D&D 5E Classes, and the structure of DPR

[FrogReaver]

That's very true. As a DM I assume intelligent or cunning creatures - with experience of combat and whose lives depend on it - will circumvent the heavily armoured defensive types. Another example of the difficulties of designing effective defensive features.

I don't think it's difficult. It just means the whole team has to invest into boosting their own personal defense before it really pays off. It's fairly easy to invest in personal defense though. Casters can multiclass to a class with heavy armor or medium armor and shields (plenty of choices for that).

Martials can invest into Barbarian Rage or defensive spells.

Sure, but - to my taste - these broad, always-on defenses are the least interesting.

Maybe. I'm not sure that activated defenses are particularly more interesting to me or even powerful enough to take. Look at feats like defensive duelist or the battlemaster parry maneuver or the monks deflect arrows. All are activated options that you rarely see picked or used.

Were you inclined, you might investigate via probability distribution functions the efficacy of blur in conjunction with decent armor. Yes, it uses a resource. It frees up more resources, however.

I think this is one area where people focus too much on relative impact instead of absolute.

As an example, take a character getting attacked 6 times in a combat with a 50% chance to be hit. On average he will take 3 hits. Blur would reduce it so that he takes 1.5 hits. That a 1.5 hit difference.

Then look at an example of a character getting attacked 6 times in combat with a 30% chance to be hit. On average he will take 1.8 hits. Blur would reduce it so that he takes .54 hits. That's a 1.26 hit difference.

Point being, blur isn't actually preventing alot of hits in most combats.

A true Scotsman is a noble gentleman.

True Scotsman, meet Whiteroom Strawman

The two strongest fighting styles are archery and defense. Dueling is third. However, you will consistently see the damage overrated.

IMO.

Archery is the best for archers.
Dueling is the best for sword and shield.
Defense is the best for Two Handed Weapons.

It's a tie between dueling and defense for combat with one handed weapon and a free hand.

 

[FrogReaver]

But your analysis is exactly my point, GWM NOT used properly /optimaly, isn't all that great. But your not using it optimally.

Change the fact pattern:

1. You said tier 2 so run it against AC 15 but with 18 or, more likely, 20 strength.

2. Assume the GWM utilizes advantage to its fullest. Say the DM allows flanking, or assume a vengeance paladin or (since D&D is a team game) assume a team member cast something like Fairie Fire on the bad guys. The GWM will get more out of advantage.

3. Forget the great sword and use a halberd and Polearm Master. Even if the fighter has an 18 strength vs. 20 strength, he'll be ahead in DPR, but regardless he'll have 20 STR by 8th level (still tier 2) and will be really ahead when properly utilizing advantage. Remember, he'll be getting 3 attacks and sometimes even 4 a round, and that's tier 2.

I've tried out the GWM, PAM fighter (with blind fighting style), he's an absolute beast.

Were you using precision attack manuever?

 

[Mort]

Were you using precision attack manuever?

Had it, but because advantage was so prevalent (I stopped allowing the flanking variant rule when I DM and this reinforced that!) needed it like once in the 4 hour session I was using the character. But yes, that also skews the math heavily in favor of GWM.

 

[Mort]

Achery is the best for archers.
Dueling is the best for sword and shield.
Defense is the best for Two Handed Weapons.

It's a tie between dueling and defense for combat with one handed weapon and a free hand.

If you allow Tasha's, I think Blind Fighting over takes Defense for two handed fighters but otherwise, yeah.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you allow Tasha's, I think Blind Fighting over takes Defense for two handed fighters but otherwise, yeah.

I think it can be in the right party. I don't think it necessarily always is. But if I was going into a campaign totally blind (no pun intended) i'd rather have blind fighting as the reward for having it when it will work is too great compared to the risk of giving up 1 AC.

 

[Mort]

I think it can be in the right party. I don't think it necessarily always is. But if I was going into a campaign totally blind (no pun intended) i'd rather have blind fighting as the reward for having it when it will work is too great compared to the risk of giving up 1 AC.

1 AC is good and all, but Blind Fighting even gets around magical darkness, something too many parties struggle with. Guess I've just seen too many DMs who love invisible, mirror imaged, displaced opponents to not recommend it.

 

[ECMO3]

But your analysis is exactly my point, GWM NOT used properly /optimaly, isn't all that great. But your not using it optimally.

Change the fact pattern:

1. You said tier 2 so run it against AC 15 but with 18 or, more likely, 20 strength.

Tier 2 means generally one ASI, this means you took GWM instead of taking an ASI and if you are using point buy you have a 16STR.

Yes you can run the numbers with a V Human or Custom with higher numbers or do it as a fighter than gets an ASI at 6th level, but the result is hardly going to change substantially

2. Assume the GWM utilizes advantage to its fullest. Say the DM allows flanking, or assume a vengeance paladin or (since D&D is a team game) assume a team member cast something like Fairie Fire on the bad guys. The GWM will get more out of advantage.

I think most DMs do not use flanking. The other things sure.

Even with advantage it is hardly as OP as you imply. Assuming you did play a V human and you have both an 20 and GWM at 6th level and assuming you get advantage on 50% of your attacks (and I think that is a high bar) your average is

13 DPA with GWM and 10 DPA if you took a 20 strength instead.

So that is it 3 point of damage per attack if you both have an 20 strength and advantage half the time against a 15AC opponent in tier 2.

Important to this discussion though the other character could have taken a different feat, including others that could enhance damage. For example, something like Hex that would give +3.5 on every attack for an hour (assuming you made concentration).

Finally damage rolled is not the same as damage dealt, you will roll on average 3 more damage against such foes, but it will come in much larger chunks and when you roll 25 damage for an attack against a foe with 5hps left, that 20 is going into the calculations, while it is not really damage you are doing.

3. Forget the great sword and use a halberd and Polearm Master. Even if the fighter has an 18 strength vs. 20 strength, he'll be ahead in DPR, but regardless he'll have 20 STR by 8th level (still tier 2) and will be really ahead when properly utilizing advantage. Remember, he'll be getting 3 attacks and sometimes even 4 a round, and that's tier 2.

Now you have used 2 feats and your DPR is even lower, and you can only do this with a human or custom in point buy.

Moreover this assumes you will be using your reaction to make an attack. If you win initiative you either have to stay back (reducing your DPR) or you won't get a free reaction attack on an enemy. More often than not you will be making 2 in attacks a round. You will get 3 on occasion and sometimes you will get 4 like you said. Finally you are not using flanking if you are doing this because you are witing for enemies to come to you, vice positioning yourself and flanking them. To flank you need an ally to be in contact first, that means the enemy is very unlikely to move into your reach.

However, you are losing 1.5DPR every single attack going with a 1d10 weapon over a 2d6 weapon. So now you have completely eliminated any numerical advantage that GWM would have given you. So if you make 3 attacks on your turn you are down 8 from where you would have been with a greatsword or maul and made 3 attacks with GWM. If you compare it to making 2 GWM attacks vs 3 PAM attacks (i.e. no crits).

I've tried out the GWM, PAM fighter (with blind fighting style), he's an absolute beast.

Sure it is fun and it can be powerful, but it is hardly OP. It also sucks when at 8th level you have a slew of +1 axes, shortswords and maces and then find a long sword of wounding while you are still walking around swinging a non-magical silvered Halberd.

 

[ECMO3]

The two strongest fighting styles are archery and defense. Dueling is third. However, you will consistently see the damage overrated.

Archery is strong, the others are not that great IME. I have never tried thrown weapon fighting, that does look encouraging. Blind fighting is situational although really good when you need it.

When I play a ranger I take Druidic Warrior, and usually get guidance and magic stone, the later to use on enemies you need magic to hit. At lower levels I find the lack of magic or silver weapons to be very debilitating and this is true well into tier 2 in many campaigns. We had a were rat nearly wipe out our party of 3rd level players (my monk/wizard did actually die). We had no magic weapons and no silver weapons. The others eventually won the day with spells, but one of our charracters was making attacks for hex damage only. Since then I have been a big fan of magic stone and you can replace it every level so if you do get a magic bow you can trade it for shillaleagh or if you get a magic Rapier and Bow you can trade it for druidcraft or mending.

If I am not playing a Ranger I get superior technique. The maneuvers I like to get are disarming strike, bait and switch or trip attack, probably in that order. In raw damage these are not as good as archery, or probably dueling, but I find them more useful and with the once a SR recharge you can use it in about half of the battles you find yourself in.

 

[Ancalagon]

If you believe in “hot” and “cold” dice this might be a meaningful concern, but over time your average damage will approach the expected value, which makes consistently using GWM or SS when they improve your expected damage and not using it when it won’t an overall positive value proposition.

Ah, so we want to talk statistics now?

You failed to grasp my point, and perhaps I wasn't clear, so I will attempt again You are 100% correct that over time, the average will be reached. However, this is over a campaign, with probably hundreds of rolls.

However, a battle is short - 4 rounds is not unusual. And even though the dice is random and "fair", a random distribution is NOT homogenous. There will be strings of good, or bad rolls, just by chance. So in one battle the barbarian GWM is rolling well and is destroying everything. But in the next, they might have a streak of bad roll and do almost nothing. And that could mean a lost battle!

edit: I see someone else answered already, but I hope this is still helpful.

 

[Oofta]

I always take analysis of "best" with a grain of salt, but it's been difficult to really judge because who really tracks in the detail you would need? Well ... I've been playing Solasta a bit lately, and one of the things it has is custom made adventures. One aspect of this is that at the end it tells you statistics for your PC.

Funny thing is that according to analysis by various sites such as this one, paladins in the game are far better than fighters. On the page I linked paladins rank at least an "A" based on subclass while fighters rank a "C". So I put it to the test. Ran through a mod (the Slave Lord series) that did levels 1-4 then 4-6 and 6-10 as separate units. Surprise, surprise, my two weapon fighter had around 40% better damage after every unit. I made sure the paladin used all their smites and kept the ability scores, equipment, etc. relatively close.

So I'm not saying this has anything to do with real world D&D, after all it's a video game that doesn't have all the options since it's based on the public rules with custom classes. That, and there's really no reason not to short rest after every fight, so the fighter had their second wind and action surge for every combat.

What I am saying is that as far as I can tell based on my analysis is that the fighter in terms of the role that they played with my build was significantly better and given the limited options I don't see why I would rank the paladin as better then the fighter. The paladin has a few options that might be handy, but not anything that would balance it out.

Oh, and the battle cleric (ranked S+ IIRC on the web site) was in 3rd place, the paladin was last. The wizard was always first by a little bit because enemies showed up in fireball formation frequently and they gave me a wand of fireballs way too early.

So ... unless you play several sessions tracking every point of damage dealt and taken and you happen to be facing the same rest restrictions and monsters I happen to facing ... yeah. Interesting analysis, just not sure how much it matters.