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<blockquote data-quote="OperationMaximumBear" data-source="post: 6164842" data-attributes="member: 6687144"><p>I was going to go with <em>acid splash</em>, but after some thought I decided <em>daze</em> was the better choice. I know, I know; let me explain:</p><p></p><p>With <em>acid splash</em>, Emily has a ranged touch attack at +2 dealing an average of 2 damage. That gives her a 50% or 60% chance to hit (or 30% to 40% if she's firing into melee), for expected damage of 1 or so. The crossbow is a bit better on average, but higher-variance. Both become much worse if Emily has to fire into melee.</p><p></p><p>With <em>daze</em>, Emily has a spell that forces a DC 15 Will save. Essentially, she trades her attack for a chance to cancel her opponent's attack. It only works once per foe. Consider a standard Orc: has a will save of -1, attacks at +5 for an average of 9 damage (well, slightly more because they crit a lot, but never mind). Here, <em>daze</em> gives Emily a 4-in-5 chance of preventing the Orc from having a 1-in-2ish chance of of inflicting 9 damage. Multiplying that through, we get an EV of 3.6 damage prevented.</p><p></p><p>Well, maybe that's an unfair example. Normal Orcs suck, after all. So I did the math again for an Orc shaman: better Will and worse attacks, so the EV comes out to about 1. I put it to you that even that is better than a 50% chance to deal 2 damage, especially if the party outnumbers its enemies (which is otherwise the worst case for <em>daze</em>).</p><p></p><p>In any case, the effective difference between the two is not very great; Emily will always prefer to summon 1 of her 8 monsters or throw one of her 3 <em>grease</em> spells. Her choice of last resort only matters if she has a monster out (in which case she's contributing anyway) or if she's completely tapped.</p><p></p><p>tl;dr <em>daze</em> is pretty terrible, but its potential replacements are not so great either, and anyway it only matters on the margin.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="OperationMaximumBear, post: 6164842, member: 6687144"] I was going to go with [I]acid splash[/I], but after some thought I decided [I]daze[/I] was the better choice. I know, I know; let me explain: With [I]acid splash[/I], Emily has a ranged touch attack at +2 dealing an average of 2 damage. That gives her a 50% or 60% chance to hit (or 30% to 40% if she's firing into melee), for expected damage of 1 or so. The crossbow is a bit better on average, but higher-variance. Both become much worse if Emily has to fire into melee. With [I]daze[/I], Emily has a spell that forces a DC 15 Will save. Essentially, she trades her attack for a chance to cancel her opponent's attack. It only works once per foe. Consider a standard Orc: has a will save of -1, attacks at +5 for an average of 9 damage (well, slightly more because they crit a lot, but never mind). Here, [I]daze[/I] gives Emily a 4-in-5 chance of preventing the Orc from having a 1-in-2ish chance of of inflicting 9 damage. Multiplying that through, we get an EV of 3.6 damage prevented. Well, maybe that's an unfair example. Normal Orcs suck, after all. So I did the math again for an Orc shaman: better Will and worse attacks, so the EV comes out to about 1. I put it to you that even that is better than a 50% chance to deal 2 damage, especially if the party outnumbers its enemies (which is otherwise the worst case for [I]daze[/I]). In any case, the effective difference between the two is not very great; Emily will always prefer to summon 1 of her 8 monsters or throw one of her 3 [I]grease[/I] spells. Her choice of last resort only matters if she has a monster out (in which case she's contributing anyway) or if she's completely tapped. tl;dr [I]daze[/I] is pretty terrible, but its potential replacements are not so great either, and anyway it only matters on the margin. [/QUOTE]
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