The Overkill Damage Fallacy

the Jester · Jun 9, 2019

FrogReaver said:
Sure. But are you really claiming such an encounter is anything other than an exception to the norm?

I will dispute that it's an exception to the norm. I'd say, depending on the campaign, it might even be quite a common type of encounter.

Just because you don't often see it doesn't mean it doesn't come up for others.

MonsterEnvy · Jun 9, 2019

I feel like the Cleave Rules are being ignored. While optional they are right there in the Core books.

Also I am not exactly sure what point is trying to be made.

Harzel · Jun 9, 2019

If it's of any interest, for the scenario in the OP, for PC 1 the exact value for expected rounds to kill is 1/0.6 = 5/3 = 1.66666... It's fairly easy to abstract the to-hit probability and the result is that for a hit probability p, the expected rounds to kill in the given scenario is 1/p.

The derivation is a little long but not hard. I'll provide it if anyone's interested (or skeptical :hmm:

).

FrogReaver · Jun 9, 2019

the Jester said:
I will dispute that it's an exception to the norm. I'd say, depending on the campaign, it might even be quite a common type of encounter.

Just because you don't often see it doesn't mean it doesn't come up for others.

Likewise, just because it's quite common for some others doesn't mean it's part of the norm.

MonsterEnvy · Jun 9, 2019

FrogReaver said:
Likewise, just because it's quite common for some others doesn't mean it's part of the norm.

It's for sure part of the norm. Fighting a bunch of Kobolds or Goblins is super common.

FrogReaver · Jun 9, 2019

Harzel said:
If it's of any interest, for the scenario in the OP, for PC 1 the exact value for expected rounds to kill is 1/0.6 = 5/3 = 1.66666... It's fairly easy to abstract the to-hit probability and the result is that for a hit probability p, the expected rounds to kill in the given scenario is 1/p.

The derivation is a little long but not hard. I'll provide it if anyone's interested (or skeptical ).

Yep. Though I don't think such a formula extends very easily to 2 and 3 hit cases.

FrogReaver · Jun 9, 2019

MonsterEnvy said:
It's for sure part of the norm. Fighting a bunch of Kobolds or Goblins is super common.

Common in what sense. That it occurs. Sure. Common in the sense that most of the fights in a given campaign are against kobolds and goblins? no.

Nagol · Jun 9, 2019

Overkill control is pointless against a single enemy. The goal in that case is at-least-enough kill.

Overkill control becomes valuable when dealing with multiple enemies.

Garthanos · Jun 9, 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.

FrogReaver · Jun 9, 2019

Nagol said:
Overkill control is pointless against a single enemy. The goal in that case is at-least-enough kill.

Overkill control becomes valuable when dealing with multiple enemies.

If that's your rebuttal then you don't understand the argument.