d20 Modern Conversion: A quick example of class balancing
I originally planned this to be part of today's main post, but the explanation kind of got away from me a little. Here's a quick example of some of the considerations I made when balancing out the classes in the conversion, looking primarily at the damage per action of the Strong Hero.
For one example of the number crunching, lets look at the damage a Strong Hero would deal compared to an equivalent Barbarian in melee for a single action.
At 1st level, the Strong Hero gets a permanent +1 to melee damage from Smash. We'll ignore Bully for the time being as we're only considering what each character can do with their action. Comparatively, the Barbarian gets +2 Rage Damage, though they don't always have access to this. So the Barbarian has better spike damage, but their average might be slightly lower (though this depends on how they use their Rages and how many encounters per long rest they're dealing with).
Through the rest of the levels, this pattern continues. Both classes get most damage-increasing features at the same levels (Extra Attack, Brutal Critical), and both classes remain roughly on-par for damage per action. When it comes to 20th level, you might think Strong Hero has the edge, with their permanent +6 to damage. The Barbarian can Rage as much as they want, but their Rage Damage is capped at +4. However, at 20th level, Barbarian also gets a further permanent +2 to damage rolls using strength, through Primal Champion. Increasing their Strength score by 4 gives an increase of 2 to their Strength modifier, which is added to all melee damage rolls using Strength.
Now, the Strong Hero doesn't have half the resilience or staying power as a Barbarian, but they do get extra damage in the form of Action Surge, and to a lesser extent Body Slam (a small amount of damage on successful shoves) when combined with Bully (bonus action shove), so I think the classes should be about balanced.
The rest of the classes will be dealing less damage in melee, but they make up for this with their additional utility or defences. As for ranged damage, none of the basic classes get direct boosts to ranged damage, so they should all be on par for that too. So whether in melee or ranged combat, none of these classes should be dealing unbalanced levels of damage.
For one example of the number crunching, lets look at the damage a Strong Hero would deal compared to an equivalent Barbarian in melee for a single action.
At 1st level, the Strong Hero gets a permanent +1 to melee damage from Smash. We'll ignore Bully for the time being as we're only considering what each character can do with their action. Comparatively, the Barbarian gets +2 Rage Damage, though they don't always have access to this. So the Barbarian has better spike damage, but their average might be slightly lower (though this depends on how they use their Rages and how many encounters per long rest they're dealing with).
Through the rest of the levels, this pattern continues. Both classes get most damage-increasing features at the same levels (Extra Attack, Brutal Critical), and both classes remain roughly on-par for damage per action. When it comes to 20th level, you might think Strong Hero has the edge, with their permanent +6 to damage. The Barbarian can Rage as much as they want, but their Rage Damage is capped at +4. However, at 20th level, Barbarian also gets a further permanent +2 to damage rolls using strength, through Primal Champion. Increasing their Strength score by 4 gives an increase of 2 to their Strength modifier, which is added to all melee damage rolls using Strength.
Now, the Strong Hero doesn't have half the resilience or staying power as a Barbarian, but they do get extra damage in the form of Action Surge, and to a lesser extent Body Slam (a small amount of damage on successful shoves) when combined with Bully (bonus action shove), so I think the classes should be about balanced.
The rest of the classes will be dealing less damage in melee, but they make up for this with their additional utility or defences. As for ranged damage, none of the basic classes get direct boosts to ranged damage, so they should all be on par for that too. So whether in melee or ranged combat, none of these classes should be dealing unbalanced levels of damage.
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