D&D General DPR Calculations Wut?

[Zardnaar]

Ahh, and advantage is close to equivalent to +5 to hit

Yeah I treat it as +4 to hit. +4 is still better as it stacks with advantage.

Theres accuracy builds that get accuracy up to 90-95 % with elven accuracy on top of that and dice manipulation is more common.

People who take DPR as gospel types are funny as they can't comprehend their white room failing

 

[FrogReaver]

Ahh, and advantage is close to equivalent to +5 to hit

Fun short hand to keep you from having to do too complex of advantage math.

Example:
Chance to hit = 60%
Advantage chance to hit = 60% * (1 + (1-60%)

=60% * 1.4 =0.84 = 84%

84% - 60% = +24% (slightly under the +5 of 25%).

Though it decreases rapidly the further from 50% you get so, if you have major accuracy difference you probably want to actually quantify it instead of estimating it as +5.

 

[Clint_L]

Let's look at DPR using the example of my Level 8 monk. Subclass Mercy, Dex 19, Wis 16, grapple feat, relevant magic items are wraps +1 and eldritch claw tattoos (+1; can activate for an additional 1d6 damage/attack once per long rest).

So if they are attacking an apponent that they can grapple (say, a Rakshasa, since she just fought one - AC 17, 221 HP), then her DPR is pretty scary if she wants to go all out. +9 to hit (+4 dex, +2 magic items, +3 proficiency), so a starting 60% hit rate. BUT every round, assuming she hits at least once, the target is automatically grappled unless unless it makes a DC 15 saving throw (Rakshasa will save on a 12+, so assume it will be grappled 55% of the time, giving my monk advantage on attacks). With advantage, that hit rate goes to 86% if my head math is correct, so overall we are looking at roughly a 75% hit rate.

Base damage is 4.5 (fist )+3.5 (tattoo) +4 (dex) +2 items): 14 x 4 (attack+flurry) =56 x .75 = 42, + 8 (hand of harm), or 50 damage per round. Plus the Rak has the poisoned condition the whole time.

TLDR: 5.5e has really increased martial DPR.

Edit: As DM, I'm really struggling with this. For example, that party also has a paladin and barbarian, so at level 8 the three martials alone will typically put out more than 100 damage per round. I'm finding it challenging to create suitably tough encounters for 5.5e. I'm having to completely ignore CR and put in some really heavy hitters against them, so fights tend to be short and really swingy - characters and creatures are going down in 1-2 rounds. It feels like DPR got turned up to 11.

 

[Zardnaar]

Fun short hand to keep you from having to do too complex of advantage math.

Example:
Chance to hit = 60%
Advantage chance to hit = 60% * (1 + (1-60%)

=60% * 1.4 =0.84 = 84%

84% - 60% = +24% (slightly under the +5 of 25%).

Though it decreases rapidly the further from 50% you get so, if you have major accuracy difference you probably want to actually quantify it instead of estimating it as +5.

Hence I treat it as +4 bonus roughly.

 

[Tigris]

So DPR is kind of the d&d equivalent to dps damage per second from mmorpgs like everquest and later WoW.


Its meant as an abstraction of how fast you kill an enemy. Of course this abstraction is better suited for MMOs where you have way longer fights. Its normally mwant to calculate the damage in boss fights, so long single target fights, because these are the hard fights where the damage matters.


In DnD and similar games its often used because its really really easy to calculate. It only needs middle school math.


On the comparison to calculate how many turns you need to kill an enemy, which is what you actually want to know, is a lot harder due to variance in attacks. And since DPR does relate to turns to kill its used instead.


In 5e 14 the enemy average AC did scale in a way that you have a roughly 65% chance to hit when you increase main stat at 4 and 8 and when including weapon proficiency. (Not magical weapon though).

Again we are trying to calculate this for hard (boss) fights, so there the AC should be around what you expect for the CR equal your level, so close to the average 65%

Of course AC varies by enemy but taking the average as an abstraction makes sense. And it ia needed in order to evaluate features which add damage not related to hit. Like miss damage or crit damage, but also increases in precision.


Also similar to DPS from MMOs you dont calculate the damage for a character, but instead for a "rotation" of a character. Ao "intended behaviour". Like "you always do extra attack + cantrip". So the "assumptions" are just the ideal behaviour you want to do, when not disrupted.

This allows one to also include bonus actions, as well as once per short rest etc abilities.


Of course one does need to add assumptions about number of fights per rests or one can just look at a single fight (with all ressources) which is often done as well.


The nice thing about dpr is that you can really easily add crits, advantage and other things and still can calculate the comparison only using middle school math.


So for a fighter level 5 using a rapier we can calculate this as:

- each attack has a 60% chance to hit for 1d8 +4 =8.5 average damage

- Each attack has a 5% chance to crit for 2d8+4 =13 damage.

- a single attack thus deals in average 0.6* 8 5 + 0.05* 13 damage

- with 2 attacks you can double this damage and get the dpr.

- you can use once per short rest 2 attacks more, so you can now assume how many fighrs per short rest and how many (meaningfull) turns in combat. And divide those extra attack damage by those to add it to dpr.

- if you have duelist fighting style, just add 2 damage each to the 4 fixed above

- if you have weapon mastery, aka vex, it gets a bit more complicated since you need to calculate the chance the last attack hit and then calculate advantage. Important hete dont make any silly simplifications like +X to hit, but just calculate it cleanly for advantage its still easy, because it also increases crit chance.


In the end the problem of dpr is that in 5e fights are hardly long enough and that burat is normally more important especially in fights with several enemies.

 

[billd91]

Edit: As DM, I'm really struggling with this. For example, that party also has a paladin and barbarian, so at level 8 the three martials alone will typically put out more than 100 damage per round. I'm finding it challenging to create suitably tough encounters for 5.5e. I'm having to completely ignore CR and put in some really heavy hitters against them, so fights tend to be short and really swingy - characters and creatures are going down in 1-2 rounds. It feels like DPR got turned up to 11.

Well, maybe the solution is to do something considerably more radical to get the experience you want (and hope your players want - so maybe ask them). And that is ignore the hit points of damage being done in favor of something else until that "something else" is satisfied and THEN go with the hit points. So if the fights are too short, go 1 or 2 round then start tracking hit points on the NPCs.
It's a very big change that a lot of people won't agree to, but I'm hearing more and more about solutions like this to the problems of players optimizing the fun out of the system or the designers and DMs trying to tune combat to specific pacing too much. It rarely really works just by cooking the numbers - the competition is too ferocious.

 

[Kurotowa]

Ahh, and advantage is close to equivalent to +5 to hit

Advantage scales on a bell curve. When you need to roll a 10-11 to succeed, it's worth about +5. At the extreme ends where you only fail on a 1-2 or only succeed on a 19-20 it's only worth about +2. So consider the +5 another abstraction.