a fighter can potentially go for the -5+10 once per manouver, plus all the advantage opportunities he has every short rest
(remeber one of the manouver, trip attack gratns advantage for the rest of the attack routine)
so lets say at least 6-7 times per short rest; thats 60-70 extra dmg every short rest
can a paladin use 8-10 spell slot on smites every short rest?
Er, what? Trip attack--
if it succeeds, and it doesn't have to since Strength saving throws are hardly uncommon among monsters--can knock a target prone, sure, and that grants advantage on further attacks. Without multiple feats, I'm highly skeptical that that translates to "60-70 extra damage every short rest."
Furthermore, "6-7 times per short rest" is not at all true. You get
at most 6 superiority dice per short rest--and that's only at 15th level. For the vast majority of the game, you have either four or five, so you can, at best, generate four to five rounds' worth of Prone status...
if you spend them all on knocking things prone. But that would prevent you from making use of Precision Attack at any point. So it's much more accurate to say that the Fighter gets 1-2 attempts--not guarantees--of inflicting the Prone status per short rest, in addition to anywhere between 2 and 4 additional maneuvers.
[sblock=Charop math-analysis--ignore if that's not your bag]Since we're further assuming balls-out damage capacity with feats, I'd guess it's safe to assume a 7th level Fighter, giving a total of 5 superiority dice. That gives 2 Trip Attacks and 3 Precision Attacks per short rest--even if both Trip Attacks are successful (which isn't as likely as you might think*), and the Fighter always uses Action Surge to attack after tripping a target, that's 1-2 Precision attacks per Trip. Normally, for the opening/Trip attack, you'd do 1d10+3 (no stat boosts because they both went to feats)+10 = 5.5+13=18.5 damage. If we apply the +10 damage, though, the chances to hit without Precision or Advantage from trip (which you can't have until you
have tripped it) aren't great--you're only at a +1 to hit, and almost all monsters have AC higher than 11 AFAIK, mostly in the 13-17 range, giving you pretty dismal chance to hit most things. Thus you can't actually add the extra damage to *that* attack, and you get 1d10+1d8+3=5.5+4.5+3 = 13 average damage for the Trip attack.
Precision attack, on average, negates most to all of the penalty from GWM (-5 always vs. +4.5 average), so with that you pretty much break even. Adding advantage on half those attacks* gives, very roughly, a 20%-25% boost to damage to the attacks that get it: you go from hitting (say) 60-75% of the time, to hitting 84%-94% of the time, which is pretty damn close to a "20% to 25%" boost--smaller benefit if the monster was hard to hit to begin with. Significant, sure, but when you're looking at
at most 3 attacks, of which 2-3 are Precision Attack, it's really not as big as you might think (18.5 damage * 3 attacks * .90 approx hit chance = 49.95). Certainly not dramatically bigger than a Paladin who (wisely) saves her Smites for crits, so she can roll (say) 4d6+6d8+3 = 14+27+3 = 44 damage. A whopping 5 points difference--and that's for a Paladin that *doesn't* apply GWM--doing so would put the Paladin
ahead of the Action Surging, blowing nearly all superiority dice Fighter, with
a single attack. The Paladin can still make another attack that round, and can do this whole thing 3 times a day, without even spending any Channel Divinity stuff. Popping
Sacred Weapon or
Vow of Enmity gives a Paladin for an entire combat stuff that a Fighter can do for a single round--if he gets lucky. And the Pally still has all the level 1 Smite spells to enhance his damage too. Based on the feedback at least for this particular forum, most people get about
one short rest per day--so the Fighter can do her thing twice, while the Paladin can do it thrice regardless of rest times.
*Assume monsters have a 75% chance to fail the save--which many will have better than that. Failing the save twice has only a (.75)^2=0.5625, a 56.25% chance of happening. So, it'll work both times about as often as it will work once or not at all; it's reasonable to assume at least one success per short rest.[/sblock]
don't forget the action surge you can pop when you know you have advantage for the full round.
Don't forget that Paladins can choose to smite only on criticals--doubling the number of dice they roll.
A paladin has definately much more utility and is VERY strong this edition.... but after the firts maybe 8 lvs he falls behind the fighter in terms of dmg.
Okay I admit I skimmed past this earlier, so my above analysis (being below level 8) doesn't fit your criteria. However, I still think you're shortchanging the Paladin. Sure, it can't attack as often, but it's getting
more dice, and only
dice get doubled on crits. The Battlemaster Fighter specializes in hit, because he attacks often. The Paladin specializes in crits, because each attack rolls lots of dice. A Paladin who optimizes as much as your Battlemaster Fighter does, and who focuses on picking up damage-improving options can absolutely keep up with the Joneses: consider that Sacred Weapon can be used once per short rest, and simply adds a flat +Cha to attack--which makes it strictly superior to Precision Attack for a given combat once you have Cha 20 (assuming, of course, that the combat doesn't last more than 10 rounds), and a Paladin of (say) 12th level can easily have that + GWM. And at, say, 15th level, when a Paladin naturally puts out +1d8 bonus damage to all attacks, and can whip out +5d8 additional damage twice a day (and +4d8 additional damage 3 times a day), plus spells like Hunter's Mark or any of the several great Smite spells? Yeah, Paladin can absolutely keep up. Ironically, you see the two sort of "swap" in that sense: with ongoing bonus damage (Smite spells, Improved Divine Smite, Hunter's Mark), the Paladin makes for a much better "every single attack hurts a lot," while the Fighter becomes all about the nova, setting up a round to drop Action Surge to get an extra 3 (eventually 4) attacks.
From the tanking perspective there is no doubt that the barbarian is king, even better if you multiclass. Even tho all you need to stop a rage is a stun until the barbarian's 15lvl.
Well yeah. Barbarians are ridiculously beefy in this edition. If the Totem Barbarian were more interesting, I'd probably be playing one instead of the Dragonborn Valor Bard I'm playing now. But classes that are "one-button" affairs bore me.
