D&D 5E Optimization and the +1 Weapon Principle

Seramus said:

Given a moderate amount of both, 1 point of Nova damage is greater than 1 point of DPR.
I would definitely value 80/40 over 60/45, even if 60/45 generates more damage over a set number of rounds, because monsters are 100% (or more) effective at 1HP compared to a dead monster.

80/40 vs 60/45 takes the following turns to kill monsters: Balor 4/5, Pit Fiend 5/6, Lich 2/3, Solar 4/5, Tarrasque 14/15.

60/40 only catches up around the 14/15 turn mark. While an 'adventuring day' might have more turns of combat total, the resource savings of terminating each of those monsters earlier is quite valuable.

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When talking about damage and nova you can’t just look at one encounter on a day. The nova always appears ahead if you do that.

FrogReaver said:

When talking about damage and nova you can’t just look at one encounter on a day. The nova always appears ahead if you do that.

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The savings snowball. Defensive resources are spent on offense instead, keeping the value of Nova higher except on extremely combat heavy days.

Seramus said:

The savings snowball. Defensive resources are spent on offense instead, keeping the value of Nova higher except on extremely combat heavy days.

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You can’t exclude the encounters where the other character is doing better and make the snowball argument. At that point it goes both ways.

FrogReaver said:

I understand the distributions generated by those 2 methods and yet your example and assumptions for it are so far off from how the game is actually played that the criticism is next to worthless. By the time you can do 4d10 damage in a single attack or do 4 different 1d10 attacks you will be fighting enemies that can easily take the 4d10 hit and still live. After that point is reached neither distributions is really better or worse.

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Let me explain: When people provide examples, they're often ILLUSTRATIVE of a point. They're not intended to be simulations.

They were meant to convey an understanding (which you indicated was successful in the first two words of your statement), not to say that you'll encounter that exact situation. However, the same phenomena happens between rogues (one big sneak attack) and monks (3 or 4 attacks, but smaller damage per attack), and in countless other areas.

DPR, in general, is horribly oversimplified in isolation, but people cling to it because it allows them to exercise their junior high math skills and sound oh so smurt (Look! numbers and percentages! And the numbers and percentages both have decimal points in them! I even put 3 or 4 numbers to the right of the decimal!). Don't get me wrong - as an academic exercise, it can be fun to figure out - little puzzles can be neat - but it has no place at the game table, and doesn't really address the efficacy of the different classes correctly. It does, however, result in people making silly arguments about things being too OP, or things being 'horrible', because the DPR doesn't match up to the DPR of another build - despite the balancing factors that are not directly tied to DPR.

There are enough variables in the equation that the only reasonable calculation of whether a class is good or not is: Play it for a few months. If fun, it is good. If not, then it was not a good fit for you, but might still be good for others.

Using that measuring stick, I've played barbarians, bards, clerics, druids, fighters, monks, paladins, rangers, rogues, sorcerers, warlocks and wizards in 5E. I've played them in multi-classes and pure builds. I've played them at high levels, and low levels. I've played most of them in campaigns, all of them in multi-session adventures, and all of them in one shots. I've sampled the artificer, too, and although I have few fears about it, I have not played enough of it to include in my comments. However, for all these other classes, while there are few subclasses that are less fun for me, and a few subclasses with mechanics that do not work as I think they were intended, EVERY class (and every race for that matter) passes the mark of being FUN and EFFICIENT. Further, I've built PCs that the DM considered to be either overpowered, or just more efficient than most PCs, in EVERY class. Some were damage machines, some took all of the DMs toys away from them, some made the party near invincible, others controlled the social and exploration pillars to the extent they made it hard for the DM to entertain us without us breezing through the challenges.

You can calculate DPR all you want - but you need to recognize it is not significant evidence of a class being good, bad, broken, underpowered or anything else. It is one tiny element to consider, but only 3.06748 to 5.23642% (see how SMURT I am) of the total equation and can downright LIE TO YOU about how effective a PC is if given too much weight - which it almost always is by the people that raise it.

FrogReaver said:

You can’t exclude the encounters where the other character is doing better and make the snowball argument. At that point it goes both ways.

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Other characters doing better favors Nova, except where overkill is concerned, and increases the snowball.

Seramus said:

Other characters doing better favors Nova, except where overkill is concerned, and increases the snowball.

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Try again. Other characters was obviously a reference to whatever lower nova higher dpr character that would serve as the replacement of the higher nova character in 2 otherwise identical adventuring day scenarios. You know so we can actually compare?

FrogReaver said:

Try again. Other characters was obviously a reference to whatever lower nova higher dpr character that would serve as the replacement of the higher nova character in 2 otherwise identical adventuring day scenarios. You know so we can actually compare?

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Sorry, I misunderstood.

The other character does not do better in additional encounters until around the 16th turn of combat. If a typical adventuring day is 16-20 rounds of combat then the second character probably never catches up because of the snowball effect.

In an extremely combat heavy adventuring day (24+) the second character would indeed surpass the Nova character. But I suspect those kinds of days are not the norm; probably the BBEG fight, a hack and slash focused group, or a low damage/high healing party.

FrogReaver said:

Showing that nova damage is sometimes better isn’t something I disagree with.

You made the claim it was more important though. It’s not. It’s only more important when your dpr is sufficiently high to begin with.

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I think that it is more important though. Let me illustrate with an example:

Over a 'standard' 20-round day, let us say that we calculate the average DPR as a measure of class performance of a Paladin and a Champion Fighter, with the smites of the Paladin averaged out the same way as the improved crit range of the Champion.

I am arguing that the Paladin's smites should contribute more to the class' performance calculation, possibly with a weighing factor of 20% extra, because that damage is much more targetable and on-demand than the essentially random nature of the criticals of the Champion.

Cap'n Kobold said:

I think that it is more important though. Let me illustrate with an example:

Over a 'standard' 20-round day, let us say that we calculate the average DPR as a measure of class performance of a Paladin and a Champion Fighter, with the smites of the Paladin averaged out the same way as the improved crit range of the Champion.

I am arguing that the Paladin's smites should contribute more to the class' performance calculation, possibly with a weighing factor of 20% extra, because that damage is much more targetable and on-demand than the essentially random nature of the criticals of the Champion.

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And I’m saying we should Just list that as 2 separate metrics. DPR (average daily damage) and NOVA.

There is no need to attempt to combine them into a single metric that’s arbitrarily determined.

"If fun, it is good. "

Oh sure, but that fails to take into account the difference between whether something is mildly fun over a long period, or intensely fun right at the start of the evening.

Clearly, we need to factor Nova Fun versus the FPH (Fun Per Hour) rating.