Help calculating Fighter damage

[TwoSix]

However, I disagree that Champion isn't a good choice. Fighter is the tops of the melee class damage due to Extra Attack (2) and (3), but last I knew, Champion was still the king of expected damage per round simply due to the expanded critical range. Six d12 superiority dice don't keep up after the second round (or the first if you action surge). Champions are relatively boring to play, and I would personally never play one without access to feats, but mathematically they're the best at damage and Survivor (regen hp up to half max) is stupid good.

I'd really want to see the calculations and assumptions on that before I'd agree. 6d12 superiority dice is 39 average damage per short rest. Baseline, an 18-20 crit range would add 0.83 damage per attack, assuming a 2d6 weapon, GWF, and no other bonus dice. That would need 48 attacks per short rest to catch up, which is 12 rounds of 3 attacks plus either a bonus action or reaction attack per round.

If there are any other bonus dice involved, or you assume the BM fighter is using the dice for anything besides damage, I could see Champion catching up, yes.

 

[Kupursk]

Again, hit point wise, the 1e/2e optimized character is much more powerful but as far as the numbers you'll be tossing out you'll be much higher much more often in 5e.

That was my overall assessment as well. So it's more or less confirmed.

Some people mentioned other stuff like magic items or magic buffs, but I didn't want to count that sort of stuff. Although a high level fighter will probably benefit from some of that, there is no way of telling which magic effects and all the possibilities they incur. Neither 2e not 5e assumes you'll have magic items by default, so I thought checking out the baseline numbers were more appropriate.

I realise that other abilities like increased critical chance and etc, do raise the average damage a tad, but comparatively speaking I think this is offset by the 2e Fighter almost never missing an attack at higher levels, whereas the 5e will probably miss considerably more. Which leads back to both probably having the same approximate "absolute" numbers in terms of damage. The discrepancy, I suppose, comes when you compare HP numbers and what 1d8+7 (for example) means in each system.

* A troll in 2e had an average of 33 HP, while in 5e he has 84 HP.
* The Balor in 2e had an average of 59 HP, while in 5e he has a whooping 262 HP!!

Anyways... The point was not really to compare which is better, I just wanted to have a sense of what the average numbers should be in 5e. As a DM I often have to improvise random NPCs that weren't planned and thus don't have their full character sheets at hand. So it's good to know what to expect at different levels, that sort of stuff.

Apparently getting advantage + "power attack" (either ranged or two-handed) is more or less mandatory at some point to deal enough damage as a warrior-type to keep up with the HP of monsters. Which is... sad... I guess. That sort of feat should be optional and not almost mandatory since it looks you into only a few specific "builds" to be able to deal good damage.

 

[cmad1977]

If damage is the metric you judge classes by you’re doing it wrong.

 

[TwoSix]

Apparently getting advantage + "power attack" (either ranged or two-handed) is more or less mandatory at some point to deal enough damage as a warrior-type to keep up with the HP of monsters. Which is... sad... I guess. That sort of feat should be optional and not almost mandatory since it looks you into only a few specific "builds" to be able to deal good damage.

It's nice when even people new to the system are able to recognize this.

[For context, the relative power of these feats and whether they proscribe certain concepts as obviously "better" has led to lots of contentious argument on these forums over the years.]

 

[André Soares]

I'm not a 2e players so I can't say much about that, but did you compare the AC (or whatever formula was used to measure the difficulty to hit a monster) was compared to 5e? I say this because the designers have state before that the they did higher HP but lower AC to keep the monsters powerfull but giving the players more chances to hit, because missing is "unfun"

 

[Kupursk]

I'm not a 2e players so I can't say much about that, but did you compare the AC (or whatever formula was used to measure the difficulty to hit a monster) was compared to 5e? I say this because the designers have state before that the they did higher HP but lower AC to keep the monsters powerfull but giving the players more chances to hit, because missing is "unfun"

I did mention something about that in a few previous posts. Again, I'm not really "experienced" with 5e, most of my assessments are from reading the rules and my former experience with D&D, so I could be wrong.

But actually it seems to me you'd miss more in 5e than in 2e. Most ACs weren't super-high in 2e either. AC values are lower in 5e indeed, but to-hit values are MUCH lower in 5e compared to 2e. Mostly in 2e after a certain level warrior-types would never miss attacks except on a natural 1. I'm guessing 5e doesn't get to that point? Unless maybe against really low AC enemies?

Which is not to say "never missing" was good game design. I think it was mostly an unintended consequence just slapping a standardized math progression to the class, which got wonky at high levels. Up to a certain point the balance of to-hit and AC in 2e was fine, and the system itself kind of had the same idea of Bounded Accuracy although they never named it, it just "was." But at very high levels it did get wonky, that's why I usually house-rule a slower THAC0 progession after level 10-ish when playing 2e.

3e however was an entirely different beast... with the system expecting you to stack tons of magic items, monster AC could hit insane values like 50+ at high levels.

 

[Kupursk]

It's nice when even people new to the system are able to recognize this.

[For context, the relative power of these feats and whether they proscribe certain concepts as obviously "better" has led to lots of contentious argument on these forums over the years.]

Well it was not my intention to spark this sort of argument.

I'm just trying to familiarize myself with what to expect in the new system, since I'm usually the DM in our games.

As a player, in a new edition you can basically just pick any class you feel like and figure out later what's what in the new rules, but as a DM it's good to know the overall workings of the system well.

 

[jgsugden]

There is a formula you can use.

Str 24 at level 13 with a +0 magic weapon is 7 + 5 = +12 base to hit.

Damage is 2d6 + 2d6 + 7 = 8.33 + 7 + 7 = 22.33 base damage on hit.

((2 * 12) - 22.33 + 32) / 2 = 16.835.

Mathematically, you should only use -5/+10 when you're attacking an NPC with AC 16 or less.

If you seek the highest average damage, yes. However, that is a really common fail approach.

Optimize Effective Damage: 1.) Average DPR (damage per round) is a simplistic analysis that fails to consider a number of factors that often mean that there is more efficiency available if you deviate from maximum DPR. For example: If you deal 15 average with a hit without GWM, and 25 with it, and the enemy has 28 hps, you're better off not using it nearly regardless of the enemy AC. If the enemy has 20 hps, you're better off using the feat benefit even if the AC is higher than is optimal for DPR. Even further, if you eliminate 'overkill' damage (damage beyond what was necessary to take an enemy to 0) from damage dealt in your average damage calculations, you'll find that the optimal use of these feats is at a lower max AC than the simple calculations suggest. In other words: Targeting max DPR generally results in more overkill wasted damage.

Just to make this point clearer: Would you rather have average DPR of 100 or 90? What if that 100 DPR was a 5% chance to deliver 2000 damage in a single blow (missing the other 95% of the time), and the 90 average damage was 9 attacks at 10 damage that hit 100% of the time? And if your foes all have 30 hps? Or 10 hps? What if your foe has 2000 hps and hits very hard and reliably? Average DPR is too simplistic to maximize efficiency - it is an overutilized crutch that results in a lot of misperceptions on the power of SS and GWM.

Optimize Fun 2.) The player in question likes the big hit, so uses it inefficienctly from a DPR perspective to increase his fun. I played a Dwarf Barby that *always* used it.

 

[André Soares]

I did mention something about that in a few previous posts. Again, I'm not really "experienced" with 5e, most of my assessments are from reading the rules and my former experience with D&D, so I could be wrong.

But actually it seems to me you'd miss more in 5e than in 2e. Most ACs weren't super-high in 2e either. AC values are lower in 5e indeed, but to-hit values are MUCH lower in 5e compared to 2e. Mostly in 2e after a certain level warrior-types would never miss attacks except on a natural 1. I'm guessing 5e doesn't get to that point? Unless maybe against really low AC enemies?

Which is not to say "never missing" was good game design. I think it was mostly an unintended consequence just slapping a standardized math progression to the class, which got wonky at high levels. Up to a certain point the balance of to-hit and AC in 2e was fine, and the system itself kind of had the same idea of Bounded Accuracy although they never named it, it just "was." But at very high levels it did get wonky, that's why I usually house-rule a slower THAC0 progession after level 10-ish when playing 2e.

3e however was an entirely different beast... with the system expecting you to stack tons of magic items, monster AC could hit insane values like 50+ at high levels.

Okay, maybe I'm missing a point, but weren't we supposed to not look at high levels? Not trying to be snarky or dispute your claims, just confused, because this makes me think you're comparing mid level 5e fighters to high level 2e fighters.

About the main point of the thread, yes, sword and board damage is kind of meh, but that's because the option is not supposed to do a lot of damage (by this edition's goals), but that does not mean it's weak. Fortunatelly the gaps in power level are very small in 5e, so even an average damage dealer will feel usefull in combat, most of the times.

 

[Kupursk]

Okay, maybe I'm missing a point, but weren't we supposed to not look at high levels? Not trying to be snarky or dispute your claims, just confused, because this makes me think you're comparing mid level 5e fighters to high level 2e fighters.

Well... higher levels, yes. 13 to 15-ish (at least that's what I sort of consider high level as I mentioned originally.) I'm just not really bothering with level 20 "maxed" characters since those are a very rare find anyway. Mid-level would be something like 7-8 ish I suppose.

My intention initially (and I suppose I could've stated it clearer) is to have a "feel" of the expected numbers as a DM, so that I can weave in NPCs on the fly without being too off on the expected average numbers (high or low). That's because damage and HP values changed so much in 5e and I'm still familiarizing myself with these values. It's not like a player and asking for the most optimized option, in this case.

In any case, there's been plenty of comprehensive answers, so I appreciate!