lichmaster
Hero
That's an interesting observation, I misremembered it as doubling the dice instead of doubling the result.wouldn't it technically be (2d10+1d10+2d6+5)*2 on a crit without elemental wrath or (2d10+1d10+4d6+5)*2 on a crit with it since in a5e damage is doubled, not dice (and damage added on a crit is added before the damage is doubled)? and before you ask what that changes, it changes that average 65-68 (it's actually an average 65.5 by the way) to an average 71. the maximum damage also increases by 10. interestingly nothing actually changes if you assume the d10 from the orc is added after the damage is doubled, but again, it's been stated you add damage like that before the crit is doubled.
anyway, i mean, yeah, that sounds kinda gross. do you have a fighter or herald in that party? i'd be interested to see how they stack up to a similarly geared berserker.
This has some interesting consequences: the former(rolling more dice) squeezes the distribution of the results towards the average, while the second is quicker to run at the table but preserves the distribution of outcomes of the original roll.
Example: (1d6)x2 has an average of 7, but you still have 1/6th of the chances to roll any even value between 2 and 12. 2d6 also averages as 7, but you have a triangular distribution and you can also generate odd results. In the first case there's thus a 1/6th probability of dealing the minimum damage of 2, while in the second there's only 1/36 chance of doing so. The same of course applies to the max possible damage.
At my table I still prefer to double the dice for two reasons: it's more exciting and drastically reduces the chances of crits turning into duds.