Best way to scale monster dmg/hp properly?

[DocMoebius]

I'm working on some balance stuff atm. I'm currently testing different ghouls who scale with the player level to make my mod more challenging. Unfortunately, their base unarmed dmg isn't scaled as well if I just use the PC level mult option. Should I go the Bethesda route and create lvlmonsters - which should be easy - or does somebody know another way? Does someone have experience with this and could tell me how they did it to have a decent challenge for low level as well as high level players who play the mod?

Edited October 13, 2020 by DocMoebius

[kingharvest]

I'm working on some balance stuff atm. I'm currently testing different ghouls who scale with the player level to make my mod more challenging. Unfortunately, their base unarmed dmg isn't scaled as well if I just use the PC level mult option. Should I go the Bethesda route and create lvlmonsters - which should be easy - or does somebody know another way? Does someone have experience with this and could tell me how they did it to have a decent challenge for low level as well as high level players who play the mod?

I'd be interested to see an exhaustive list of what effect level can have on NPCs. In vanilla their Health scales and I believe the XP you get for killing them as well. If you want to have a damage bonus that directly scales to level then you can probably achieve that by creating a Perk which imparts that effect (I don't know if there's a Perk effect that does that already, I doubt it) and then give that perk to all of your NPCs that you want to have smoothly scaling damage.

 

The way that eg. Raiders get more damage is just via perks that give flat multipliers, and those are attached to Raider, Raider Scum, Raider Psycho, Raider Scavver, etc. to create a gradient of damage.

[kingharvest]

Looks like you'll need Lutana to make your damage Perk effect correctly scale off level: https://geckwiki.com/index.php?title=How_to_use_the_Add_Actor_Value_Mult_entry_point

 

e: sorry maybe that bug only exists in FONV engine? The geckwiki doesn't specify, but Lutana is a NV mod and when I checked in xEdit for FO4 there are a bunch of new entry points and probably Add Actor Value Mult got fixed somewhere in between Skyrim and FO4. So this ought to be much easier, and you have the option of Multiply Actor Value Mult too if you want to scale by multiplying rather than add and multiply...

 

e2: can confirm that Multiply Actor Value Mult works if you use the "AVIF" parameter type. You can use it to dynamically set magnitude for a Perk effect from an Actor Value. I tested using the "cone mult" thing that the hip shooting perks use and a random new AV I created and set to different values from the console, the aim reticule grew/shrank with the AV.

[DocMoebius]

Thanks for all the answers. I'll definitely look into this stuff, when I get to doing ranged monsters. What I've done so far is that I created e.g. my own ghouls and gave them my own specific values(obviously for all the different encGhouls) for health, dmgres and melee dmg and I make sure to mostly only spawn medium to hard enemies to make it more engaging for the player, altough further balance testing is needed.

Edited October 15, 2020 by DocMoebius