D&D 5E Best Non-GWM, Non-SS, Non-PM, Non-CE Damagers

Thateous said:

You should read the link i posted toward the end of the previous page. Granted, a DM can rule however they want...

For the extremely lazy among us.

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Thanks. So the effect of Hover (keyword) is to keep you aloft even if you're unconscious or whatever... while any creature with fly can stop moving and hover. Perhaps because a turn-based system can't do a good job of representing what is actually happening, when it comes to the in-detail movement of a creature. Thus a flying creature can stop moving to avoid Booming Blade's trigger.

If you look at the creatures that have it, Hover is more like being buoyant or floating supernaturally.

Thateous said:

Except booming blade doesn't prevent anyone from moving... but let's get back on topic.

Does anyone feel like explaining to me how you guys come up with the damage per round calculations? What's assumed based on chance to hit, etc. Or just point me to a thread that already explains this.

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I'm replying without having read other replies. So if I duplicate any responses consider it reinforcement of their point.

I start with average damage per hit. The damage per hit is subdivided if there are different sources of damage that don't always land together. For example, a Ranger 5/Rogue 3 with dex of 18, a rapier, colossus strike, hunter's mark and sneak attack. He's got two attacks but colossus strike and sneak attack can only hit once.

So (using Excel, because it's awesome) I have something that looks like this:
weapon: 1d8+4 8.5
colossus strike: 1d8 4.5
hunter's mark: 1d6 3.5
sneak attack: 2d6 7

I then assume a hit percentage. To keep my sanity, I assume a base 65% chance modified by whether your attack stat has kept up with your ASIs. That is, I expect 16 from levels 1-3, 18 from levels 4-7, and 20 from levels 8+. I adjust hit chance based on the above so in my example the PC has a 60% hit chance. If, for example, you are a level 6 fighter who has a 20 stat you are "ahead of the curve" and I assign a 70% chance to hit. 65% is basically correct given average monster AC.

When you get multiple chances to do one thing, the math is tricky. The weapon and hunter's mark are easy to calculate. But colossus strike and sneak attack can only land once. The easiest thing to do is calculate your chances of not hitting once and then subtracting that from 1. In this case, .4*.4=0.16. Subtract that from 1, 1-.16=.84, and you get an 84% chance of sneak attack and colossus strike on your turn (assuming the target has less than max HP). If the target has max HP then you have to land with both hits to get colossus strike, 0.60*0.60=0.36.

If the target is below max HP and you can get sneak attack, you can combine the weapon and hunter's mark damage (12.0) and also the colossus strike and sneak attack damage (11.5). And you end up with something like this:
12.0*2*0.60+11.5*.84=24.06

Oh, but you're not done yet! You have to calculate critical hit damage. For the regular attack and hunter's mark, it's easy. It's 0.05*2*8 (where 8 is the average of the dice you'd roll on the crit) =0.80.

The sneak attack and colossus strike are a bit trickier. If you hit on the first attack, you'll likely apply colossus strike and sneak attack (you might not if the target has low hp and will die, but I've never seen anyone but me do anything other than assume targets have infinite hp). If you do that, it doesn't matter what happens on the second attack. Therefore, you have a 0.05 chance of getting a crit with sneak/colossus on the first attack and you'll only have an opportunity to get a crit on the second attack if you miss on the first one. So that's 0.40*0.05=0.02 or a 0.05+0.02=0.07 chance total.

The math for that is 0.07*11.5 = 0.805.

All told we have 24.06+0.80+0.805=25.665 DPR.

If the creature is at max HP (so no colossus strike on first attack) the math is 12.0*2*0.60+7.0*0.84+4.5*0.36+8*2+0.05+7*0.07+4.5*0.03=23.325 DPR.

As you can see, things get messy really fast.

EDIT: If you want to assume a different hit chance or advantage, it's really easy as all I (or you) have to do is plug a different number into your 'hit' and 'crit' block on the spreadsheet and it'll auto-calculate any change.

In fact, if you calculate each damage source separately it's easy to calculate damage per round with, say, assuming you can't get sneak attack in. It's not really hard. The key is to start by separating out all the bits.

FrogReaver said:

I understand the general back and forth but that doesn't mean it impacts things enough for say a sword and shield paladin with shield master to close the gap on a SS CE fighter. I guess we could look at how much of a buff we give a paladin under such assumption and how much of a nerf we give a fighter to get a benchmark?

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I think you're misunderstanding.
A Fighter can burn their resources to nova three times during the adventuring day under the assumptions in the OP.
The Paladin can nova once.
When not burning resources, the Fighter generally has better at-will damage than the Paladin and will catch up on the damage discrepancy caused while the Paladin was burning its level 2+ slots.
This seems to be roughly what the classes are balanced around.


In a shorter day, with no short rests, the fighter only gets to nova once. That is less than half the amount that they are balanced around.
The Paladin not only gets to use their higher-damage, resource-spending smites as many times as they would during a much longer day, they also have to make less lower-damage at-will attacks, giving the Fighter much less opportunity to catch up.

Caliban said:

To keep my sanity, I assume a base 65% chance modified by whether your attack stat has kept up with your ASIs.

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To keep things simple, I use...
+3 = 50%
+4 = 55%
+5 = 60%

[MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION] thanks. I'm starting to grasp the math.
[MENTION=6801209]mellored[/MENTION] so the to hit percentage is only based off ASI or would archery style increase it by 10%

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Cap'n Kobold said:

I think you're misunderstanding.
A Fighter can burn their resources to nova three times during the adventuring day under the assumptions in the OP.
The Paladin can nova once.
When not burning resources, the Fighter generally has better at-will damage than the Paladin and will catch up on the damage discrepancy caused while the Paladin was burning its level 2+ slots.
This seems to be roughly what the classes are balanced around.


In a shorter day, with no short rests, the fighter only gets to nova once. That is less than half the amount that they are balanced around.
The Paladin not only gets to use their higher-damage, resource-spending smites as many times as they would during a much longer day, they also have to make less lower-damage at-will attacks, giving the Fighter much less opportunity to catch up.

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Here's the thing that I understand and that I think you are not understanding. Around character level 5 action surge and precision generally will do as much as the paladins smites even if you get no short rests. A paladin smiting with all his spells at level 5 will do 63 damage. A fighter Action Surging and precision attacking over a day with no short rests and even with just a longsword and duelist will do 13.65 with action surge (assuming 65% chance to hit) and will almost always turn 4 misses into hits yielding another 42 average damage. Altogether that's 55.65. In this scenario the Paladin is winning out by about 8-10 damage per day. However, if we change to using SS or GWM then the fighter suddenly starts winning that race by maybe about 20 damage. If you add in one short rest after that he really blows the paladins daily stuff out of the water.

Thateous said:

[MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION] thanks. I'm starting to grasp the math.
[MENTION=6801209]mellored[/MENTION] so the to hit percentage is only based off ASI or would archery style increase it by 10%

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Yes, although people often fail to grasp the significance of that. Think of it this way

If I hit on 13 numbers on the die (65%), hitting on 2 more numbers will mean I hit 15/13 times more. About a 15% gain. Now consider the case where you're using power-attack?

I'm hitting on 8 on the die (40%), so hitting on 2 more numbers will mean I hit 10/8 times more. About a 25% gain. That's what makes Archery so valuable in conjunction with Sharpshooter.

That all said - by modelling in Excel these gains will be emergent from the calculations. The way I like to do it is slightly different from [MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION]. I set up twenty rows representing each number on the die, and populate them with the average damage. With a column for each damage source. I then sum the table and divide over 20. The advantage of this is that it makes it clearer what is going on, and which attacks matter (for instance, Riposte sounds good but adds very little damage). Rows that are live only conditionally (e.g. with Precision) get a multiplier e.g. the second number made live by Precision contributes 0.9.

Additionally, I add applicability assumptions such as, Sneak Attack doesn't apply all the time. That keeps things clearer with counting stuff like bounce damage off GFB or Sentinel triggers. They obviously don't happen every turn. For example, to trigger Sentinel you must have an ally next to you (with planning, perhaps 80% of the time?) the foe must choose to attack that ally (without knowing more, 50% of the time?) and you must be able to reach that foe (90% of the time?) and have not used your reaction (90% of the time?) = about 32% of the time.

Elaborating slight further on something guachi said, a useful tool is this

1-(1-%)^t

Say we want to know our chance to get a critical hit with our three attacks, so that we get a bonus attack (for GWM). If our critical chance is 5% (natural 20).

1-(1-5%)^3

1-(.95)^3

1-.857 = the chance of not landing a critical hit in three attempts given a 5% chance to get one

= 14.3% = the chance to land a critical hit in one of those attempts (we don't know which one)

(if you're not familiar with exponents, .95^3 is the same as .95*.95*.95)

FrogReaver said:

Here's the thing that I understand and that I think you are not understanding. Around character level 5 action surge and precision generally will do as much as the paladins smites even if you get no short rests. A paladin smiting with all his spells at level 5 will do 63 damage. A fighter Action Surging and precision attacking over a day with no short rests and even with just a longsword and duelist will do 13.65 with action surge (assuming 65% chance to hit) and will almost always turn 4 misses into hits yielding another 42 average damage. Altogether that's 55.65. In this scenario the Paladin is winning out by about 8-10 damage per day. However, if we change to using SS or GWM then the fighter suddenly starts winning that race by maybe about 20 damage. If you add in one short rest after that he really blows the paladins daily stuff out of the water.

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. . . So you're agreeing with me? The presence of a longer adventuring day, with multiple short rests is going to make a big difference in the balance between some classes compared to a much shorter day with no short rests.

The actual balance point is immaterial. The question I was answering was how different assumptions of the day would affect the result.
In the example of the BM fighter vs the Paladin, as we have both said, more short rests and more total rounds of combat will increase the Fighter's damage capability compared to a long-rest class like the Paladin. I was looking at level 11 because that was closer to the middle of the range the OP requested and where the fighter jumped ahead a bit due to 3rd attack, but even at level 5 where the Fighter has almost all of their nova resources and the Paladin has much fewer it is borne out. Particularly if, as in your example, the fighter is trading out their on-demand nova capabilities in exchange for an overall higher damage total over a longer period.

Cap'n Kobold said:

. . . So you're agreeing with me? The presence of a longer adventuring day, with multiple short rests is going to make a big difference in the balance between some classes compared to a much shorter day with no short rests.

The actual balance point is immaterial. The question I was answering was how different assumptions of the day would affect the result.
In the example of the BM fighter vs the Paladin, as we have both said, more short rests and more total rounds of combat will increase the Fighter's damage capability compared to a long-rest class like the Paladin. I was looking at level 11 because that was closer to the middle of the range the OP requested and where the fighter jumped ahead a bit due to 3rd attack, but even at level 5 where the Fighter has almost all of their nova resources and the Paladin has much fewer it is borne out. Particularly if, as in your example, the fighter is trading out their on-demand nova capabilities in exchange for an overall higher damage total over a longer period.

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For the first question: I thought that would be obvious to any creature with a 3 intelligence. Of course I agree.

The actual balance point is important though. It's what's going to inform us if this general concept of less short rests lowering the fighters abilities compared to a paladin actually matters in predicting which fights better. The basic inference when someone says that less short rests favor classes like the paladin is that the paladin actually becomes better than a fighter when using no short rests. I think my numbers show that isn't really the case.

Let's look at the nova point you brought up. The fighter makes 5 attacks with CE + SS. He will hit on them nearly just as often as the paladin hits with his attack. The paladin can use polearm mastery for 3 attacks so at least that part of the comparison is the same. 9.5 damage vs 16.5 damage (2x) and 7.5 damage vs 16.5 damage (1x) and 0 damage vs 16.5 damage (2x) = 26.5 vs 82.5. Even looking at a enemy where we only have 50% chance to hit that's 13.25 dpr vs 41.25 dpr. It will take 28 damage from divine smite to break even with the fighter's nova. Using 2 level 2 divine smites gets pretty close but not quite there. The paladin won't normally be able to use more as he only has a .125 chance of landing all 3 attacks.

In other words, the fighter's nova is better at this point. In a no-short rest campaign the paladin can nova a few more times a day though.

FrogReaver said:

For the first question: I thought that would be obvious to any creature with a 3 intelligence. Of course I agree.

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That's fair enough. But someone found it non-obvious enough enough to ask, and it was them I posted to answer.

As to which particular class is in the lead with any specific set of assumptions? I'm not even going to try to get into that debate. Too many unspoken assumptions and too many people with something to prove. Even the base starting assumptions of the OP are likely to be discarded in the scrum.

The actual balance point is important though. It's what's going to inform us if this general concept of less short rests lowering the fighters abilities compared to a paladin actually matters in predicting which fights better. The basic inference when someone says that less short rests favor classes like the paladin is that the paladin actually becomes better than a fighter when using no short rests.

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If class X begins far enough below class Y, then even assumptions that favour X over Y may not be enough to bring them to parity. X getting better relative to Y does not require X to exceed Y.

In the Fighter and Paladin case, you can probably draw a graph of how a very short adventuring day will favour Fighters, then as the day extends Paladin rises more steeply than Fighter, but then falls off more steeply as well, with the longer day going back to favouring fighters. Adding in short rests will raise the fighter line, but the Paladin line will remain the same.
Of course each line will be different depending on level, feats, ability distribution, opponent type and statistics, etc. By changing assumptions the position and shape of lines can be adjusted to prove almost anything.
Hence why I don't get into the debates on which class does more than which other class: - its too easy for people to push their own personal opinions simply by picking assumptions to favour their agenda.

Let's look at the nova point you brought up. The fighter makes 5 attacks with CE + SS. He will hit on them nearly just as often as the paladin hits with his attack. The paladin can use polearm mastery for 3 attacks so at least that part of the comparison is the same. 9.5 damage vs 16.5 damage (2x) and 7.5 damage vs 16.5 damage (1x) and 0 damage vs 16.5 damage (2x) = 26.5 vs 82.5. Even looking at a enemy where we only have 50% chance to hit that's 13.25 dpr vs 41.25 dpr. It will take 28 damage from divine smite to break even with the fighter's nova. Using 2 level 2 divine smites gets pretty close but not quite there. The paladin won't normally be able to use more as he only has a .125 chance of landing all 3 attacks.

In other words, the fighter's nova is better at this point. In a no-short rest campaign the paladin can nova a few more times a day though.

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I'm sure it is. I'm presuming that the OP specifically disallowed using feats like PM, SS and CE for comparisons in this thread for a good reason. Possibly they thought that they skewed examples.