D&D General What does the mundane high level fighter look like? [+]

[W'rkncacnter]

You're not including action surge or feats like GWM.

because neither of those are "typical" - action surge is a pretty limited resource (as opposed to, say, spell slots), and feats are optional.

but sure, for argument's sake let's assume we have GWM. first, the sub-level 20 holy avenger fighter (which itself is absolutely not typical, but i am still a merciful god) - still no expanded crit range, +8 to hit since we're using GWM, so we hit on a 3 or higher. average of 66 damage for 2 attacks - hey, we killed one! and we got a bonus action from GWM to throw at another ogre, and our third attack, so...hey! we've finally killed more then one ogre in a round!...now what if we change out the holy avenger for a +3 sword? well, on average, 3 attacks gets us 65 damage - enough to kill the first ogre and let us belt one out at the second, which...can't kill it, no matter what we do.

so even with GWM, before level 20, in order to kill more then one ogre in a round (without action surge - this is a typical round, remember?), we need a literal holy avenger. hm. ok. what about at level 20? no holy avenger, just a +3? well, first off, we have +9 to hit, which means we need a 2 to hit (which means our accuracy is basically at its peak for this specific enemy) - 3 attacks gets us to 72 damage (lower then that is only 48), which means we can throw out our bonus action GWM attack. 2 more attacks is 48 damage on average - VERY CLOSE to killing the second, but not quite.

Also depends on what "high level" means.

well, i was taking one of 2 assumptions - the first was a level 13-16 fighter with 20 strength and a holy avenger greatsword (later just a +3 greatsword to demonstrate how much work the 2d10 radiant was doing), and the second was a level 20 fighter with 20 strength and a +3 greatsword. really, i'd say i was being kind.

Take a level 15 fighter, 20 strength, +1 greatsword.

yeah, my point exactly. i am a merciful god.

They're +11 to hit, doing around 31 points of damage per round ignoring all the other things I should be adding based on subclass.

13 damage per hit for 36 damage per round - there's technically a small chance of nat-1ing but eh.

I'll probably still hit 80% of the time even with a -5 to get +10 damage so it only takes 2 hits because the ogre has 59 HP.

with GWM, with 3 attacks, with a +6 to hit against AC 11, you're dealing 56 damage per round.

the ogre (probably) lives, bud.

I have 3 attacks and an action surge, so 6 attacks for round 1.

not a typical round, i see. but sure, let's double those attacks...that gets you to 112 damage. but wait! 3 attacks doesn't kill the first ogre, so we need the fourth to kill it, which means the second is actually only taking 37 damage on average.

Yep, I likely take out 3 ogres in 1 round.

on average, you don't even take out 2.

Perhaps I could do one more if I used some battle master maneuvers or had pole arm master and used a halberd instead of a greatsword for that bonus action attack.

battlemaster maneuvers wouldn't be viable round-to-round...but sure, let's take a shot with polearm master. why not? +1 halberd, let's go.

replacing 2d6 with 1d10 brings our initial 3 attacks to 52 damage. definitely not an improvement. the polearm master attack bumps this to 67 damage - so hey, our first ogre is dead!...and we're out of attacks. action surge? well, now we do 52 damage to the second ogre...and it's still alive. but he's way more screwed up then our second ogre from earlier, so yeah, definitely an improvement.

edit: also, if anyone wants to know where my numbers are coming from, i'm just plugging them into this dpr calculator and giving out the results.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm not sure it is terribly illustrative to get stuck on the ogres, as one should more broadly consider how the fighter damage output scales with the monster HP across the levels.

 

[Scribe]

Agreed. I prefer something akin to TSRs cleave rules for fighters, where you just keep chopping into the little guys so long as you keep dropping 'em.

The thing is, ogres are big hulking brutes, and I see no reason why that should change. So I'm fine with no level of fighter slaughtering them by the score in a single round with a sword.

Sword?! I need to be able to do it with a Head Kick!

 

[Oofta]

This was your scenario..not mine. You said that a Fighter can hack a bunch of ogres to bits. You haven't shown your work

I used monster hp.
I used..your..estimated damage.
I included action surge.

If you have something specific I should have added, I'd love for you to provide it. To get close to your assertion, you need to account for an additional 6-7 points of damage per attack that can be applied to every attack.

I have better things to do, I am done with this conversation.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I have better things to do, I am done with this conversation.

Have a nice evening.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I'm not sure it is terribly illustrative to get stuck on the ogres, as one should more broadly consider how the fighter damage output scales with the monster HP across the levels.

Agreed. This would be an interesting graph.

 

[pemerton]

I recall numerous discussions back in the day debating whether or not, when confronted with minions, a PC in 4e should be able to tell. Why would this even be a question if the difference was anything other than a narrative conceit?

Huh?

The debate has the same basic structure as the one, among AD&D or 3E players, of whether a PC can tell that the person they just met is 0-level or a commoner or a 10th level fighter or whatever. It's a debate about whether a difference in power is a perceivable phenomenon.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm not sure it is terribly illustrative to get stuck on the ogres, as one should more broadly consider how the fighter damage output scales with the monster HP across the levels.

The point is higher level villains in most media have high level henchmen to deal with higher level heroes.

They send ninjas and hitmen after John Wick and Wick still slaughters them 2 at a time.

But 5e assumes higher level villains use low level henchmen to deal with higher level heroes. Just more of them.

That doesn't match fiction, nonfiction, nor real life.

The ogre is not even high level. It's a low Tier 2 threat. and it requires a max level Tier 4 fighter to exhaust all their resources and have a Monty Hall DM to even cleave through 2 of them.

 

[hawkeyefan]

GM is constrained in a sense that they are required to stat the fiction in consistent manner. It is more WYSIWYG and predictable to the players.

Why is that a good thing? And how is that different than having an ogre champion and a regular old ogre? Differentiation in monster stat blocks already exists and isn't ever really cited as a problem.

I don't think it entirely goes away. The GM still has to decide every time what version of the monster to use. And it will lead to situations like @Oofta described, high level characters helping low level town guards to fight medium power monsters that should be minions to the characters but normal to the guards. I think this is genuinely more convoluted that just having objective stats and being able to throw them into whatever combination and not having to decide to whom the relative stats should be scaled.

The GM always has to decide what monsters to use. It's no different in that regard.

The high level PCs helping low level town guards need not be a problem either, depending on how you handle it. If the GM is actually rolling attacks for all those extra characters, then they can just track damage as normal for any minion not killed by a PC. I usually just narrate those amounts of extra characters myself. I don't want the players to sit there and watch as I play D&D by myself.

No, they don't all have same stats. I modify monster stats often to represent different individuals. But these differences are diegetic. Everyone would agree that the pit-fighting champion Mord is a particularly tough ogre that can punch unusually hard and fast with his meaty fists.

This kind of justification is no more or less diegetic than the minion rules.

This ogre is a greater threat, so his stats are changed to reflect that. These ogres are less of a threat, so their stats are changed to reflect that.

I don't understand what you mean here.

You talked about predictability being desirable, so I was pointing out that this can all be player-facing, so predictability is a non-issue.

It indeed is somewhat restrictive, which I consider in this case to be a feature, not a bug. It lends rigour to the mechanical description of the world and keeps rules and the fictional reality aligned. So it is not the tail wagging the dog, it is the tail being attached to the dog in the first place.

It is the mechanics controlling the world rather than serving the world.

I can see how someone might want to narratively put ogres as one-shots because it fits their vision. But I can see the opposite too. For example, the biggest problem I have with a 1 hp ogre is because what it means in the context of everything else going on in the game world. If an ogre has 1 hp, then it can be killed by a housecat rather easily (insert MU joke here).

For me, and it sounds like a lot of others, creatures and monsters don't live in a vacuum where only whatever is part of a particular encounter matters. Everything is related to everything else. That's what we mean by living world.

I mean, the housecat wouldn't be able to kill the ogre in my living world. Because I don't feel the need to be a slave to the mechanics.

I place the world above the mechanics.

Yes, if that is the sort of effect one wants, something like this is way more elegant way of doing it, and avoids all the issues in the mixed party and consistent world representation departments. It also is clearly codified and not reliant on the GM's whims.

No offense to @Quickleaf because it's a perfectly fine suggestion, but to say it's more elegant than simply lowering enemy HP to 1? Come on now.

I can’t speak for everyone naturally, but I suspect a whole lot of people view mechanics in context with everything else. If a player realized it only takes 1 pt of damage to kill an ogre, they are going to wonder why. Why don’t the commoners just kill it?

Because they're not powerful heroes? Gee whiz.

Except you can do this easily in 5E as well. Take the lowly skeleton, CR 1/4 with 13 HP and vulnerability to bludgeoning damage. Put them in plate armor, give them necromantically cursed weapons so they hit a bit more often and do a bit more damage and you're off to the races. Same monster, just different equipment. Perhaps throw in some other supernatural or spell buff.

Certainly seems easier than simply changing the HP!

I don't think that's supportable, there's a ton of ways this sort of ability could be modeled, and just the one specific way that clearly runs afoul of some player's aesthetic concerns.

Well, no... it would run afoul of my concerns if it took a lot of work. It takes almost no work to remove a monster from play when they get hit.

The easiest thing I can think of is adding some default cleave ability, and a phantom bonus to damage that only triggers the death by massive damage rules, but does not cause HP depletion....which I just now realize I have accidentally stolen wholesale from Fantasy Craft, where that's the keen weapon trait.

There are many ways it could be modeled, yes. They range all over in the complexity department. I tend to look at the easiest one to implement at the table to be the most desirable.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So I kinda have feeling people don't quite appreciate how the CR works (sure, rather badly, but that's not what I mean this time.) CR 2 might not seem like a big deal to higher level characters, but people are wanting the fighter to dispatch like six ogres with ease. Six CR 2 monsters is a CR 10 encounter, so a fair fight for four level ten characters and still a deadly encounter for a lone level 15 character. It is not a trivial challenge, so being able to solo that is rather big deal. It is same than soloing a young red dragon. And ultimately this is group game, so characters will rarely be fighting against anything alone, so I'm not sure how necessary it is for the a lone fighter to be able to super quickly kill ogres.