D&D 5E Is Savage Attacker worth it?

[FrogReaver]

One thing to note. Savage attacker improves with the number of attacks you make.

For example on a single attack the optimal algorithm for using savage attacker is simple. You always use it.
However, once you start doing two attacks you need a method for determining which attack roll to use it on. This is further complicated by having to decide after just the first damage roll whether you spend it now or wait and spend it on the next damage roll.

I'm working on how to calculate this. I'm anticipating it's going to be near 1.5 times what savage attacker on a single attack will be. So if savage attacker gives 2 damage I anticipate this will give close to 3 damage but I'll have the calculations down soon hopefully.

 

[Ferrous]

Garbage. It is not equal to +1 to hit and damage, never mind the additional +1 saves and skills you get by boosting a stat. Even the flavour is poor as it is prescriptive for no good reason. If you want to do more damage you might want to play a silk smooth duelist for example. Obviously you can reflavour but why make it so prescriptive to begin with?

 

[FrogReaver]

Right it's not equal to +1 hit and damage.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

It's a fine feat. As always, simply averaging things doesn't tell the whole story. It is quite wonderful when you roll a 2 on damage, then reroll it as 8. Especially when you do it on multiple rounds over a combat. This feat protects you from sh*t damage rolls.

Actually, "the whole story" would be looking at the entire distribution of rolls, both with and without the Savage Attacker feat. If you're using this feat, the average goes up slightly, the odds of getting max damage increases, and the odds of rolling minimum damage is reduced a great deal, but it's still possible. (I've seen players roll minimum damage twice.)

Also, re-rolls aren't bonuses. This feat never adds anything to damage; a d12 is still a d12 no matter how many times you re-roll it.

 

[FrogReaver]

IMO: "The whole story" is useless unless we can take advantage of the information it provides. Currently no one I know is able to make solid predictions about how different distributions of damage die relate to actual success in terms of fighting actual battles against real monsters.

What we as a community are aware of is that higher DPR and lasting longer during an encounter (from more hp or armor or damage reduction) is directly coorelated to our success rates in battle. As such we know that a higher DPR with no sacrifice means we have increased our success rate against all monsters across the board. We can't say anything at all similiar to damage distributions. The fact is until we get more information about them (we likely never will)... then knowing that the damage distribution is different really doesn't give us very much predictive power.

 

[sandvirm]

What? The damage distributions are easy to figure out. And it's easy to compare two distributions and know which will yield a higher DPR.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What we as a community are aware of is that higher DPR and lasting longer during an encounter (from more hp or armor or damage reduction) is directly coorelated to our success rates in battle. As such we know that a higher DPR with no sacrifice means we have increased our success rate against all monsters across the board. We can't say anything at all similiar to damage distributions. The fact is until we get more information about them (we likely never will)... then knowing that the damage distribution is different really doesn't give us very much predictive power.

I don't get it. What additional information are you looking for? It's fairly trivial to compute the optimal time to use Savage Attacks in any attack sequence; but it's also not worth the bother because a simple heuristic is almost as good as optimality. Just use it whenever you're disappointed by a low roll, and/or use it on your last attack. Either way the magnitude of the effect is small.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

IMO: "The whole story" is useless unless we can take advantage of the information it provides. Currently no one I know is able to make solid predictions about how different distributions of damage die relate to actual success in terms of fighting actual battles against real monsters.

Actual battles against real monsters?

FrogReaver, what game are you playing? (And where can I avoid it?)

As far as I know, in the tabletop version of D&D (none of those "real monsters" for me, thank you) a higher distribution on the damage dice means the bad guys fall down sooner.

That's a solid prediction.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Actually, "the whole story" would be looking at the entire distribution of rolls, both with and without the Savage Attacker feat. If you're using this feat, the average goes up slightly, the odds of getting max damage increases, and the odds of rolling minimum damage is reduced a great deal, but it's still possible. (I've seen players roll minimum damage twice.)

Also, re-rolls aren't bonuses. This feat never adds anything to damage; a d12 is still a d12 no matter how many times you re-roll it.

Averaging is just that, averaging. In actual practice, from fight to fight, you will get all kinds of results. Perhaps savage attacker will lead to a string of 8 on d8 damage rerolls, and help drop a foe quicker, avoiding a TPK. Merely calculating that "on average over the life of a campaign savage attacker will give +1 damage" is an gross oversimplification. A feat which simply added +1 to damage is very different to savage attacker. I only want to highlight that focusing on averages is at best unwise and at worst misleading.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't get it. What additional information are you looking for? It's fairly trivial to compute the optimal time to use Savage Attacks in any attack sequence; but it's also not worth the bother because a simple heuristic is almost as good as optimality. Just use it whenever you're disappointed by a low roll, and/or use it on your last attack. Either way the magnitude of the effect is small.

I wouldn't say its trivial to compute the optimal time to use Savage Attacker in multiattack situations. However, it is doable. But algorithms aside that's not the point I was making.


My post was in relation to JackofTirades where he suggested that "the whole story" would include looking at the damage distributions. Right now about the only thing knowing the damage distributions allows is to do is to calculate DPR, which is rather handy because DPR is strongly correlated with being "better" at combat.

So basically the point I am trying to make is that when we talk about DPR with savage attacker we are talking about the only meaningful stat that knowing the damage distribution currently let's us compute. So it's almost wrong to talk about the whole picture and bring in damage distributions when they are currently meaningless in relation to combat effectiveness outside their DPR.

Oh there is one other thing knowing a damage distribution can do for us at the moment, knowing our minimum and maximum damages which has very little to do with being "better" at combat. So basically trivially obvious and meaningless information that seems to get pointed out by way to many people because those people apparently think everyone else is too dumb to realize that a reroll that causes +1 DPR doesn't actually have change your minimum or maximum damage values.

The reminder given would actually be a useful reminder if there actually existed something besides DPR that allowed comparing different damage distribtuions in such a way that the comparison was a useful predictor of combat effectiveness.