Side Quest: Hit Point Analysis#
What we’ll be looking at in this chapter is the way various classes stack up in survivability against average incoming damage from creatures they’ll face on their journey from level 1 to 20.
Note 1: While the damage comparisons are done against the bestiary, survivability is done against the book’s creature building guidelines. This is in part due to the difficulty of parsing creatures Strikes and spells, each creature often has several of these. Which ones are used are at the GM’s discretion, and so it’s very unpredictable.
Note 2: We will be ignoring AC for now, but AC makes a huge difference in reducing how often you get hit or crit. Not getting hit at all is much better than tanking a hit, but getting hit is definitely inevitable in this game.
#r "nuget: Plotly.NET.Interactive"
#load "../Helpers.fs"
#load "../Hitpoints.fs"
#load "../publish-backend/hp.fs"
open SideAnalysis.HitPoints
open PublishBackend.Hp
- Plotly.NET.Interactive, 5.0.0
HP growth of classes#
First, we’re going to look at how classes themselves grow HP. Any ancestry can be any class, but we’ll stick with human for now as the default case, which will add 8 hp to everyone.
We’ll primarily consider the wizard, rogue, fighter, and barbarian here as stand-ins for the 6, 8, 10, and 12 hp classes. For ease of analysis, we’ll assume none of these characters invest in any constitution. This is in part because adding two constitution “bumps” a class up to the next hp tier, e.g.: a wizard with 2 con gets the same hp per level as a rogue with 0 con.
Kineticist, on the other hand, will get special consideration, since we know the vast majority of kineticists will opt to maximize their constitution.
classGrowthChart
Some things jump out right away, though these are probably obvious. The wizard’s hp is roughly half of the barbarian’s (6 per level vs. 12). The kineticist makes it to 348, almost three times the wizard’s natural 128 and more than double the rogue’s natural 168. A human barbarian with Toughness and 4 Constitution can also make it to that 348 number.
But we need to contextualize this hp against the threats the adventurers will face.
Hits to knockout#
One way we can assess the value of HP is by comparing that against the average damage of successful Strikes (or failed saves) from monsters’ abilities. Let’s start with enemies that are on-level and do high damage with their Strikes.
monsterDamageVsPartyChart MonsterDamageTier.High 0
One of the first things that stick out to me is the shape of these curves. In the beginning, new levels make a big difference. At the end, each new level doesn’t change the survivability ratio very much. These curves are this way because of two major factors.
One, your ancestry gives you a little buffer to your starting health. And two, while high damage Strikes gain about 2 damage per level, they start at an average of 6 damage at level 1.
A human rogue would start with 16 hp. So these high Strikes start at a ratio of 3/8s of a rogue’s hp. But over the levels, a rogue continues to gain 8 hp each level, and the high Strikes only gain 2 per level, a “limit” ratio of 2/8. As the adventurer’s level goes up, the damage approaches this limit ratio steeply at first before leveling off.
Some observations here for these high damage Strikes:
The average crit at level 1 KOs your 0 con elf wizard. (I’m sure many of you have seen this!)
The wizard’s limit ratio of 2/6 means that, if dice are doing a large portion of the damage (compared to flat damage boosts), a max damage roll on a crit would still KO a 0 con wizard at any level.
i.e., if an average roll is 2/6, a near-min is 1/6, and a near-max is 3/6, then doubling the near-max on a crit would bring you up to 6/6–all of their hp.
Most classes stop becoming meaningfully more tanky vs. on-level threats by around level 5 without constitution investment.
2 extra constitution is roughly 1 more average high Strike hit worth of hp
Or 4 con is roughly an extra average crit of hp
Barbarians comfortably withstanding two strong crits to the face starts very early, about level 4.
There’s an implication here that, for average high Strikes, just one more point of constitution could be the difference between going down in 3 hits and 4 hits. That said, a single point is not going to protect you from above average damage rolls, but 2 points likely will in the long run.
Extreme Strikes#
Let’s look at average extreme Strikes next.
monsterDamageVsPartyChart MonsterDamageTier.Extreme 0
Here we see something remarkably similar. Extreme Strikes start at roughly 8 damage and scale at roughly 2.6 damage per level, which explains why everyone’s survivability drops by roughly 1 Strike. So characters that went down in roughly 4 hits go down in about 3 here.
The average crit won’t quite KO a wizard on its own, but rolling just a bit higher than average might one-shot. Even a barbarian’s ability to eat two crits is threatened by some unlucky rolls, though the temporary hp from Rage will help.
Players who prefer Champion or Shield Block will likely recognize some of the value here. These are ways to grant yourself or an ally basically an entire point of constitution each time you use the reaction. At certain breakpoints like the wizard eating a crit or a rogue taking their third Strike, this may be life-saving.
Limited Area of Effect#
Limited AoE is a bit of a weird phrasing, but it’s what’s used in the book. These are abilities like the dragon’s breath, high rank spells, things where monsters are usually spending multiple actions and have a 1d4 cooldown or are burning limited resources.
monsterDamageVsPartyChart MonsterDamageTier.LimitedAreaOfEffect 0
Curiously, you can see that a human wizard’s survivability gets worse over time. I’ll address that in a moment.
Limited AoE damage scales at 3.5 per level, usually the monster’s level in d6s with an extra d6 added on top. In practice, it varies. Sometimes it’s a creature making an extreme or high damage Strike on a cooldown. Sometimes they do an analogous amount in half as many d12s.
This means it starts at 2d6, or an average of 7. The human wizard’s starting hp is 14 (exactly double the average–exactly the average crit failure), but only gains 6 hp per level. This keeps them extremely vulnerable to crit failures one-shotting them, since critical failure damage’s limit ratio is 7/6, outscaling the wizard’s hp. Even somewhat lower-than-average incoming damage rolls risk the wizard’s life on these critical failures.
For this reason, I have to highly recommend a wizard puts at least 1 point in constitution and/or takes Toughness. Even if they can reach a rogue’s 8 hp/level, they significantly increase their chances of surviving that unlucky roll.
Matching ratios of ancestry, class, and limited AoE#
Let’s quickly address the awkwardness of the human wizard becoming less tanky to Limited AoE damage as they gain levels. This is actually also the case for an orc rogue. It’s because of the starting hp from ancestry being higher than what the class provides, in combination with the way the initial damage and scaling damage of Limited AoE damage works.
Because the initial damage and scaling are the same, ancestries that provide the same amount of hp as the adventurer’s class does will keep the same ratio. At level 1, that’s double the ancetry’s hp, and at level 20, that’s 21 times the ancestry’s hp. Exactly the same as damage, which starts at 2d6 at level 1 and makes it to 21d6 at level 20.
To demonstrate, we’ll quickly compare elf wizards, human rogues, and orc fighters against Limited AoE damage and show that these create flat lines. They never become more or less tanky on their own by leveling and require investments in feats, shields, spells, or constitution.
flatRatioChart
The impact of higher level monsters#
Now that we’ve gained a general sense of what these threats are like for on-level enemies, let’s take a peek at above level enemies. We’ll start again with high Strike damage and assume a 0 Con Fighter (or a +2 Con rogue).
fighterVsMonsterLevelsChart MonsterDamageTier.High
Intuitively, these results make sense. A level +4 creature is 500% the level of a level 1 adventurer, but only a 20% higher than a level 20 adventurer, so some amount of flattening was inevitable.
This chart demonstrates part of the wisdom around avoiding throwing a level +4 creature at a party until they’re mid game. Even a level 3 creature has good odds to drop a level 1 fighter in a single crit.
With average high Strike damage, we expect about +2 damage per level, starting with 6 damage at level 1. That’s very quickly double damage at level 1 with a creature just a couple levels above the adventurers.
A big flaw of these charts is that AC and accuracy is not included in these. Accuracy is usually around a flat +6 for a +4 creature (or +3 for a +2 creature). So the crit chance is very high, and the miss chance is very low, compounding the incoming damage significantly.
Level and Limited AoE#
Let’s consider our fighter again and that terrifying, limited-use AoE damage.
fighterVsMonsterLevelsChart MonsterDamageTier.LimitedAreaOfEffect
We can see our fighter is quite doomed at low levels, but stays reasonably threatened at high levels.
At level 1, a level 4 or 5 creature is very likely to KO the fighter on a failed save.
Until around level 9, a +3 or +4 creature has a good chance to KO the fighter on a critically failed save.
At level 2, a level 3 creature is likely to KO the fighter on a critically failed save.
Since these damages are often all dice without modifiers, there maintains a chance for all of them that a near-max damage roll with a critical failure will KO the fighter.
Even a high roll, instead of a near-max one, is likely to do this for level+3 and level+4 monsters.
I do sometimes wonder about TPK risk with these abilities, and if bumping up critical failures to failures when gaining master proficiency in a save would be better than the usual bump of successes to critical successes. Perhaps, when the adventurer is on the ropes or already significantly injured, the opportunity to take no damage is more important than the risk of taking double damage from full health. The occasional drop or near drop from full is quite exciting, but terrifying if the higher level creature’s save DC leads to several crit failures. (A haunt KO’d 3/4s of our party before we even had a turn once because 3 of us critically failed around level 3. Only the luck of a high disable roll from the barely standing rogue and some heroic recoveries prevented our deaths.)