It breaks down the big 6 magic items that are required to maintain pace with monsters as characters advance. They are Magic Weapons, Magic Armor (including shields), Deflection bonus items (ring of Protection), Natural armor bonus items (Amulet of Natural armor), Stat boosters (Belt of giant strength), And resistance items such as cloak of protection.
It starts by going through a monster statistical analysis of monsters by CR. The designer measured the average of each of the following statistics: AC (avg), AC Trend (since the AC average isn't exactly 100% linear, its close but not exact, the trend table presents a more linear progression to measure the PC's against for benchmark testing), attack bonus, attack trend, Good Saves, Poor Saves, DC for abilities, and HD.
I'll show you where a CR 1, 10, and 20 monster stand:
CR; AC; AC trend; Attack; Attack trend; Poor Save; Good Save; DC; HD
1-- 15-- 14--------- 3------- 4-------------- 1------------- 4------------- 12-- 2
10- 21-- 22-------- 17------ 16------------- 7------------ 12------------ 19-- 13
20- 31-- 31-------- 31------ 29------------- 13----------- 19------------ 27- 22
There are multiple other tables laying out. PC attack vs Monster AC progression, Monster attack vs player character AC, Character spell DC vs monster Saves, and Characters saves vs monster DC.
On the PC tables they assume they assume a couple things about the PC's abilities. This is a snapshot, there are a few other things listed.
PC Level; Base Ability Score; Stat bonus; Total score; Magic Wpn bonus
1----------- 16---------------------- 0----------- 16------------- 0
10---------- 18--------------------- 2----------- 18------------- 3
20---------- 21--------------------- 6----------- 27------------- 5
Here is a page breaking down the designers conclusions and gives you insight to his thought process without giving away any specific changes presented in trailblazer :)
SPINE CONCLUSIONS
We believe that the data clearly challenges the conventional wisdom that all of the “Big Six” items are required for the PCs to keep pace with level appropriate challenges. We believe that the “optimal” success rate, one that is neither too easy nor too difficult, is somewhere around 70%.
Let’s review the Big Six, one at a time, against the data shown:
Weapon Enhancement
By 9th level, a character that is optimized as a striker will only miss the typical monster AC on a roll of natural 1. Without magical items—including both a magical weapon as well as a stat booster—his success rate drops to 75%. This success rate is still within our desired parameters; however, do note that although the character is still able to hit his foes, he will deal much less damage than the optimized striker. Note that the success rate actually increases as the PCs approach CR20, and does not begin to drop off until a few levels higher. In the absence of magic items, we have addressed this success rate in a couple of different ways.
First and foremost are action points, which can provide a bonus to your attack roll at key times.
Second, we have embraced the concept of the striker combat role. All characters whose primary function is to attack their foes in melee or ranged combat should have the base attack bonus to do so. To this end, both the monk and the rogue gain a bonus to their attack rolls—under certain thematic conditions—that brings their total attack bonus up to the same level as the primary fighting classes (barbarian, fighter, paladin, and ranger).
Third, we expect that all strikers will work much more closely together in a variety of ways. Tactical movement in combat is much easier to accomplish without provoking attacks of opportunity, allowing PCs to get into flanking positions; and the seldom used Aid Another was moved from an action(which required you to spend your own action merely to play second fiddle to another, presumably better, striker) to a combat reaction. As a combat reaction, Aid Another will see much more use. Altogether it should be almost trivial for strikers to find a total of +4 to hit in conditions that require it.
Armor Class
Magical armor and shield, deflection items, and natural armor items make up three of the Big Six (and by far the greatest portion by gold piece value). Note that the monster success rate for hits varies between 15% and 40% all the way through CR20; viewed from the players’ point of view, this gives them a rather satisfying success rate—“success” defined for the players as not getting hit—of about 70%.
Do note, however, that high level play should not really be defined by avoiding hits entirely; it is important that both the DM and the players understand and accept this concept. Rather, as level increases, the ability of monsters to hit the PCs (and vice versa) should be assumed, and the PCs should focus instead on ways to mitigate that assumed damage.
Nevertheless, there are some specific attacks that both the PCs and the DM will want to avoid. To this end, we have added
the Dodge combat reaction. This combat reaction allows the PC (or monster) to gain a dodge bonus to their armor class against
one attack. How is this best used? In the case of the PCs, clever players will save a dodge combat reaction to avoid those
attacks that carry significantly undesirable secondary effects. For example, dodging just one claw attack from a troll may save you from rend damage. Against a purple worm, a PC may decide to dodge either the bite (and swallow whole) or the sting (and the poison). From the DM’s side of the screen, having a dodge in your back pocket may allow your big bad evil guy to unexpectedly dodge an unpleasant ray or touch attack from the party wizard.
Stat Boosters vis-a-vis Player Character Spell DCs
Against a reasonably optimized PC spellcaster with a stat booster, the
monsters’ Good save hovers around 50% to 60% success rate all the way
through CR20. Against their Poor save, their success rate is usually 30%–35%—again, well within the 70% success rate from the PC’s perspective. A spellcaster without a stat booster is going to give up 1–3 points of DC, and so is certainly going to want to be sure of targeting a monster’s Poor saving throw. The party, in general, will also want to work together to decrease monster saves by any means possible. (Have you ever seen the party fighter intimidate an opponent in combat? Are your players aware that a shaken opponent takes a –2 penalty to saving throws?)
Player Character Saving Throws
Perhaps the biggest problem with saving throws is that, although the 65% to 70% success rate shown for Good saves (through CR20) is within our desired success rate, it’s not the saves you make that matter, it’s the saves that you fail. The Worst Case column is where the rubber hits the road for most players: This column assumes your Poor saving throw and, worse, that you don’t have any bonuses to improve it. This column starts at a 40% success rate and gets worse—much worse—from there.
The problem with ‘always on’ resistance bonuses, such as those provided by the ubiquitous cloak of resistance , is twofold. First, you can’t boost the Poor save to reasonable levels of success without also boosting the Good saves to unreasonable levels of success—that is, well above 70%. Second, PCs don’t generally require their saves to be good all the time; they can afford to fail a saving throw now and again. Unfortunately, what is most concerning to players are those times when they can’t afford to fail that one utterly catastrophic save.
Action Points were added to the Trailblazer ruleset first and foremost to shore up this potential for utterly catastrophic saving throws. We assume that saving throws that (a) target the worst
saving throw of (b) unequipped PCs with (c) utterly catastrophic consequences are the exception, not the rule—and that if circumstances prove otherwise, the primary responsibility for fixing this untenable
situation falls to the DM. Beyond that fail-safe, action points suffice.
There are two significant ways that action points aid in this regard. First, you can use an action point at the time of your first saving throw to add a bonus to your roll. Because of the particular mechanics that action points use (i.e. exploding dice) these boosts are significant. Should that saving throw fail, action points allow you to make a second save against many spells and effects.
Ultimately, unless the PC has exhausted his supply of action points, he should be well protected from unexpected, catastrophic saving throws. The DM should not look at such saving throws as a missed opportunity
to “nail” the PC; rather, he should understand that the purpose of such saving throws is to allow the PCs to advance successfully while at the same time depleting them of action points. The slow but inevitable loss of action points ratchets up the tension in exactly the same fashion as dwindling hit points.
They go on to discuss magic treasure allocation, how to allocate treasure if you want a low magic campaign where you eliminate the reliance on the big six. Then their own feats and class rebalancing, remember that this book was written at the same time pathfinder was being developed so they were presented their version of how to fix 3e. I'd suggest buying it. Its cheap, and I think it has all the info your asking for.
