one instance where teh math of the edition breaks down, and sadly it is the only one that works out in the players favor.
It's only a breakdown if the DM only runs absolutely bog-standard, adversarial encounters. CharOp has to assume that's what's being done in order to meet or exceed standards, but outside of CharOp DMs can and will be flexible.
As for them being too easy to hit, that is true at higher levels of optimization, and completely not true for unoptimized pc's.
For a character that has taken a few basic steps to stay on the game's baseline math, they will have the relative same exact possibilty to hit a mob of at any level.
Feel free to call me out on it. I can prove it.
I'm not going to argue any math. If you want to argue math, go to CharOp. I just don't think math alone proves it. There's too much else going on in a game, and too much ability of a DM to adjust, even within the rules. The game could be better about offering more guidance on how to adjust, but there's really a lot of it in there already, and far more between the lines. It's not enough to depend on math.
But just tell me this: What are the top five or so assumptions of the game's "baseline math"?
I've been told that at Epic hitting isn't as big a concern, due to some of the crazy powers that are available. Can anyone tell me more about that? I thought one thing CharOp was big on were powers that had a lot of bang for low risk.
To the original poster: in the first round of a fight, before any bonuses or penalties have been applied to anything, what do the characters in that party need to roll in order to just hit a target? This will tell me how much lower the character's attack bonus could be to still meet that particular baseline, which I think will be instructive, at least in this case if not in general.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
The basic problem for epic is the way damage works. Building a striker who does enough damage to be proportionally effective to what they were at, say, level 6 by default means 80-90% of your character has to be bent towards that. But once you're at that point of equal effectiveness, making a striker who will obliterate everything in the books without breaking a sweat just requires a final little push. This is because you are able to improve on many, many axes (damage per attack, number of attacks, amount of status resistance, setup efficiency, etc. etc.) all of which compound with each other to make a character that's exponentially more effective the more optimized they are.
The same effect is simultaneously applying at the party scale, where the effectiveness of the strikers is compounding with the effectiveness of the controller and the leader and cetera to guarantee that the party is able to finish the enemy while still at full throttle nearly all the time.
What you need is monsters with similar degrees of synergy. LFR has been experimenting with "glory tier" guidelines for its own epic content for this exact reason, I'd suggest looking into that.
^
"Non nobis Domine Sed nomini tuo da gloriam"
"I wish for death not because I want to die, but because I seek the war eternal"
But just tell me this: What are the top five or so assumptions of the game's "baseline math"?
Baseline combat math:
Post errata mobs have Ac lvl+14 NADS lvl+12 (averaged out) Att rolls against AC lvl+5 Att Rolls against nads lvl+3
Players should have a minimum of those values, but really want to have at least 1-2 points higher in each since they will typically be fighting mobs 1-2 levels higher than them. Some classes will want better numbers (defenders want higher ac, strikers want to hit more often, etc) and, naturally some levels will be better than others depending on whether its even or odd, or when you get a stat boost or gear upgrade. But those are the very basics you need to have the same chance to hit and be hit by him that he does by you. Also, these do not include bonuses from leaders or CA. Those things are called 'bonuses' because they aren't part of baseline.
Damage is harder to quantify without showing real math, but it boils down to this: Most combats are expected to last 4-6 rounds, and typically has one mob (or equivalent) for each pc. Assuming 5 pc's, then a monster should die every round (or to be more general, that same number worth of damage should be dealt by the party each round). Given the basic assumption that a striker does roughly double the damage that a non-striker does, and that only 3/5 of the party's attacks hit in a given round, you conclude that a striker should do about 30-40% of a mob's hps in damage every round, and non strikers should do about 20%. Also note, these numbers are numbers that a pc can pull up reliably (at-will, maybe a few encounters), so it doesn't include things like an AP to use 2 dailies.
Most of this is info is scattered throughout the phb, dmg and similar, but it's findable if you look hard enough.
And as a disclaimer, most charops wouldn't consider this optimized at all (because it isn't). It is baseline. To be "optimized for combat" you would need to be better than baseline. However, a character can be baseline in combat and "optimized for skills/skill challenges" and still be considered optimized.
FWIW [4e designer] baseline assumption was that roughly 70% of your feats would be put towards combat effectiveness, parties would coordinate, and strikers would do 20/40/60 at-will damage+novas. If your party isn't doing that... well, you are below baseline, so yes, you need to optimize slightly to meet baseline. -Alcestis
Players should have a minimum of those values, but really want to have at least 1-2 points higher in each since they will typically be fighting mobs 1-2 levels higher than them.
What I'm after is why a PC should have a minimum of those values.
But those are the very basics you need to have the same chance to hit and be hit by him that he does by you.
This seems like it would answer my question, but it doesn't. Take the original monsters: their damage is supposedly too low, so if the monster hits more often or more times, as a result of players not optimizing, the damage might be closer to something that presents an entertaining challenge.
Also, these do not include bonuses from leaders or CA. Those things are called 'bonuses' because they aren't part of baseline.
I understand why these numbers aren't relied upon, but to neglect them completely strikes me a folly. Something should be added to account for them, even if it's a very conservative number. Something like "Assume +X to attacks and +Y to damage if there's a leader present in the group, adjust as follows for certain common leader classes and builds," or "Assume +Z to defenses if there's a leader present." Z doesn't have to be the full 2 a defender can provide, but even if it's a 1 that's 1 that can be dropped off from another source to still meet the "baseline." Even fractional advantages could be worth estimating if there were overlap. That is if a controller is worth +0.5 attack and +0.5 defense and a defender is worth +0.5 defense and +0.5 damage, then if you can assume the presence of either two controllers or two defenders or one of each, then you can at least assume a +1 defense.
The anecdotal evidence suggests to me that each other character present is worth at least a +1 to any number you care to choose, but whatever the real benefit is, it's not nothing.
Most of this is info is scattered throughout the phb, dmg and similar, but it's findable if you look hard enough.
Yep, there's a lot of good stuff out there, on a lot of topics.
So, my question of why still remains. I trust that the goal of CharOp, when it's not just a numbers exercise, is for people to sit down, have fun, and feel competent. All fine goals. The goal of the game is to have fun, and provide challenge (which means different things to different people). Somewhere "competent" and "challenged" bump into each other. I think CharOp assumes the game will somehow be challenging, even if someone is maxed out. I think the game assumes that players enjoy challenge, if not actual failure, and so will rise to the occassion, but not feel the need to get even more powerful. I don't know. But there's a definite conflict of philosophies somewhere.
Other games have decided that people are going to optimize no matter what, and have mechanics that make it hard to optimize without being challenged. I'm not confident in D&D being able to balance the math, without taking into account the tendency to want to avoid challenge, and avoid feeling incompetent.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
- lots of good epic tips on there as well. 
