D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[FrogReaver]

If the GM is choosing antagonists, and roleplay objectives, and the environment, where are the players exercising agency?

Everywhere else

 

[Tony Vargas]

If the GM is choosing antagonists, and roleplay objectives, and the environment, where are the players exercising agency?

Intra-party conflict?

 

[pemerton]

Everywhere else

It's not clear what's left!

 

[NotAYakk]

This isn't just a narrative problem, it's a physical IRL time problem. By level 7, nearly every PC has multiple things to do on every turn. Resolving 5 PCs and 5 Mobs turns can easily take 7 to 10 minutes. So completing even 18 rounds of combat is going to require 2 to 3 hours of IRL time combat. And that's if we're doing things fast.

But things can go really slow. Just look at a Monk burning some ki points.

1. 2 Attacks, each with a Stunning Strike
2. Flurry of blows for two bonus attacks and Way of the Open Hand forcing saves

Resolving such a Monk round requires up to 8 sequential rolls of the d20 (attack/save, attack/save, ...). What's worse, each roll depends on the roll before it. You can't roll your second attack until you know if the Stun worked. Your second Flurry attack may be improved if the target fails, etc.

There's just no way to resolve such a round in an IRL minute. So completing 18 rounds of combat requires hours of combat and sucks up entire sessions.

This is the "damage per second" problem that bogged down high level 4e combat. Your damage per round could keep up or diverge, but quite often this came at the sacrifice of damage per second - table time it took to resolve something.

Being brutal about damage per second when designing features and the combat engine is important, and I think 5e does run into issues with it.

But some of your examples aren't great. You can roll a mass of attack rolls; so long as you know the order, you can apply the stun and retroactively add advantage.

Another trick that 4e tried (and failed at) was to avoid multi-tap attacks, and if you do do multi-tap attacks make them mechanically simple. 4e failed at this because multi-tap attacks ended up doing much more damage than single big attacks, but at least they tried.

---

If I took the "damage per second must remain high" rule and applied it to 5e, we'd do away with extra attack and replace it with more damage dice on a hit.

---

Combat Mastery:
Starting at level 5, at the start of your turn roll 1d20. This roll can be used to replace a weapon attack roll before the start of your next turn (you can do this after you know your attack missed). In addition, your weapon attacks deal two sets of weapon damage dice. In addition, if your attack reduces a creature to 0 HP, you can make 1 additional weapon attack this turn (if you aren't incapacitated).

---

I think this generates a similar level of damage per second to 5e "extra attack", but I tried to speed it up a bit. I avoided up-front decisions.

We roll 1d20 "mastery" die at the start of your turn. If you roll a 20, you know you are getting a crit on demand, which is fun. There is no decision here.

We then make an attack. This attack is not quite twice as powerful as a baseline 5e two attack routine, but because it is one attack the resolution is faster.

If it does drop someone, you get a free cleave. I put this here because it (a) doesn't happen often except against mooks, and (b) keeps needless decisions out of the primary execution path. I could pick "you can split your attack into 2 targets for 1 set of damage dice each" or something, but that would require an on the fly tactical decision each turn, and that slows play.

The fighter Improved Combat Mastery, that does 3 dice of weapon damage, gets 2 Mastery dice, and can make up to 2 additional attacks if you kill targets, also fits right in at level 11.

As a side benefit, opportunity attacks don't suck (your mastery die applies to them, and you get extra damage dice), and two weapon fighting also doesn't suck (as it gets extra dice of damage as well) unlike baseline D&D.

We'd have to tweak the Paladin's Improved Divine Smite (I'd probably make it +2d8 radiant on a hit once/turn) to account for 1 attack/turn, and the same with the Barbarian (I'd swap Rage Damage for Rage Damage Die to start, then pack more oomph into their crit abilities).

---

Applying DPS reasoning to spellcasters, one thing I've played with is making powerful spells take more than 1 turn to cast. Like, instead of fireball being 8d6, it is 12d6 but requires 2 turns to cast, with a cantrip before starting casting and one after you finish casting it. (If you can cast a cantrip and start casting a spell on the same turn, spells like blade ward become interesting!)

The narrative impact of powerful spells gets spread out over multiple turns (keeping their damage per round under control), while the damage per second is kept up by making the spells impact larger. And wizards only spend 1 turn in 2 picking the ideal spell to cast.

---

Anyhow, I digress.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is the "damage per second" problem

DPS is only a thing in CRPGs/MMOs with real time combat. In turn-based resolution, it's meaningless.
Whether you cycle turns quickly or slowly, you're still taking turns, and, if the game is at all fair, each getting about the same play time.
The only other way speeding through combat might be desirable is if you don't want combat, in which case, have fewer combats and more social/interaction encounters. I suspect, most tables are not united in how much they enjoy combat.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Everywhere else

They get to pick the names of the character's in the DM's novel.

 

[overgeeked]

This is the "damage per second" problem that bogged down high level 4e combat. Your damage per round could keep up or diverge, but quite often this came at the sacrifice of damage per second - table time it took to resolve something.

Being brutal about damage per second when designing features and the combat engine is important, and I think 5e does run into issues with it.

But some of your examples aren't great. You can roll a mass of attack rolls; so long as you know the order, you can apply the stun and retroactively add advantage.

Another trick that 4e tried (and failed at) was to avoid multi-tap attacks, and if you do do multi-tap attacks make them mechanically simple. 4e failed at this because multi-tap attacks ended up doing much more damage than single big attacks, but at least they tried.

---

If I took the "damage per second must remain high" rule and applied it to 5e, we'd do away with extra attack and replace it with more damage dice on a hit.

---

Combat Mastery:
Starting at level 5, at the start of your turn roll 1d20. This roll can be used to replace a weapon attack roll before the start of your next turn (you can do this after you know your attack missed). In addition, your weapon attacks deal two sets of weapon damage dice. In addition, if your attack reduces a creature to 0 HP, you can make 1 additional weapon attack this turn (if you aren't incapacitated).

---

I think this generates a similar level of damage per second to 5e "extra attack", but I tried to speed it up a bit. I avoided up-front decisions.

We roll 1d20 "mastery" die at the start of your turn. If you roll a 20, you know you are getting a crit on demand, which is fun. There is no decision here.

We then make an attack. This attack is not quite twice as powerful as a baseline 5e two attack routine, but because it is one attack the resolution is faster.

If it does drop someone, you get a free cleave. I put this here because it (a) doesn't happen often except against mooks, and (b) keeps needless decisions out of the primary execution path. I could pick "you can split your attack into 2 targets for 1 set of damage dice each" or something, but that would require an on the fly tactical decision each turn, and that slows play.

The fighter Improved Combat Mastery, that does 3 dice of weapon damage, gets 2 Mastery dice, and can make up to 2 additional attacks if you kill targets, also fits right in at level 11.

As a side benefit, opportunity attacks don't suck (your mastery die applies to them, and you get extra damage dice), and two weapon fighting also doesn't suck (as it gets extra dice of damage as well) unlike baseline D&D.

We'd have to tweak the Paladin's Improved Divine Smite (I'd probably make it +2d8 radiant on a hit once/turn) to account for 1 attack/turn, and the same with the Barbarian (I'd swap Rage Damage for Rage Damage Die to start, then pack more oomph into their crit abilities).

---

Applying DPS reasoning to spellcasters, one thing I've played with is making powerful spells take more than 1 turn to cast. Like, instead of fireball being 8d6, it is 12d6 but requires 2 turns to cast, with a cantrip before starting casting and one after you finish casting it. (If you can cast a cantrip and start casting a spell on the same turn, spells like blade ward become interesting!)

The narrative impact of powerful spells gets spread out over multiple turns (keeping their damage per round under control), while the damage per second is kept up by making the spells impact larger. And wizards only spend 1 turn in 2 picking the ideal spell to cast.

---

Anyhow, I digress.

You could make it even quicker by saying you get regular damage on a miss, double damage on a hit, and triple damage on a crit.

Or each of those extra attacks is advantage and depending on how many hit you multiply the damage by that amount. Roll a bunch of dice at once then do some simple math.

Cleave as an extra rolled attack slows things back down. Make cleave an always on ability that automatically deals any excess damage (anything after the target reaches zero HP) spills over to a nearby target.

 

[NotAYakk]

DPS is only a thing in CRPGs/MMOs with real time combat.

No, Damage per Second is damage per real life second at the table. This exists outside of CRPG and MMOs.

This is highly meaningful, as the experience of table top role playing games is actual people at actual tables spending actual time.

You'll note I go on to talk about it not being only damage, but the impact of actions and the resolution time.

I described something in detail. Please do me the courtesy of not dismissing it immediately after you quote me.

If you want to discuss CRPG/MMO DPS, do so (it seems off-topic for this thread, so maybe somewhere else), but it isn't relevant in a response to my use of DPS, which is aimed explicitly and directly at the problem of the time it takes to resolve damage (hence the end of a fight) at a table top game table played in real life.

A mechanic that generates high damage per round can easily also generate low damage per second. An example is a single attack that does 50 damage as 1 action, vs 10 attacks as 1 action each of which does 5 damage - the average damage per round is identical, but resolving the 10 attacks will take every table longer (and some MUCH longer).

[SNIP]

 

[Tony Vargas]

A mechanic that generates high damage per round can easily also generate low damage per second. An example is a single attack that does 50 damage as 1 action, vs 10 attacks as 1 action each of which does 5 damage - the average damage per round is identical, but resolving the 10 attacks will take every table longer (and some MUCH longer).

Though I suppose its inevitable that some spell in some edition has been that baroque, I can't really think of a lot of D&D mechanics that accomplish something simple like just doing damage to one target, slowing the game down that much. It's more interesting mechanics that do more than just damage.

I described something in detail. Please do me the courtesy of not dismissing it

Can't go over everything but, these bits stood out:

If I took the "damage per second must remain high" rule and applied it to 5e, we'd do away with extra attack and replace it with more damage dice on a hit.

I see. A player rolling to hit twice in one round slows things down. What about a spell that forces saves for half damage from multiple targets?

Applying DPS reasoning to spellcasters, one thing I've played with is making powerful spells take more than 1 turn to cast. Like, instead of fireball being 8d6, it is 12d6 but requires 2 turns to cast, with a cantrip before starting casting and one after you finish casting it. (If you can cast a cantrip and start casting a spell on the same turn, spells like blade ward become interesting!)

So, make an attack roll on one round, on the next round force multiple saves and make another attack roll - will speed things up?

I'm not sure that, if you, say, did both of those, it'd have a big impact on the turn cycle. Maybe if you had more characters just making an attack per round than you did casters?

No, Damage per Second is damage per real life second at the table. This exists outside of CRPG and MMOs.
This is highly meaningful, as the experience of table top role playing games is actual people at actual tables spending actual time.

Different tables can resolve turns much faster or slower than others, and different individuals have vastly different perceptions of time and tolerance for 'delay' (ie, getting the action back to the only turn that matters, theirs.) Of course, if a game is balanced, players are comparably skilled, and play time is fairly distributed, then, in oder to get back to your turn quickly, you turn will aslo be shorter. That's the best 'fast combat' can hope to accomplish - cycling very short turns. Whether you get 12 turns that each resolve in 30 sec or 3 turns of 2 min each out of an hour of play, you're still not taking your turn for 54 min of that hour.

(I suppose you'd consider that the 'same DPS' if we're covering once combat in one hour, either way... But, wouldn't that make the ideal/fastest iteration of D&D 3.x 'rocket tag,' tho?)

I've often likened RPGs to entertainment in which the players are both audience and writers. Ideally a good TTRPG would engage the entire able through each turn - when taking their turns, players would acting as writer/direct/actor, and when not, as audience. I haven't seen many RPGs come anywhere near that, some good FATE tables seem to do it, D&D is certainly bad at it, but 4e not quite so bad as most other editions, it keeps most characters about comparably engaging to play, and entertaining to watch being played - and it has built in incentives on the purely game side, to pay attention between your turns - even so, I'd hesitate to even rate it 'fair,' for many of the same reasons...

One way D&D exacerbates the issue is that, in most editions, anyway, it's only turn-based, player-by-player, in combat. Out of combat, it's generally unstructured. (Yes, in 1e, there was the idea of exploration turns and a 'caller.') And that's another benefit of fast combat, if less of the game is devoted to the turn structure where there's at least a possibility of play time being equitably divided, then that leaves more time for unstructured play, in which a player with the right personality and skill can claim more of said play time. That might or might not be a problem for everyone else at the table, and facilitating that sort of thing might be reasonable if there were more roles than DM & players, if there were a third, 'main character' role for the exceptional player who entertains the other players with his brilliance, skill, acting, and initiative, while they indulge in the audience aspect, for instance. Not that I've ever seen an RPG structured that way, but there certainy seem to be players out there aching for it.

 

[Clint_L]

The criticism is valid, though: it's super confusing to take a term that is well understood (DPS) in its normal context and try to redefine it in a very different way for a somewhat related context. When discussing how long turns take at a TTRPG no one really talks about damage per second, we talk about issues such as complexity or stacked effects that take extra time to resolve, some of which may involve more damage happening, but most of which don't. So it's not a useful way to repurpose the well-known term DPS and will inevitably lead to confusion.

Obviously, you can keep using it if you want - you do you - but using a well-known term in an obviously confusing way and then getting literally snippy about people expressing confusion doesn't seem productive.

Edit: DPS/DPR (as normally defined) is easily understandable and measurable. Your abstract concept of TTRPG DPS is neither.