How much damage can you do an how?

For comparison to the topic:

Denevir the Dark Kin Gladiator.
Exceptional Mace,
+5 to hit (with -1 for Forward Stance), d10 Prowess,
Basic attack:
1d8+1d10+1d4+3 avg = 15.5
Speed 4,
3.875 dpt.

Maneuvers:
-Sweeping Strike
-Crushing Blow
-Unbalancing Attack (+1/+4, hits Discipline, -3 to damage, +Prowess die on next attack)

Advanced Maneuvers:
-Vexing Sweep (Unbalancing Attack and Sweeping Strike, Spd/Rec +2/+5)

Taking a mace was mistake, but whatever. I’ll adapt Mighty Swing later.
I lack the ambition to work out how Unbalancing Attack tweaks my DPT, though I typically apply it with a whip to shave the time down a little and for positioning as against Large targets it gets me the chance to set them up at their attack range so they’re less likely to kite me out if I decided to close the distance beforehand.

Defensively I’m:
AR: 4
Avd: 21 (with -1 Bulk for Wings of the Fiend)
Frt: 21
Dsc: 20

Usually I feel like basically an easy to hit target, but AR: 4 (Gladiator’s Armor, Bestial Hide) seems to be adequate.
IMO the Wings chain seems underpowered and overpriced, but eh -RP tax.
Otherwise the whip is totally normal and I have Massive Horns, which are abominably useless.

It’s also no credit to the mechanics that the leading edge of “effective” can slip away so quickly. See also how hard people think a BI should be and whether being part of the grand battles of destiny should be automatically selective to combat specialists.

I don’t follow the first statement. Could you clarify? My point as I stated before was to understand how the damage #s I was hearing are being calculated. I have not seen from those who write stat blocks a tendency to play to the margins. Transparency across the range of characters playing should help ensure the combats don’t go to the huge damage #s. A well built combatant should help a mod like a well built diplomat character does. Sure you can succeed without them, but they certainly make life easier.

A BI should be dangerous for individuals of reasonable martial skill. By that I mean characters who’ve made an effort to do something in combat. Not twinked out, not combat monsters, but characters who if casters have a spell or two to use and a plan to use it or a near maxed out weapon skill and at least a bit of armor. If you’re clearly better than that you’re likely to draw the enemy’s attention and still be challenged. If you walk in as a character with sub-par defenses, virtually no armor and at best questionable combat contributions, then yes, expect to be at greater risk. That does not mean the character doesn’t have a valid reason for being there. You can argue it makes them more heroic rather than less-so for being that scribe willing to take a stand for a cause she believes in. It can be a great RP opportunity and character defining. The player simply needs to accept the risks they incur as part of that.

An average BI encounter is arguably going to be more difficult than your average mod encounter. Note the use of “average” in both descriptions. Again there will be variability. There’s an optional rule at the back of the Codex of Heroes called Permanent Injury.

“When a Hero would die as a result of a failed Healing Action rolls, the Hero can “succeed” instead. The Hero obtains a physical Flaw instead of dying. Suitable examples include: Physical Weakness, Feeble Attribute or One Eye.”

Something that has been brought up which I feel is valid, is if a player is unwilling to have their character die a meaningful death at a heroic moment as the balance of the campaign is in play, then when are they willing to die? I can’t think of any GMs that are out to get the PCs. Most if not all of them would feel bad about killing a PC if it happened.

I’m just another player. If you think my position above is wrong, help me understand why. The PCI staff has done a great job of being responsive to players requests and concerns over the years.

It’s the same problem it’s always been, and that’s player focus. DPS masters tend to check out between fights unless they have an itch being scratched.

I’m not sure how much Arcanis draws the hack and slash crowd compared to other systems. Some people are simply polite and yield the floor to other players to have their turn in the spotlight.

By comparison Social skills are important, but I haven’t yet seen a mod terminally deviate into a ditch and end early because someone didn’t have Empathy or Persuade.
That’s the difference because the plot moves on and it’s possible to RP through a scene you can’t dice through.
Failing a social roll might not get you the outcome you want, but fail to fight and you’re just dead.

There are a number of mods though where it’s possible to avoid combats through social rolls and good planning. Failure in those cases leads to combat. So while it’s true that the lack of social skills didn’t directly execute the character, the net result may still be the same.

I’ve trimmed the rest of the post because it’s long and it’s late. It’s clear you’ve had some bad experiences at tables. That doesn’t inherently mean that particular encounters are poorly designed. Spoiler threads and others allow for feedback and fixing encounters that don’t run as intended. In terms of GMs you will always find varied levels of ability.

I hope you continue to find enough enjoyment in playing the system that you keep with it. Constructive criticism is generally accepted graciously from what I’ve seen.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Snipping for brevity, but as always the man can keep his hat.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Forget BI’s.
I’ve been to them, I understand the whole idea and my point is to be wary of power creep in the guise of greater challenge.
Reading elsewhere there was a report of players complaining that the BI they were in was too easy.
I say “circular file” that crap if it isn’t a common observation because, grats to whoever, they built to be excessively effective and they succeeded. And that made the event less entertaining.
Seems like there’s a lesson there.
Maybe they need to reconsider what Heroism is (sacrifice), and what it’s not (risking nothing).

And yeah, I haven’t had that many deliberately deadly GM’s. But I have had plenty who went in with a “us versus them” mentality and, however sympathetic as I can be towards ingratitude-induced burnout, while near on everyone feels bad about killing a PC rarely does “feeling bad” bring back the slain.
Like the man said, “accidents happen.”

Re: players.
Last campaign I shared many tables with a pair of “Dark Kin Barbarian-Fighter Warped Ones From The Hinterlands.”
They weren’t brothers, but for a while they were pretty much twins. I don’t know where they clocked in measured against the entire coterie of PC’s, but I recall them calling 250+ hp of damage in a round “average.”
Now it’s entirely true that they were crazy into the setting, but their method of interaction involved finding the biggest nasty burliest Bad Guy and ripping it into pieces more then it involved agonizing over moral dilemmas and carefully choosing sides.

And for this they are eternally appreciated.
It’s a team effort, and the artillery is always a welcome part of a team.

But make no mistake they were both exercises in mechanical efficiency first.

In this campaign there’s another pair of players who’re, good folks without question, more about maximizing Smite damage and pounding arrows into tangos then being real caught up in the metaplot or in making an identity out of their character.

To each their own, sure. But for some folks it seems to me they’re comfortable Doing then being Done To.

(Ah. I’ve got this theory: Internal and External characters.
Internal characters are about being changed themselves.
External characters are about changing their world.
There’s no real pure kind either way, but I wonder if characters don’t tend to gravitate towards on pole or another.
Generally speaking the “smash’em all and let the diplomats sort it out” are the External kind -and so usually are the diplomats. “We get sh*t done” is their motto.
The people on personal quests? The ones less about their immediate circumstances and more about their own reactions? They’re Internally driven. They’re about becoming, and in the process grow to change the lives of others. This is more common among DK’s, Elorii, and Gnomes then others imo.)

I say my point remains uncontested.
A party that’s imbecilic at social encounters but are also blood-drenched gods of combat will fair better then a part of silver-tongued aristocrats who can’t remember which end of the dagger goes into the angry people.

Combat is naturally a dramatic narrative tool; incidentally combat is also the largest singular set of actions that require rules. I’ve never encountered a system that split a dinner party into dozens of variables of abilities and interactions while reducing combat down to a few hostile resolution skills called things like “Killing” and “Not Dying” -unlike Persuasion and Empathy and the like being design standard schema.
Bad RP isn’t dangerous because at the minimum there aren’t rules for dying of embarrassment.

Yeah, a great GM can save a bad encounter like a bad GM can damn an interesting one. Nor do I consider my experiences to be the prevailing experiences of all the players for a given encounter.
But I won’t be silent about what a bad damn idea the RPG Arms Race always is and how suggesting that getting ruthless about Helpless-inducing effects in response to things like Solidify Water is appalling because a) I care way too much about this setting, and b) I’m not lucky.
When Illir decides a “Fire-From-Heaven” lesson is in order I tend to be the one who forgot his asbestos umbrella, and consequently I’ve come to appreciate how easily the little weeny PC’s can be mulched because I had a ring-side seat to the three revisions of Lifewarden while Psi-Warriors and Warped Ones went on unchecked.

I don’t mean to drag up the past to shame anyone, but I do mean to make the point that priorities are mixed up when a d4 versus d6 hit die is a conversation rager while having a 50 Strength (“I have a 30 Might and a 30 Prowess, of course it’s balanced!”) is almost unremarkable.

So is Solidify Water broken because it can be used to cause Helplessness?
Hell yes!
But the solution isn’t to stump for eye-for-an-eye, but to debuff Helpless so that a party of Thralls on hot streak don’t wipe a party.
How about they Push and dish out Strain when they hit instead? Piling on Recovery and Strain is a great way to punish without just butchering everyone.

Also, seriously. Sleep/Hold Person effects are where casters start demonstrating how broken they can be. If there’s nothing like that for non-casters, it’s probably a bad idea that could stand to be forgotten.
Enemy of My Enemy and Challenge both have progressive penalties, why not this other stuff?

Besides that we’re going in circles; let’s PM this out if you want. I’d rather not because, hey, circles.

Zac you aren’t soliciting a critique of your posts, but I’m offering you one anyway. Your posts are too long and rambling. We talk about this stuff here in Portland; but online I can barely follow you. Please strive for a higher signal to noise ratio. Brevity and/or shorter sentences would help. Generally, 3-5 paragraphs is enough for one post.

Forget BI’s. I’ve been to them, I understand the whole idea and my point is to be wary of power creep in the guise of greater challenge…snip…
This is a valid point. OTOH with leveling up there is a natural power creep in absolute power. That’s fine. I’d like my Tier 5 character to be more powerful than my Tier 1 character. What we don’t want is for the relative differences in power between PCs and NPCs to increase as we get to higher tiers. Or for the relative power between PCs to grow so great that some players feel like their (non combat optimized) PC doesn’t contribute. That’s pretty much what this thread is about.

I haven’t had that many deliberately deadly GM’s. But I have had plenty who went in with a “us versus them” mentality …snip… I think every player has had that experience. Probably more than once. At the same time how many times has this happened to you in the last 4-5 years of the Crusade or Blessed Lands Arcs? I’m guessing that most of these experiences took place in another campaign.
.
I say my point remains uncontested. (That) a party that’s imbecilic at social encounters but are also blood-drenched gods of combat will fair better then a part of silver-tongued aristocrats who can’t remember which end of the dagger goes into the angry people. In some mods this is true. In others it isn’t. The ratio varies by campaign. Overall I strongly disagree in Arcanis. Not least because getting to a happy-ish ending in To Die Alone (aka the module I wrote) depends more on thoughtfulness on the part of the PCs than on killing everyone who disagrees with you in Maren’s court.

I don’t mean to drag up the past to shame anyone …snip…. And yet this returns to what I think is the rant I skipped past about high level warped ones. From the last campaign. Which is many years in the past and used an entirely different rules set. It might be all right to use the stories of Warped Ones as a cautionary tale about disparities in PC builds. But what numbers they pumped out back when does not (IMO) have much bearing to the analysis we’re doing here.

Let’s see, my fighter Ursula swings a Tralian Hammer, she has a d10 might so that’s d10 (which can explode) plus a d12 for damage, +1 for the hammer being exceptional. Say an average of 12-13 points of damage on a basic attack every 6 ticks. She has mighty swing and sweeping strike but ususally doesn’t use them since they slow down the speed of the weapon (which is slow enough already ) I do have a Fire Rune on the hammer for an additional point of fire damage. I’ve got a wish list of things to boost her damage output but they have to wait until I hit Tier 2. At 1.6 that’s a ways off.

As for Haakon my priest he uses an exceptional fervidite quarterstaff which does d6+1 as I recall with a d8 Might die. So say an average of 8-9 points every three ticks, assuming he’s not casting. Plus additional damage against higher armored opponents. Certainly nothing to bring down the house but I try to carry my weight in a fight. I’d like to trick him out a bit with the staff, but alas I need other things more as a priest to make me more effective on that end.

I will definitely use Sweeping Strike and the rest of the toolbox if the opportunity presents itself, especially when trying to clear the board of minions. The things I am waiting for are Passing Strike and Vital Strike (as I remember the names since I don’t have the books with me at work).