General Discussion Thread VIII

[Rystil Arden]

One thing this has tought me, when taking a redied attack action against a potential charging opponent who may or may not have a reach weapon, take it the following way.

"I will take a five foot step and attack anyone who gets within 10 feet of me" or some such. Lets you step in under their reach

Indubitably. That is what I have seen from pretty much every character fighting an opponent with reach.

 

[SlagMortar]

By "he was going to get an attack anyway", I didn't mean during that round, I meant sometime during the combat.

 

[Rystil Arden]

By "he was going to get an attack anyway", I didn't mean during that round, I meant sometime during the combat.

Ah, well the random generator on Invisible Castle would've cooked up something different though

 

[El Jefe]

Although the ratman was going to get an attack sometime and so if his second attack was a critical for 22 damage, someone was going to die.

I'm just trying to figure out how you roll 7 1/3 points of damage on 2d4+3. 3x(7 1/3)=22, right?

 

[Rystil Arden]

I'm just trying to figure out how you roll 7 1/3 points of damage on 2d4+3. 3x(7 1/3)=22, right?

He rolls his critical rolls separately instead of just multiplying them out. This makes them closer to average. I first noticed on one of the other times he critted us for 9 damage with a x2 crossbow.

 

[El Jefe]

He rolls his critical rolls separately instead of just multiplying them out.

Well, I'll be. It says right there on page 134 of the PHB that you're supposed to do it that way. Learn something new every day.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Well, I'll be. It says right there on page 134 of the PHB that you're supposed to do it that way. Learn something new every day.

Heehee, I don't care what way the crits are rolled--the average is the same both ways. Just as long as its consistent.

 

[El Jefe]

Yeah, but for crit x 3, rolling 3 times pushes the damage toward the average...smaller "standard deviation" for the statisitcally minded. That means that you can pretty much count on damage clustering around the mean...24 points in this case (and 22 is pretty close to 24). As a player, you can use that to your advantage. Never mind that the max damage could run as high as 33...the odds of actually rolling a 33 would be 1 in 4096. But if you just multiply x 3, the odds are 1 in 16...much, much worse.

It works the other way, too. Juliana needed an 18 or less to survive. Rolling 3 times, the odds of rolling an 18 or less are 84 in 4096, or about 49 to 1. But rolling once and multiplying, the odds are 3 in 16, or about 5 to 1. I'd much rather take 5:1 than 49:1 if my character's life was on the line!

 

[Rystil Arden]

Agreed, and yup, I did know that

 

[Bront]

I'm not sweating it. We'll see what two says, and then go from there. If I'm dead, I'm dead, and I make a new character. Amazingly, that will be my first character death since 1st Ed.