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Message: <blockquote data-quote="auburn2" data-source="post: 8255818" data-attributes="member: 6855259">IF it is not breaking the game then you should keep it as is.Going by the guidelines in the DMG - 37 adventuring days done  "by the book" should get you to 20th level.  So that is 37,000gp total spent on mage armor between 1st and 20th level and another $53k spent during days of adventuring at 20th level.  I would wager most 20th level characters can afford that.  Also since most of this 90 days is spent at 20th level, the wizard should have PLENTY of first level slots to waste on this by this time.On downtime you would not be casting mage armor, wear your studded leather during that time in case you are ambused or something/Sure.  One is better than the other.  That is hardly an argument that the BOD should not be attunement.  I mean a staff of Magi is better than either, so then SOD should not be attunement, nor anything less powerful than SOM?And stop acting like attuning to BOD is a terrible trap.  It is an option.Except you have called it stupid to use grapple.  Comparing the two, it is undoubtedly more costly to purposely announce your presence to everyone.As a matter of fact, we are talking about "wasted" attacks.  You claim grapple "wastes an attack".   Yelling and screaming as you walk around the dungeon "wastes" a lot more than one attack.  It gives every single enemy warning and the opportunity to hide, potentially costing your entire party a full round of attacks (if they all fail perception) and it  denies any chance you have of hiding denying, a further potential attack by all your party members.  So with a party of five this decision could waste a full 10 entire actions during an encounter for nothing.Which is why I said "often but not all the time"Your concer with BOD only comes up if there is a Monk in the party, that is no less weak.No they don't.  If an enemy is not going to take disengage and flees he will take an AOO from everyone he is within reach of (unless they have already used a reaction).  Whether he moves away from both of them at the same time (triggering SA) or pivots triggering the other allied attack first, he still takes TWO AOOs.It doesn't make it worthless.  It is still an AOO.Whereever I want, that is the point!   Heck maybe I want him to give me cover against the archers on the walls.So if he casts haste did he waste his attack?  If the cleric casts spirit guardians did he waste his attack?  Niether of those examples cause "direct damage"."Can't" and "shouldn't" or don't want to are two different things.  Maybe he is out of rages (and that is why he is at 30%).There is no denying the fact that it is easier to hit someone with advantage than without.  The Barbarian can take reckless attack and not worry about the repurcussions and that is true at full hps or at 30%hps and the Rogues wasted 1 attack and probably one which did not even qualify for SA.Denying attacks with advantage will prevent a lot of damage without requiring rage.In better shape to be attacked.  There is a difference.4 turns to do the damage oil does in 2 turns.If he can step to the left.  Of course if that was the case I might not have used it.Where did I ever say I would do that.  I use grapple sometimes.  I use oil sometimes.  I use shove sometimes.  I use most of the options listed in the PHB and you can bet when I use them they are better options thaan the alternatives.My math on the fighter is correct.   I broke down every explicit case for the fighter (assuming he makes 2 attacks) and the exact probability that each specific case happens. And "2 attacks hitting" is a subset of "at least one hitting". At least means one or more. The chance of exactly one attack hitting is fundamentally different than the chance of at least one hitting. Using the +6 you were using, there is a 48% chance of hitting exactly once, a 16% chance of hitting twice (64% total htting at least once) and a 34% chance of missing twice.As noted above, the fighter with +7 attack making two attacks against a 19AC foe has exactly a 30.25% chance of missing entirely with both swings, that is not debatable.If a Rogue gets advantage EVERY attack he has the exact same 30.25% chance of missing completely.  If the Rogue has advantage less than 100% of the time he will always miss more often than a fighter.  In the example I used (30% advantage, 70% no advantage) the chance the Rogue misses is exactly 47.575%.The answer who does more is not simple because this is not a function of a single variable.  You are trying to base this on damage alone, but damage, AC and for the Rogue ability to qualify for SA and how often he gets advantage are all relevant to this discussion and those variables will drive the amount of damage each does.  The numbers I assumed might not be the ones we should use, but without choosing something you can't do this analysis at all.On a turn a fighter with dueling will do between 0 and 44 damage (but never 1-6).  A Rogue will do between 0 and 56 damage (but never 1-4).What it is safe to say is the Rogue misses completely more often than fighter.  What is also true is his hits are more powerful and his critical hits are much more powerful.  Without pinning down all the other variables you can not say anything more conclusive than those three things.  If you do pin them down this is a straightforward calculation but the results will vary widely based on what you choose.The other thing you have to decide is what type of average you are comparing because a mean and a median will yield different results.Finally for the Rogue we are assuming he is not doing TWF, which is probably a safe assumption, but note we are not optimized for damage as a Rogue if this is the case, while the shield fighter is optimized for it given his loadout.  If you assume the Rogue is using TWF when he does not have advantage, then in terms of damage he will out do the sword and board fighter in most cases by a significant margin.Here are graphs showing the distribution of fighter vs Rogue damage against a 19AC foe, Comparison is for a +7 attack bonus, 18 ability, d8 weapon, fighter with dueling, Rogue with SA 90% and advantage 30%.  The numbers on the left are tens of thousands of occurrences per million turns, along the bottom the amount of damage.  So for example the fighter will get exactly 14 damage (total) about 63,000 times out of a million and Rogue will get exactly 20 damage about  43,000 times out of a million.  These represent the respective most common numbers of damage for each class other than 0 damage (zero is off the top of the chart on the left for both)[ATTACH=full]136046[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]136048[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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