Search results

Nope; at least not if you measure impact in terms of the absolute number of monster turns saved. You could measure it as a proportion of the baseline number of monster turns, in which case the AoE that hits all of the monsters scales the number of monster turns by a factor of P/K, whereas single...

Ah, so in the first derivation, K had represented the ratio between a monster's hitpoints and the AoE damage per target, whereas in the second it became the ratio between a monster's hitpoints and the party's damage. Let's use the second definition, and redo the first formula, also changing M...

Using the same notation, if the party does D damage per round and there are M monsters with KD hit points each, then we expect the combat to last about MK rounds. A monster who dies in round R gets R turns. As a reference point, if all monsters are worn down evenly and all die in the last round...

Yes. Though that would apply to either single target or multi-target damage. And interact with initiative bonuses and so on. Probably not worth trying to model.

Yeah, but then the P is indexed to 0.5 in the original formula, so if P is 1 you end up with an extra factor of 2.

So I guess we could say, roughly, that if the rest of the party's damage is D per round, then an AoE that does PD damage to each of M creatures (changing M here to be the actual number instead of half) should save the party around P(M^2)/2 monster turns.

Should be roughly proportional in the share of damage, if you ignore the remainder bit. So 40% of party damage should be 4/5 as many attacks as when it's doing 50%. For 4 creatures, that's something like 3.2-4.2 monster turns. For 6 creatures, 7.2-8.2.

So, against 2 monsters, an AoE that does damage to each creature equal half the rest of the party's DPR (e.g., a fireball in a scenario where the rest of the party puts out a combined 42 DPR) should prevent 1-2 monster turns. Against 4 monsters, it should prevent 4-5 monster turns. Against 6...

Keep in mind that my M is half the number of monsters, so 4 monsters is just the M=2 case.

To remove the impact of overkill, let's use an even number of monsters -- say 2M -- leaving the party damage at 2N and the AoE per target at N, and set the number of HP per monster to KN. That way, with no contribution from the caster, the party will take MK rounds to go through the monsters'...

Attack bonus is in the table though, so it's there, just separated.

Haha, that's an amazing retort. "This thing means A!" "No, it means B!" "Maybe to people who care! But to those of us who are apathetic, it means A!" :-)

Oh, sorry, yes, that's right. I was comparing the single target damage in the first scenario to the single target damage in the second scenario: both wind up with N overkill damage. But yeah, the AoE eliminates the overkill in the second scenario, but not the first.

Only if it does the killing damage. But that's the best case for it. If we are assuming it is used in the first round to soften up a bunch of enemies and kill none, then it has no overkill.

I don't think that's the difference. In both the 4N/enemy case and the 3N/enemy case, we wound up with one enemy having N HP left in the last round -- that is, there was N overkill damage in both cases.

It also seems to me that these examples may be being overly generous to single target damage, since 100% spillover is the absolute best case. Essentially we're treating single target damage as though it can optimally become multi-target damage when it is advantageous. To some extent, single...

Of course, if we change the above example so that the enemies only had 3N HP, then: With nothing: 3 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 10 turns With AoE (N per target): 3 + 2 + 1 = 6 turns With 3N Single Target Damage in Round 1: 3 + 2 + 1 = 6 turns So the AoE was as efficient as single target damage...

In this example, the AoE did 3N damage in total, and knocked off two enemy turns, compared to that character doing nothing. A useful comparison would be to look at the number of enemy turns if the caster instead were able to contribute 3N damage to a single target (but only once). In round 1...

DPR is the average, factoring in chance to hit/save. The average damage roll is 28, so you average 28 per failed save and 14 per success. If saves succeed half the time the average damage is 21. The simplification is to ignore the variability, which against specific monsters does matter (if...

I think the assumption is a 50% save chance