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Monster encounter powers I'm getting close to getting all of the basic combat elements in, at least for simple melee one-on-ones. In this round, I added the soldier's encounter power. According to DMG p.184, monsters should have one encounter or recharge power with a limited damage expression...

I'm still adding some of the basics to the simulation. For example, up until now, Second Wind didn't apply a +2 bonus to defenses. Now it does. (This also forced me to put in some rudimentary support for conditions, which I'm sure I'll flesh out as more powers are added.) What is that one turn...

The source code I still haven't gotten around to figuring out github, but in the meantime, here's the latest source code. To run this, you'll need a copy of Ruby (Google it). Then open a command prompt and switch to the directory with the source code. To self test, type: rakeTo run the sim...

And... we're back. Not dead yet! I've got the sim back up to where it was before, but with LOTS more reporting, including a cool feature where it shows you an example fight from each scenario. Hopefully the extra detail will let you catch any boneheaded mistakes in the sim. I've also built in...

I've made a good amount of progress on the retrofit of the simulation. It's taken a while because I've added a ton of tests and also reworked the basic infrastructure. Powers are now more-or-less 'pluggable', which will make adding new powers in the future a lot easier. The sim has taken a step...

Quick update about what's going on: I'm on vacation this week, which is giving me extra time to work on this. (Like I said, I'm a programmer. This is my idea of a great way to spend a Friday evening.) I'm taking advantage of the time to clean up the code and put in automated tests. As you can...

He must be. The code's not designed to support hypothetical rules like "infinite surges"--I just hacked it in, and I must have missed something. I'm not going to try to find the bug, though, since an analysis of a dwarf with infinite surges isn't where I was planning on going with this. ;)

It's high on my priority list. First I need to finish the basic fight mechanics... I still need to add initiative, monster encounter powers, and missing on a natural 1. I'm already generating charts that show how many rounds combat takes, and I plan to keep doing so. I won't be doing any 3e...

It's true he wasn't healing all the way at the short rest. I fixed it, but it didn't change the shape of the curve. Keep in mind the rest of the random factors are still in place--it's not a simple 10% chance of death. LEVEL 1 SOLDIER VS. DWARF GREATWEAPON FIGHTER Days simulated: 100000 Avg...

Corrected Daily Simulations As Elric pointed out in his post above, my to-hit probability on the soldier was way too low. I've fixed the error (his to-hit is now 8, per DMG guidelines), and re-run the simulations. Here are the results for level + 0 to level + 5: LEVEL 1 SOLDIER VS. DWARF...

Oh, damn. At some point I took out the hard-coded monster attack bonus and replaced it with a calculation by level... and I totally muffed it. I was looking at the text for calculating the primary attack stat rather than the table. Doh. Thanks for catching that. The old calculation: att_bonus =...

A Hard Day's Night As I've mentioned, I don't think "the math" is so much about rounds per combat or damage per round as it is about resource consumption. Now that the dwarf actually has daily resources (healing surges and his level 1 daily power), I was able to simulate it. I had the poor...

Encounters and Dailies We have the dwarf's at-will abilities, but what about encounters and dailies? I programmed those next. First, the encounter. I chose Steel Serpent Strike because it was the only PHB power that did additional damage. The others all apply conditions, and I'm not ready to...

Powers, Surges, and Feats, oh my! Up until now, we've only been using basic attacks... no wonder our PC dies a fifth of the time. It's time to make things more realistic. For my level 1 feat, I chose Dwarven Weapon Training, and also upgraded my maul to a mordencrad. This bumped my death rate...

The Monsters Strike Back As a few people have mentioned, if all we're doing is a glorified DPR calculation, there's not much point. The real question is, how does each encounter consume the PCs' valuable resources? To start answering that question, I first added the ability for the monster to...

Easier for you, maybe. Go ahead. :)

That's the ultimate goal, but it's going to take a lot of work to get there. The big question I want to answer is, "is the (year 1) math actually balanced across 30 levels?" But I can't answer that without simulating a lot of feats and powers, not to mention multiple characters, positioning, and...

Good point. I agree with your overall point. Just for fun, let's run it through my simulator. First, I have to find real stats that give the DPR you're talking about. I chose a monster with AC 18 and 60 HP. Character A: att +10 for 1d12 + 7 dmg = 9.05 dpr = 8.5409 rounds to kill Character B...

Interesting stuff. Most of it went over my head, I'm afraid--I'm a programmer, not a mathematician, and I don't know much about statistics. I hope you'll contribute your expertise to this thread, too.

Monte Carlo vs. DPR Let's start by looking at the difference between a stochastic analysis and a DPR analysis. For this one, we'll start very simply. The question we're analyzing: How many rounds does it take for a PC to kill a monster? The PC: a level 1 dwarf great-weapon fighter, using...