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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 5825810" data-attributes="member: 53980">What's your point? That's never the way the math worked in D&D. Your above example assumes no modifier, and moreover seems more like a mathematical exercise.A more realistic example would be that you want two fighters to do similar amounts of damage. One dual wields 1d6 swords (2 attacks) while the other two hands a 1d12 sword (1 attack). Both have 18 Str.[sblock=Example]At first level, assuming 100% accuracy the DW deals:Min 10Avg 15 (this doesn't include crits)Max 20One Max (Double damage) Crit: 30Two Crits: 40 TH does:Min 5Avg 10.5Max 16Crit 32Clearly the dual wielder outperforms the two hander here, but 100% accuracy is hardly realistic, so let's assume a 50% base accuracy, and adjust the DW's penalty to bring him in line with TH.DW (50%)Avg 7.5Abs Max 40TH:Avg 5.25Absolute Max (Max Crit) 32The DW deals about 1/3 more damage, so we'll apply a -4 penalty to roughly balance him:DW (30%)Avg 4.5Abs Max 40Now lets assume that the PCs have gained a few levels, increasing Str to 20. We'll say that DW has two +2 swords while TH has one +3 sword (because he only has to buy one sword, instead of two).TH (50%)Avg 7.25Abs Max 40DW (25%)Avg 5.25Abs Max 52[/sblock]DW's average damage has fallen behind TH's by 2 DPR (Damage per Round), so clearly the penalty needs to be lessened. If we decrease it by 1, DW's average increases to 6.3, and if we decrease it by 2, the average becomes 7.35. But what happens if, soon after that, DW is able to acquire one (or even two) +3 swords?Mind you, these are just "back of the envelope" numbers, so to speak. They don't even try to take into account the fact that DW is twice as likely to crit as TH. It's just there to demonstrate that the numbers don't exist in a vacuum. DW will continue to set the standard for hp numbers. After all, if you don't want a solo creature to be one-shot, his hp have to be higher than DW's absolute maximum value. Because while it won't happen often, double crits do happen. Heck, last game I rolled four natural 1s in a row (0.0006% chance). And (unfortunately) I can't even say that that's the first time I've pulled that unlucky feat off!Sure, you can mitigate jumps by introducing bonus attacks in an iterative fashion (which was basically, each attack after the first has a cumulative -5 penalty) but that's a terrible approach (IME). At higher levels, those attacks are a waste of time.Analyze may have been a poor choice of words. Is there a term for "examining the average, as well as upper and lower bounds, of the damage of various attacks in order to balance them against each other and the hp system"?Attack forms should be balanced against each other. TH shouldn't regularly feel like an idiot for choosing his fighting style because DW is dishing out significantly more punishment (nor the other way around). That would be indicative of a poorly designed system (IMO).Attacks also need to be balanced against hp. If my boss is one shot because DW rolled a lucky pair of crits, I'd be annoyed as DM. I have no problem with lucky crits making a battle shorter or easier than I expected, but two crits shouldn't render the antagonist laughable.There are other means to achieve more consistent performance. Allowing fighters the ability to reroll a miss x/encounter (or day), for example. Multi attack penalties have significant issues in this respect. Against a high AC, for example, the only consistency you can expect is to miss constantly.</blockquote>

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