Barf Forth Apocalyptica
powered by the apocalypse => Dungeon World => Topic started by: wightbred on January 05, 2011, 05:53:32 PM
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OK I'm not talking about escalation in Dogs, which is awesome, but unnecessary mathematical escalation.
IMO D&D has been plagued with unnecessary maths (THAC0 anyone?) but recently I've become sick of unnecessary mathematical escalation. My chance to hit goes up, so the monsters AC goes up. My AC goes up, so the monsters are better at hitting. Also, I need a better magic sword and armor all the time to cope. Nowhere is this more evident than in 4e where almost everything goes up every two levels. (And where forum posters complain if the escalation maths is not perfect.)
I suppose you could say this doesn't really matter in a world of personal computing where character sheets can be updated automatically. Only this doesn't work if you level in the middle of a game and I hate it that players have to check their sheet everytime they need to make any roll because their Stealth bonus has gone up again.
So I was shopping around for a game that felt like D&D but didn't have this problem (and improved some other things for my play style) and found Dungeon World / Apoclaypse World and I'm very, very happy. Sure your stats jump every few levels and the moves make you tougher, but basically the unnecessary maths escalation is gone.
Well almost. There is still Hit Points (HP). My HP go up every level, and so does the monsters. Some concerns I have with this:
- Unless my damage goes up in proportion won't fights get longer? Some people like this, but I'd like to keep fights short. Getting this balance right is hard, and some forum posters complain that 4e feels like a grind because the damage balance is not right. Dungeon World damage for most classes doesn't go up, so unless I balance the monsters right the fights will get longer.
- Players have expectations of HP per level for monsters, and if you push this too far I think they will cry "wonky". Especially if my monsters start having 10 HP and are doing 25 damage per round to keep the fights short. I know my players are eventually going to as why they can't do the same damage.
- My DM experience feels like it needs to reset every level. I know now that 15 HP each for 6 monsters doing 1d8 each makes a challenging fight. But what are the right numbers when my characters go up a level or two. Sure I can wing this and have done for years, but do I need to?
- Move (power) design gets harder with HP escalation because you have to consider the impact in a broader context. In the draft version of Dungeon World there is a draft Cleric move called Penitence which is "When you take damage, you may take +2 damage. If you do take +1 forward to Cast a Spell." If the design goal is to make this more attractive as you level up then cool, but if the not then there is a problem.
- I'm concerned about how some existing Dungeon World moves like "Hack and Slash" cope with increasing damage. More in this thread: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=642.0
So based on my concerns above I am thinking of ditching HP escalation. My question is this: If I removed the escalation element of HP, that is your PCs HP never go up, would it still feel like D&D?
Next: A draft way to do this so you can see what I mean and to kick around.
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OK so here is my draft plan for removing HP escalation:
I'm assuming most people see HP as something like physical stamina, luck and skill. Lets drop the luck and skill and let the DM handle that. So HP is now just physical stamina and will only go up if your Con modifier does. Calculate it like this:
HP = 8 + class HP + Con modifier
So a Fighter might have 20 (8 + 10 + 2) and a Wizard will probably have 12 (8 + 4 + 0).
Monsters HP and damage varies in comparison to the average party level. For monsters I just look up their level, compare it to the party average and use the HP and damage from the table below. They still keep their moves of course.
Level HP Damage Area Damage Friends
+4 30 1d12(7) 1d10(6) +3 / ally
+3 25 1d12(7) 1d8(5) +2 / ally
+2 20 1d10(6) 1d8(5) +2 / ally
+1 15 1d10(6) 1d6(4) +1 / ally
same 10 1d8(5) 1d6(4) +1 / ally
-1 / -2 8 1d8(5) 1d4(3) +1 / 2 allies
-3 / -4 4 1d6(4) 1d4(3) +1 / 3 allies
less 1 1d4(3) 1d4(3) +1 / 5 allies
Some explanations: Level is the monster level compared to the party. So +4 means the monsters are 4 levels higher. Damage is for a standard attack. Area Damage is where it will hit multiple players, like a dragon's breath or fireball. Friends is how much additional monsters of the same type add to the damage.
So for 1st level characters Goblins (level 1, 10 HP ea, 1d8 damage +1 / ally) is a tough fight, but Ogres (level 5, 30 HP ea, 1d12 damage +3 / ally) is very tough.
For 5th level characters the Goblins (now: 4 HP, 1d6 damage +1 / 3 allies) are now easy, Ogres (now: 10 HP ea, 1d8 damage +1 / ally) are now only tough and a Black Dragon (level 9, 30 HP, 1d12 claws, 1d10 breath) is very tough.
Before I get your thoughts, some FAQ:
- Why not just use the AW countdown clock? Because it would definitely not feel like D&D for me then. To me rolling damage is fundamental, but HP escalation may not be.
- Why not just modify D&D? Because I have the other escalation problems, and because there are too many spells and other effects that connect to escalating damage.
- Do you need to change the spell damage? Fireball does 3d6 which seems OK in this context. And the healing spells will have a greater impact which is also what I want.
- Did you just make these numbers up? I crunched some maths to check fights would be the right length and survivability for my game. The beauty of this system is that you could easily do your own table to perfectly customise your game.
- How do the players know they are getting better under this system? This is the cool bit. Because they can't see the monsters changing it is based on their play experience: "Those goblins used to be hard, but now I wade through them. I guess I rock."
Now keen to responses on these two questions:
- Would Dungeon World still feel like D&D Without HP escalation (using my system as an example)?
- Any problems / suggestions for the system?
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I really like this idea; the needless escalation of D&D always frustrated me and I just assumed it was due to my background of games like SR where HP didn't exist.
I don't see any problems with your proposed fix to this and think DW would really sing with this.
There appears to be a real elegance to this; the longevity of items would increase and the drop frequency could decrease - it removes quite nicely the reliance on magic weapons and armour.
Good Work!
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Lots of great ideas here, wrightbred. Let me make sure my co-author, Adam, sees this.
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Thanks Epic Fail / Sage.
Some other notes in case they are useful:
- Used 8 HP for the "kicker" to all classes as this meets my style of play. Adjusting this between say 4 and 12 is a simple way to give you a "grittier" (4) or more "heroic" (12) campaign. The more "complicated" way is to adjust the HP or damage of the monsters on the table, which would only take slightly longer.
- Should probably list how many of a particular level of monster you need for an average fight or even a list of options, but I haven't crunched all the numbers on this yet.
- Attribute increases and additional moves would mean you would need to make combats slightly harder as people level up, but this increase would be pretty slow. Even a move like adding +4 to one characters damage or spells like fireball shouldn't have a dramatic impact on the challenge of fights.
- If you leveled during a fight, your moves would improve, but I wouldn't worry about adjusting the monsters.
- I'm thinking average level to set the monsters, but this might also encourage players to help players level up. Overall I think this could be a good thing.
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This is really cool. Any chance something like this gets into the final game. Maybe after leveling HP for the first 5 levels you plateau this off and go with a system like this?
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Have to say I like the look of this. The whole escalation thing in D&D makes sense to keep a level playing field, but wightbred's approach appears to achieve the same effect in a far more elegant manner. Wightbred is also an awesome handle!
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I've tinkered with various "low-fantasy" hacks of D&D over the years which usually aimed to limit hp increases in a manner similar to this, and my personal nostalgia touchstone is Fighting Fantasy, so this still feels like D&D-style fantasy to me, but, I suspect it won't to most people.
It's probably worth pointing out that character damage does increase with level in DW because of the various advancements and higher level spells. The spells in particular might be tricky to integrate into this system. Do you have thoughts on that?
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Regarding your two questions, Wightbred:
1) Yes. I don't think that numerical escalation is intrinsic to the D&D experience, just the feeling that, relative to where you used to be, you are now better.
2)I can't see any problems yet, but I REALLY want to try this.
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It's probably worth pointing out that character damage does increase with level in DW because of the various advancements and higher level spells. The spells in particular might be tricky to integrate into this system. Do you have thoughts on that?
I would also love to read Wightbred's response to this.
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Thanks for the feedback. It is a while since I first wrote this, and in those olden days it was easier to integrate this into the earlier version of DW. Since then Sage and Adam have addressed damage increasing with level and added more damage increasing moves which makes it a little harder. But really it is only a few marks of the pen to go through and cut these down to size if you want to.
Ultimately I wrote my own hack using this and some of the other ideas that interested me, but about the villans not the heroes. I am evil, having been bred by wights and all, so you shouldn't be suprised. I respect DW and Sage and Adam so it feels wrong to spruik my game too much in this thread so I'll stop there.
My view is that this idea is to radical for most people to accept in their D&D and Sage and Adam made the right move in not including it. Maybe I don't play DW as much as I would have, but I'm sure they would have put many more people off if they went this way.
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Thanks, Wightbred! Is your hack on these forums?
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Yes. Caution: it is fantasy but it's not a hack of D&D and AW like DW, so may not be what you are looking for.
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I dont mind hitpoint escalation per se, but wightbred is right about having to grind it out.
Wizards and clerics get more powerful spells every level - I reckon characters who rely more on hitting things should get more combat power as well, special moves that make them more powerful.
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I think most of the combat classes have access to advancements that boost damage (Merciless, Dual Wield, Smite Evil, Weapons Specialization, etc). Has anyone found this to be a problem in practice and at what levels?
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Definitely more of a problem with the DW rules in January when I wrote this and less so now.
A trick is that when the escalation of damage is even remotely complicated (Wizards get 6d6 for fireballs and Fighters get +2 damage) there can be the perception of imbalance even if it doesn't exist. Go to any D&D forum and you'll see debates about from every edition how Swordmages or whatever class suck / rule as they advance. Without the unnecessary escalation the design is easier to do and tweak, and easier for players to see balance (if that's what they want).
But I don't expect to see these rules to make it into mainstream D&D. You don't sell books and online content with a set of rules you can fit into 20 pages and the majority of players expect to see numbers go up as proof their characters are getting better.
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I'm really glad to see people still talking about and using this system. I don't think we'll ever remove escalating HP/damage from DW, but I'm not against it. I just don't think it's where DW is going.
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Last night the players, with characters around 5th level, observed that fights were taking longer and becoming grind-it-out drags rather than tense, exciting affairs where you could go down at any point, but equally might take out the monster in a shot or two. So D&D emulation is spot on. ;)
However, the latter is what I want from Dungeon World, as well as the players. It's a shame we seem to have lost it. Combined with my difficulty making the Fronts relevant to campaign play, it makes me feel that DW at present is better suited to intense one-shots for me at present.
If you look at the monsters, they get more HP, armour and damage with level. Characters get more HP, maybe another point of armour, but the feeling was that damage doesn't scale. Characters (other than maybe the Fighter and Wizard) don't really get more, and monster damage doesn't seem to quite keep pace with character HPs (in terms of hits-to-last-breath).
Sure, there are a few options- the Bard actually used a cross-class advance to take Merciless (+1d4 damage) at 6th level when he's probably attempted four hack-and-slashes in the campaign. And yes, the Fighter-Wizard was missing this dungeon, having some human orphanages to burn, or something. But the game isn't just about that evil chick! And should having to use up (what should be) cool level advances to keep up with the opposition damage-wise be required?
We were spitballing options, talking about things like Plus Level or Plus Half Level damage as you go up. You'd need to look at the HPs of the monsters to measure the effects and consider class 'balance'.
Have any others found this to be a problem in campaigns, and if so what if anything has worked for you? Should I be handing out +d6 magical hitting sticks? I've been pretty reluctant to hand out numerically-enhanced magical loot.
(We're using a Hack/AG/RB mashup for the playbooks, 10 + Level XP required to go up, and the XP system Rob talks about http://ryanmacklin.com/2011/10/dw-xp-experiment (http://ryanmacklin.com/2011/10/dw-xp-experiment). The players have repeatedly fed back that 10 x Level XP to go up would not be a game they want to play, unless- perhaps- a level Really Means Something but this is probably another thread).
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I haven’t actually observed this personally because I’ve been playing DW one-shots or with kids and other AW hacks where this is not a problem.
There are lots of parallels in what you are saying with what people have seen in D&D over the years such as “why do I need to spend feats (moves) to keep parity?” So I’d recommend looking at solutions (like the ones you were spitballing) people developed for D&D over the years. For example:
- Limit the player’s HP like E6 (No HP after 6th level, but you do get powers). This has the advantage of keeping you in the fun zone indefinitely. But this does mean some work for the DM on monster HP and damage.
- Halve monster HP and double damage like some people have done with 4e. Simple solution, but it may be even trickier to balance fights.
- Add level damage like you suggested, but be careful to see if this affects spellcasters.
- Give a kicker of 20 HP like Hackmaster or 4e and give a smaller bonus to HP each level. Would also mean some work on monsters.
But my personal favourite and I think the easiest is the one we used from D&D 2 to 3.5: make damage dice explode. So if you roll a 6 on a d6 roll again and add. And keep going if you roll another 6. This makes fights much swingier and therefore more tense but keeps the balance somewhat. I have seen people do 120+ damage on a hit, but only because we played this rule for years (and because of multiplying criticals). Note: We also exploded healing rolls as well when we used to play this, and I had to prove to the group mathematically that an exploding d4 was not better than an exploding d6 before we started using this.
I’m interested in hacking my original idea of static HP back over DW, but I’m waiting for the definitive version of DW because I don’t want to have to keep fiddling with it based on changes to come. If someone else wants to take the lead on doing it now, I’d be happy to help out.
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Thanks for the suggestions. Some would be easier to apply mid-campaign than others- the characters already arguably have too many HP. I've also run into these issues from 3.x (and other editions) of D&D. (And you can work around them- in a 3.0 Against the Giants campaign, the heavily-optimised Barbarian had a decent chance to take a Giant down in one round, but if they got a full attack back, he'd be toast. Most of my Clerics time was spent move-and-healing him...)
Exploding dice do add swinginess, but don't on their own scale damage with level. Nonetheless, for healing it is also an option and one I might introduce. I now have characters repeatedly singing and praying for spells after every fight as the 1d8 or 2d8 slowly fills the health meters, while I occasionally have to think of more unwanted attention...
I mentioned your static-HP hack and the players were interested, but I confess I haven't taken the time to really grok the mechanics of the approach.
What the Ranger did (once) was Defend, then spend the three hold to do 5 damage three times to the monster. They felt this was much better value than a Volley... though I did make them cross off ammo because of the fiction.
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Hmm, thought- rather than an increasing +damage with level (where the difference between the Fighter and the Cleric erodes with level), could we use 4E style Tiers?
Get an extra damage dice at say 6th level? I realise that this just resets the balance at some point before escalation kicks it out of the sweet spot again.
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Damage increase from "tiers" seems like a great idea for an ongoing game. You can add a bump now and see how it goes and add another at a higher level if you need more.
The static HP approach is that you have set HP that never go up (and neither does damage), much like standard AW. Monsters slide along a HP scale in comparison to the PCs, so a monster 4 levels above the PCs is always a clear challenge. Lots of advantages for the listed in my first post in this thread, but the thing I love most about the static HP approach is it means you'd never have to worry about balancing combat to avoid grind again: all your prior DM experience helps you balance every fight to this particular group.
But a static HP hack won't help you in an ongoing campaign, unless they are prepared to remake their characters with a different approach to HP.
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Rough outline of the Hack, Tiers for PCs and monster guidelines.
How many hits to take out a monster in a tense, exciting fight that doesn't drag? Maybe for a fighter, up to one lucky shot or two good ones, others characters no more than two to three hits? So,
Tier One:
Levels 1-4, One Damage Dice, Monsters 1-10 HP, ~1 Armour
Tier Two:
Levels 5-8, Two Damage Dice, Monsters 11-20 HP, ~2 Armour
Tier Three ":
Levels 9+, Three Damage Dice, Monsters 21-30 HP , ~3 Armour
ToDo:
Cool Tier names
Monster damage to character HP. Grab the AW concept of 'first bullet is free'? So characters can take 3-4 hits? 2 seems too few except perhaps for the Wizard.
Effect on spell damage- do they double/triple as well? Get the bonus die?
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Monsters at higher levels need some rebalancing. The idea is currently a lot like tiers: you'll notice there's only so many +damage moves in the 1-5th moves, and only a few more in 6-10th. Monsters should be designed with that in mind: HP doesn't actually rise much between levels, it's more about the fictional effectiveness.
That said, we probably need to go through and check the numbers again. We did some last minute changes as the Red Book was headed out the door that aren't reflected elsewhere.
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Cool Sage. As I said I haven't played DW lately in a way that I've seen this, but good to see you are aware of this. Fiddling with the balance like this must get annoying, but as I've said before I think you are making the right choice in escalating HP as it is the only approach to get DW as popular as it deserves to be.
Are you worried that the damage increasing moves will become like the balance requiring feats of D&D 4e?