D&D 5E Classes, and the structure of DPR

[clearstream]

Maybe. I'm not sure that activated defenses are particularly more interesting to me or even powerful enough to take. Look at feats like defensive duelist or the battlemaster parry maneuver or the monks deflect arrows. All are activated options that you rarely see picked or used.

Defensive duelist was picked by a battlemaster in my OOTA campaign, in late tier 2 I think it was. It was extremely strong.

I think this is one area where people focus too much on relative impact instead of absolute.

As an example, take a character getting attacked 6 times in a combat with a 50% chance to be hit. On average he will take 3 hits. Blur would reduce it so that he takes 1.5 hits. That a 1.5 hit difference.

Then look at an example of a character getting attacked 6 times in combat with a 30% chance to be hit. On average he will take 1.8 hits. Blur would reduce it so that he takes .54 hits. That's a 1.26 hit difference.

Point being, blur isn't actually preventing alot of hits in most combats.

The better analysis uses a probability distribution function, and takes into consideration critical hits.

Archery is the best for archers.

Agree.

Dueling is the best for sword and shield.
Defense is the best for Two Handed Weapons.

Disagree. The best value from defense (and defensive duelist, and blur FTM) is when your AC is already high. So the SnB fighter with plate, shield, defence has 21 AC. Defense isn't terrible on THW fighters, but it's not as good as it is on SnB.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yep, that’s the formula.

If you believe in “hot” and “cold” dice this might be a meaningful concern, but over time your average damage will approach the expected value, which makes consistently using GWM or SS when they improve your expected damage and not using it when it won’t an overall positive value proposition.

That is usually true, but depending on the situation, reliable damage trumps the higher average.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

'You can at least do this with this level 1 spell, but often you'll find better spells to you use with your slots whose impact is going to be much higher than +1d6 damage per attack' - seems like a fine baseline to me even if the player sometimes chooses to use a better spell.

Thing is, if you lose concentration, your baseline is down 10.5 points. A monk with stunning fist can easily make you drop it. You can take resilient constitution to at least have a better chance to resist the stun. But if the monk wants it hard enough, they will get through. The monk will also get into melee easily.
They also set up for other characters to deal more damage.
In our games hex and hunter's mark don't hold that long on average. So sometimes just using hellish rebuke with your slot will be a net advantage.

 

[Charlaquin]

That is usually true, but depending on the situation, reliable damage trumps the higher average.

It can. Again, it depends. You don’t just want to use the -5/+10 blindly. Against low-HP opponents, that +10 damage probably won’t matter, but against high-HP ones it might be worth it, depending on their AC. And of course, if you can get advantage, that significantly shifts things in favor of using that -5/+10.

 

[ECMO3]

Defensive duelist was picked by a battlemaster in my OOTA campaign, in late tier 2 I think it was. It was extremely strong.

It is a lot better at higher levels. In tier 4 it is equivalent of an at will shield against 1 attack a turn. Shield is stronger but uses a slot.

I think this is one area where people focus too much on relative impact instead of absolute.

As an example, take a character getting attacked 6 times in a combat with a 50% chance to be hit. On average he will take 3 hits. Blur would reduce it so that he takes 1.5 hits. That a 1.5 hit difference.

Then look at an example of a character getting attacked 6 times in combat with a 30% chance to be hit. On average he will take 1.8 hits. Blur would reduce it so that he takes .54 hits. That's a 1.26 hit difference.

yes but that is a huge difference in relative damage taken and it also is the difference between getting hit and not getting hit and other effects besides damage that often come with being hit.

For example getting hit one time less by a Ghoul means 1 less save required to avoid being paralyzed in addition to taking less damage over the course of a battle. With a 0.54 hits per fight most characters will probably not have to save at all. This pays forward too, by preventing the hit and the save to start with it also prevents future hits because if the Ghoul paralyzes on his third hit then the target with no disadvantage will likely get more than once more on the other 3 attacks later in the fight. If he gets paralyzed on the first, he is probably going to take 2 or 3 more hits. A Ghoul is CR1 and 3 hits with 2 criticals is likely going to kill many 1st level characters outright.

When you consider damage you need to consider critical hits. Using the same target 15 to hit, one in every 6 hits is going to crit and if you fight 6 times a day you are going to get crittted once or twice on average. With blur that is a flat 1 in 400 attacks regardless of AC.

Finally this presumes you need a 15 to hit (30%). The math is exponential and because of that Blur is most effective when your base defense is already better than that. We had a guy who played a bladesinger in our game and went multiple levels without getting hit in combat at all (like levels 4 to 7), not a single time and she was the first into melee every combat. Some of that was luck, some of it was the DM choosing not to attack her, but most of it was her base AC that was 22 in bladesong (mage armor, staff of defense, bracers of defense) before the shield spell and she had the lucky feat, for the already very, very rare case that the enemy rolled high enough on two dice.

 

[FrogReaver]

The better analysis uses a probability distribution function, and takes into consideration critical hits.

A very specific situation can be analyzed with probability distributions (including crits). However, the analysis for this could change significantly depending on the specific damage, hit rate and number of attacks paramaters you use. IMO, that means that specific kind of analysis in regards to this question won't be generalized enough to be beneficial.

Disagree. The best value from defense (and defensive duelist, and blur FTM) is when your AC is already high. So the SnB fighter with plate, shield, defence has 21 AC. Defense isn't terrible on THW fighters, but it's not as good as it is on SnB.

This is only true if you are talking relatively. Absolute matters more given the number of hits we are talking about potentially receiving. +1 AC will cause the same number of hits to miss at 20AC as at 10AC.

Disadvantage has the most absolute affect on reducing hits when you are at 50% to be hit. Why - because the difference between h and h*(1-h) is maximized on the scale of 0 to 1 when h = 0.5. *h=chance to be hit

 

[FrogReaver]

Thing is, if you lose concentration...

Your first explanation was something totally else and now you've shifted the explanation why to 'losing concentration'. Always is a bit frustrating when that happens.

That said, this was the reason I had expected you to go with initially. But the real question is how likely is it for a warlock to lose concentration twice before his next short rest. That's going to depend mostly on how many attacks he's facing, whether he has any AC boosts or Concentration save boosts. I'll ignore the last two parameters and set the warlocks AC at about 15 for this walkthrough (a reasonably moderate AC). Each attack will have about a 60% chance to hit you. Each hit will have about a 65% chance of maintaining concentration. This means each attack you face has a 0.6*0.35 = 21% chance of causing you to lose concentration. We could use that probability in a negative binomial distribution to determine how many times we can expect to be attacked before losing concentration twice. Without actually performing the calculation - the point is that we can expect to take a significant number of attacks before we would expect to lose than concentration.

In our games hex and hunter's mark don't hold that long on average. So sometimes just using hellish rebuke with your slot will be a net advantage.

In terms of total damage caused hellish rebuke tends to stay competitive with hex for most of the game (primarily due to scaling warlock slots). If you were really prone to losing concentration I'd recommend hellish rebuke over hex. That said, hellish rebuke does have a bit of a targeting problem as you can't be sure you'll get to hit the target you want with it.

 

[ECMO3]

This is only true if you are talking relatively. Absolute matters more given the number of hits we are talking about potentially receiving. +1 AC will cause the same number of hits to miss at 20AC as at 10AC.

This is only true if you assume there is never any advantage or disadvantage and everything is a straight roll with no modifiers.

Even when this is the case, when the numbers of hits is low already this dramatically changes the damage taken. For example, going from a 19 required to hit to a 20 required to hit will cut the number of hits in half and cut the amount of damage dice rolled against you by a full third. That is the difference between 100 damage and 67 damage on a series of attack rolls (and it would be less than 67 if some of that damage is a bonus and not from dice).

If you put disadvantage on top of that +1 it cuts the number of hits by 98% and the damage dice taken by 97%. That is the difference between 100 damage and 3 damage.

 

[ECMO3]

In terms of total damage caused hellish rebuke tends to stay competitive with hex for most of the game (primarily due to scaling warlock slots). If you were really prone to losing concentration I'd recommend hellish rebuke over hex. That said, hellish rebuke does have a bit of a targeting problem as you can't be sure you'll get to hit the target you want with it.

What kills hex most of all in the games I have played is the bonus action required to move it to a new creature or worse the hexed creature escaping/fleeing. Because of this, both Armor of Agathys and Hellish rebuke are going to do more damage. Of those I prefer AOA. Even though it is less damage on a single hit, it can and often does hit more than once per casting and gives you hps too. Also AOA does not require a reaction so you can even double it up and use both!

That said I still like hex not for the damage, but for the disadvantage it causes on ability checks. That can be a huge boon even if you only use it for 1 turn. Grappled by a Frog about to swallow you (pun intended) - Hex him before you try to break the grapple. Hex is the most common spell I get through a feat (magic initiate or Fey touched) and I especially like it for Rogues and Wizards.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Your first explanation was something totally else and now you've shifted the explanation why to 'losing concentration'. Always is a bit frustrating when that happens.

That is right. I got distracted...
Sorry.