Classes and damage

[doctorbadwolf]

No, I trust "Ya know, [...] data."
Like the second survey they had that proved the DDB statistics (technically the reading of them) wrong, where it was still the least popular class, losing every single instance of the randomised "this vs that" section as well as being poorly rated overall. I can't quote you on that unfortunately though.

You’re conflating disparate conclusions.

The ranger is much more popular than it is *mechanically satisfying*. People play the hell out of the class, they just aren’t happy with how it’s features work.

Popularity and satisfaction are two separate questions. The DDB dataset is huge, and very, very, detailed.

 

[squibbles]

The sky is the baseline.

Anytime a game has an option that is stronger than the others on a significant metric, players will judge the other options in relation to it. That's why everybody on this board knows what GWM and SS are abbreviations of.

I don't say that as a value judgment, that's just what people tend to do in games.

Good damage is done by classes and options that can compete with a GWM/PAM fighter hitting with all its attacks. The damage of everything else is bad, terrible, or

below terrible

 

[FrogReaver]

The sky is the baseline.

Anytime a game has an option that is stronger than the others on a significant metric, players will judge the other options in relation to it. That's why everybody on this board knows what GWM and SS are abbreviations of.

I don't say that as a value judgment, that's just what people tend to do in games.

Good damage is done by classes and options that can compete with a GWM/PAM fighter hitting with all its attacks. The damage of everything else is bad, terrible, or

I wouldn't go that far. I think "the sky" is the important data point that can be used to determine what is acceptable damage, what is good damage and what is terrible damage etc.

 

[clearstream]

I wouldn't go that far. I think "the sky" is the important data point that can be used to determine what is acceptable damage, what is good damage and what is terrible damage etc.

That describes quite well how I use GWM to evaluate damage: it defines an upper bound. Overall I use eight "pillar" builds to evaluate the damage that I feel ought to be associated with given strategies.

If something does GWM-equivalent damage, for me it needs to have similar costs: gives up defences, goes toe-to-toe, spends a feat, commits to a source of advantage. (I revised SS for my campaign within the bounds defined by GWM, but it is still very strong and forms an upper bound for ranged damage.) A build that gains defences, like sword-and-board, gives up damage against GWM. Evaluating spell damage is a work in progress. I use Agonizing Eldritch Blast as one pillar, and the damage gained from Greater Invisibility or Haste, as another.

My pillars aren't designed to be the most optimal possible version of each build. They focus on being "obvious" builds, such as the raging Barbarian who uses Reckless Attack + GWM with a greatsword. A Precision or Tripping Battlemaster might find ways to do more damage with GWM, but I use the Barbarian because I want my pillars to be representative of the builds that players are most likely to come up with. However, I think it is true that informative pillars are those that are near the upper bound for each "obvious" strategy.

 

[clearstream]

Hello gang!

i have not posted in a while now...job changes and restricted websites etc.!

Anyway, I have been musing on damage output lately. I often think that a class does fine in this department only to hear someone talk about trap options and all that jazz.

i just wondered what metric we are using when lauding or complaining about damage output. Is it a number? Is it comparing to a fighter or a sorcerer or paladin?

When we say good or poor damage is there a number people use to anchor their judgment?

i of course realize there are MANY more things to consider, but wondered where people are coming from

Referring to my post above, I guess I'm saying that I find the following principles useful for such evaluation.

1. Use an ensemble of "pillar" builds representing obvious strategies (builds that are mechanically reasonable, but not esoteric). Examples could include Reckless/GWM, Agonizing/Eldritch Blast, Trip/sword-and-shield, and Precision/SS.
2. Estimate DPR over a presumed 5-round combat (one round in isolation is less representative of play), and keep in mind any resource constraints based on your rest cadence (such as two encounters per short, three or four per long).
3. Evaluate both the expected (i.e. multiplied by hit chance and any assumptions you have about up-time) and maximum damage (always crits, always up) for each pillar.

Step 3 reveals when a build has potential to do far more damage than it typically expects, indicating the pay-off for magical buffs and other such enhancements. Contrast Greater Invisibility with Haste: the former will increase the expected damage without changing the maximum, the latter will increase the expected and the maximum.

I'm slowly closing on a good way to produce pillars for magical damage (other than the basic cantrips, which are roughly alike to weapons). It necessitates grouping pillars into likely parties of four (for buff applicability), and and making assumptions about average counts of foes (for AoE efficiency). My intuition is that an AoE like Fireball will produce the maximum potential damage, but a buff like Haste will produce better expected damage.

 

[Ashrym]

I am a fan of dead is the best condition status so the more damage the better. The main counter-point to that is that it's a condition that works both ways so DPR drops to 0 on characters who trade off too much survivability for damage. IE a character who does 2 damage over 6 rounds does more damage than a character who does 5 over 2 rounds and then drops.

Damage is clearly important because it's the typical factor in combat resolution. The real question isn't so much "how much damage can my character do?" so much as "what does character do to contribute in replacement of damage?" and "how effectively does my character contribute?"

Damage itself can also be compared against itself in sustained, burst, and area; per round and total per short and long rest; consistent and possible; etc. For example, chaos bolt bonus bolts are possible to add to a DPR calc but the frequency is so low that the low sample size from actual use precludes anything but a lucky spike.

Damage calcs often miss the swinginess that combat has as the calcs include outliers.

People like to comment on relative damage but it's not so simple.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Way back in 1981, when I started playing at the tender age of 7, I learned pretty quickly that my brother’s MU who cast charm person instead of magic missile was the better choice. I’m guessing that charmed henchmen probably inflicted close to 100 points of damage throughout the adventure before he died. Even 7 year old me figured out that difference between 100 pts and 1d4+1, let alone the henchmen soaking attacks otherwise directed at the PCs

Over the decades, I’ve made an observation as to why we keep having this dicussion and there is never consensus. It’s because of difference of play style. I’ve noticed that people who prefer a more arena style of combat tend to focus on DPR. And those that view the game through a more macro lens (not just combat, but equal parts role playing and exploration) focus more on long term results.

I.e, like my comment above, DPR is best if you reset resources after every battle, but if you play with a style where you think about longer term, like how you’ll overcome non combat challenges or what you’ll need for combat encounters you might have later on, you might focus on defense, or things like charm person or how to avoid combat in the first place.

I want to make it clear that neither preference is any better or worse than the other. It’s subjective. The game is awesome because it allows a myriad of play styles. But if you have two people who view the game in fundamentally different ways, then we won’t ever have consensus, and thus there’s not one true best way of how to build your character. One build is not objectively stronger or weaker than another. So we’d be best served if we’d stop presenting arguments as such.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I wouldn't go that far. I think "the sky" is the important data point that can be used to determine what is acceptable damage, what is good damage and what is terrible damage etc.

If I understand you correctly, "the sky" refers to the greatest amount of damage possible, so you judge everything as a percentage of that.

One issue with that approach, at least from a usability standpoint, is that we don't really know how high the sky actually is, because the game options are not necessarily set in stone prior to making the evaluation. At a given level, you might get a sustained 50 damage per round from a particular configuration of allowed classes, races, feats, and so on. And you might get 30 damage per round, with a more restrictive allowance. But if you actually opened it up to everything out there - DM's Guild, homebrew, conversions, etc - then you could gets hundreds of damage per round, if not thousands.

Without a baseline, we can't tell which options are over-powered, and which are under-powered. Without having a firm baseline, we can't decide which options should be allowed into the game or not, which is one of the primary goals in these discussions. When someone proposes a new class on here, there's no way for us to know whether it's balanced or not, because we don't have a set standard to compare against. Having a fixed standard for everyone on these boards would be incredibly useful.

 

[FrogReaver]

If I understand you correctly, "the sky" refers to the greatest amount of damage possible, so you judge everything as a percentage of that.

Yes that would be the theoretical "sky" I was referring to

One issue with that approach, at least from a usability standpoint, is that we don't really know how high the sky actually is, because the game options are not necessarily set in stone prior to making the evaluation.At a given level, you might get a sustained 50 damage per round from a particular configuration of allowed classes, races, feats, and so on. And you might get 30 damage per round, with a more restrictive allowance. But if you actually opened it up to everything out there - DM's Guild, homebrew, conversions, etc - then you could gets hundreds of damage per round, if not thousands.

Without a baseline, we can't tell which options are over-powered, and which are under-powered. Without having a firm baseline, we can't decide which options should be allowed into the game or not, which is one of the primary goals in these discussions. When someone proposes a new class on here, there's no way for us to know whether it's balanced or not, because we don't have a set standard to compare against. Having a fixed standard for everyone on these boards would be incredibly useful.

I think that no matter what baseline is chosen that baseline isn't going to be useful after a bunch of houserules are applied that drastically alter the game. That said, I think my self adjusting "sky" baseline will be able to be adapted to any campaigns constraints while arbitrarily chosen baselines will be worse off in such situations.

And for games that aren't drastically altered by houserules away from official options then the practical approach is to ignore the minor houserules and just compare it to the sky available from the official options. Not exact, but easy and practical and much better than arbitrarily picking a baseline that has no adaptability to heavily houseruled games. That's the kind of solution we want right? One that theoretically works, one that practically works and one that can be meaningfully expanded to campaigns with vastly different options?

 

[clearstream]

If I understand you correctly, "the sky" refers to the greatest amount of damage possible, so you judge everything as a percentage of that.

One issue with that approach, at least from a usability standpoint, is that we don't really know how high the sky actually is, because the game options are not necessarily set in stone prior to making the evaluation. At a given level, you might get a sustained 50 damage per round from a particular configuration of allowed classes, races, feats, and so on. And you might get 30 damage per round, with a more restrictive allowance. But if you actually opened it up to everything out there - DM's Guild, homebrew, conversions, etc - then you could gets hundreds of damage per round, if not thousands.

Without a baseline, we can't tell which options are over-powered, and which are under-powered. Without having a firm baseline, we can't decide which options should be allowed into the game or not, which is one of the primary goals in these discussions. When someone proposes a new class on here, there's no way for us to know whether it's balanced or not, because we don't have a set standard to compare against. Having a fixed standard for everyone on these boards would be incredibly useful.

I'm drawn toward an ensemble of fixed standards, based on pillar builds representing the main strategies, times tiers.

The reason is that some strategies offer advantages that are balanced by reduced damage. A single fixed standard might make a build look weak, whereas against other builds offering those advantages it is strong. Additionally, some strategies change in relative strength depending on tier. A single fixed standard could suffer the same issues as "the sky" in such respects.

A starting point then might be to agree the main strategies. I think some of those are -

Melee one-target* weapon attack, no shield e.g. Reckless+GWM
Ranged one-target attack, e.g. Precision+SS
Melee high-AC, e.g. Trip+Shield+Defense or Shield(spell)+Shield+Defense
Ranged cantrip spam, e.g. Agonizing + Eldritch Blast (+Repelling?)
Offensive buff, e.g. Twinned+Haste or Twinned+Greater Invis.
Unarmed e.g. Mobile+Shadow Arts or <missing feat>+Open Hand
Dual-Wield melee one-target weapon attack e.g. Dual Wielder+TWF+Rapiers (IKR)

*at a time

Once the main strategies were agreed on, a next step could be to agree parameters for various up-times, i.e. how many rounds to average over, how many encounters to spread resources across, number and HP of foes for strategies like cleave and horde breaker. An ensemble like that casts a lot of light, revealing gaps in the design space that players might like to explore, and places where the designer balance estimates have gone over or under. It could require formation of a work group who might argue out the terms, before getting down to creating the estimates.