dark sun: carnage weapon

[evilbob]

So, for example, a Carnage Falchion. High-crit, 2d4 weapon that does + 2 x enhancement bonus damage whenever you roll a 4 on any damage die. Sure, that's only 2 chances on most at-wills, but at high levels or using encounter/dailies, that could be 4 or 6 chances - and on a crit, you get 2 x tier MORE.

I'll take those odds. Plus it's only a level 3/8/etc. item and it has a great crit damage plus. Even on a 2d6 weapon, your odds are still good - and you get the higher average damage. Think this is the new bloodclaw or will it not get far considering it's a Dark Sun thing?


Edit: Carnage Gouge - a Dark Sun weapon - gives you a 2d6 brutal 1. +3 average damage and only a 1-in-5 chance instead of 1-in-4? Throw in a few items or powers that let you re-roll damage dice and you're doing very well.

 

[TheClone]

Nice idea. I take it I guess I'll note that down for my upcoming DS campaign. I don't have much knowledge about balancing, but it looks okay. Maybe it should be restricted to blades? Or maybe the weapon just has to look "dire" enough. Clubs with spikes all over and that stuff.

 

[Mengu]

Enh	1d4	1d4[b1]	1d6	1d6[b1]
0	2.5	3	3.5	4
1	3	3.67	3.83	4.4
2	3.5	4.33	4.17	4.8
3	4	5	4.5	5.2
4	4.5	5.67	4.83	5.6
5	5	6.33	5.17	6
6	5.5	7	5.5	6.4
				
Enh	2d4	2d4[b1]	2d6	2d6[b1]
0	5	6	7	8
1	5.89	7.11	7.61	8.72
2	6.75	8.22	8.22	9.44
3	7.63	9.33	8.83	10.16
4	8.5	10.44	9.44	10.88
5	9.38	11.55	10.06	11.6
6	10.25	12.67	10.67	12.32
				
Enh	4d4	4d4[b1]	4d6	4d6[b1]
0	10	12	14	16
1	11.37	13.60	15.04	17.18
2	12.73	15.21	16.07	18.36
3	14.10	16.81	17.11	19.54
4	15.47	18.42	18.14	20.72
5	16.84	20.02	19.18	21.90
6	18.20	21.63	20.21	23.08

Hope the tables are clear (and correct). It's a nice enough bump in damage, but doesn't really go crazy.

Edit: The formula is pretty simple in principle.

Average damage with Carnage = Average damage without Carnage + (Chance of rolling at least one die max * Enhancement bonus * 2)

Chance of rolling at least one die max = 1 - ((chance of not rolling max) ^ number of dice)

For example, chance of rolling at least one 4 on 2d4 would be = 1 - ((3/4)^2) = 0.4375.

 

[TheClone]

Hope the tables are clear

I recognize it's about weapon damage of brutal and non-brutal weapons with different dice an enhancement bonuses. But where is the connection to "carnage weapons"?

 

[evilbob]

TheClone: I think the entire chart is what your average damage would be with a carnage weapon (excluding the normal enhancement bonus).


So a 2d4's 2x 25% chance to roll a 4 and add 2x enhancement damage only increases the average damage by about 1/2 with enhancement of 1? The thing is: that's still better than any other weapon, especially if your goal is to do damage. And at +6 enhancement bonus, +2 1/2 avg damage to every single attack is nothing to sneeze at.

I see what you're saying that it's not really that out of control, but just remember: bloodclaw was +3x enhancement damage for the price of a few HP (aka nothing), and this is very similar. The difference is that it isn't a 100% chance, but most importantly: just like the original bloodclaw, there is no restriction on the number of times this can happen in a round. So the supernova 20-attacks-a-round builds just got their new best weapon. Extra irony: even using the new weird rules about item rarity, this would still be considered a common item.

Bloodclaw was one of the most broken things about 4.0 for nearly two years: it was better than any artifact, much less any other similarly-priced weapon. I'd say "carnage" has the potential to be ... about 1/3 a bloodclaw.

 

[evilbob]

Mengu: could you post the stats you used for the frequency of how often the bonus damage would be added? For example, what's the frequency of a 2d4 showing at least one 4, or a 2d6 brutal 1 showing a 6?

Wait - I guess that's actually obvious from your chart, if you use the +1 enhancement bonus, right? So a 2d4 showing a 4 is a 44% chance, and a 2d6 brutal 1 showing a 6 is a 36% chance? Am I reading that correctly?

 

[Mengu]

Wait - I guess that's actually obvious from your chart, if you use the +1 enhancement bonus, right? So a 2d4 showing a 4 is a 44% chance, and a 2d6 brutal 1 showing a 6 is a 36% chance? Am I reading that correctly?

Correct. I edited the original post to show the formula.

 

[evilbob]

So thinking more about it, let's compare this to the current leader in (generic) pure-damage output: radiant. Radiant has a 100% chance to add 1x enhancement bonus damage. Using 2d4 and 2d6 brutal 1 as our comparisons, carnage has a 44% and 36% chance of doing 2x enhancement bonus damage with a 1[W] attack. Respectable, but still lower (except on some encounter powers and dailies that have higher than 1[W] damage). And since carnage weapons are much cheaper (level 3 vs. level 5), you'd expect that to be balanced.

Where this gets a little sticky is epic levels, where a 2[W] attack is your basic attack, and 3[W] - 6[W] attacks are your encounters and dailies. If a 2[W] attack with a 2d4 is a 68% chance and a 2d6 brutal 1 is a 59%, that means you have a better than 50% chance to do twice the enhancement bonus vs. a 100% chance to do 1x the enhancement bonus. On average, carnage becomes better. And that's still not counting encounters and dailies, which you'll have more of as well.

So: playing the odds, carnage becomes a much better bet for generic average damage. Granted: this is only true for a limited set of weapons; a bastard sword, for example, will never be a good carnage weapon. And granted, a radiant sword's radiant damage type is better for certain situations. (In fact, other weapons can do more damage than radiant swords under certain situations.) But for straight-up average damage, this seems to be the new best possible property for 2-handed weapons.

 

[Klaus]

It's like a little brother to the Vorpal.

A Vorpal glaive used with a 7 [W] power means you'll be rolling 14d4.

 

[evilbob]

Very true - although carnage could come into play much earlier; it's not unreasonable for a level 21 character to have a level 23 weapon, and you're talking about a +10 to damage 60% of the time. But vorpal's exploding dice would likely still outpace it in the end.