TOPIC: Let's talk Difficulities

Per the safehold 1 thread ( truedungeon.com/forum?view=topic&catid=762&id=258330 ) mythic is coming and we should discuss it

Jeff Martin wrote: I want to create the "Mythic" level of Difficulty Rating that will take the place of the “Epic” DR. We will make it more difficult than even the current Epic DR, and we will produce “Mythic” Survivor buttons. We will phase out the old Nightmare level Survivor buttons. Thus, you can gain Survivor buttons for playing on either Normal or Mythic DR. So, we will have Non-Lethal, Normal, Nightmare and Mythic DR, but only Normal and Mythic give out Survivor buttons.

....

While it would be neat to create new characters and new powers/spells, we need to keep it simple. Maybe we can emphasize something new like “Damage Limiting” where a monster will only take 100 points of damage in a round no matter what – unless the attacker has a certain Charm to allow her damage to count beyond the 100-point limit? Whatever new we can add some be somewhat simple to implement.

Problem statements with the current difficulty system

1) Current difficulties have non linear scaling. The jump from normal to hardcore is small. The jump from Hardcore to Nightmare is huge. The Jump from Nightmare to Epic is moderate.

2) Given point 1, and given lack of published modules and data from TD, players can't easily figure out where their build fits difficulty wide. The two most common questions I see are "How much more do I need to add to my hardcore build to make it NM ready if I end up in a NM party", and "Is my build good enough for Epic?" It's very difficult to give solid answers.

3) Combat DMs have to calculate large numbers on the fly against different monster stats. A DM may have a normal party come through a room where they are dealing with +5 damage, and the very next party might be an epic party with a Druid that has +78 poly damage that can also FA cast spells at 60+ damage. ( tdcharactercreator.com/#/character/edit/617c9444-678e-4740-8c1f-9c9d5c5eea13 ). Dealing with large numbers quickly is a challenge in and of itself, and Epic level builds add even more complexity. For example, the Barbarian might be +6 damage from rage, while the whole party has boosts from the cleric and bard, and the Cleric's divine intervention requires twisting sliders to different damage values.

4) Difficulty needs to change to match token creep. Not only do we get new slots every several years which require refactoring monster numbers, we also see tokens within a rarity creeping to higher values. This means it's difficult to reuse monster stats or stat principals over time because a "pack rare only" build gets 10% "better" year on year.

Possible Solutions

1) Normalize difficulty scaling for Normal -> Hardcore -> Nightmare. Personally. I'd target hardcore against pack rare builds, and Nightmare against 5th level UR builds, and try to make it more linear in scaling - ex, you want +5 hit for normal, +10hit for hardcore, +15 hit for Nightmare. For epic and mythic I have a different suggestion below.

2) publish modules or at least monster stats regularly again. That way the players and community can address problem 2 above on their own.

3) To ease the load on DMs, I'd like to suggest a different way to adjust builds for Epic and Mythic. Instead of scaling the monster numbers higher to match the builds, why not just use the nightmare monster stats, but apply penalties to the builds similar to how games like Diablo handle higher difficulties? For example, maybe epic subtracts 5 from hit, saves, ac, and subtracts 10 from damage. Maybe mythic just divides those values by 2 or even 3. This could add some load to coaches calculating the values for the party card, but I suspect most players at Epic and Mythic level are using tools for character builds, in which case these modifiers could be added programmatically.

If the character penalties are handled only in coaching, there is also a nice side effect - consumables stay relevant across more difficulties. Right now a potion of bulls strength isn't super useful at NM and Epic. but +2 hit and +2 damage when your hit and damage are divided by 3 in coaching is suddenly much more meaningful.

4) I know this comes up every year, but avoiding new slots, leaning more into reprints for C/UC/R. and keeping a close eye on balance at UR would really help constrain having to adjust monster stats for each difficulty, especially at NM and lower.

Endgame wrote: 1) I'd target hardcore against pack rare builds, and Nightmare against 5th level UR builds, and try to make it more linear in scaling - ex, you want +5 hit for normal, +10hit for hardcore, +15 hit for Nightmare.

3) Maybe epic subtracts 5 from hit, saves, ac, and subtracts 10 from damage. Maybe mythic just divides those values by 2 or even 3.

4) Avoiding new slots, leaning more into reprints for C/UC/R. and keeping a close eye on balance at UR would really help constrain having to adjust monster stats for each difficulty, especially at NM and lower.

This is an excellent post, it is so well written that I have little to add. In particular, the above points are closely in agreement with my own views on how difficulty scaling and power creep should be addressed.

I think this is a good start to the conversation.

Before looking at solutions, I think we should align on the end goal.

1) What defines whether the difficulty is correct? I personally think the difficulty is right if the entire party makes it to room 7, using 75% of their spell slots and such, and 2 party members get KO'd in the final boss battle. Also, fights should be hard enough that they take most of the 12 minutes to complete, but on average are complete just before the Horn.

2) Too easy: enemies dont get a chance to go, or die in 2-3 rounds. Spell casters don't need to use spell slots and can save most everything for the final boss battle. Healers only need to use lvl 1 heals in rooms 1-6.

3) Too hard: If the party run's out of time on a majority of the fights and only passes through push damage. Or if the party wipes before room 7 (wiping in room 7 is allowed to an extent). Or if the party has two healers (Druid and Cleric) and both are out of heals going into room 7.

I think its normalized that the group should always survive the dungeon, and most will downplay their difficulty to make sure that happens (I typically play NM although I can gear for Epic myself, and spec more for healing to help the group).

If we are looking at issues, I think the biggest one is the gap in the parties highest and lowest geared players. A new player not hitting things or constantly being about to die on higher difficulties is no fun, and well geared players not being able to use their fancy combos is no fun.

There are times where you have most of the groups stats recorded, and two normal level PUGs show up at the last minute, thus NM level players are now playing normal. If there was a cap then you can proceed as normal (not necessarily advocating for a cap but something to limit damage). Without a cap you now 1 shot every battle or have to sit back and dance to allow the new players to enjoy it. I do appreciate the DM's that help by giving the baddies more HP or other things to keep the fight going, but there is only so much you can do.

Alternatively, if the difficulty is something that has minimum stats, then those two new players still have a chance at contributing and surviving (something like NM minimum gives all players 40HP, +10 hit, +10 damage, +10 saves). So a party of players at the minimum will likely fail, but a party of 8 NM geared people and 2 minimum gear will have a good chance at success. This also speeds up the party card if they last people show up with a few minutes left, and negates having to carry around loaner tokens as much. Still keep them at Lvl 4 unless someone has something to help get them to 5th level.

(slightly abridged cross-post from before this thread started)

Difficulty levels are important because:

1. every player pays the same (significant) ticket price, and deserves to have a lot of fun!
2. token collections vary widely in power from zero to ludicrous, and the range expands every year as new tokens are introduced
3. some players inherently prefer a higher/riskier level of challenge than other players

I continue to support a conceptual model of difficulty levels primarily balanced around the different "price tiers" of token collection, since this variable is often constrained by players' real-life circumstances.

Normal: balanced for casual players with a ten-pack
Hardcore: balanced for players with a solid collection of rares (and some game experience)
Nightmare: balanced for players with URs
Epic: balanced for players with relics and/or legendaries
...and sure, perhaps...
Mythic: balanced for players with Mythic tokens, if those become a thing

where, if you choose the difficulty that matches your party's equipment level, you can expect to have a good time and a reasonable chance of winning. (From there, players who enjoy extra challenge can play "up" a level, and players who want less risk of failure can play "down" a level)

Endgame wrote:
2) publish modules or at least monster stats regularly again. That way the players and community can address problem 2 above on their own.

Huge +1 to this! No matter where we end up regarding the intended design of difficulty levels, publishing actual monster stats after the fact is a very low-effort thing to do that will help players appropriately self-select the difficulty that they will find most fun.

(And since things do drift over time, actual data from recent adventures is much more useful than from 2+ years ago.)

Limitless wrote:
1) What defines whether the difficulty is correct? I personally think the difficulty is right if the entire party makes it to room 7, using 75% of their spell slots and such, and 2 party members get KO'd in the final boss battle. Also, fights should be hard enough that they take most of the 12 minutes to complete, but on average are complete just before the Horn.

I agree this feels about right as a median target for groups using the "intended" level of gear for that difficulty.

(NB: not a median target for all groups that actually choose that difficulty! Currently lots of players equipped for Epic choose to play Nightmare anyway, which is 100% fine if that's what those players enjoy, but should not result in TPTB making Nightmare harder because "too many people are surviving")

Jeff

I strongly encourage adjusting your proposed approach on difficulty levels.

First - if nightmare and epic were grouped together, it would exacerbate the problem of overpowered parties in nightmare. Nightmare is already challenging to tune because of the power gaps present. If Epic gets mixed into Nightmare, you'd see players ranging from to hit of +15 to +35, damage bonuses of +10 to +95, and saves between 15's to 40's. Making combat encounters challenging at that kind of power gap is next to impossible. The current tiers work pretty well but get stressed right now. A combo nightmare-epic difficulty wouldn't be possible to tune combats to both be challenging but winnable.

Second - Please consider a different approach to mythic difficulty. Capping damage and nerfing existing items can make players feel like they wasted their time and resources building up powerful builds. With that said, it is possible to have mythic difficulty be a thing that is different from the rest of the runs.

My idea is to introduce mechanics borrowed from other successful RPG systems and combine that with fantasy abilities we see in books and movies. My idea is as follows:
1 - Bring magic resistance back for Mythic creatures. Combine that with more liberal use of DR. Fighting an Iron Golem, I'd expect DR 10 or 20 to any physical attacks.
2 - Let creatures crit - including cases with expanded crit ranges. Maybe even use old crit charts like what we had in ad&d.
3 - Add legendary actions akin to 5th edition d&d. This allows a creature to react 1-3 times per round after individual attacks or actions in addition to their regular attacks. You'd have players slide in 3 groups (4-3-3). This will slow combat a little but create some interesting encounters.
4 - Give creatures player equipment. For example, the death knight we're facing has a shadowskin cloak and a charm of spell storing.
5 - Add more legendary type attacks such as vorpal attacks, disintegration attacks, heat metal, etc.. At mythic, instant kill attacks wouldn't be surprising. Don't make them automatically overcome shadowskin, etc - just give them a volume of attacks that would overcome those. Vorpal isn't daunting if they only swing once. In a mythic fight, I'd think we're facing 10th+ level/hit dice creatures that may have 4-5 attacks/round. Someone swinging a vorpal sword at you 5 times with a threat range of 18-20 would inspire fear.
6 - Make AC matter - it doesn't matter right now past hardcore. Have AC impact how hard you are hit. Maybe you take 2 extra damage for every point they beat your AC. For example, the monster rolls a 15 on an attack that does 25 damage with a +25 to hit. Against AC of 40, that would do 25 damage. Against an AC of 30, it would do 35 damage. Against an AC of 10, it would do 55 damage.
7 - Consider using electric fields under the sliding boards that would throw off our slides to simulate special powers the creatures may have. It would be a bit like the creature having a force field that the party has to overcome (solutions being focused on puzzle solving, etc rather than you have to have a druid or bard) in order for melee to be fully effective.

For mythic, theme the creatures to be more legendary. Nightmare/epic runs, we may see a big baddie as a beholder. Mythic, that Beholder gets boosted to be Doomsphere (undead incorporal beholder with spellcasting powers and possession abilities). A knight becomes a death knight. Occasionally, tag an event have a special mythic option run for one day where the sliding board gets switched out for a different version and maybe a new NPC. Mythic players did invest a great deal of money to get to that level - an occasional extra nod would be a fun reward.

Thanks for starting this Endgame. I genuinely don't think I have anything to add and your post has pretty well sufficiently outlined and addressed my own issues on this matter.

+1 to all of it

The only thing that needs mild consideration would be a "Mythic FAQ" which would address what tokens get divided and what don't.
I think under current suggestion of division would be divide every party card stat by 2. This leaves the following at full value
Class Effects + Spells (Cat's Grace Bard Song, Prayer, Bless)
Consumables
Crit Mods
HP
Other things I'm not gonna outline unless we decide to go this direction

The only non-party card item I think should be divided is DR, which is admitably a little clunky but I think required.

Oh also a statement of what way we round, a simple golden rule of "Always round down" or up would be nice.

Endgame wrote: 3) To ease the load on DMs, I'd like to suggest a different way to adjust builds for Epic and Mythic. Instead of scaling the monster numbers higher to match the builds, why not just use the nightmare monster stats, but apply penalties to the builds similar to how games like Diablo handle higher difficulties? For example, maybe epic subtracts 5 from hit, saves, ac, and subtracts 10 from damage. Maybe mythic just divides those values by 2 or even 3. This could add some load to coaches calculating the values for the party card, but I suspect most players at Epic and Mythic level are using tools for character builds, in which case these modifiers could be added programmatically.

To steal Picc's idea from the main thread

We could have scaling Mythic Difficulty that increases the divisor by some amount. So lets say Mythic starts at dividing Party Card + DR by 2. Then Mythic 2 could add to that divisor (say .5 in this example) thus getting you a divisor of 2.5. What's your reward for this? Maybe a sticker or something. Now we have unlimited difficulties

Since it's popping up in discussion here and in discord, I want to expand on the proposal for Epic and Mythic difficulty that was buried in the middle of the first post..

Why maintain Epic and Mythic instead of merging them?
If possible, I think we want to keep stepping stones available so there is a smooth transition between difficulties. I think we want to avoid large jumps in difficulty due to the problems encountered with current hardcore -> Nightmare.

What is the core proposal?
I'm proposing that monster stats don't substantially change for difficulties past nightmare. Instead, for difficulties past nightmare, we start adding penalties to player stats, similar to how various action RPGs handle increasing difficulties by reducing player's resistances, sometimes even pushing them negative.

The reason for this is to reduce cognitive load on the combat DM. Instead of having to deal with player characters that have +100 damage or more, the numbers can be smaller and applied against a monster stat line they are familiar with from NM difficulty.

What is the specific implementation being proposed?
In coaching only, after epic or mythic difficulty is declared, the party card is recorded with reduced values (the specifics can be discussed in detail if this idea is seen as desirable).

For example, lets say I have a druid build that is going to play on Mythic and Mythic divides values by 3 rounding up.

Base druid values:

+hit: 21
+Damage: 47
+poly damage: 78
+spell damage: 43
+heal: 41
Fort save: 32
Reflex save: 31
Will save: 34

Mythic druid values:

+hit: 7
+Damage: 16
+poly damage: 26
+spell damage: 15
+heal: 14
Fort save: 11
Reflex save: 11
Will save: 12

Once the party leaves coaching, all tokens spells, and abilites work exactly as printed on the token / character card and combat is against the Nightmare monster stat line. level 5 bard with Legendary lute still adds +4 hit and +4 damage for the party. Prayer is still +2. Damage wheels are exactly as printed. Using a potion of Bull's strength is still (basically) +2 hit and +2 damage. All of these things just happen to scale better with the modified difficulty stat line than the do against the base character stat line. What I mean by that is:

+4 damage from bardsong for a druid with +78 poly damage is appx a 5% increase in damage. It feels like it's not that big of a buff. However, in the mythic modified druid stat line, +4 damage is a 15% increase in damage. This feels much more meaningful and scaling is much less of a concern between "mythic builds" vs "NM builds".

Won't people be turned off by the idea of reducing their numbers to play at higher difficulties
Maybe? It doesn't bother me in the slightest after years of conditioning in ARPGs, so this is a blind spot for me. I would personally say the benefits massively outweigh a number being smaller, but I also don't get the appeal of lottery tickets so it's possible I just don't "get" it.

Endgame wrote: 1) Normalize difficulty scaling for Normal -> Hardcore -> Nightmare. Personally. I'd target hardcore against pack rare builds, and Nightmare against 5th level UR builds, and try to make it more linear in scaling - ex, you want +5 hit for normal, +10hit for hardcore, +15 hit for Nightmare. For epic and mythic I have a different suggestion below.

If we have a normalized scaling from Normal to Nightmare, why can't we have a normalized scaling to Epic and Mythic? +22 to hit for Epic, which would be a 50% increase over Nightmare. +34 to hit for Mythic would be a 50% over Epic.

Grizwald wrote:

Endgame wrote: 1) Normalize difficulty scaling for Normal -> Hardcore -> Nightmare. Personally. I'd target hardcore against pack rare builds, and Nightmare against 5th level UR builds, and try to make it more linear in scaling - ex, you want +5 hit for normal, +10hit for hardcore, +15 hit for Nightmare. For epic and mythic I have a different suggestion below.

If we have a normalized scaling from Normal to Nightmare, why can't we have a normalized scaling to Epic and Mythic? +22 to hit for Epic, which would be a 50% increase over Nightmare. +34 to hit for Mythic would be a 50% over Epic.

Yes you could have some kind of normalized scaling through any number of difficulties. However that also means having a stat block for every monster at every difficulty - and the combat DM will have to keep track of that for the 1 mythic and 2 epic parties that come through over the course of the day. It also means larger numbers to track during a run - The DM has to reference the difficulty stats because they probably haven't seen them often, then check to see if a slide of 18 + the character's +37 hit will miss or hit the monster's AC 57. It's not hard math, but larger numbers are still hard to do fast on the fly.

Endgame wrote: 3) To ease the load on DMs, I'd like to suggest a different way to adjust builds for Epic and Mythic. Instead of scaling the monster numbers higher to match the builds, why not just use the nightmare monster stats, but apply penalties to the builds similar to how games like Diablo handle higher difficulties? For example, maybe epic subtracts 5 from hit, saves, ac, and subtracts 10 from damage. Maybe mythic just divides those values by 2 or even 3. This could add some load to coaches calculating the values for the party card, but I suspect most players at Epic and Mythic level are using tools for character builds, in which case these modifiers could be added programmatically.

If the character penalties are handled only in coaching, there is also a nice side effect - consumables stay relevant across more difficulties. Right now a potion of bulls strength isn't super useful at NM and Epic. but +2 hit and +2 damage when your hit and damage are divided by 3 in coaching is suddenly much more meaningful.

I proposed something similar to this a few years ago and it wasn't warmly received, but I still believe this is a very valuable idea. I just wanted to point out one more benefit that you have not explicitly noted. This could allow the difficulty of the dungeon to be an individual decision instead of a party-wide one. If you join a random group at a convention and want to play Epic you don't have to drag everyone up to your level, or punch through the monster too quickly. You would play on Epic and the party card would reflect it as such, but then your stats are scaled so you can fight the same monster and leave the combat mostly balanced for everyone involved.

The only general issue is that at higher levels of play the action economy matters a lot more so having a character which could perform multiple complex actions in a single round is still going to stand out.