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TOPIC: Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses

Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #61

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Matt Goodman wrote: I, for one, don't understand why we're debating this. I think the original proposal if having the damage modifier only work for one puck is bad. And until TPTB chime in and say that they're actively thinking about this, I'm not going to debate that proposal.

Instead, focus on the real imbalances:
AC has become a joke
2 handed weapons don't function as they should

Possible solutions. Every monster does retribution damage, amount based off AC. 15 pts for under 10, 10 pts for under 20, 5 pts for under 30. Adjust as needed.

Make 2 handed weapons use 1.5x their strength modifier for damage (e.g., if your +dmg, strength only, for one handed weapon is +10, its +15 with a 2 hander).

Now discuss.


We're debating it because dual slides make two classes disproportionately high on damage due to the extreme + damage bonuses and it's continuing to get worse as more and more tokens are released.

Also the discussion of the proposed change is the focus of this post. So I'll stay on the focus of the topic and not change to an unrelated suggestion that does not resolve the damage inequality issue.


But, don't you see? My proposed changed do resolve the inequality issue, or at least allows player agency.

(For sake of argument)
So, the problem is too high damage output due to damage modifiers being too high. What causes damage modifiers? Tokens. Well, what would make players choose other tokens instead of these damage modifying ones? Oh, if they know they'll get hit with damage twice every round unless their AC is higher, then maybe, perhaps, they change those damage modifying tokens to AC boosting ones. Or health boosting ones. All of a sudden, their damage modifiers are lower! Problem solved! Would this "hurt" any other classes? Not to the extent of the dual sliders. Rogues would need to be careful (perhaps no retribution on sneak attacks), but I like this idea (granted, I'm biased).

Problem two: the damage spread is too wide. Solution, instead of bringing down classes, make two handed weapons actually feel like two handed weapons! The damage wheels on those are pretty pointless when the modifiers are as high as they are.

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #62

So punish every player (actually punish your healers or require healers be played in groups with no one who wants to play them) vs actually addressing the issue of overly strong damage output of two classes.

The suggestion is definitely biased and not in the favor of 10 of the 12 classes in the game.

The suggestion to fix the heavy damage of Monk and Ranger only affect Monk and Ranger. The suggestion to add retribution damage to all monsters in an effort to make Monks and Rangers change tokens to lower their damage output affects all melee slide players and all healers. And makes skipping a healing class not viable at Hardcore or higher difficulty. Just not a valid fix in my opinion

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #63

Kirk Bauer wrote: I'm fine with the idea that only one puck gets the damage bonus. It will dramatically change Ranger and Monk builds of course. Especially with the new Ranger Legendary we will see many more ranged rangers. It will put monk and Ranger solidly at the bottom of the pack of damage dealers though with little upside.


I'm not sure that's how it would work out at all.

The Monk will still have a higher STR than Bard, Cleric, Dwarf Fighter, Paladin, and Rogue.

So for Monks to be at the bottom of the pack you'd have to conclude they are more likely to miss on 2 pucks than those other classes are to miss on 1 puck.

The second puck can still tack on an additional 1-10 damage per attack round if it hits.

I also see lots of upside in the huge variety of ancillary abilities the Monk has, and in the Ranged Ranger being the best Ranged damage dealer again with Sharpshooter.

Compare proposed Monk:

* May slide a second puck in melee, score hits if either hits, deal more damage if both hit, Base AC 17, Immune to non-magical missile attacks, Immune to all types of Poison, Feather Fall, Improved Evasion, and Stunning Fist

With Fighter:

+2 to hit, once per combat you may reside.

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #64

Picc wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: Let me clarify. The biggest reason Monks and Rangers are so much more powerful than a fighter is poor combat design, plain and simple. If melee was more dangerous than ranged attacks then the builds would have less STR and more defence. In this case the higher AC of a fighter would be a big advantage.

So if every melee attacker takes attacks pretty much every round then the glass cannon approach is less useful. This lowers the damage of dual melee and increases the value of heavy armor. It also encourages more ranged builds.

I don't hate the idea but I think it's a patch to a different problem.


One approach might just be to make retribution damage interact with armor somehow. That said I already kind of feel like ranged is at the point where it's close to if not outright equal to melee in terms of output and far ahead in terms of utility, but that's another kettle of fish.


This is a good idea.

If 1-2 monsters each dungeon monsters had things like:

Damage Aura: Melee attackers take:

14-AC damage on Normal
28-AC damage on Hardcore
42-AC damage on Nightmare

For each attack puck slid it would change things around quite a bit.

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #65

Philip Goodman wrote: I
This thread is insane with how little forethought and math has gone into this suggestion. Putting monk and melee rangers at rock bottom of the damage dealers. If this occurred, I would guess a 2-handed monk build would do comparable or more damage.


Please demonstrate this change would put Monk and Ranger at the rock bottom of damage dealers.

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #66

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Picc wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: Let me clarify. The biggest reason Monks and Rangers are so much more powerful than a fighter is poor combat design, plain and simple. If melee was more dangerous than ranged attacks then the builds would have less STR and more defence. In this case the higher AC of a fighter would be a big advantage.

So if every melee attacker takes attacks pretty much every round then the glass cannon approach is less useful. This lowers the damage of dual melee and increases the value of heavy armor. It also encourages more ranged builds.

I don't hate the idea but I think it's a patch to a different problem.


One approach might just be to make retribution damage interact with armor somehow. That said I already kind of feel like ranged is at the point where it's close to if not outright equal to melee in terms of output and far ahead in terms of utility, but that's another kettle of fish.


This is a good idea.

If 1-2 monsters each dungeon monsters had things like:

Damage Aura: Melee attackers take:

14-AC damage on Normal
28-AC damage on Hardcore
42-AC damage on Nightmare

For each attack puck slid it would change things around quite a bit.


This sounds like a bad idea to me, I'd much rather have the monster just make more attacks. And since Ranged already has the advantage of working in both melee and ranged situations, I wouldn't be in favor of new restrictions on Melee that don't also impact ranged.

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #67

Since we are debating the bonuses applied by strength why not just give half the bonus rounded down to each puck? As in each arm contributing to half the strength in the cases of monk and ranger. Then you still have full strength for the two handed builds. We may need to make an adjustment to the classes that only use single handed weapons...
Fall down......Go boom!

Adam Guay

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Last edit: by Adam Guay.

Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #68

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Mike Steele wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Picc wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: Let me clarify. The biggest reason Monks and Rangers are so much more powerful than a fighter is poor combat design, plain and simple. If melee was more dangerous than ranged attacks then the builds would have less STR and more defence. In this case the higher AC of a fighter would be a big advantage.

So if every melee attacker takes attacks pretty much every round then the glass cannon approach is less useful. This lowers the damage of dual melee and increases the value of heavy armor. It also encourages more ranged builds.

I don't hate the idea but I think it's a patch to a different problem.


One approach might just be to make retribution damage interact with armor somehow. That said I already kind of feel like ranged is at the point where it's close to if not outright equal to melee in terms of output and far ahead in terms of utility, but that's another kettle of fish.


This is a good idea.

If 1-2 monsters each dungeon monsters had things like:

Damage Aura: Melee attackers take:

14-AC damage on Normal
28-AC damage on Hardcore
42-AC damage on Nightmare

For each attack puck slid it would change things around quite a bit.


This sounds like a bad idea to me, I'd much rather have the monster just make more attacks. And since Ranged already has the advantage of working in both melee and ranged situations, I wouldn't be in favor of new restrictions on Melee that don't also impact ranged.


This is more or less just monster retribution damage. It was tried, didnt really change behavior, did generate a lot of complaints, and has a shirt that prevents it (which heralded the point at which it was basically never seem again). Honestly that more time I spend thinking about it the more I remember why I didnt like it.
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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #69

Adam Guay wrote: Since we are debating the bonuses applied by strength why not just give half the bonus rounded down to each puck? As in each arm contributing to half the strength in the cases of monk and ranger. Then you still have full strength for the two handed builds. We may need to make an adjustment to the classes that only use single handed weapons...


I thought about that option in my original post, but it seemed like too big a penalty to the Monk and Ranger. They would have to hit on both slides to get the same damage bonus that the other classes get with one slide. If they only hit with one of the two slides, they get half the damage bonus the other classes get with one slide.

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #70

Mike Steele wrote: The main reason (from what I can gather) that Ranger and Monk are so powerful is that they get to add their combat bonuses to two sliders instead of one.

What if we treated the melee damage bonus kind of like a pool, like with area attack spells or LoDS healing? Just apply the damage bonus to the first Monk or Ranger slider the DM gets to that hits in combat, and if the second slider from the Monk or Ranger also hits it just gets the base weapon damage. That shouldn't be too hard for the DM to deal with.

That would really help level the melee playing field (and ranged for the Monk when using GoTFF).


This is absurd, let’s just all play fighters, no other classes, then we can play fair on a level playing field.

Edit -
I agree that other sources should be able to match the damage per round of the monk one on one. I also think GotFF are an issue and should get a nerf reprint. I think modifying a class because a token exists is absurd.
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Last edit: by macxdmg.

Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #71

macXdmg wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: The main reason (from what I can gather) that Ranger and Monk are so powerful is that they get to add their combat bonuses to two sliders instead of one.

What if we treated the melee damage bonus kind of like a pool, like with area attack spells or LoDS healing? Just apply the damage bonus to the first Monk or Ranger slider the DM gets to that hits in combat, and if the second slider from the Monk or Ranger also hits it just gets the base weapon damage. That shouldn't be too hard for the DM to deal with.

That would really help level the melee playing field (and ranged for the Monk when using GoTFF).


This is absurd, let’s just all play fighters, no other classes, then we can play fair on a level playing field.

Edit -
I agree that other sources should be able to match the damage per round of the monk one on one. I also think GotFF are an issue and should get a nerf reprint. I think modifying a class because a token exists is absurd.


Per your edited comment, wouldn't restricting the damage bonus to the melee token from the Monk and Ranger to the slide that slides the highest number would accomplish the goal of letting other classes be in the ballpark of damage per round of the Monk and Ranger? That was the point of the proposal.

I totally agree with you that the GotFF is an issue and should be nerfed. Unfortunately it doesn't look at this point like that will happen. That's not directly connected to the proposal in this thread though, I'd have made the proposal regardless of whether or not the GotFF exists, because Melee combat would still be an issue. I'm not proposing the modification because of the existence of any one token, but because the current rules allow Monk and Ranger to add the full damage modifier to both weapon slides, giving them potentially twice the bonus from damage modifiers as any other classes.

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Proposed change to Monk and Ranger bonuses 4 years 7 months ago #72

Mike Steele wrote:

Adam Guay wrote: Since we are debating the bonuses applied by strength why not just give half the bonus rounded down to each puck? As in each arm contributing to half the strength in the cases of monk and ranger. Then you still have full strength for the two handed builds. We may need to make an adjustment to the classes that only use single handed weapons...


I thought about that option in my original post, but it seemed like too big a penalty to the Monk and Ranger. They would have to hit on both slides to get the same damage bonus that the other classes get with one slide. If they only hit with one of the two slides, they get half the damage bonus the other classes get with one slide.


Yep, that's why the current suggestion is that if either weapon hits it gets full modified damage and if both hit the second one gets unmodified damage. That way they are at equal levels if 1 hits and slightly ahead if 2 hit.

There could also be something built into each class that allows for certain fights to give full bonuses to both, such as Monks Flurry dealing full damage 1/room or Rangers dealing full damage vs Giant race monsters.

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