D&D 5E Fighting Style Balance: Offense vs. Defense

[FrogReaver]

Let me see another take when he is at 25 percent against the fighter how good is he against the wizard he is likely to be facing? if he ignores the fighter and goes to them like monsters usually did in every edition til 4e brought in defender mechanics.

I'd say 50% chance to hit the wizard. That's about 1.5 rounds in this 2d6+3 damage attack scenario.

 

[Garthanos]

Shield of faith prevents 10% of all incoming damage on a single target. If it was 10% of all incoming damage prevented on the whole party it would be pretty good. But as it stands enemies can react to it and attack a different party member - which is what makes most defensive buffs soo weak.

Like why the Leadership feat had to be made pretty strong. I remember actually mentioning this during the Playtest of Next if one wanted a Leader who used temp hit points pre-cast it had to be very big because it lacked surgical value.

 

[Garthanos]

I'd say 50% chance to hit the wizard.

That is a huge difference hmmm... you got me thinking.

 

[FrogReaver]

If a monster is already virtually unable to do anything offensively and you can push it all the way by defenses against them it seems an extreme case an atypical one.

But you are missing an important concept - things get worse for the offensively character if the party is fighting a single large enemy because him doing a single extra attack at that time per round has a good chance to not even bring the enemy down a round faster.

That is - to be able to down an enemy a round faster you need to be able to cause an additional 50% to 100% of the parties per round damage by the end of the fight with your resource abilities.

Essentially the more allies attacking the same enemy the less impact you adding more damage to your own attacks is going to have.

 

[Stoutstien]

Shield of faith prevents 10% of all incoming damage on a single target. If it was 10% of all incoming damage prevented on the whole party it would be pretty good. But as it stands enemies can react to it and attack a different party member - which is what makes most defensive buffs soo weak.

Healing doesn't have that issue as it's purely reactionary. So take a healing word and compare 5.5 healing on average to a target that was already injured. That's actually alot of effective hp added as a character's AC and resistance applies to it as well. The downside is that healing word doesn't scale much which at later levels makes it a pretty bad cast.

yea SoF really has to combined with other features to work like sentinel or other ways to draw fire, like AG barbs which i was who i looked at for this. EHP of healing spells are practically doubled for a raging barb but after lv 5 the healing just can't seem to keep up with the exception of preventing rage from being loss.

Like why the Leadership feat had to be made pretty strong. I remember actually mentioning this during the Playtest of Next if one wanted a Leader who used temp hit points pre-cast it had to be very big because it lacked surgical value.

HP scales so quickly in 5E so it is really hard to provide features that grant % of that total without getting silly. i think this is why a lot of the newer THP features are smaller but easier to recharge like artillerist cannon or glamour bards. shepherd druids can lay down a decent chunk if the also grab inspiring leader.

 

[Garthanos]

HP scales so quickly in 5E so it is really hard to provide features that grant % of that total without getting silly.

Is that kind of the 1 per level or 2 per level mechanic.

 

[Garthanos]

i think this is why a lot of the newer THP features are smaller but easier to recharge like artillerist cannon or glamour bards. shepherd druids can lay down a decent chunk if the also grab inspiring leader.

Not familiar with those actualy

 

[Garthanos]

Essentially the more allies attacking the same enemy the less impact you adding more damage to your own attacks is going to have.

The defensive benefits of an attack do go down if you do not have a group of adversaries indeed (but I think that is just narrowing the margin till the question is are your defensive things keeping an ally in the fight one round when they wouldn't have - oh and yes the resource part ) ... although building an enemy who has ahem hydra type enemy with attack capabilities which are fully disabled individually. For instance if you can knock out the jewel in the beasts forehead you don't get the death ray.

 

[Stoutstien]

Not familiar with those actualy

Shepherd druid and glamour bard are from xanathar's guide and artillerist artificer is from eberron: rising from last war. Glamour and artillerist both have a way to hand out a small amount of THP as bonus action repeatedly and shepherd druid can give out LV +5 THP once a short rest as a bonus action to a large area.

 

[FrogReaver]

Dup post.