I used the same parameters I always do (and treantmonk does) in calculating practical expected damage.
Many of your assumptions about damage in the post were terrible: a few examples:
1. Assuming I was referencing a single 20 round combat as opposed to an adventuring day.
2. Assuming the Wizard didn't have +Int from ASI's when mine did.
etc.
The only parameters I "changed" were what you said at the start, "no combat feats", which to me also means not using ASI for boosting your stats. If you're going to limit the fighter to that, you need to also limit the Wizard to that as well.
The whole point of my post was to establish that fighter's needed to use some ASI's to match the wizard in combat - so it was important that the fighter not use any ASI's on combat until that was established, while the wizard is free to use them because maxing out INT is a typical wizard thing that helps both in combat and out of combat.
Standard to hit ratios, and standard chance to fail their saves. Factoring in Arcane Recovery is moot if you're assuming continuous 20 round combat. If it's 20 rounds of combat over a day that is different, but that isn't the impression I got from your post.
Then you are looking for me to be an unfair, biased and partisan idiot when I am not - please don't be that way.
Even if you factor the most efficient Arcane Recover option for this scenario (2x 3rd level spells), that only puts the Wizard's expected damage up to 400.95. That is STILL 21 points short of the Champion (most boring/vanilla option) over the 20 rounds.
Use the same chance to hit and chance to fail rates I did. There's nothing about treantmonk's assumptions that are any better than mine.
I did factor in Action Surge, you obviously didn't actually read my post.
Then why did you complain about me factoring in arcane recovery? Both are short rest abilities afterall...
My final conclusion in the scenario YOU posited, single target damage, is that the Fighter does more damage than a wizard over the same duration without combat feats taken or ASI spent on boositng stats.
You listed the fighter doing more over 20 rounds. But then at the end you said that wizards do more damage because the timespan we should be looking at is shorter than 20 rounds - a point I agree with - and one that when accounted for puts the wizard at doing more damage than the fighter, just as you rightfully noted.
In a burst situation, it FEELs like the wizard does more damage, but over an adventuring day, the fighter is actually dealing more single target damage than the wizard given the parameters that you set in your example.
Oh, I've not even talked about the benefits of damage now being greater than damage later - or the benefits of multi target capabilities - or the benefits of control spells.
So in fact, my point was that I DON"T AGREE with your premise. The fighter is good at their job already as the math proves regardless of what we FEEL and only gets better if you optimize them.
Sounds like you do. Wizards over some reasonable number of rounds of combat per day (under 20 rounds) do more single target damage than fighters - that's something you agreed with.
You said to "do the math":
I did the math and it doesn't support your position.
Before someone brings up Scorching Ray. I did the math on that too, even with Arcane Recovery it's objectively worse than fireball. It maxes out at 344.825 expected damage over 20 rounds with AR and firebolt rounding out the balance of 20 rounds.
Yea, that's why I don't bring up scorching ray.
Even if they did the same amount of damage (they don't), how would that "objectively prove" the fighter is worse than the wizard. It would "objectively prove" that the most vanilla fighter is the same at combat for single target damage over 20 rounds as a Wizard who burned all of their 3rd, 4th, 5th, & 6th (including Arcane Recovered ones) on Fireball spells. Not that they're worse at it.
If the wizard can do the same amount of single target damage, but also can control and can do strong multi target damage then objectively he is better at combat. More options than in lieu of straight damage means that if the wizard isn't doing less damage that he will be better at combat - as he can pick the option that best helps in the given situation.
There is:
- Fighter (champion) = newbie-friendly combat class (melee or ranged).
- Warlock (pretty much any patron,, Tome Boon) = newbie-friendly spellcasting class.
- Rogue (Thief) = newbie-friendly skill monkey
Maybe you are missing the point that I am making - the champion fighter needs at least some ASI's to go toward combat to actually be better at combat than a wizard. Once that's acknowledged then we can have a meaningful discussion about how many ASI's he needs to go toward combat to be considered the wizards equal - which then tells us how many ASI's he can spend on out of combat stuff. Of course the ultimate point of this exercise is that to balance the champion fighter with the wizard in combat pushes back the out of combat stuff to even higher levels - deligitmizing out of combat feats as a meaningful counter point to fighter's having sufficient out of combat options.
