D&D 5E Comparing Monk DPR
Tasha's greatly expands the weapons Monks can use and more or less makes this not applicable any more.
Sharpshooter in particular works really well with just about any Monk using a crossbow or shortbow, it also works with a Kensei and a longbow.
You can also do a Kensei build with GWM and tavern brawler using a longbow in melee to get +10 damage (although you miss out on the other benifit of the GWM feat for a crit or dropping a foe as that requires an actual melee weapon, which the longbow isn't).
Using martial arts and stun to start, you can get advantage on 4 of these attacks over two rounds with either of these builds, which largely overcomes the -5 penalty to the attack roll.
Chaosmancer
Legend
True, but... that's sort of the odd thing I've noticed about the monk. Them and the Druids don't really have a lot of magic item support. And Monk's especially seem to lend themselves to a vision of "self-reliance" instead of having magical items.
I know it isn't anything to do with the class, and more to do with my particular players, but Monk's always seem to end up with the fewest magical items after they divide them up.
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It is true, I wrote this before Tasha's, and I haven't quite decided how that will effect this.
I will note, I do get a mild bit annoyed that every monk build that ends up mentioning weapons always makes them Kensei. I know they are supposed to be the "weapon monk" but if we are saying "Monks can use these feats because Kensei allows..." Then it feels like Kensei use the feats, and the rest of the monks get left behind.
Asisreo
Patron Badass
Firstly, DPR isn't a complete metric for how good of a damage dealer a character is. DPR is basically expected value, which is definitely nice to know. However, dispersion measurements are also extremely important and shouldn't be left out of the discussion.
I calculated that at level 15 (no feats and assuming a rogue sneaks attacks every turn they hit) that combatants have these measurements.
Expected Value/Standard Deviation
Rogues (twf): 28.61/14.18
Monks (w/o flurry): 17.77/9.21
Monks (w/ flurry): 23.70/10.63
Fighter (SnB): 21.37/10.78
Not only is the rogue's standard deviation higher, but they're also 2.5x more likely to not contribute in a round at all. Both the un-flurried monk and SnB fighter has a 6.4% chance to miss while the rogue still has a whopping 16% chance. And while they hit harder when they land a hit:
DPR is a measure of the average of numbers across infinite trials. However, what you average over infinite trials doesn't matter because you're not infinitely fighting a single monster that isn't threatening your resources, you're fighting a finite number of trials "rounds" where each prolonged number of trials can cause resource drain.
For example, if choosing between an attack that has a 50% chance to kill or an attack that guarantees to kill on round 2, it would be safer to choose the second option in all cases except when your resources cannot sustain lasting for 2 rounds. If you can last for 3 rounds, the first attack sequence gives you a 25% chance to die while the second attack gives you a 0% chance to die. In this scenario, its technically best to try the first attack first then do the second attack option. But if you don't know how long you can last in a fight, option 2 is more appealing because there's lower risk.
Higher Deviations are basically a negative unless your characters are on their last legs. While you have a higher chance to kill earlier and save resources, you also have a higher chance to kill later and, worst case scenario, increase the likelihood of a TPK.
The big issue is that it doesn't actually matter that you saved the team 10HP or 2 spell slots at the end of the day because they were getting all of that back anyways. What matters is that you could have caused the team to lose an extra 10HP or 2 spell slots which could have brought them to a TPK. Not saying rogues are awful now, they still contribute fine, but they aren't reliable and their higher RNG increases the chances of the party losing important resources and leading to a TPK.
TL;DR Rogue's have high "expected value" but they play a riskier game which can swing the game in greater extremes. While rogues seem to be the king of at-will DPR, they're risking alot more than the fighter, monk, or barbarian.
Well any monk can use sharpshooter with a shortbow or crossbow. A Kensai does more damage due to his Kensie damage bonus and can use a longbow, but sharpshooter is a viable build for any monk.
If you want attack damage, Kensei is undeniably the best monk build. It gives up quite a bit to way of the shadow, sun sould and way of the elements to get that though.
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Gammadoodler
Hero
The piece of this type of analysis that I find problematic is that it includes an inherent assumption that all participants will have an equal opportunity to inflict their DPR...every round.. always.
No actions/turns lost to movement. No actions/turns lost to status effects, no actions/turns spent toward mitigating damage.
And this assumption undercuts one of the strengths of the monk, especially at high level, in that they are harder to shut down than other martials, and have more tools to allow them to more reliably inflict their damage across a range of potential battlefields.
Has anyone done an analysis of the breakeven point for incremental monk attacks required to catch up to their peers across an encounter/campaign(11-20)?
No actions/turns lost to movement. No actions/turns lost to status effects, no actions/turns spent toward mitigating damage.
And this assumption undercuts one of the strengths of the monk, especially at high level, in that they are harder to shut down than other martials, and have more tools to allow them to more reliably inflict their damage across a range of potential battlefields.
Has anyone done an analysis of the breakeven point for incremental monk attacks required to catch up to their peers across an encounter/campaign(11-20)?
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
And yet at level 15 most enemies are going to have 100+ hp. By the time it takes 3+ actions to take down an enemy the variance across a single action matters very little.
Asisreo
Patron Badass
If the enemies are lasting longer than 3 rounds, then the more consistent the better. Because higher health correlates to higher CR which also correlates to higher damage output. An extreme is that a fight with a balor lasts longer and is more dangerous than a fight with a Glabrezu on average.
Using your action for 0 damage is the same as deciding to skip your action altogether, which hurts the action economy of the individual fight. Now, all of this is accounted for (to an extent) in the CR, but that's only on-average assuming average rolls. But the swing of the game can easily make things difficult and tpk your party and introducing more unnecessary swing is just going to increase those odds of TPK. Killing monsters as fast as possible is nice, but ultimately the important part is avoiding a TPK.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
I said 3+ actions not 3+ rounds. Could be 3 actions from you or a combination of 3+ actions from you and your allies.
One could make a pretty strong case that in most games the encounters you face are somewhat dependent on your groups abilities. If so then less consistency may actually help as the encounters you face may actually decrease in strength as the DM and players will be more likely to experience some bad runs of bad luck and thus be more careful overall regarding the encounters they engage in.
If your point is that against 2 identical challenges that the lower variance always better then I would have to disagree. It will depend on whether it's a challenge you are likely on average to win. If so then low variance helps. If not then high variance helps. (Assuming equal DPR of course)
But going back to my main point - by the time your party is spending 3+ actions (some with multiple attacks) to defeat an enemy the additional variance due to you being a rogue or a fighter is pretty miniscule.
Using your action for a high risk high reward action doesn't turn that into a bad decision even if unsuccessful. Taking a risk and not having it pay off isn't the same as skipping your action altogether.
The higher the CR, then typically the more rolls you are making to defeat the encounter - meaning variance is reduced due to number of rolls. Your variance on a single attack or turn doesn't matter much if it takes 2 rounds of the whole party acting to down the enemy.
I wanted to add, I agree that reducing your odds of a TPK is a worthy goal - but 1 out of 5 characters being a rogue instead of a fighter isn't going to alter the group damage dynamics enough to matter in regards of TPK in 99.99999% of situations. Then you've got to account for the TPK's that happened due to more reliable but lower DPR and the most I think we can conclude is that damage with the same DPR but less variance is ever so slightly better than the same damage with higher variance. (Obviously variance is significant on lower hp enemies).
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Asisreo
Patron Badass
The standard deviation/variance shouldn't be mistaken for a + damage tolerance or the range.
If you miss your attacks, you are giving up 8d6+10 damage, even with 100+ hp, 38 average damage can be very important to ending the fight early.
Taking unnecessary risks are bad decisions. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. Now, most rogues don't have alternatives within their means, so its not like they chose poorly to use their action, but they are a swingier class by nature of having fewer attacks.
Variance is never reduced no matter how many rolls you make. You're thinking about the average of rolls versus the expected average roll. 2-4 rolls are definitely not enough to evoke the Law of Large Numbers as a relevant point, though.
Don't forget that its about likely scenarios as well. Actually, in the rogue's case, the most likely damage output the rogue produces in a round is 0, almost 4x as likely as their second most likely damage of 31. Their chart is heavily skewed such that alot of their average damage is due to their very high damage upwards of 106 damage theoretically possible but highly improbable. I'm talking a 1.48x10^-7% chance of occuring and less than a 1% chance to do higher than 70 damage. So they have a large chunk of probability on the left-hand side of the curve and a very thin tail skewing all the way to the right.
