+1 To-hit or +2 to damage

[Black Pharaoh]

+1 to hit.
you don't do any damage if you miss.

 

[Remathilis]

+2 damage, for the reasons I outlined in the other thread.

In SWd20, You can boost your to hit with battlemind and enhance ability (dex) + weapon finesse to make a truly awesome hitter, but with no damage behind it. Thus, that +1 to hit looks cheap, but +2 to damage is a godsend...

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Damage. Neither I nor the other DMs in my group allow the 1 for 2 power attack with 2 handed weapons.

 

[kyloss]

+1 to hit- my dice tend to roll low, I need all the help I can get. It has gotten bad enough at times that the people I play with have asked me if I need to be taught how to roll properly, not as bad in D20, but truely horrible luck with Whitewolfs system.

 

[Sledge]

Very interesting results so far. Pretty much exactly as I expected. I'll explain at 1000 votes if it ever gets that high.

 

[domino]

+1 to hit for me. It's more versitile. With other feats, that a player who would take this feat are likely to have, it can be used for a +1 to hit, +1 to AC, +1 or +2 to damage.

 

[Seule]

Disregarding outside factors like power attack and such, each +1 to hit means (generally) one extra hit per 20 attacks. That means on every swing, on average, you do an extra 1/20 your average damage. Therefore, if you average over 40 damage per hit, then +1 to hit is better, otherwise +2 to damage is better.
Of course, power attack changes all that. It lets you turn +1 to hit into +1 (or +2) damage.
I have a character who regularly does charges with power attack for 150+ damage from horseback. I know which one he wants.

--Seule

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Damage bonus is useless unless you hit.

 

[Driddle]

I picked one option, then logged on as a different user ID and picked the second option so I could have both.

 

[iwatt]

Disregarding outside factors like power attack and such, each +1 to hit means (generally) one extra hit per 20 attacks. That means on every swing, on average, you do an extra 1/20 your average damage. Therefore, if you average over 40 damage per hit, then +1 to hit is better, otherwise +2 to damage is better.
Of course, power attack changes all that. It lets you turn +1 to hit into +1 (or +2) damage.
I have a character who regularly does charges with power attack for 150+ damage from horseback. I know which one he wants.

--Seule

actually, your analysis is correcyt only in the case that you always hit: i.e in the case when you add +2 to your expected damage. The thruth is that the break even point is determined by two factors:

AD= Average damage on a succesful hit
PtH=Percent chance to hit

The break even points is that in which the expected damage is equal for both situations (+1 to hit v/s +2 to damage)

This break even point is of course dependent on the chance you have of actually hitting something:

The break even point can be found like:

AD=2*PtH/5%

If you're allways hitting the point in whic +1 to hit is more beneficial is of course whenervr you do more than 40 per hit. But when you're only hitting 5% of the time, the break even point is when you're doing only 2 points per succeful hit. For a tough encounter (say only 35% of your hits score) the break even point is 14 hp per succeful hit.

The above formula is of course valid for single hits and for a choice between +1 to hit and +2 to damage. But it can be extrapolated to compare any two values of hit bonus (HB) v/s damage bonus (DB):

AD=DB*PtH*20/HB

So for example if you want to compare a +3 atack bonus to a +5 damage bonus:

% to Hit	AD**
100%	33.3
95%	31.7
90%	30.0
85%	28.3
80%	26.7
75%	25.0
70%	23.3
65%	21.7
60%	20.0
55%	18.3
50%	16.7
45%	15.0
40%	13.3
35%	11.7
30%	10.0
25%	8.3
20%	6.7
15%	5.0
10%	3.3
5%	1.7
0%	0.0

AD** is the maximum damage with a succesful hit in which a bonus to damage is moer useful than a bonus to hit for a given percent chance to actually score a hit.