The Overkill Damage Fallacy

Ovinomancer · Jun 12, 2019

FrogReaver said:
[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], by the way I can account for multiple enemies etc in my formulas. The only thing I can't implement yet is variable damage dice.

Cool. Of course you can. My point was that you didn't.

My formula is surisingly easy to use. Simply list rounds out. Find first round enemy can be killed and then copy paste my formula in every cell.

Can you make changes to target hp, PC damage, PC hit chance, PC number of attacks, and also adapt to changes from those to the number of rounds needed to kill? The PC1/PC2 sheets are pretty easy to do if you're limiting the range of possible inputs so that you can hard code things. It's when you have to create the probabilities density functions for variable inputs that it becomes a challenge. For example, for a given round on PC 2 with variable inputs, I needed to figure out:

Number of hits needed to kill (HTK), then,

Chance no hits have yet occurred times chance HTK occurs this round (not a given) PLUS Chance 1 hit has yet occured times chance at least HTK-1 occurs this round PLUS ... PLUS chance HTK-1 hits have occurred yet times chance at least 1 hit occurs this round.

A number of these end up as zeros in my equations depending on the PC numbers for a given scenario, so error correction is also needed.

The formula for determining chance to kill for no previous hits is:

1. iferror(binom.dist(0,#att*(N-1),hitchance,false),0) x iferror(1-(binom.dist(,@att, hitchance, true),0)

This gives the probability mass function (ie, chance that in N trials you have exactly r results) for no successes in all previous rounds (accounting for attacks per round) at the given hit chance, and returns 0 if binom,dist fails due to improper numbers (if it's round 1, then you have 0 trials, and this fails). This is then multiplied by the formula to determine the chance to hit with all attacks, up to the number of attacks in this round. This uses the cumulative probability function to find the cumulative probability for all hit combos up to HTK and subtract from 1 to find the probability for HTK hits. Error correction catches if HTK exceeds current attacks per round and returns 0.

This then happens for each scenarios from 1 hit to HTK-1 hits. I'm currently using 6 iterations (meaning up to 6 hits needed to kill) but can easily C&P to more (the joys of named cells making formula easier and of relative references).

I know, I know, I'm weird. But, I can generate the weighted average of the probability to kill on round X for up to six hits needed to kill for Y attacks per round at P chance to hit. (Turns out damage dealt and target hp are feed in variables to the one that matters -- how many hits to kill.)

Garthanos · Jun 12, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Focus fire is just so effective under D&D style hp rules, though...

Heck even ignoring hp oddities, attacks against an enemy tend to disrupt their attacks against you... ie you might have better effective armor class against any enemy you are attacking. So someone making broad sweeping attacks with a chance of hitting multiple enemies would be better defended from those enemies too.

Basically enemies not threatened have a significant advantage. So you want to threaten everyone even if your multistrike is itself at a penalty to hit.

Note this does not necessarily take complex mechanics either... if you weren't attacked last round you gain a bonus this round (could be bonus damage if that is easier and you are playing to the bounded accuracy gods - note this would reward both surprise and initiative situations too)

Tony Vargas · Jun 12, 2019

Garthanos said:
Note this does not necessarily take complex mechanics either... if you weren't attacked last round you gain a bonus this round (could be bonus damage if that is easier and you are playing to the bounded accuracy gods - note this would reward both surprise and initiative situations too)

It's a tangent, but, sure: it'd be fairly simple to give a bonus (in 5e, say advantage) to a character who has not been attacked since the end of his last turn and was not threatened at the start of his turn. It'd be a mild counter-incentive against somewhat unrealistic focus fire, and make 'suppressive fire' a thing in D&D's Fantasy Vietnam - heck, we already have recon by fire(ball). ;P

Garthanos · Jun 12, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
It's a tangent, but, sure: it'd be fairly simple to give a bonus (in 5e, say advantage) to a character who has not been attacked since the end of his last turn and was not threatened at the start of his turn.

That is a wicked amount of bonus might undermine almost completely focus fire temptations

FrogReaver · Jun 12, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
It's a tangent, but, sure: it'd be fairly simple to give a bonus (in 5e, say advantage) to a character who has not been attacked since the end of his last turn and was not threatened at the start of his turn. It'd be a mild counter-incentive against somewhat unrealistic focus fire, and make 'suppressive fire' a thing in D&D's Fantasy Vietnam - heck, we already have recon by fire(ball). ;P

I rather like this idea.

5ekyu · Jun 13, 2019

FrogReaver said:
I rather like this idea.

Iirc there was a version (perhaps more) of Traveller which had a pretty serious penalty for "took damage since last round."

It changed play quite a bit and frankly in many good ways.

Honestly if one wanted to do do, one could setup feats that would give bigger bonuses *if* not hurt since last turn, or bonus action maneuvers that stretched from turn to turn with big bonuses if you made it.

Heck, maybe even a growing turn by turn focus - that worked like concentration. Damage can cause you to lose focus.

Lots of potential there.