Author Topic: What does it take to be effective in melee?  (Read 60393 times)

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juton

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What does it take to be effective in melee?
« on: December 14, 2010, 05:35:57 PM »
Stabbing people with swords is a mainstay of fantasy literature, it's no wonder that D&D players want characters who can stab well. The question that has been plaguing me is how good is good enough, what does it take to make a viable melee character in D&D. Some people set the bar high, a Druid is viable because they can defeat a level appropriate encounter more than 50% of the time, by himself. Unfortunately for those who pursue melee the writers at WotC decided that melee should be a team sport, so even a very good melee character will have difficulties dealing with an encounters even a few levels below them. So I'm off to quantify what a team needs to be able to do to survive in the exciting world of melee combat!

Assumptions
I'm assuming that we are dealing with a 4 member party, and that the party and the monsters are focused on doing HP damage to one another. I'm also assuming a complete lack tactics other than stab the baddy, and that the party's tank absorbs all the damage from the monster. For the party to win it has to drop the monster before the monster drops the party's tank, because resurrections are expensive. Since a party doesn't just fight monsters equal to their CR, I'm going to test versus CR+2/+3, which I think would be a suitable melee boss monster, because if the party can't beat a boss, then it can't really succeed.

Methodology
I am just doing a small survey of monsters, I could have spent a lot of time crunching data but I wanted to focus on fairly common monsters that are melee oriented and would be a challenge for a party a few levels lower than it. I will look at a selection of melee monsters at levels 7, 13 and 18, which I think would be challenging encounters for parties at levels 5, 10 and 15 respectively. My thinking is, it's all well and good to be able to defeat opponents of your CR, but every few encounters will be a boss fight and if you can't reliably win those then your party isn't really viable. I decided to cap the CR gap by 2-3, the DMG says that even a +4 encounter would be challenging, but I think that could be asking a bit much, and hopefully the group is smart enough to run from battles that are 5+ over their ECL. Also, one thing I noticed when compiling this is that CR is a really horrible metric for judging monster difficult, but it's what we have so I'm going with it.

Math:
We assume that our party's tank has some way to attract the monster's attack. Further we assume standard WBL, half of which is spent to boost AC. This table shows the tank's AC and hitpoints through the various levels.

Level:ACHP
52042
102690
1538161

Using the Tank's AC and HP I calculate how many turns on average it will take for the monster to kill the tank. For instance it should take 1.6 rounds on average for a hill giant to kill our party's tank. So the party has 1.6 turns to kill the giant, there are 4 members in the party so they have 6.4 PC turns to make the kill, we divide the giants HP (102) by those 6.4 PC turns, and we get 16.4. So each member of the party has do be doing at least 16.4 damage.

CRMonsterTTKTACADR
7Flesh Golem2.8     18     7.1     
7Hill Giant1.62016.4
13Iron Golem2.253014.3
13Storm Giant1.162742.9
18Mature Adult Red Dragon    2.93226.9
18Ancient White Dragon2.153743.6

*TTKT - Turns To Kill Tank
**ADR - Average Damage Required to drop the monster.

Conclusions:
So when given an arena that totally favours a melee party's paradigm, they are almost doomed to failure. I'll draw your attention to the Storm Giant entry, each character has to be doing 43 damages on average to an enemy with an AC 27 to win, which I think may be impossible in core (save for a Druid, maybe) and even demands optimization outside of core. This confirms something Min/Max has known inductively for a long time, to succeed at higher levels your party either needs a smart caster or a really reliable dirty trick, simplistic straight forward melee will not work. Which isn't to say that melee has no part in D&D, it just can't be the only part.

Tenebrus

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2010, 06:29:55 PM »
I predict several answers to the subject question will be:
    "A wizard."
    "A warblade"
    "A LAWS rocket"
    "My custom built tauric 1/2 pixie baleen whale vampire ninja/archivist/incantrix."

Melee (and magic) have to change.  You're right in melee being a fantasy mainstay, and it should be.

I'm a newcomer to the boards and have missed most of the "fighters suck" discussion.  Others have educated me (and/or confirmed my in game experience) so I'm on board now, but I'm still interested in fixing the problem rather than giving up.  I've changed my mind about the ToB material and would, given my druthers, strongly advise players who want a melee fighter to go that way rather than core.

We know that by the time our melee faces a CR 13 Storm Giant, the wizard will be ready with X and the Cleric with Z (both of which now have 7th level spells) to spread havoc over the battlefield and dominate the encounter, again.  There's plenty of commentary on the magic problem already.  It would be nice if all the smartypantses on this board could craft a constructive solution; there is certainly the talent to do so, and I know several people are working on it.

I've also toyed with the idea of taking away strength as a bonus to hit; while it hurts the players, it hurts the monsters far more.  For example, your storm giant goes from an attack of +26 to 3/4 of its 19 Hit Dice or +14, a 45% reduction.  Of course, the giant still has 18 dice of chain lightning to hand out, so it's not really helpless.

It seems to me that we need to mess with the fundamental mechanics of D&D such as I just offered as part of the way to address the problem.  Magicians need to step back, melee fighters need to come way up, and the monsters may need to be reevaluated.

Amechra

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2010, 07:14:30 PM »
Tank should have more AC; (s)he would probably end up using Improved Combat Expertise. Of course, to use that properly, you have to be a Kalashtar, and take Dancing with Shadows. Also, what level of magic we talking; low magic or higher up? Because the expectations completely change, due to the addition of BC from the party's caster; that has to be taken into account if you want something truly accurate, though a gish might get in the monster's face a lot.

Also, what are we talking battlefield wise? Is there area to charge, space to flank (for sneak attacks, obviously); can the monsters drop back to use ranged weapons later? Can the party do the same?

How wide are you stretching the net, and how optimized are you looking for? For example, would stuff like Lady's Gambit (from Dragon, sacrifice HP for damage and to-hit bonuses)+Stone Power be allowed? Of course, that's more of an archer's thing, but it can be thrown onto melee characters as well.

So, in short, what limitations do you want us to work under

And oh, Tenebrus, that last build has so much LA it is not even funny. I think there is at least +10 LA on that thing, as a conservative estimate. And Rogue is better than ninja in a party set up. Just saying.

Oh, and by the way, by "no tactics", I assume that excludes tactics that help add more damage to the enemy, like the aforementioned flanking for sneak attack?
[spoiler]Fighter: "I can kill a guy in one turn."
Cleric: "I can kill a guy in half a turn."
Wizard: "I can kill a guy before my turn."
Bard: "I can get three idiots to kill guys for me."

On a strange note, would anyone be put out if we had a post about people or events we can spare a thought for, or if its within their creed, a prayer for? Just a random thought, but ... hells I wouldn't have known about either Archangels daughter or Saeomons niece if I didn't happen to be on these threads.
Sounds fine to me.
probably over on "Off-topic".
might want to put a little disclaimer in the first post.

This is the Min/Max board. We should be able to figure out a way to optimize the POWER OF PRAYER(TM) that doesn't involve "Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu".
[/spoiler]

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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2010, 07:30:36 PM »
Your HP and AC are probably going to be slightly higher at the listed levels, but nothing too significant.
For example, a barbarian's HP will be 12 +6.5*4 + 5*con.  A con mod of +1 would yied a hp of 43, so I'm not sure where you're pulling a 42 from.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2010, 07:33:47 PM by The_Mad_Linguist »
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juton

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2010, 07:53:20 PM »
So, in short, what limitations do you want us to work under

I set it up using the most common tactics I see in D&D, the fools rush in, surround the BBEG and then just start wailing on it. This is the very lowest end of the optimization spectrum though, unfortunately it's the end I see most often. You can start to use spells to improve the tanks defenses or debuff the enemy, both will decrease the DPR needed to win. At that point though you getting into spell optimization and not melee optimization.

Your HP and AC are probably going to be slightly higher at the listed levels, but nothing too significant.
For example, a barbarian's HP will be 12 +6.5*4 + 5*con.  A con mod of +1 would yied a hp of 43, so I'm not sure where you're pulling a 42 from.

I used d10 hit die and a +2 con modifier, (10 + 5.5x4 + 5x2 = 42).

The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2010, 08:05:16 PM »
I suppose.  When I think of tanks I think more of barbs than of fighters, though.
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Solo

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #6 on: December 14, 2010, 08:05:47 PM »
There needs to be a way to draw aggro off of someone.

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Rebel7284

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #7 on: December 14, 2010, 08:07:07 PM »
Swarm fighting + Iron Guard glare for uber AC!
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carnivore

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #8 on: December 14, 2010, 08:13:53 PM »
although it is not a "Tank" nor is it Melee.... this could probably take the Storm Giant out before he gets to attack.....


CR 13 CORE only

Human
Ranger 1/ Fighter 12
Attributes: (32pt buy)
22 Str(16 +2 Lvls +4 Enhancement(belt)
22 Dex(16 +2 lvls +4 Enhancement(Gloves)
18 Con(14 +4 Enhancement(Amulet)
14 Int(14)
8 Wis(8)
8 Cha(8)


Feats:
Combat Reflexes(Human Bonus)
Track(Ranger Bonus)
1st lvl: Pointblank Shot
2nd lvl: Weapon Focus(Composite Longbow)(Fighter Bonus)
3rd lvl: Improved Initiative, Rapid Shot(Fighter Bonus)
5th lvl: Weapon Specialization(Greatbow)(Fighter Bonus)
6th lvl: Manyshot
7th lvl: Precise Shot(Fighter Bonus)
9th lvl: Mounted Combat, Mounted Archery (Fighter Bonus)
11th lvl: Greater Weapon Focus(Composite Longbow)(Fighter Bonus)
12th lvl: Improved Precise Shot
13th lvl: Greater Weapon Specialization(Composite Longbow)(Fighter Bonus)

110000 GP equipment

16000gp +4 Str
16000gp +4 Dex
16000gp +4 Con
22400gp Celestial Chainmail
12000gp Boots of Speed
19000gp +1 Flaming Frost Mighty(+6 Str bonus) Composite Longbow
480gp 5x +1 Giant Bane Arrows
3350gp 50x Adamantine Arrows
105230gp

Full Attack vs AC 27(probably will be vs Flatfooted AC 25):
+13 BAB +6 Dex +3 Enhancement +2 GWF+1 Haste-2 Rapid Shot= +23/+23/+23/+18/+13

Damage:
4.5 Arrow +6 Str +3 Enhancement +4 GWSpl +7 Bane = 24 per hit

will drop the Storm Giant before he gets to Act after the Surprise Round

 :D

Mixster

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #9 on: December 14, 2010, 08:37:40 PM »
The problem with this is, that if the party is ignoring a large part of the book, they are doing it wrong.

So I fail to see what you can gain from this, as I see it you have two possible outcomes:

A) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is possible.
B) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is impossible.

Either way you have not proven that it wouldn't be better to cast a spell to help your "tank".
So I fail to see the reason for doing this.

However, a Swift Hunter/Dervish could probably help the party help such a challenge fast. Or a Rogue, or a Daring Outlaw, or possibly a supercharger.

Also by playing the HP game you are playing into the monsters sort of combat. That is "what it wants". If you play your game, where you can outrun the monster, trap it in your tentacles, summon random monsters to block it, trip it, or just do anything it doesn't want you to.

If you try to take the big baddie monsters right on, they will probably win (at least, they should IMO), as well as if that goblin tries to take your level 1 fighter right on, the goblin will probably lose, but goblins are intelligent creatures, and could use hit and run tactics, just as you would against an Iron golem or an Ooze. This is only fair in my opinion.
Monks are pretty much the best designed class ever.

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Waazraath

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #10 on: December 14, 2010, 08:48:08 PM »
The problem with this is, that if the party is ignoring a large part of the book, they are doing it wrong.

So I fail to see what you can gain from this, as I see it you have two possible outcomes:

A) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is possible.
B) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is impossible.

Either way you have not proven that it wouldn't be better to cast a spell to help your "tank".
So I fail to see the reason for doing this.

However, a Swift Hunter/Dervish could probably help the party help such a challenge fast. Or a Rogue, or a Daring Outlaw, or possibly a supercharger.

Also by playing the HP game you are playing into the monsters sort of combat. That is "what it wants". If you play your game, where you can outrun the monster, trap it in your tentacles, summon random monsters to block it, trip it, or just do anything it doesn't want you to.

If you try to take the big baddie monsters right on, they will probably win (at least, they should IMO), as well as if that goblin tries to take your level 1 fighter right on, the goblin will probably lose, but goblins are intelligent creatures, and could use hit and run tactics, just as you would against an Iron golem or an Ooze. This is only fair in my opinion.

Dunno... it has its charms to play the nigh unkillable mofo that beats up the giant, to standing brused and batterd on it's corps, victorious even after having taken incredible punishment. Plenty of nice stories to go with that, plenty of epic in it, so it should be possible for the melee figher to go toe to toe with somthing Big and come out ont op. I guess for many folks, its not a good story if every time the big bad evil gets saved or died while it's minions are stuck in black tentacles, being torn apart by an animal companion or squashed like a but by a large sized clerc.

Akalsaris

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #11 on: December 14, 2010, 09:11:47 PM »
Frankly, I'm just surprised at how quickly the tank will die going full attack to full attack vs. these opponents.  I had expected 3-4 rounds for a d10 character, not 1.6.

Nytemare3701

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #12 on: December 14, 2010, 09:24:36 PM »
I've been toying with the idea of giving all mundanes the ability to roll a (Insert relevant skill here) after a successful melee attack to do one of 3 effects:

Flatfoot the opponent until it's next turn(Stealth)
Move to another square within 10 feet and make an attack at lowest bab (Acrobatics)
Deal double power-attack damage. (Concentration)

I'm aware that it's a very crude patch, but it's off the top of my head. I just like the idea of mundanes gaining followup attacks and maneuvers based on successful attacks.

juton

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #13 on: December 14, 2010, 10:31:30 PM »
The problem with this is, that if the party is ignoring a large part of the book, they are doing it wrong.

So I fail to see what you can gain from this, as I see it you have two possible outcomes:

A) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is possible.
B) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is impossible.

Either way you have not proven that it wouldn't be better to cast a spell to help your "tank".
So I fail to see the reason for doing this.

On this board you'll hear things like 'the only viable meleers in Core are the Cleric, Druid and Gish'. What I wanted to do was quantify if melee with any of those characters at all was viable. At level 10 I think the Druid is the only character that can come close to doing 40ish damage in melee (Wildshaped with their Animal Companion) even then it is not a guarantee. That means, in core you absolutely can not rely solely on melee, you can't rely on ranged weaponry, spell casting becomes essential for your group to function. Clerics are viable in melee with something like a Storm Giant only if they Blind or Paralyze it first, which is news to me, I always assumed that a properly buffed Cleric, with party support you take out anything without casting any spells on it.

I also wanted to create a sample metric to answer the question: is my build good enough? Currently their is only one way to test to see if your build can function at level: the same game test. This test pits your character against equal CR challenges, a build works if it can win about 50% of the challenges. I think that test is unduly harsh to melee classes, because I've seen high level melee groups deal with encounters quite easily with little or no magical support. While it suffers from a paucity of depth a little rubric like I've made up I think can show if you character can pull his weight in combat, before actually going into combat.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2010, 11:16:15 PM by juton »

jameswilliamogle

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #14 on: December 14, 2010, 10:32:33 PM »
A well made fighter still is OK.  It just takes Shocktrooper and a bunch of specialized feats.

weenog

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2010, 11:11:27 PM »
On this board you'll hear things like 'the only viable casters in Core are the Cleric, Druid and Gish'.

Uh, this is a BG board.  I'm not sure what board you read wizards aren't viable in core on, but you probably shouldn't go back there.
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juton

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #16 on: December 14, 2010, 11:16:46 PM »
On this board you'll hear things like 'the only viable casters in Core are the Cleric, Druid and Gish'.

Uh, this is a BG board.  I'm not sure what board you read wizards aren't viable in core on, but you probably shouldn't go back there.

I wrote 'caster' when I meant to write meleer, my mistake.

weenog

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #17 on: December 14, 2010, 11:22:53 PM »
Okay, that seems a little less batshit insane.
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Amechra

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #18 on: December 14, 2010, 11:30:49 PM »
As I put it before, you can get insane AC and to-hit bonuses with a Kalashtar using Combat Expertise, due to their racial feat Dancing with Shadows, which is serious fun.

Of course, if we're going debuffing, may I suggest the Fencer? It is from Dragon, but it is relevant in that it has the unique ability to give the opponents penalties to their BAB. You heard me right.Combine with Goad, and nice stuff happens.
[spoiler]Fighter: "I can kill a guy in one turn."
Cleric: "I can kill a guy in half a turn."
Wizard: "I can kill a guy before my turn."
Bard: "I can get three idiots to kill guys for me."

On a strange note, would anyone be put out if we had a post about people or events we can spare a thought for, or if its within their creed, a prayer for? Just a random thought, but ... hells I wouldn't have known about either Archangels daughter or Saeomons niece if I didn't happen to be on these threads.
Sounds fine to me.
probably over on "Off-topic".
might want to put a little disclaimer in the first post.

This is the Min/Max board. We should be able to figure out a way to optimize the POWER OF PRAYER(TM) that doesn't involve "Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu".
[/spoiler]

My final project for my film independent study course. It could do with a watching and critiquing

Tenebrus

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Re: What does it take to be effective in melee?
« Reply #19 on: December 14, 2010, 11:46:53 PM »
As I put it before, you can get insane AC and to-hit bonuses with a Kalashtar using Combat Expertise, due to their racial feat Dancing with Shadows, which is serious fun.

Of course, if we're going debuffing, may I suggest the Fencer? It is from Dragon, but it is relevant in that it has the unique ability to give the opponents penalties to their BAB. You heard me right.Combine with Goad, and nice stuff happens.

Yes, there are always better and worse combinations, and I'm sure this is a very solid BG-style build (my baleen whale awaits you on the field of honor, Sir!  Actually, in a large lake next to the field of honor.)

But my feeling is it shouldn't come down to being a Kalashtar, or any other race, or using 1 particular feat.  I know you're just offering this 1 example of a way to address the question of this thread, but I'd like to see a simple mechanical fix to what ails the melee fighter.  Upping casting times for spells is another very interesting proposition to help balance the classes and I'm still liking my strength change to sabotage the monsters. 

I've mentioned this elsewhere: the classic fantasy standoff is huge vs. fast but D&D mechanically makes anything huge have fantastic accuracy because of the HD+strength formula.  Aragorn can't be missed by the troll; his leather armor is nothing compared to the Huge creature and it's massive strength.  But if it was skill against skill alone, he could be missed so long as there was a level component to AC.  As an initial thought, 1d20, 11+ hits, adjust for difference in BAB so that a 6th level fighter has +3 to hit a 3 HD monster.

Just some ideas.  Like I said, I think the melee fighter is only really saved by some fundamental overhauls of the core mechanics of the game.