Question about scaling damage

[bmonroe]

I've been messing around a lot with "Labyrinth Lord" lately, and kicking around ideas for a few house rules so as to fine-tune the game to a certain style.

To give fighters a bit of ‘oomph’, how do you think it would work to give Fighters a damage bump of +1d6 damage per five levels? IE a 5th level Fighter gets a +1D6 to all damage rolls, 2D6 at tenth level, 3D6 at 15th, etc.

Was thinking that one of the things that never really ‘clicked’ with me in early editions of D&D is that by tehnth level or so, you were supposed to be fighting dragons and giants and shit. While the monsters had the ability to do massive damage with breath weapons, tree-sized clubs, etc. fighters were sort of left in the dust. Even Magic User spells start to become “Do 1Dx damage per caster level”.

Do you think this would break/imbalance things too much? Or is there something built into the game to accommodate this that I’m just not seeing?

[Mark]

A lot of oomph was added by adding second, and third attacks per round in later editions. It became hives of damage. I don't think you'll break anything with the additional d6's you propose.

[harmyn]

If your wanting to go that route have you considered using some form of mastery/skill system for it? I have been working on something I call Martial Mastery that was inspired by another system that I hope is a bit more balanced than the more powerful concept that many had some issues with related to balance. The link below is to a partially finished document. I am still needing to give it another read over, do some formatting on the weapon description pages, and maybe finish out describing a few more things but the idea is here.

Martial Mastery Beta Version

If anyone has any thoughts or feedback I am happy to hear them. I hope to eventually get this done and then it will take its official place in the AntiPaladin Games OSR section.

[Brad]

Do you happen to have the old Master Set or Rules Cyclopedia? If you want "oomph", give fighters the ability to use Weapon Mastery. They will soon be laughing at puny spells like fireball.

EDIT: No sooner than I hit submit does harmyn make a post about the same exact thing!

[Blood axe]

Perhaps let them use two weapons, one in each hand. Give a small "to hit penalty".
Maybe allow "Flurry of blows" and allow several less accurate strikes.

[Lord Kilgore]

To give fighters a bit of ‘oomph’, how do you think it would work to give Fighters a damage bump of +1d6 damage per five levels? IE a 5th level Fighter gets a +1D6 to all damage rolls, 2D6 at tenth level, 3D6 at 15th, etc.

That seems extremely high to me.

Are you expecting a high level fighter to take on a dragon or giant one-on-one like a low level fighter takes on an orc? Dragons and giants are not just big orcs. They don't do high damage because they are the equivalent of high level characters. They do high damage because they're huge savage monsters. And they usually require a number of characters (and/or retainers) to battle toe-to-toe. Just because a hill giant has 8HD doesn't mean he's the equivalent of an 8th-level fighter, and that the two should be comparably-powered.

I don't think your proposal would "break" the game. At least not if you are thinking you'll be seeing one or two PCs taking on hoards of giants and tons of dragons. That's totally a different style than most of the rules were set up for, but I can see it working. It's just not the style of game I think I'd go for.

If you're thinking that higher-HD monsters are over-powered compared to higher-level characters, maybe think about toning down the damage that monsters do. The original version of the game gave almost all monsters only one attack doing 1d6 damage, even dragons. (Special attacks like breath weapons were more powerful, though.)

That was TOO weak, in my humble opinion, but we re-did all the monsters to have one attack per round (no claw/claw/bite, for instance) for a set amount of damage, usually 1d6, 1d8, or 2d6 except for the biggest baddest ones. Seemed to work okay.

[Irda Ranger]

To give fighters a bit of ‘oomph’, how do you think it would work to give Fighters a damage bump of +1d6 damage per five levels? IE a 5th level Fighter gets a +1D6 to all damage rolls, 2D6 at tenth level, 3D6 at 15th, etc.

That seems fine to me.

Now you just have to give Thieves something to do at high levels.

[YHWH]

I don't like it.

You can't compare a special case like fireball to a standard fighter attack. Fireball is a once or twice per day climatic explosion. A fighter attack happens every single round for free (or more!).

With this rule by level 15 a fighter would be doing 40 damage per round on average, assuming hits and a couple pluses. Singlehandedly chopping down anything with less than 7 or 8 HD in one round.

[johnnybleu]

I see what you mean, but it's not something I would implement, personally. As mentioned above, it would drastically change the flavour of the game. You also have to keep in mind that while more powerful monsters do have the ability to dish out insane damage, they also have relatively low HP compared to more recent editions of D&D. In my opinion, a game where the high-level Fighter is killing dragons and giants with one blow would be... well, boring!

[Aplus]

What I TRY to do (and often fail simply because I like tinkering) is just play by the book until you actually see it being a problem in play. If you actually get to 5th or 10th level, and see the fighter falling behind, just give him a badass item to make up for it.

It may not even really be a problem, as things often play differently than they look on paper. Furthermore, keeping a solid campaign going long enough for players to reach those levels can be rare, so you might be spending time figuring out a problem that will never be an actual problem for you.

I hope that makes sense.