A D&D party hard at work deciding where to try out their new striker bonuses to damage.
I recently wrote about how monsters take more hits to kill at higher levels and offered some solutions. Instead of (or in addition to) lowering monster hit points, you could use the following system to boost the damage output of every class. This essentially gives every class a bonus striker role, while increasing the damage output of strikers even more.
PC Damage: PCs now get damage bonuses based on their role.:
- Grit (Defenders): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a defender hits a creature that is marked by them or in their defender’s aura with an attack power, they may deal an additional +1d8 damage to the creature they targeted. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d8. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d8.
- Precision (Controllers): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a controller targets a creature with an attack power they may deal an additional +1d6 damage against the targeted creature. The damage is applied whether they hit or miss. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d6. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d6.
- Empathy (Leaders): Starting at level 6, once per turn when a leader heals or grants temporary hit points to themselves or an ally on their turn, they may deal an additional +1d8 damage to a creature they hit with an attack power. Alternatively, once per turn when a leader hits with an attack power, they may grant an ally they can see a +1d8 bonus to their next damage roll until the end of that ally’s next turn. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2d8. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3d8.
- Expertise (Strikers): Starting at level 6, once per turn strikers may add +1 die to the extra damage dice they do as part of their class abilities, such as the rogue’s sneak attack (so at level 6 a rogue would do +3d6 sneak attack damage instead of +2d6). If the striker has no extra damage dice as part of their class abilities, once per turn when they hit with an attack power they may deal an additional +1d6 damage to the creature they targeted. At level 16, this bonus increases to +2 dice of damage. At level 26, this bonus increases to +3 dice of damage.
This change increases everyone’s damage to keep up with disproportionately rising monster hit points. It also rounds out striker damage a bit so that proportionately they are doing a bit less damage versus other PCs. With this change, a striker might go from doing twice the damage of a PC to merely 50% more damage or so.
With this increase in damage, it might make sense to give certain class abilities a damage bonus to keep up with the increase in damage overall, such as the automatic damage a paladin does when a marked enemy attacks someone else.
Note: The striker damage bonus will often be lower than the damage bonus of other classes. Partly I did this because I think strikers are already the most powerful role (certainly they tend to be the most played in my games) so they don’t need as much of a boost. Partly, it made sense to attach their damage mechanic to existing striker mechanics used by their classes, which will both make things easier for the player and make it easier for them to do the extra damage (i.e. the rogue already wants to get combat advantage for their sneak attack, so this just rewards them further).
STOLEN.
Or almost every class 😉
I guess Slayers get to use power strike an extra time?
While sad Avenger avenges sadly? Maybe give them an extra d20 on their attacks against their oath target?
And sorcerers don’t get much out of this either
Sorcerers seem to get +1d6 damage per round, so they are actually better off than rogues, who get a conditional +1d6 per round. But it seems to me like coming up with class- or even character-specific damage bonuses would be part of the fun. For instance, for chaos sorcerers, you might add a d12 of damage if the attack roll is odd, nothing if it is even.
For my player Claire’s bizarrely hat-obsessed orc barbarian character, Hoopster, I’d assign bonus damage based on the hat she was currently wearing, from the d4 bonnet to the d12 top hat. On a natural attack roll of 1, Hoopster loses her current hat.
Hi Simon. Yeah, as Paul says, if you don’t normally get extra damage dice to damage as a striker, you get +1d6 to any damage roll once a turn.
Also, while rogues get +1d6 damage a round normally, they can pick up the backstabber feat to upgrade that to +1d8. I’d imagine the phb1 ranger would also end up picking up their feat which upgrades their extra damage to a d8 to take advantage of the extra dice.
Slayers, I would say, could probably just get the +1d6 for every attack or maybe a flat +4 bonus to damage to complement their current striker bonus. I would give Avengers +1d8 against their oath target, probably, similar to how things work for defenders.