D&D 5E Bigger monsters do more damage

[Stoutstien]

You sort of need to do both. Otherwise you end up like the 200 feet dinosaurs from Wotcs Glory of the Giants dealing 30 damage on a hit or something like that.

Yes and no.

The issue with scaling damage with size is the fact that d&d has never handled size differentials well. You get to the point where there's not a difference between fighting a goblin at level one and a dragon at level 20 because you're practically doing the exact same thing which is a race to zero. You saw this in the dragon splat book where there was a few really good ideas in there but the majority of it was just hey here it is but bigger.

I'd rather than focus on actually doing a paradigm shift in their encounter design when you're dealing with these larger creatures so you can have those God of war type encounters. That's why I'm more of a fan of things that just typically make it more difficult for the party to rely on plan A (kill it fast) rather than just burn HP.

 

[dave2008]

Hey Dave buddy!

Interesting idea (though I have settled on multiattack damage being 25% of hit dice myself, with recharges 100% and Reactions 12.5%).

One thing I did notice was that your Dragon's breath weapon is notably weaker than its multiattack. I guess you could argue it's an area effect, but with save's and potential protections up, it's notably weak.

Thanks UK for the input!

The way the DMG guide's us is to assume 2 people are hit by a breath weapon so the DPR is quite a bit higher than the multiattack (and thus impacts CR more than multiattack does). Also, this dragon has a trait that eliminates resistance, so it is going to do a lot of damage! Regardless, this was just thrown together as a proof of concept - nothing more.

 

[dave2008]

Yes and no.

The issue with scaling damage with size is the fact that d&d has never handled size differentials well. You get to the point where there's not a difference between fighting a goblin at level one and a dragon at level 20 because you're practically doing the exact same thing which is a race to zero. You saw this in the dragon splat book where there was a few really good ideas in there but the majority of it was just hey here it is but bigger.

I'd rather than focus on actually doing a paradigm shift in their encounter design when you're dealing with these larger creatures so you can have those God of war type encounters. That's why I'm more of a fan of things that just typically make it more difficult for the party to rely on plan A (kill it fast) rather than just burn HP.

That is a different scale all together really. The ancient red I was basing this on has a body about 20' long, a neck and head about 15' long, and a tail about 35' long. All told 75' long. This is not something that PCs are running over like terrain, but it should hit harder than 19 dmg IMO.

 

[CapnZapp]

As a general trend for design for large and larger creatures, I'd rather their attacks hit wider areas and multiple targets than just ramping damage up as single attacks.

For dragons, what I do is utterly ignore the limits of breath attack areas.

That 30 ft cone? Have the dragon continuously exhale during its entire round's movement!

So if it flies in a straight line with Speed 80, then it paints not a 30 by 30 square on the ground, but it moves one edge of that square 80 feet in one direction, so we're talking 30 by 110 feet.*

This represents well that dragon's breath isn't an instantaneous shot like a paint ball, but an entire lung's worth of explosive fire. The dragon can now properly set multiple cottages on fire just in one strafe, instead of merely a single one.

The impact on heroes is relatively low. Yes, it's no longer trivial to spread out in such a fashion the dragon can only target the melee bruisers of the group, but "cone dragons" doesn't actually do any additional damage to any one member of the group.

Dragons that did lines do - they now get to do a combo. They both do the line AND a regular (non-continuous) cone of the same size. This represents a cloud dispersing off of that center beam. So an Adult Black Dragon doesn't cause the 60x140 squares conflagration of 18d6 fire that an Adult Red Dragon can do, but it does do a 60 ft line AND a 60 ft cone (in the same direction). The Fighter that stands in the dragon's face is hit by both line and cone and need to do two Dex saves and takes up to 24d8 acid damage.

This makes "line dragons" more concerting to adventurers, while "cone dragons" remain the premiere source of "countryside anxiety"...


*) A really devious "cone dragon" would, like most well-optimized players, of course know that moving diagonally is far superior to moving in a line that's straight on graph paper.

 

[Stoutstien]

That is a different scale all together really. The ancient red I was basing this on has a body about 20' long, a neck and head about 15' long, and a tail about 35' long. All told 75' long. This is not something that PCs are running over like terrain, but it should hit harder than 19 dmg IMO.

Depends on the overall kit.three attacks with higher than normal hit chances and moderate damage is likely to perform better then it looks assuming it lives long enough to make a difference

 

[dave2008]

Depends on the overall kit.three attacks with higher than normal hit chances and moderate damage is likely to perform better then it looks assuming it lives long enough to make a difference

IMO, That is not really what this discussion is about.

 

[dave2008]

For dragons, what I do is utterly ignore the limits of breath attack areas.

That 30 ft cone? Have the dragon continuously exhale during its entire round's movement!

So if it flies in a straight line with Speed 80, then it paints not a 30 by 30 square on the ground, but it moves one edge of that square 80 feet in one direction, so we're talking 30 by 110 feet.*

This represents well that dragon's breath isn't an instantaneous shot like a paint ball, but an entire lung's worth of explosive fire. The dragon can now properly set multiple cottages on fire just in one strafe, instead of merely a single one.

The impact on heroes is relatively low. Yes, it's no longer trivial to spread out in such a fashion the dragon can only target the melee bruisers of the group, but "cone dragons" doesn't actually do any additional damage to any one member of the group.

Dragons that did lines do - they now get to do a combo. They both do the line AND a regular (non-continuous) cone of the same size. This represents a cloud dispersing off of that center beam. So an Adult Black Dragon doesn't cause the 60x140 squares conflagration of 18d6 fire that an Adult Red Dragon can do, but it does do a 60 ft line AND a 60 ft cone (in the same direction). The Fighter that stands in the dragon's face is hit by both line and cone and need to do two Dex saves and takes up to 24d8 acid damage.

This makes "line dragons" more concerting to adventurers, while "cone dragons" remain the premiere source of "countryside anxiety"...


*) A really devious "cone dragon" would, like most well-optimized players, of course know that moving diagonally is far superior to moving in a line that's straight on graph paper.

Here is my guide on that:

• Strafing. If a dragon moves in a straight line in the same round that it uses its breath weapon, it can add the movement to the length of its breath weapon. For cone shaped breath weapons, the added length is a line the width of the cone added to the end of the cone.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Yes and no.

The issue with scaling damage with size is the fact that d&d has never handled size differentials well. You get to the point where there's not a difference between fighting a goblin at level one and a dragon at level 20 because you're practically doing the exact same thing which is a race to zero. You saw this in the dragon splat book where there was a few really good ideas in there but the majority of it was just hey here it is but bigger.

I'd rather than focus on actually doing a paradigm shift in their encounter design when you're dealing with these larger creatures so you can have those God of war type encounters. That's why I'm more of a fan of things that just typically make it more difficult for the party to rely on plan A (kill it fast) rather than just burn HP.

I agree to an extent. To use the God of War analogy, having massive climb-able or explore-able monsters is cool, but you also need the numbers to go up so the other enemies are also threat.

Godzilla and Kratos might be in around the same ballpark in terms of power. The easy way to explain that is in their damage.

contrary to WotC 2014 Monster Manual, high level D&D is not just ancient dragons, Balors the Kraken and the Tarrasque. DM's need a range of simple but tough high C R mooks and mini-bosses to throw at players.

Fizban's was a big disappointment.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Thanks UK for the input!

Anytime amigo. I thought it was well done, although the idea does make some serious impact on damage...Though I would argue official damage is far too low.

The way the DMG guide's us is to assume 2 people are hit by a breath weapon so the DPR is quite a bit higher than the multiattack (and thus impacts CR more than multiattack does). Also, this dragon has a trait that eliminates resistance, so it is going to do a lot of damage! Regardless, this was just thrown together as a proof of concept - nothing more.

Yes it's interesting trying to balance things like that.

The multi-attack chain has the chance of dealing a crit.

sometimes you have to trust you epic tier players will find a way to win and simply "let God worry about the math".

In our epic game the heroes (currently 2 PCs) recently won an almost no-win fight with brilliant tactics against 4 killer robots that were each more dangerous than the Tarrasque (IMO). Each robot was dealing approx. 240 damage per round and we had previously fought 1 such robot and nearly had a TPK...and these are standard PC's not some char-ops exp exploit.

The moral being, epic heroes can probably handle it.

 

[cbwjm]

I think increasing the dice is fine, but the modifier damage might be a bit too much. However, turning an attack into a small AoE might be cool, make a single attack roll, possibly hit both the barbarian and the fighter with a single attack.