Flights of Fancy
Candy is King
But doesn't garner as much information.
Yes, it would lessen the percentage increase, but the 0.5225 average damage remains constant for each difference in +1 ability increase.
D&D (2024) Using general Feats when your ability is already 20
- Thread starter ECMO3
- Start date
Horwath
Legend
true, but how do you do all AC?
do you count frequency of every AC value vs every other.
do you fight zombies or soldiers in plate+shield
+1 attack will carry a lot vs AC20, not so much vs AC7
if it's against AC 20, then you go from 30% to 35% hit rate,
that is about 28% more damage
and who cares about AC 7 monsters.
they are filler punching bags.
true,
but we are talking about relative increase, not absolute.
Flights of Fancy
Candy is King
Yes, I determine the average damage for each number needed to hit from 1 to 20, so I know all possible ACs are covered as well.
I do not weigh the average for the frequency of each AC occuring since I have no way to definitively do this, it would be an estimation at best.
But by doing all ACs I know the high ACs average out against the low's, which is why I also report only the average increase over all ACs.
Because they represent the impact of the +1 modifier difference for their AC just like an AC 18 would. shrug
No, I am talking about both, because both have value. Relative increase is misleading at times, and often used by people who want to show "greater impact" than actual impact--which is the purpose for absolute value.
Horwath
Legend
You hit them with a "2", even 1 would be enough for most builds, but we have crit failure for some reason...
it's not a representative number.
honesty, I would never include AC lower than 10 as any significant enemy.
calculation needs to be simplified,
average hit rate 60%
vs heavy armored opponent 45%
vs non armored opponent 75%
for each level that is 7 values of AC to play with, more than enough
at 1st level, hit bonus is +5 as default, that means that you play with AC of 11 to 17, AC 14 on average.
at 9th level you can count on "20" in primary, with +4 proficiency.
so you should play with AC 15-21, averaging out at 18.
Flights of Fancy
Candy is King
Which results in "to hit numbers" from 8 to 17 giving variable attacks from +4 to +7.
I expanded it to include AC 10 to 21, since AC 10-15 are extremely common, especially in low-level play and even later on.
This increases the average damage increase to about 0.9 points over all damage types per +1 modifier increase. Certainly more significant, but not enough in my opinion a player would notice it in daily play.
I agree and I feel that is exactly what is happening with respect to my experiences and the opinions I stated regarding them on this thread.
They are being dismissed because it is not the "overwhelming tendency" and "insanely widespread evidence" shows something else while offering no actual evidence.
I am not dismissing anyone's experiences, and I clearly said what other people claim obviously does happen.
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Flights of Fancy
Candy is King
I'll chime in on the discussion of super-high ability scores and a PC stealing most of the spotlight:
It doesn't happen much in my experience. Having one or even two 20s will give a PC an edge, no doubt, but the game is too complex and too swingy with the d20 for that to account for any sort of long running, consistantly felt edge, with the SOLE exception possibly being a CON 20.
CON 20 can make things feel very off-balance with other PCs have CONs 14 or 12. In one game with had a Barbarian with STR and CON 20... so great offense numbers of course but also stellar durability! Or other martial, a Paladin, had STR 16 and CHA 20 IIRC, so was decent at offense (great when he nova'd!) and had a great AC due to plate armor, but his durability with CON 14 just couldn't match the Barbarian. Consequently, he felt like the proverbal glass-cannon to the player.
Meanwhile, the DM could never get the barbarian down! To make the issue worse, he even took the Tough feat so by the end of the game (level 12), he had something like 180 hp and good AC around 19 IIRC. Meanwhile, the Paladin had about 100 hp or a bit more. So, even though he had a better AC (22 I think?), he just couldn't tank enough to front-line like the Barbarian--especially when you add in the damage resistance due to rage!
Overall, their abilities were about the same average, because the barbarian was low-average in most of the stuff, but two 20's; while the Paladin had generally higher scores, but just the CHA 20 at the end.
So, despite the barbarian having STR 20 and the paladin STR 16, offensively they were well matched due to smites. But that second 20 in CON just made the barbarian impossible to bring down.
Other party members felt it, too, because creatures would down them more easily, while the barbarian was still up in the end.
CON is the only real score where I've seen this sort of issue come up, personally.
It doesn't happen much in my experience. Having one or even two 20s will give a PC an edge, no doubt, but the game is too complex and too swingy with the d20 for that to account for any sort of long running, consistantly felt edge, with the SOLE exception possibly being a CON 20.
CON 20 can make things feel very off-balance with other PCs have CONs 14 or 12. In one game with had a Barbarian with STR and CON 20... so great offense numbers of course but also stellar durability! Or other martial, a Paladin, had STR 16 and CHA 20 IIRC, so was decent at offense (great when he nova'd!) and had a great AC due to plate armor, but his durability with CON 14 just couldn't match the Barbarian. Consequently, he felt like the proverbal glass-cannon to the player.
Meanwhile, the DM could never get the barbarian down! To make the issue worse, he even took the Tough feat so by the end of the game (level 12), he had something like 180 hp and good AC around 19 IIRC. Meanwhile, the Paladin had about 100 hp or a bit more. So, even though he had a better AC (22 I think?), he just couldn't tank enough to front-line like the Barbarian--especially when you add in the damage resistance due to rage!
Overall, their abilities were about the same average, because the barbarian was low-average in most of the stuff, but two 20's; while the Paladin had generally higher scores, but just the CHA 20 at the end.
So, despite the barbarian having STR 20 and the paladin STR 16, offensively they were well matched due to smites. But that second 20 in CON just made the barbarian impossible to bring down.
Other party members felt it, too, because creatures would down them more easily, while the barbarian was still up in the end.
CON is the only real score where I've seen this sort of issue come up, personally.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Looking at the highest relative increase is dangerous. If you increase your hit chance from 5% to 10%, you have a relatice increase between 50% (only damage dice) and 100% (only static damage or being a champion).
That means you go from sucking to sucking a bit less.
If you have 4 attacks or you are a paladin or rogue that can crit fish a bit, you might still be doing ok but it is usually not very reliable.
On the other hand if you go from 90% to hit to 95% hit chance, you just reduced your chance to miss a crucial attack by half. Sometimes hitting reliable is that imortant.
Remember, a fight is often only a few rounds, which means not more than 10 attacks rolls more often than not.
So if you increased your chance to hit by 5%, you won't notice any damage increase in more than half the fights due to hitting more often. Meanwhile a +1 to damage is always noticable.
Same for +1 to initiative. You have a 1 in 20 chance to go before a given opponent due to that increased initiative score. So in the important fight, since you only roll initiative once, chance that it matters is low. Even if you compare dex 20 vs dex 10, a +5 difference means you only have a 25% chance that you go before a given opponent.
This translates roughly into "flip a coin twice, if you get 2 tails in a row, you get an extra turn to act" against a single opponent.
We should just start another 5e math thread :'D
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Our best armored character (cleric level 4, AC 22, up to 24 using a reaction) just stole the spotlight by being hit with a 19, 14 damage (with a d10 weapon) and a crit for 23 damage.
So yeah, although she will probably won't have that happen to her in the long run, she now has a run of going down first in the last 3 fights (the two fights before with 2 less AC) , while the fighter with AC 16 can tank a lot more damage due to higher Con, Tough feat and second wind.
Who has the higher effective hp? Probably the cleric. But 2024 monsters (and my own creations) tend to hit hard. So the fighter has a bigger chance to not go down in a given fight, because she is just never one hitted, so there is plenty time for a bit of self healing.
People tend to look too much on averages and don't see the variance/standard deviation.
Same goes for weapon damage: 2d6 or 1d12? People are concerned about 0.5 more average damage. What is moree important is the chance to down a foe with X hp.
2d6 is the more reliable weapon. You tend to do between 5 and 9 damage 2/3 of the time. 11 or more only 1/12 of the time. But 3 or less also only 1/12 of the time. Never a 1.
While witha great axe your chance to do 3 or less is 1/4 and 11 or more is 1/6. If you don't have static bonuses, the chance to only do 2 or 3 damages on a crit or 2 hits with a great axe is probably too hurtful. If you however have a big static bonus (great weapon mastery and str and rage bonuses), you will get along and compensated by having an increased chance of doing close to max damage. With savage attacker (which is not a bad feat for a great axe wielder when your damage bonus is still low) your chance to do terrible damage is severely reduced.
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