D&D 5E Heavy Armour Master, how does a front liner survive without it?

[pemerton]

That's where the fallacy is. It is just as effective as before. If it knocked 3 off of 30 or 3 off of 3, it's still 3 less damage in total per hit.

I agree with [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] on this one.

The relevance of damage reduction isn't "number of hit points reduced per hit". It lies in the "percentage of damage negated per hit". An ability that negates 100% of all damage per hit is manifestly more effective than an ability that negates 50% of damage per hit, because with the former ability the character cannot be knocked unconscious or killed by hit point loss.

Given that 3 hp reduction per hit is likely to be a greater proportion of damage per hit from low level than higher-level creatures, that seems to me a sufficient basis for saying that the ability is more effective against lower level than higher-level creatures. Whether the ability is significantly more effective at lower levels than higher levels will depend on more things, like encounter mix, what exactly counts as "significant", etc. But it wouldn't surprise me. 4e has a notorious 1st level cleric ability that grants party-wide damage reduction at a fixed value. At 1st level it's brokenly strong. For my current, 27th level, party it is not a very attractive option - incoming damage totals are typically 30 to 60 hp per hit.

The scaling in 5e is not as aggressive as in 4e, and more monsters depend on multiple attacks to deliver their full damage payload, but there is still a degree of scaling, and hence the point still stands.

 

[KarinsDad]

If you consider crits there are WAY WAY more than a dozen. There are probably more than a dozen that can break 90 damage on a weapon crit.

100 Bulette CR 5
92 Chasme CR 6
90 Giant Ape CR 7
105 Nalphashee CR 13
163 Remorhaz CR 11
105 Storm Giant CR 13
106 Tarrasque CR 30
103 T-Rex Cr 8

I stand corrected. I was actually talking about without criticals, but it's still a good sized number of creatures, maybe 25 or 30. There are also creatures that can get to 30 points with a weapon attack, but it is very unlikely without a critical. For example, an Ancient Silver Dragon that needs to roll a 10 on both D10s to get to 30 points. Yes, the creature is capable of it, but no, it's not very likely.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I thought of it this way.

Surf's analysis of the creatures seems to imply that a monster of CR=level can kill a fighter in three hits. (Other characters two.) So regardless of critter, energy damage aside, this is effectively giving the fighter nine more HP per fight. A greater number of opponents means a greater amount of effective bonus HP.

So on the one hand, higher level fighters fight larger numbers of low-level critters, increasing that potential for bonus HP. On the other hand, at the one critter level, it's nine HP whether you're 1st level or 20th - whether you have 12 HP (a 75% bonus) or 240 (a 4% bonus). Does this even out?

 

[KarinsDad]

I thought of it this way.

Surf's analysis of the creatures seems to imply that a monster of CR=level can kill a fighter in three hits. (Other characters two.) So regardless of critter, energy damage aside, this is effectively giving the fighter nine more HP per fight. A greater number of opponents means a greater amount of effective bonus HP.

So on the one hand, higher level fighters fight larger numbers of low-level critters, increasing that potential for bonus HP. On the other hand, at the one critter level, it's nine HP whether you're 1st level or 20th - whether you have 12 HP (a 75% bonus) or 240 (a 4% bonus). Does this even out?

This analysis does not include healing.

Each time the fighter is healed up near full, he can take 9 more points of damage extra.

So at low level, this is probably once for 9 extra damage or 18 total (maybe two times at level one since two heals could be close to max and get the fighter back up near full twice, but once it's level 2, that rarely happens since it takes more than one heal spell to get the fighter back up near full).

At high level, this is probably 4 times max (depending on party healing resources, it could be 2 or 3 times) for 36 extra damage or 45 total. Granted, most combats do not last long enough for a solo foe to hit the fighter 15 times.