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D&D 5E Have the designers lost interest in short rests?

Right. IIRC my Transmuter was doing almost Battlemaster level damage in the earlier levels. The fighters did pull ahead some later. At high levels there are definitely a lot of "gimp the wizard" type monsters. Of course that is IMHO a "code smell" (bad smelling design indicator) that should clue the developer that they have other issues to fix. As I've said before, the problem is they are handcuffed if they are forbidden to touch the genre assumptions.

No. Not in the least.
As long as some monsters have great AC and DR to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing, and others have varied resistances, it means, that overspecialized groups sometimes have a harder time, so diversity in builts are encouraged.
 

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tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Epic
. At high levels there are definitely a lot of "gimp the wizard" type monsters. Of course that is IMHO a "code smell" (bad smelling design indicator) that should clue the developer that they have other issues to fix. As I've said before, the problem is they are handcuffed if they are forbidden to touch the genre assumptions.
The example of magic resist cold resist fore immune nonmagic weapon attack resist creatre I pulled was cr four, hardly "high level" & far from an aberration. Those "gimp the fighter monsters" are almost completely missing from 5e & out of the few borderline "maybe if you squint" ones nearly all of them take full damage once the "fighter" has a magic weapon of any kind with few exceptions
1605373736527.png
and it was so traumatizing that the statblock itself literally declares that killing it
1605373855693.png

do give some examples of these "gimp the fighter" monsters that justify wotc designing monsters like 5e casters are still operating on 3.5 caster type footing. It's even better if you can give them in context of how wotc uses them in HC adventures given the near whiteroom thought experiment level "no reasonable gm would design like that" descent into avernus caster hostility martial friendly HC both the examples I posted came from.

@UngeheuerLich there are virtually no monsters that "have great AC and DR to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing" because nearly all of them cancel the b/p/s resist with the words "nonmagical".
 

Quartz

Hero
Reckless Attack is just advantage on attack rolls. It does not permit you to do any more damage in a round than you could (potentially) have done otherwise, with the sole exception that crits are slightly more likely (the equivalent of 4.75% of your weapon's damage dice, on average, for whatever rounds you use it).

You're looking at it from the wrong perspective: over the long term it increases your average damage because you hit more often and therefore do damage more times than you would if you were trying to hit without Advantage.
 


The example of magic resist cold resist fore immune nonmagic weapon attack resist creatre I pulled was cr four, hardly "high level" & far from an aberration. Those "gimp the fighter monsters" are almost completely missing from 5e & out of the few borderline "maybe if you squint" ones nearly all of them take full damage once the "fighter" has a magic weapon of any kind with few exceptions
and it was so traumatizing that the statblock itself literally declares that killing it

do give some examples of these "gimp the fighter" monsters that justify wotc designing monsters like 5e casters are still operating on 3.5 caster type footing. It's even better if you can give them in context of how wotc uses them in HC adventures given the near whiteroom thought experiment level "no reasonable gm would design like that" descent into avernus caster hostility martial friendly HC both the examples I posted came from.

@UngeheuerLich there are virtually no monsters that "have great AC and DR to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing" because nearly all of them cancel the b/p/s resist with the words "nonmagical".

Yes, I know. But at least good AC on some critters. I would love some more resistances against weapon types.
 

Yes, I know. But at least good AC on some critters. I would love some more resistances against weapon types.
Meh, this is one point upon which I and 4e-vintage Mike Mearls agree, this is a cheap way to do it. 4e HAS resistance and immunity (though AFAIK it doesn't ever use "resistant to non-magical" though it COULD). Anyway, it doesn't do much with resistance at all, except for demons and a very few select creatures (devils I think are one). The 4e style of resistance is pretty tame anyway, it is just DR. Only a few non-corporeal creatures have a half damage from weapons thing, and ALL of those have half the normal hit points for their level, which means EFFECTIVELY they are taking double damage from non-weapon attacks.
Instead the 'puzzle monster' space consists more of things like catastrophic dragons, which become much harder to fight when you hit them with certain types of damage, and/or simply tactically disfavor certain tactics (like standing next to them).
This is a rather more sophisticated form of the concept, which a lot of us appreciated.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
You're looking at it from the wrong perspective: over the long term it increases your average damage because you hit more often and therefore do damage more times than you would if you were trying to hit without Advantage.
Okay, but again, making two attack rolls is always better than making one attack roll with advantage. Like, we agree that this is mathematically correct, yes?

A single normal attack roll has X% chance of success to deal N base damage. X will vary based on the stats of the attacker and the target. N mostly depends on the attacker's stats, but may be affected by something like Resistance. Since accuracy is something you want factored in, we have to account for approximate hit rate, which (based on much more in-depth number crunching done by others) is generally in the 60%-65% range, varying up or down only about ten percentage points in either direction in most cases. And since we're talking about Barbarians and Champions--two things that love crits--we're going to be looking at things that want big singular damage dice (due to dumb rules regarding 2d6 weapons vs 1d12 weapons).

Given the above, I hope you agree it is a reasonable assumption that we're looking at a 1d12 weapon such as a greataxe, wielded by a character which has reasonably high (16 initial, later maxed) base Strength, no early feats (none before 12th level anyway), and is generally race-agnostic (e.g. I'm not going to make special calculations for Half-Orc Barbarian vs Halfling Champion--if both the Champ and the Barb are the same race, there should be no net effect).

Since the Berserker is generally agreed to be Not Very Good, we'll assume a Totem Warrior. Only one of the Totem Warrior features directly affects damage or accuracy: the 14-level Wolf and Elk totems permit knocking things prone, and the Elk totem permits some extra damage if a save is failed. However, since I presume we are already assuming Barbarians use Reckless Attack 24/7, this won't actually affect the calculations. To start us off, I'll do calculations at 5th and 11th level--the points where new damage features come online. I will assume no magic weapons for these characters, though if we go to high level I will assume a +2 weapon. (It's worth noting, not having a magic weapon is very favorable to the Barbarian, as increased base damage and increased base accuracy are both more useful for "two ordinary attacks" than they are for "one attack with Advantage.")

At 5th level: Champion has one 3-round use of Action Surge per short rest. Barbarian has 3 rages per day. Assuming the expected "about two combats per rest" pattern (which is in keeping with the 6-8 medium encounters guideline), each character gets ~1 combat where their special bonus doesn't apply, and ~1 combat where it does (Barb may get unlucky, but we'll assume the pattern holds). Obviously, if we tilt things so far that there are only 2 combats a day and either one SR or none then things get wonky, but at that point classes like Paladin and full-casters have such an overwhelming advantage it's not really worth doing the calculations to begin with.

Champion's damage per hit: 1d12+3 = 10.33 on average (due to GWF)
Champion's damage per crit: 2d12+3 = 17.33 on average
Barbarian's damage per hit: 1d12+3 = 9.5 on average, 11.5 when raging
Barbarian's damage per crit: 2d12+3 = 16 on average, 18 when raging

With a 65% chance to hit, the Fighter hits 55% of the time and crits 10% of the time. The Barbarian, if always Reckless, hits 78% of the time and crits 9.75% of the time. If we assume a four-round combat, so the Barbarian does get to benefit from at least 1 round of Rage that the Champ isn't Action Surging, the Champion makes a total of 14 attack rolls, while the Barbarian makes a total of 8 attack rolls with Advantage.

Champ's average damage (w/3 rounds AS): 14*(.55*10.33+.1*17.33) = 103.803
Barbarian's average damage (w/4 rounds Rage): 8*(.78*11.5+.0975*18) = 85.8

Champion is ahead. But perhaps that second fight, without Rage but with Reckless Attack, will make up the difference?
Champ's avg dmg (4 rounds, non-AS): 8*(.55*10.33+.1*17.33) =59.316
Barb's avg dmg (4 rounds, non-Rage): 8*(.78*9.5+.0975*16) = 71.76
Turns out...not quite? The gap between the first two is 18.003 (exactly), and between the second two is 12.444 (exactly). That's about a difference of one attack. So the Champion has definitely pulled ahead in this pair of combats.

I'll do more math work later if you're interested (the 11th level stuff is more complicated because number of crit dice changes), but...I'm pretty sure the gap will just get bigger as Proficiency bonus goes up. Again, just for simplicity, two actual attacks is almost always better than one attack with advantage, because of static damage modifiers (Strength score, in this case, and a possible contribution from a magic +N weapon).
 

tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Epic
Okay, but again, making two attack rolls is always better than making one attack roll with advantage. Like, we agree that this is mathematically correct, yes?

A single normal attack roll has X% chance of success to deal N base damage. X will vary based on the stats of the attacker and the target. N mostly depends on the attacker's stats, but may be affected by something like Resistance. Since accuracy is something you want factored in, we have to account for approximate hit rate, which (based on much more in-depth number crunching done by others) is generally in the 60%-65% range, varying up or down only about ten percentage points in either direction in most cases. And since we're talking about Barbarians and Champions--two things that love crits--we're going to be looking at things that want big singular damage dice (due to dumb rules regarding 2d6 weapons vs 1d12 weapons).

Given the above, I hope you agree it is a reasonable assumption that we're looking at a 1d12 weapon such as a greataxe, wielded by a character which has reasonably high (16 initial, later maxed) base Strength, no early feats (none before 12th level anyway), and is generally race-agnostic (e.g. I'm not going to make special calculations for Half-Orc Barbarian vs Halfling Champion--if both the Champ and the Barb are the same race, there should be no net effect).

Since the Berserker is generally agreed to be Not Very Good, we'll assume a Totem Warrior. Only one of the Totem Warrior features directly affects damage or accuracy: the 14-level Wolf and Elk totems permit knocking things prone, and the Elk totem permits some extra damage if a save is failed. However, since I presume we are already assuming Barbarians use Reckless Attack 24/7, this won't actually affect the calculations. To start us off, I'll do calculations at 5th and 11th level--the points where new damage features come online. I will assume no magic weapons for these characters, though if we go to high level I will assume a +2 weapon. (It's worth noting, not having a magic weapon is very favorable to the Barbarian, as increased base damage and increased base accuracy are both more useful for "two ordinary attacks" than they are for "one attack with Advantage.")

At 5th level: Champion has one 3-round use of Action Surge per short rest. Barbarian has 3 rages per day. Assuming the expected "about two combats per rest" pattern (which is in keeping with the 6-8 medium encounters guideline), each character gets ~1 combat where their special bonus doesn't apply, and ~1 combat where it does (Barb may get unlucky, but we'll assume the pattern holds). Obviously, if we tilt things so far that there are only 2 combats a day and either one SR or none then things get wonky, but at that point classes like Paladin and full-casters have such an overwhelming advantage it's not really worth doing the calculations to begin with.

Champion's damage per hit: 1d12+3 = 10.33 on average (due to GWF)
Champion's damage per crit: 2d12+3 = 17.33 on average
Barbarian's damage per hit: 1d12+3 = 9.5 on average, 11.5 when raging
Barbarian's damage per crit: 2d12+3 = 16 on average, 18 when raging

With a 65% chance to hit, the Fighter hits 55% of the time and crits 10% of the time. The Barbarian, if always Reckless, hits 78% of the time and crits 9.75% of the time. If we assume a four-round combat, so the Barbarian does get to benefit from at least 1 round of Rage that the Champ isn't Action Surging, the Champion makes a total of 14 attack rolls, while the Barbarian makes a total of 8 attack rolls with Advantage.

Champ's average damage (w/3 rounds AS): 14*(.55*10.33+.1*17.33) = 103.803
Barbarian's average damage (w/4 rounds Rage): 8*(.78*11.5+.0975*18) = 85.8

Champion is ahead. But perhaps that second fight, without Rage but with Reckless Attack, will make up the difference?
Champ's avg dmg (4 rounds, non-AS): 8*(.55*10.33+.1*17.33) =59.316
Barb's avg dmg (4 rounds, non-Rage): 8*(.78*9.5+.0975*16) = 71.76
Turns out...not quite? The gap between the first two is 18.003 (exactly), and between the second two is 12.444 (exactly). That's about a difference of one attack. So the Champion has definitely pulled ahead in this pair of combats.

I'll do more math work later if you're interested (the 11th level stuff is more complicated because number of crit dice changes), but...I'm pretty sure the gap will just get bigger as Proficiency bonus goes up. Again, just for simplicity, two actual attacks is almost always better than one attack with advantage, because of static damage modifiers (Strength score, in this case, and a possible contribution from a magic +N weapon).
1605428552910.png

Nothing in recess says you cant roll one die and decide if the second die from reckless is needed. It's nothing but good with the risks mitigated to zero unless you roll bad on that first die & at that point the benefir is likely even greater since your only using it if you roll low or what you already know/suspect is too low to hit
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
View attachment 128541
Nothing in recess says you cant roll one die and decide if the second die from reckless is needed. It's nothing but good with the risks mitigated to zero unless you roll bad on that first die & at that point the benefir is likely even greater since your only using it if you roll low or what you already know/suspect is too low to hit
I don't know about you, but I would certainly expect the Barbarian to make the choice before rolling the dice. You don't get to decide AFTER you rolled "oh, no, I wanted advantage on that roll." I would treat literally all sources of expendable advantage (such as Inspiration) in the exact same way. Unless a feature explicitly says "you can choose to apply this after you see the roll, but before the results are determined," or "when you miss with an attack"/"when you make an attack roll and don't like the result" or the like, I see no reason why we SHOULD let the player elect to apply Advantage after the fact. (Note that the Paladin's Divine Smite, or the Warlock Eldritch Smite invocation, explicitly say "when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack"/"when you hit a creature with your pact weapon," meaning they explicitly say you DON'T call it out before you make the attack roll, but SPECIFICALLY that the ability is triggered by hitting.)
 
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tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Epic
I don't know about you, but I would certainly expect the Barbarian to make the choice before rolling the dice. You don't get to decide AFTER you rolled "oh, no, I wanted advantage on that roll." I would treat literally all sources of expendable advantage (such as Inspiration) in the exact same way. Unless a feature explicitly says "you can choose to apply this after you see the roll, but before the results are determined," or "when you miss with an attack"/"when you make an attack roll and don't like the result" or the like, I see no reason why we SHOULD let the player elect to apply Advantage after the fact. (Note that the Paladin's Divine Smite, or the Warlock Eldritch Smite invocation, explicitly say "when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack"/"when you hit a creature with your pact weapon," meaning they explicitly say you DON'T call it out before you make the attack roll, but SPECIFICALLY that the ability is triggered by hitting.)
in running AL games twice a week precovid I eventually gave up on trying to force that because I was literally the only gm (of like 6 regulars) who was doing it that way. The logic given was that unlike something like peerless skill that says that reckless attack is the barbarian dropping form & defense to make sure it hits even if it was iffy.

I think it's stupid, but both ways fall under "when you make your first attack on a turn" while only one would fit "before you make your first attack on a turn"
 

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