D&D 5E Random Starter Set Teaser from Google+

[Cybit]

Until you show me the stats of a sim between a large squad of greataxe wielding dwarfs vs maul wielding dwarfs, vs wave after wave of orcs, I think you reducing the difference between 1d12 and 2d6 to 0.5 is simplistic and wrong (considering the new crit rule with is probably just double damage, thus exacerbating this difference even further).

As one of the people here who has done such a thing; I would not worry as much about the difference. While the 1d12 vs 2d6 thing sort of annoys me in that the latter does seem better in most cases (though the more iconic combinations do come closer than I expected due to...stuff.), so far it has not seemed as that big of a deal. I'm curious to see what changes they've made in the final PH and how it affects this.

Spoiler Alert: The orcs destroyed them all. Bounded accuracy makes low level enemies terrifying once you get a certain amount.

 

[DDNFan]

As one of the people here who has done such a thing; I would not worry as much about the difference. While the 1d12 vs 2d6 thing sort of annoys me in that the latter does seem better in most cases (though the more iconic combinations do come closer than I expected due to...stuff.), so far it has not seemed as that big of a deal. I'm curious to see what changes they've made in the final PH and how it affects this.

Spoiler Alert: The orcs destroyed them all. Bounded accuracy makes low level enemies terrifying once you get a certain amount.

Darned Orcs. I hate those guys!! Kill'em all!

Thanks for the reassurances Cy, you're a trooper. I'm hopeful the devs actually do know that they're doing here and make fighting styles make up the difference or make greataxes not feel so lackluster. I really don't like rolling a 1 on a d12 crit, feels bad when I could have gotten a 2 but probably closer to a six, times two, which is often plenty good enough to finish off an enemy. Crits should be big fireworks, it never sat well with me in 2nd edition when I rolled a 1 for damage on a natural 1 and the final damage was a 2. Very disappointing. Ooooh, it's such a critical, can't even kill a kobold with that attack. Don't think it's good design to allow crits to feel like whiffs, it's confusing and contradictory and frustrating.

At least in 4th edition the base crit damage was maxed, which would at least somewhat equalize the difference between a 1d12 and a 2d6 weapon.

I'm trying to remember if 2d6 was the value for greatswords from 3rd edition, or if it was just turned into that in Pathfinder. I believe Pathfinder is where that change was made, and for ill. I had a greataxe wielding barbarian in a Pathfinder game once and he upgraded to a silver greatsword the first chance he got, and never looked back. Too bad, it would have been fun to keep the axe, but I want the biggest baddest weapon, both in character and out of character, and greataxe isn't it. This just "soft encourages" everyone towards greatswords or mauls, for no good reason.

It would have been much better to have the base damage be 1d12 across the board, except for specialists, who can get either damage advantage or damage re-rolls on 1s and maybe 2s. Let the specialists get that really good and realiable damage, and random guys using those weapons don't get to deal minimum 5 damage on every hit that just by walking into a shop and buying a greatsword instead of a greataxe.

This will all be okay in the end if there is some kind of damage rerolling mechanic for low damage rolls. Maybe that's what they did, I hope so.

 

[occam]

I'm trying to remember if 2d6 was the value for greatswords from 3rd edition, or if it was just turned into that in Pathfinder. I believe Pathfinder is where that change was made, and for ill.

The base damages were the same in 3e (greataxe 1d12, greatsword 2d6), but the crits were different (greataxe 20/x3, great sword 19-20/x2), which was enough to fuzz the evaluation about which was better. The problem here is that there is no crit difference between the two (as far as we know, unless the crit rule from the latest playtest is still in effect), so the evaluation about superiority is crystal-clear.

 

[DDNFan]

The base damages were the same in 3e (greataxe 1d12, greatsword 2d6), but the crits were different (greataxe 20/x3, great sword 19-20/x2), which was enough to fuzz the evaluation about which was better. The problem here is that there is no crit difference between the two (as far as we know, unless the crit rule from the latest playtest is still in effect), so the evaluation about superiority is crystal-clear.

The only real unanswered question is how the great weapon fighting style will alter it. If they went with a straight up Brutal 1 or 2, then the greatsword comes out even more ahead. Brutal 1 would bring the greatsword from 7 to 8 average damage, but the greataxe from 6.5 to 7. Brutal 2 makes greatsword 9, but greataxe 7.5. As you can see, greatsword is pulling ahead. If they didn't notice this, I would have to say they are totally incompetent game designers. If they did, they would have had to say something like "you can reroll a single occurrence of a natural 1 on any damage roll" to keep the weapons from diverging even faster.

Even that seems like a poor game design choice though, since it's more complex than it needs to be, and would have been much better and simpler to just make them all do 1d12 and then brutal X fighting style benefits them all equally.

What's the stats on advantage for damage rolls, for 1d12 vs 2d6?

 

[the Jester]

I'm trying to remember if 2d6 was the value for greatswords from 3rd edition, or if it was just turned into that in Pathfinder.

It was 2d6/19-20 in 3e, while a greataxe was 1d12/x3.

 

[DDNFan]

It was 2d6/19-20 in 3e, while a greataxe was 1d12/x3.

Seems like it was still superior back then too. I guess greatswords are a sacred cow, and must always come out ahead? Someone must really hate axes down at Wizards.

 

[Cybit]

Seems like it was still superior back then too. I guess greatswords are a sacred cow, and must always come out ahead? Someone must really hate axes down at Wizards.

Yeah; it depends how Brutal exactly works. If it comes down straight brutal 2 (IE, reroll all 1s and 2s on damage dice), then that's ridiculous for any 2d6 weapon. If it's "reroll once" or "reroll only one die", then it becomes a little better for the axe. Or if it's "if you roll a 1 or below on your damage dice, you may reroll", which would mean that a greatsword couldn't benefit at all from it (since it's minimum damage is 2).

That said, I wish they'd just have a greataxe add an additional d12 for critical hits. Makes the weapon swingier but super nasty when you land a crit. Or, perhaps go with weapon group specific feats; have an axe master and a sword master, etc. Polearm Master is pretty nifty, so I'd like some way of differentiating weapons at some point. I can understand not at release, but at least in a martial add-on or something.

 

[Agamon]

Seems like it was still superior back then too. I guess greatswords are a sacred cow, and must always come out ahead? Someone must really hate axes down at Wizards.

Seems to me that the sword has always been the mainstay in D&D, probably coming from wargames where units were armed more often than not with swords, stemming form the fact that the sword was most common weapon for a light infantry soldier. Also, all the cool magic weapons in fiction and myth are swords.

So yeah, someone uses an axe because they are good at using axes specifially. Otherwise, defaulting to the sword makes sense.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Another house fix to go along with allowing axes to do better damage vs. objects (I wouldn't give mauls the same benefit against most objects) would be to add a bardiche to the weapon list, which would be an axe that uses greatsword stats and isn't any better than a greatsword at damaging objects.In

In other words, refluff a greatsword into an axe and call it a bardiche. Make it a double-bladed one for that barbarian.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I actually don't care that much about the greataxe thing anymore. The fact that it's slightly more likely to kill a monster faster is enough to make it reasonable.

The quarterstaff thing is really bugging me, though. It feels like a typo more than anything else. I mean, that's clearly supposed to be 1d4/1d6, right? There's going to be errata for that, right?

Can someone at Origins please ask this?