DX-to-Damage and CR

[rainzax]

So,
I have come around to the idea that treating "finesse" as a weapon quality and having the feat Weapon Finesse grant DX-to-Damage is a good idea for my players, and did not create this thread to discuss whether it is indeed a good idea.

But,
As what's good for the goose is good for the gander, I have lately been perusing the Bestiaries and looking at the smaller creatures (often Fey) and realizing that this boost in damage (as many have Weapon Finesse) is significant - frequently jumping from something like 1d2-2 to something like 1d2+6 when applying the house rule equally.

...

For those of you who have a similar house rule:

1) What adjustments do you make?
2) Do you simply raise CRs and call it a day?
3) Do you factor back in a ST penalty? Or introduce a size-penalty to damage?
4) Do you only allow the house rule for PCs? Or "small" and larger creatures? What about if a PC polymorphs into a tiny creature?

Thanks in advance for your thoughtful comments.

[Cyrad]

An easy way to fix that is either make the Improved Finesse feat have a +1 BAB requirement and/or apply any penalties you have to Strength on damage rolls. Either or both of those would prevent a squirrel from becoming deadly enough to slaughter a child with a single bite.

[Dasrak]

I do Dexterity in addition to Strength to damage, so a strength penalty offsets the dexterity bonus. It still means a damage increase for some of these low CR creatures, but almost never enough to change their CR. This changes the concern to high CR monsters, of which a few do have very high scores in both strength and dexterity. However, due to the limitations on weapon type they need a very high dexterity score to make up for the reduced damage dice due to using a smaller weapon. The number of monsters that get a substantial damage increase are relatively small, and tend to have such a high CR that there's sufficient wiggle room for a DPR buff anyways. You just need to be mindful if you throw PC class levels on top of that, but PC class levels on monsters always has the potential to break stuff so that's really nothing new either.

[Atarlost]

You're running into a problem with the meaning of damage.

For medium and larger creatures dexterity and strength are trying to represent overlapping things. Strength is representing slow and fast twitch musculature while dex is representing fast twitch musculature, kinesthetic sense, balance, and for the disable device skill fine motor control. (But int represents fine motor control in crafting, WTF?) Since fast twitch musculature is the primary determinant of force imparted to a weapon it only makes sense that both should effect damage.

For tiny and smaller creatures dex is artificially inflated. Dexterity is primarily representative of dodging and a cat has far less mass to move than a man. The ability to move it quickly that dex represents stops meaning ability to apply a large amount of force in combat. Small is kind of on the border.

Essentially, strength is ability to apply force and dex is ability to move, but ability to move is ability to apply force multiplied by size. Dex is also mostly lower body strength while strength is upper body strength, except when disarming dexterity is manual dexterity and when lifting strength is whole body strength and when kicking strength is lower body strength and the whole distinction gets very complicated and stupid very fast.

I would suggest applying small size modifiers as a penalty to attack and damage when using finesse and large size modifiers as a bonus to counter the scaling problem between dex and str. The latter probably won't come up in the bestiary or non-custom NPCs, but will allow dex based polymorphers to be competent. Natural weapons are light, but I don't think any large monsters have the dex to bnefit from finesse even if doing so lets them benefit from their size modifier instead of be penalized.

Alternately all the real problem creatures have 0' reach and you could penalize that instead, possibly with always provoking AoOs like unimproved unarmed strikes rather than only when moving into the enemy's space.

Ideally you'd merge the two stats, but untangling statblocks that not only have them separate but have them more different than size modifiers justify is a horrible mess and unless you're making a new system from scratch you're better off slapping another ugly kludge on top of the pile.

[rainzax]

Cyrad,
Weapons Finesse, in my house rules, is DX-to-Damage. The original benefit is retained by every creature 'for free' when they use a finesse or light weapon. Rather than create a new feat, I modified an existing one, precisely because it'll make it easier to just use printed material (ex. statblocks) as printed. This was working fine until I started seriously perusing the Bestiaries.

Dasrak,
Interesting inversion and implications. My personal tastes hesitate to give damage to two ability scores - even if there is precedent in it for the game already (CMB/CMD). Though I like how your system incentivizes multiple ability scores, I think the damage to hit point ratio already favors the former, and even a minor boost to that for every character, especially at low levels when the ratio is the starkest, makes for a little too deadly a game than what I'm going for.

Atarlost,
Thanks for the breakdown - you raise some valid points in terms of misrepresentation especially when sizing and scaling come into the picture. As I'd like to keep compatibility with printed material (statblocks, etc) that means more "ugly kludge" in terms of finding a solution:

Your "penalize 0 reach" idea looks interesting... I'll think about it.

I want to make sure I'm understanding your first suggestion. Let's say a small, medium, and large PC are using a 1d6-damage weapon and each has a BAB of +1 and a ST/DX score of +2. The small PC rolls 1d20+4 1d6+1, the medium PC rolls 1d20+3 1d6+2, and the large PC rolls 1d20+2 1d6+3.

In short, that the PCs uses the Size Modifier for attack rolls but the Special Size Modifier for damage rolls?

This has some interesting consequences, in that I believe that it creates the opposite problem I posted in the OP - it's effectively a damage boost for larger creatures.

So I ask, which problem is less desirable, buffing Fey or buffing Giants?

[Dasrak]

Quote:

Though I like how your system incentivizes multiple ability scores, I think the damage to hit point ratio already favors the former, and even a minor boost to that for every character, especially at low levels when the ratio is the starkest, makes for a little too deadly a game than what I'm going for.

It's not a boost to every character. You still need to pay a feat for it, and it doesn't function for the most powerful weapons (like Greatswords). The difference between a greatsword and shortsword average damage rolls is 3.5 per hit, so for most traditional strength-based builds it is never worthwhile even if they do have a decent dexterity score to back it up. As it turns out, those traditional two-handed weapon builds are still king. Take the following example:

NPC Human Fighter 1 with 17 strength with a greatsword, weapon focus, and power attack has +5 to hit and 2d6+9
NPC Goblin Fighter 1 with 19 dexterity and 12 strength with two weapon fighting and weapon focus with shortswords has +5/+5 to hit and deals 1d4+5 and 1d4+5 damage.

Average damage on the greatsword hit is 16 while average damage from two hits of the shortswords is 15. The shortswords are slightly more reliable since they're not all-or-nothing, but the greatsword is better for charging or standard action attacks. Overall, a dex-plus-strength feat is well-balanced and produces similar numbers to existing "strength-only" combat options.

Doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing for your table, but I've come to like it and found it doesn't break PC's. Monsters with PC class levels, however, need to be treated with caution because they can easily break this.

Quote:

So I ask, which problem is less desirable, buffing Fey or buffing Giants?

Giants have pitiful to mediocre dexterity scores and use two-handed weapons, so they don't benefit at all. The kinds of monsters you're worried about are things that are already obscene like the Balor (35 strength and 25 dexterity) or Wendigo (29 strength and 29 dexterity). Even then, the Balor is only gaining +6.5 damage per hit net if he's downsizing from a large greatsword to a large longsword, which actually isn't a big amount on a CR 20 monster. A buff to be sure, and be mindful when adding PC class levels, but not one that's going to break the game on its own.

[rainzax]

Dasrak wrote:

Doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing for your table, but I've come to like it and found it doesn't break PC's. Monsters with PC class levels, however, need to be treated with caution because they can easily break this.

Yeah this is a main concern. I'd like my house rules to work both ways across the table - for PCs and NPCs - while also minimizing the work of re-statting creatures from Bestiaries.

Question: What affect will granting a damage bonus (equal to Special Size Modifier) do to larger monsters and polymorphed creatures? And what corresponding implications might this have for the DM?

Special Size Modifier

Spoiler:

Fine -8
Diminutive -4
Tiny -2
Small -1
Medium +0
Large +1
Huge +2
Gargantuan +4
Colossal +8

[Claxon]

I can't support your premise so I will refrain from further commentation.

[rainzax]

Your exercise of restraint is... appreciated!?

[Dasrak]

rainzax wrote:

Yeah this is a main concern. I'd like my house rules to work both ways across the table - for PCs and NPCs - while also minimizing the work of re-statting creatures from Bestiaries.

Well, one possible solution then is to disallow this to work with one-handed weapons used in two hands and natural attacks. That does render the Elven Curve Blade effectively useless and effectively precludes some dexterity-based Alchemist builds (mind you, that might be a feature to some), but effectively solves 99% of issues from the bestiary.

rainzax wrote:

Question: What affect will granting a damage bonus (equal to Special Size Modifier) do to larger monsters and polymorphed creatures? And what corresponding implications might this have for the DM?

This is a bit of a double penalty. Smaller-sized creatures already use smaller damage dice for their attacks than larger creatures, and similarly if a polymorph spell changes their size their weapons will use similarly bigger or smaller dice. I don't think this is necessary or desirable.

[rainzax]

Smaller size creatures can make up the different by adding their DX to their damage if they have the Weapon Finesse feat. Here is the text for my version of Weapon Finesse, btw:

Weapon Finesse

Spoiler:

Benefit: When fighting with a finesse weapon, you may add your DX bonus to damage rolls in place of your ST bonus. This bonus is neither increased for two-handed nor decreased for off-hand attacks. While using this feat, if you have a ST penalty, it also applies to your damage rolls with your finesse weapon.

What I'm really interested in is the effect of larger creatures getting a free boost in damage (equal to their Special Size Modifier).