Help calculating Fighter damage

[André Soares]

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!

Oh, got you now! I've also had some struggles finding that information. the 1d8+5 seems like a good average to use as damage output. How I got the feel for it was a bit less crunching numbers and a little more experimenting in the table. As both the players and I were begginers in the edition experimentation was a common theme. I could experiment in encounters and they could experiment in character builds, being able to redact anything at any time. It didn't take long for me to more or less get the feel of what was the power level of en encounter and what were the traps to avoid

 

[The Crimson Binome]

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 not mandatory to keep up with monsters. It's mandatory to keep up with other PCs. The monsters are more-or-less punching bags, since they can take way more than they dish out.

Most games don't use feats, and everything works out fine. I ran a game from 1-20, and the math basically worked out. Even when high-level enemies impose impossible saving throws, the PCs have enough HP that they can still pull through.

I would go so far as to suggest that the game works better, and is better-balanced, if you don't use feats. One common solution, for those who see a problem with Power Attack but still want to use feats, is to replace the Power Attack portion of the feat with +1 to Strength.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Most games don't use feats, and everything works out fine.

I'm guessing that comes from the DDB data, but I think that's a suspicious interpretation. First, AFAIK, the data is on characters without feats, not campaigns without feats. Feat power level is pretty significantly weighted towards martial classes, so even in campaigns where feats are legal you'll often see characters that select no feats. I've seen comparatively few spellcasters that take feats of any kind, with Resilience (Constitution) being the only common exception, but even that isn't until high level.

Second, it's important to remember that overwhelming majority of active characters in DDB, nearly 90%, are below level 11, with 62% at levels 1-4. While, yes, characters do get two ASIs below level 10, many players will select "+2 to prime attribute" before anything else to get that 18 or 20. In other words, in many games players will not select a feat before level 8 or level 12 naturally. I'd also point out that Variant Human is the second most popular subrace (nearly tied with regular human) and that subrace is only available when you're playing with feats.

I'm not saying you're wrong (and I agree the math is just fine). I'm just saying that a lot of the available data is skewed. It's not necessarily a choice and might be a consequence of feats only being appealing in the late game.

 

[Quickleaf]

There's an online comparison of low-level fighters across editions, looking at how many individual goblins a fighter can kill before the fighter drops. My google-fu is failing me to find the link, but IIRC his results for the 5e fighter are pretty similar to 4e fighter, something like 15+ goblins.

 

[Bacon Bits]

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

[...] 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.

I disagree. I think it's an essential first step. Simply put, if you don't know what your expected damage output even is, you'll find it essentially impossible to draw any further conclusions. It's limited to only look at expected damage, but it's certainly not useless. It's a safe, if naive, assumption that you want to do as much damage as quickly as possible in combat. If you don't know how to do that, you can't really decide whether it's best to use -5/+10 at all.

Yes, if you want to account for overkills, you can use additional knowledge to account for that. But before the game session even begins you can determine that AC inflection point to be aware of in order to do the highest amount of damage. If your enemy's AC is over that threshold, you don't even have to consider using -5/+10 unless you're literally throwing a hail mary. You can determine it absent any information about your enemy at all. In most combats, you'll learn AC first, then hp. In many combats, you'll be able to determine AC visually ("He's wearing chain mail and carrying a shield.") whereas in some combats you won't learn hp until combat is over. Sure, you might be facing a swarm of goblins for the thirtieth time and you know they have less than 10 hit points, but those aren't really the kind of combats we're worried about.

I'd also argue that literally tracking opponent hp (i.e., actually writing down how much damage your party is dealing to each opponent each attack -- not that I'm suggesting you're doing this) approaches metagaming, so I'd expect most tables would allow you to only count hp in your head, as it were. Even then, if you've got an entire party attacking and doing variable damage to varied opponents with varied hp, that gets difficult quickly. Point is, you're often going to find yourself in a position where you don't know enough about hp to use that information. Again, you'll often fall back on dealing as much damage as you can as quickly as you can: expected damage output.

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.

While that's true, it's not really useful. "A player might choose to ignore analysis," is quite irrelevant to the validity of the analysis itself. The game does allow you to make tactically or mathematically poor decisions. That's not a weakness of the analysis, nor is it something that the analysis needs to consider or account for. It's like suggesting that I shouldn't try to understand what a balanced diet requires because I can always choose to eat nothing but cake.

 

[Kupursk]

Even when high-level enemies impose impossible saving throws, the PCs have enough HP that they can still pull through.

That's something else I would probably have to consider as well.

I know a lot of people hate "save or suck" spells but I never minded them, really. I'm ok with stuff like petrification taking 2 saves or holds allowing consecutive saves to free yourself. But I'm not a fan of they having converted almost every save-based spell and effect to simple damage dealers.

It feels like if you have enough HP you can just say "Whatever, I know I can take the hit!" then rush in and try to nuke the enemy. Would you say that's what usually happens with the change? And would using save-or-suck in creatures like powerful undead and such break the system somewhat, considering the new save rolls being more swingy?

I find that certain creatures being deadly no matter how big your HP pool enhance the experience and make players have to think out of the box before certain encounters, the Save being a "last resort" probably against the threat. Of course I don't make a habit of throwing these creatures on players like random encounters. I usually give fair warning during the adventure or clues of what they might be facing, and leave part of it for players to figure out.

 

[Bacon Bits]

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.

The assumption, as I recall, is based on the fact that even at high level you're presumed to have 6-8 combats a day and a rest at most every other combat. You've got 6 dice, yes, but you're likely to spread them out so you'll only have 2-3 in a single combat.

Additionally, you've got to remember that GWM has an additional ability: it procs additional attacks on crit! A 15% crit chance means you've got 1 - (0.85*0.85*0.85*0.85) = 47.80% chance to crit at least once and proc an extra attack. That's nearly a proc every other round. If we say 23 damage on hit, that's ~+11 damage per round. A 5% crit chance means 1 - (0.95*0.95*0.95*0.95) = 18.55% chance to crit at least once and proc an extra attack. That's less than one crit every five rounds, or ~+4 damage per round.

I no longer recall if it assumed 2d6 or 1d12 weapon damage, but it did assume that combats would last at least 5 rounds. It may also have assumed the most beneficial race for crit fishing (i.e., Half-Orc due to Savage Attacks).

Unfortunately, I'm not someplace I can stop and do a more thorough analysis at the moment. It was annoying enough using my phone to calculate the above.

 

[Bacon Bits]

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

Yeah, but it's worth noting that, if you're actually playing 1e/2e fairly, 18/00 strength should see play perhaps once in a player's lifetime (in my 30 years of experience, I've seen it rolled exactly once). Percentile strength is broken. Full stop. 18/00 puts you so wildly far above anything else the game is capable of (except mid and late game magic-user spells) that it's not a reasonable game mechanic. It's a bad system to look at in terms of balance, and comparing the heavily optimized essentially unique 1e/2e character to what any character in 5e can accomplish is unfair.

* 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!!

Our very well-equipped and pretty heavily optimized 13th level party in Into the Abyss included a Fighter, Fighter/Rogue, Paladin, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue (but the last was basically a non-combatant). Everybody had at least a magic weapon, and we easily took down a Balor in 1 round. As in it did not even get a chance to act. At 14th level, the same party took down 2 Balors in 3 rounds. Now, the fire and detonate abilities did hurt and knocked several of us unconscious, but it was no contest at all in terms of damage. 260 hp looks impressive, but when PCs alpha strike they do massive amounts of damage.

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.

No, I don't agree with that at all. The game works perfectly fine without the -5/+10 mechanic, and, indeed, I'd argue the game would be better off without the -5/+10 mechanic. I think it's bad for the game and would recommend replacing the -5/+10 mechanic entirely. The PCs can do more than enough damage without it.

 

[jgsugden]

I disagree. I think it's an essential first step. Simply put, if you don't know what your expected damage output even is, you'll find it essentially impossible to draw any further conclusions. It's limited to only look at expected damage, but it's certainly not useless. It's a safe, if naive, assumption that you want to do as much damage as quickly as possible in combat. If you don't know how to do that, you can't really decide whether it's best to use -5/+10 at all....

Nobody called it useless. Just too simplistic to maximize efficiency. It was offered here as "*THE* way to determine when you should use GWM. That fails to accont of the two issues I raised, as well as a few others that I did not mention.

Yes, if you want to account for overkills, you can use additional knowledge to account for that. But before the game session even begins you can determine that AC inflection point to be aware of in order to do the highest amount of damage...

And you can calculate the number of calories in half a pint of Ben and Jerry's as well. However, neither the calories nor the DPR calculation provide you information, that by itself, should guide when to use GWM.

While that's true, it's not really useful. "A player might choose to ignore analysis," is quite irrelevant to the validity of the analysis itself. The game does allow you to make tactically or mathematically poor decisions. That's not a weakness of the analysis, nor is it something that the analysis needs to consider or account for. It's like suggesting that I shouldn't try to understand what a balanced diet requires because I can always choose to eat nothing but cake.

Overreliance upon misleading metrics is a flawed approach. The game is not about optimizing DPR. It is not about optimizing effective DPR. It is not about minimizing hits to kill, or rounds per death...

It is a role playing game. We play characters in a story. The DM places challenges that will be balanced for us against us. The closer we are to the intended balance of power encisioned by the designers of the game, the more efficient the system is and the easier it is to create a good story. The more out of whack our characters are (glass cannons, etc...), the harder to balance and make a fun game.

In the end, this DPR calcs neither do what they're intended to do (provoide optimal use scenarios for the ability), nor do they serve the game. They fail from both directions. As third grade teachers often have to say, "Your math being correct doesn't mean you solved the word problem."

I'm sure that statement will end this eternity of people arguing about the same old stuff over and over and over and over and over and over. Really. It will.

 

[TwoSix]

The assumption, as I recall, is based on the fact that even at high level you're presumed to have 6-8 combats a day and a rest at most every other combat. You've got 6 dice, yes, but you're likely to spread them out so you'll only have 2-3 in a single combat.

Additionally, you've got to remember that GWM has an additional ability: it procs additional attacks on crit! A 15% crit chance means you've got 1 - (0.85*0.85*0.85*0.85) = 47.80% chance to crit at least once and proc an extra attack. That's nearly a proc every other round. If we say 23 damage on hit, that's ~+11 damage per round. A 5% crit chance means 1 - (0.95*0.95*0.95*0.95) = 18.55% chance to crit at least once and proc an extra attack. That's less than one crit every five rounds, or ~+4 damage per round.

I no longer recall if it assumed 2d6 or 1d12 weapon damage, but it did assume that combats would last at least 5 rounds. It may also have assumed the most beneficial race for crit fishing (i.e., Half-Orc due to Savage Attacks).

Unfortunately, I'm not someplace I can stop and do a more thorough analysis at the moment. It was annoying enough using my phone to calculate the above.

Yea, that's fair. That's actually around the difference I'd like to see. BM is slightly ahead, but assuming 10-12 rounds of combat between short rests, the delta is way less than 10%. Since BM is more complex, it should see a slight reward for skilled play (using maneuvers in a timely fashion for extra synergy), but the Champion keeps up and can even exceed it with some dice luck (which is what you'd like to see with a class based around simplicity).