D&D 5E Not Much Ado About Bless

[James Gasik]

That character was a fighter

Huh. Well I don't know then.

 

[Mort]

Huh. Well I don't know then.

That character was essentially just a starter character and was killed off quickly (the player and DM clearly planned it out early), so stats for him have to be taken with that in mind (or simply ignored).

 

[Flamestrike]

Here's another "actual play" (of sorts) example. A bit back @Flamestrike did a quick play by post to determine some of these very issues (I participated in the 15th level version) which sadly petered out after only a few encounters but 2 were combat encounters (with large amounts of opportunity for AoE damage).

After 2 encounters the CLEAR total damage king was the fighter (the dreaded Crossbow expert/sharpshooter combo), the sorcerer was 2nd (aided by a disintegrate of 69 HP damage against a wall of force, but I counted it as damage) and the Cleric/Paladin and Rogue followed closely behind. The Bard was hilariously far away in damage (doing less than 10% of the 3rd other best) but aided in other areas.

Total damage numbers over 2 combats (remember 15th level):
Fighter:712
Sorcerer (counting AoE on each target not just the damage roll): 415
Paladin/Cleric: 396
Rogue: 371
Bard: 25

So the sorcerer did well in damage, but did not come close to the fighter, and was basically in line with the other 2 damage dealers (and that's fully accounting for spells like disintegrate, fireball, lightning bolt etc.).

Source thread

There is a lower level version of this experiment here but I haven't had time to crunch these numbers.

In the Bards defence, he (you!) spammed a lot of non damage dealing save or suck or buff type spells and abilities (as expected because Bard). The Paladin/ Cleric also had a lot of buffs and heals and si ilar effects going, and shone with his damage bursts from time to time. The Sorcerer was more of a blaster, and the AOE's were quite effective also.

Bardic inspiration alone caused several of those attacks from the Fighter that missed, to hit.

But yeah the Fighter was your text book SS/CBE/ Archery/ BM with a +3 crossbow so high damage was his thing.

 

[Hussar]

As @FrogReaver said "total damage" is, at best, a bit misleading, that said:

Critical Role's damage is extremely well documented. Taking a look at your metric (total damage dealt) with 23 sessions tracked - the barbarian (Ashton) is at the head of the pack with 592 total damage, the BM fighter (Orym) is second with 481, and the sorcerer (Imogen) is third with 454. No idea if the cleric casts bless at all regularly. But your assertion does not hold up for their group.

Source

Now that's tracking.

I'm not sure though, are they tracking area damage as a total or just the damage done to one target. I couldn't find it. I am looking at Imogen's numbers and that very much doesn't look like they are tracking total damage for area effects.

To be perfectly honest though, I don't watch the show and I am just asking questions here. Not doubting, but, just want to know.

 

[Hussar]

Again, I'm just putting it out there that you need to look at your own games. Two combats isn't enough to make a generalization. Now, the Critical Role stuff is probably a better view, although, again, I don't know what levels they are looking at and I don't know if they are tracking total damage or not. Seeing as how the sorcerer scored zero damage in a number of sessions, I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that might be a tad of an outlier.

My point is, don't look at other people's games. Look at your own. Track the damage totals of your own groups for the next twenty or thirty rounds. It's really, REALLY eye opening.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Edit: Nevermind, that topic has sailed by the time I read it.

 

[billd91]

Now that's tracking.

I'm not sure though, are they tracking area damage as a total or just the damage done to one target. I couldn't find it. I am looking at Imogen's numbers and that very much doesn't look like they are tracking total damage for area effects.

To be perfectly honest though, I don't watch the show and I am just asking questions here. Not doubting, but, just want to know.

I’m pretty sure they do count area damage. Imogen unleashes a lightning bolt in an episode and 32 damage appears 3x on her damage track. And it looks like she only casts 2 damaging spells that episode.
I tell you, the Critter community is an intensely focused beast…

 

[Hussar]

Heh, that's true @billd91.

The point I was making here though, is that it really is something every table should do once in a while. It's so helpful to the DM rather than relying on gut feelings. Heck, I just went through this for our Artificer. My gut feeling was that her character was way out damaging other characters - 3 attacks per round, all doing force damage at 5th or 6th level? Man, what a beast.

Then I tracked the damage over 20 rounds. Pegged her character dead in the middle of the pack. I was totally wrong. It just happened she had a bit of a run of luck for a couple of sessions and that stuck in my head. But, once I tracked it over time, I realized that there wasn't a problem at my table.

Now, that all being said, the important bit there is "at my table." Looking at that Critical Role site, I noticed there were several sessions where the sorcerer did zero damage while the fighter types did - so there was combat in that session. This is something that would likely not happen at my table. It would be a very rare combat that the sorcerer did zero damage. It certainly wouldn't be a fairly regular occurrence like it is according to that site.

OTOH, there are all sorts of other factors that contribute to who does damage and how much. I play online and have for a very long time. All my groups are VTT players, which means that they aren't casuals or newbies. You don't get on Fantasy Grounds in 2013 or 2014 if you're a new player. Now? Where VTT play is so much more common? Sure, maybe. But then? No. No newbies. All of my players have been playing since at least the 90's. Which is really going to skew my results.

That's why I so highly recommend people do this for themselves before arguing that something is broken or overpowered or whatnot. Is it actually overpowered at your table? Is that Sharpshooter Fighter (for example) doing so much damage that it's out of line with everyone else? If so, then start looking for potential reasons - maybe that player is really good at power gaming, maybe the other players aren't so interested in dealing damage, maybe the other players are buffing the crap out of the fighter, thus greatly increasing his effectiveness. So on and so forth.

White room theorycrafting doesn't work. There are just too many variables. At best you might identify a potential problem. But, until you take the time to actually check if this really is a problem, you cannot begin to work on a solution. And gut feelings are so rarely right.

 

[FrogReaver]

White room theorycrafting doesn't work. There are just too many variables. At best you might identify a potential problem. But, until you take the time to actually check if this really is a problem, you cannot begin to work on a solution. And gut feelings are so rarely right.

White room theorycrafting works just fine for me. Maybe you are just no good at it. It’s a lot easier and works a lot better than playtesting a single encounter a time or too, or even monitoring damage over an adventuring day. Luck, specific encounters, etc all play a large roll there and don’t actually reveal which character if any is generally better.

As an example: From white room theory crafting we know that sufficiently sizes air’s that hit enough enemies can far out damage fighters in terms of total damage. But the question is more of how often that event arises.

 

[Mort]

Again, I'm just putting it out there that you need to look at your own games. Two combats isn't enough to make a generalization. Now, the Critical Role stuff is probably a better view, although, again, I don't know what levels they are looking at and I don't know if they are tracking total damage or not. Seeing as how the sorcerer scored zero damage in a number of sessions, I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that might be a tad of an outlier.

My point is, don't look at other people's games. Look at your own. Track the damage totals of your own groups for the next twenty or thirty rounds. It's really, REALLY eye opening.

It was actually more like 3 combats (one was a wave of creatures right after the first one). But more importantly,

The sorcerer was starting to run low on juice (specifically she was relying on her staff of power for damaging spells and that was starting to run low on charges, her own known spells were not "blasty,") while the fighter was basically as good to go as before the first combat (we would have gotten a short rest in after the 2nd encounter so even his action surge and maneuver dice would have reset). The damage differential would have, almost certainly, increased in favor of the fighter, not decreased!

That said, yes, more tracking over many encounters and multiple situations will provide more complete information.