RachnaX's page

A fighter loses out on 120 hp plus con ifhit points are capped at level 10. A wizard loses out on 60 hp. See?
Plus, the wizard's class abilities are deemed better that the fighter's by the designers - why else should the fighter be getting more hp that the wizard. So even if both classes continue to improve class abilities, the fighter "loses" more.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on this point. The way I see it, both classes are losing half their HP and half their dmg potential, so the fact that one class has more HP than the other to begin with is irrelevant.

It seems the argument you are making is that, even though the penalty is 50% across the board (HP and dmg), the fact that the numbers were different to begin with makes it unbalanced. If that were the case, I'd wonder why the developers thought that making these classes have such a large difference between them (in HP for this instance) would have even been enough to balance them out in the first place.

While, if damage were to continue to scale past 10th lvl, I would see your point, that is specifically curbed in my system. Therefore, I feel the basis for your concern has already been addressed, IMHO.

Making the average adult level 3 means that a starting PC can only be a teenager, which is a bit restrictive.

While many published campaigns start PCs out at lvl-1 or lvl-2, there is nothing saying that a setting couldn't have PCs start out as youngsters or as 3rd lvl characters.

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There's isn't really any difference between a level 10 fireball vs a level 6 fireball when cast into a crowd of commoners.

I generally agree with this sentiment, but the goal is to make the difference between lvl-10 and lvl-20 less drastic, while still preserving some of the feeling of power advancement. For this purpose, the difference between a 6th lvl fireball and a 10th lvl one is rather large.

As such, my variant attempts to provide a (relatively soft) cap to both HP and damage, while retaining ability and flat proficiency bonuses (minus level bonuses), as well as special action options provided by class features and feats in an effort to let higher level characters (who also have more spell slots) make up that difference over time.

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As for numbers bloat, why not just remove level from proficiency modifiers? That would approximately half all bonuses to rolls by the time you get to level 20. I don't think you should be doing anything to modify damage, though.

There is a good argument for removing level from proficiency modifiers, but I feel like doing just this would not affect the number bloat issues concerning HP and damage output/turn, which I honestly feel is the larger issue.

In the native system, a single lvl-10+ character can mow through fields of commoners (lvl-1 NPCs). I'm going for a system that will make them think twice (in this case by making the the commoners lvl-3 NPCs). However, this still falls apart in the gap between 10th and 20th lvl (as a 20th lvl character can wade through a field of 10th lvl characters without adjustment). Therefore, it becomes necessary IMHO to limit HP and dmg values, letting actual dmg output over time rely more upon the differences in static proficiency bonuses, action economy options, etc.

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For the Child NPC: 2E got rid of hit dice, so you should just put a number there for hit points.

Given the way the native system works, this is not a bad suggestion. Do you thing 4 + Con would be appropriate?

#1: Classes with high HPs (martials) gets hit harder than classes with lower HP (casters), without the latter suffering any hit to their class abilities.

As I've been reading it, most of the major scaling damage boosts for melee characters (such as Sneak attack, Power attack, etc) are also based on the numeric character level. As that caps at lvl-10, I don't see where that should become imbalanced as all classes tend to end 10th lvl with about 6dX dmg/round, plus static bonuses.

Is there something I'm missing? And if so, what might you suggest to correct this?

Edit:
I did notice that the Barbarian does get a 12th level feat "Spirit's Wrath" which may need adjustment, as it is a 1-action ranged attack dealing 4d8 + Con dmg. But bringing this down to 2d8 + Con should be sufficient to fix this, bring it back in line with other damage sources.

The only other issue I see is potentially with the Barbarian's static Instinct damage bonus once they obtain Greater Weapon Specialization, but seeing as this replaces the Greater Specialization bonuses, only functions while raging, and they get no real additional damage dice boosts past lvl-10, I'm not sure how much of a problem this would really be.

Am I mistaken, or is there anything else which I might be missing?

Concerning points # 5, 6, and 7, I was initially unsure how to apply this to Polymorph spells in particular, as these sometimes give static Attack bonuses (which are effectively proficiency bonuses that factor in character level). As such a large variance in attack modifiers can can drastically affect damage over time, I suggest reducing such modifiers by 2/spell level above 6th lvl.

This factors in the fact that a character's max spell level is generally equal to lvl/2, rounded up, but does grant an overall +1 level bonus to this proficiency-based stat for expending a higher level spell slot. As this equates to just a 5% chance increase, and it falls in line with the rest of the system, I feel this is a reasonable compromise.