`spellExpectedDamage` (`dnd_class_balance.go`) now multiplies expected
damage by 3 when `sp.Concentration && sp.Effect ∈ {EffectDamageSave,
EffectDamageAuto}`. Attack-roll concentration excluded by design —
hex-style cases ride per-hit mods, not the score. Closes the picker
gap that walked past heat_metal / spike_growth / flaming_sphere /
cloud_of_daggers in favour of one-shot blasts of similar slot level.
Measured on n=5000 d8c corpus vs d8prereq baseline (sim_results,
gitignored): per-class means all within ±2.4pp (1σ ≈ 2.2pp); macro
leaderboard unchanged. Real picker swap lands at T3 manor_blackspire
— bard +11pp, mage +10pp, sorcerer +9pp, druid +5pp. T4/T5 caster
wall unchanged → confirms HP+AC is the binding constraint past T3
(D8-d-fix territory), not picker quality.
Side discovery: cleric flat / warlock −6pp manor — spirit_guardians-
style AOE-save concentration spells appear to resolve once in
SimulateCombat / turn-engine instead of re-ticking per round. The
multiplier is correct in expectation; the engine under-delivers.
Filed as separate follow-up; D8-c stays.
Plan §8 D8-c marked SHIPPED.
Closes the 'fairly breezy with some death' target the user picked
for Phase 5. Five-piece ship; Phase 1 matrix lands T1 88%, T2 74%,
T4 72%, T5 ~57% in or above band. T3 remains the design hump at
~45% (manor 39, underforge 47) — Wraith promotion to elite was
already done in Phase 4-B, the remaining standard-pool deaths are
the irreducible part of T3.
Pieces:
1. computeMaxHP × 1.5 (phase5BHPMult in dnd.go). Uniform across
class/level so the class-balance harness's in-tier parity
assertion stays green. Bootstrap (bootstrap_phase5b_hp.go)
refreshes hp_max for existing characters at startup;
idempotent via db.JobCompleted. hp_current is bumped by the
same delta so a full-HP character stays at full.
2. applyPhase5BPlayerFloor (dnd_combat.go): +3 AC, +3 AttackBonus,
+3 weapon.MagicBonus (damage). Applied at the END of
applyDnDEquipmentLayer (after computeArmorAC's AC override)
and inside buildHarnessPlayer so live and harness measurement
match.
3. Elite bracket 19 → 23 (resolveCombatInterrupt). Case order
puts Elite (≥23) before Patrol (≥22) so a 23+ total prefers
the single dangerous fight. Elite is now effectively a
high-threat event reachable only via the +1-per-20-threat-
above-40 mod — Phase 4-B's elite-pool monsters still appear,
just less often.
4. dailyThreatDrift base 3 → 1. Slows the threat clock so
players have the days they need before threat tips zones
into the new 23+ elite band.
5. applyDailyBurn default → 50% (phase5BDailyBurnRatePct). Also
applied in the temporal-override branch in
dnd_expedition_cycle.go so tidal / unraveling days scale by
the same 0.5× — otherwise those days would be
disproportionately harsh against the new baseline.
The harness's expedition_balance.go reads phase5BDailyBurnRatePct
as the default-burn fallback when the override knob is zero, so
Phase 1 matrix measurements now reflect what live players
experience.
Test debt: 13 pinned-numbers unit tests across combat_stats_test,
dnd_test, dnd_xp_test, dnd_equipment_profiles_test,
dnd_expedition_supplies_test, dnd_expedition_cycle_test,
dnd_expedition_extract_test, dnd_expedition_region_cmd_test,
dnd_expedition_combat_test, dnd_expedition_threat_test,
dnd_expedition_temporal_test, expedition_balance_test were
pinning pre-Phase-5-B baselines; updated with comments noting
the cause. Class-balance suite stayed green (uniform buff
preserves spread).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Generalizes the Phase 0 spike harness to the full build matrix the
class-balance doc plans for. No tuning yet — just measurement.
- classBalanceProfile gains Subclass; buildHarnessCharacter sets it on
the synthetic DnDCharacter; buildHarnessPlayer now calls
applySubclassPassives after class+race passives, matching live order
(combat_bridge.go, combat_session_build.go). Subclass="" is a no-op,
so L1–L4 pre-unlock rows are unaffected.
- buildPhase1Profiles yields 190 rows: 10 classes × 4 pre-subclass
levels (L1–L4) + 10 classes × 3 subclasses × 5 post-unlock checkpoints
(L5/7/10/15/20). Order is registry order so output reads like the
design doc / !class help.
- TestClassBalance_Phase1_FullMatrix runs the matrix at 200 trials/cell
(~5.5s) and logs every cell plus a per-class tier-mean summary with
min/max range. Only harness-broken pathologies fail the test (0% at
T1 anywhere, or 100% at T5 for an L1 build); per-tier parity bands
land in Phase 2 once we have data to calibrate the tolerance.
Phase-2 baseline from this run: at T4 the cross-class spread of mean
win rate runs Bard 0.62 → Fighter 0.80 (~18pp); at T5 0.48 → 0.64
(~16pp); casters trail martials at the post-unlock tier (T3) by ~20pp.
Phase 0 test (TestClassBalance_Phase0_FighterVsMage) still green with
identical numbers — the additional applySubclassPassives call is a
no-op for Subclass=="".
Per gogobee_class_balance.md §5 Phase 0: harness skeleton, equipment
and spell-selection policies, Fighter-vs-Mage plausibility run before
Phase 1 generalizes to the full 10 × 30 matrix.
Bypassed in Phase 0 (per doc §2): DB-touching layers (magic items,
armed abilities, pending-cast persistence), subclass passives (none
below L5), and race passives beyond Human +1-all. Everything else
flows through the production combat path.
Initial numbers (400 trials/cell, dungeon T1..T5):
fighter L1 .998 .805 .165 .020 .000
fighter L3 1.000 .998 .795 .235 .035
mage L1 .880 .190 .003 .000 .000
mage L3 1.000 .950 .158 .003 .000
Both classes win at T1 (spell policy is firing — Magic Missile lands
each Mage fight); both collapse by their off-tier — monster scaling
works. The Mage's L1 T2 gap (-60pp vs Fighter) is real data, not a
broken harness. Phase 1 picks up the full matrix from here.
