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<blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8237375" data-attributes="member: 72555">Above, my &quot;super melf&quot; does 5d4 on a hit 23d4 on a miss.&nbsp; Each turn it loses 1d4 (2d4 if immersed in water), and you can use an action and take 1d4 damage to reduce it by 2d4.That ends up pretty strong.&nbsp; If we drop it to 4d4/2d4 instead, we get something that is only marginally better than scorching ray:So 4d4, 3d4, 2d4, 1d4 on a hit, and 2d4, 1d4 on a miss.With 30% discount on delayed damage a hit is worth 10 + 5.3 + 2.5 + 0.9 = 18.7 on a hit, and a miss is worth 5 + 1.8 = 6.8.&nbsp; Or 11.9 P + 6.8 damage.Scorching Ray does 21 damage; it needs a 75% hit chance to match it.MM2 is 14 hit or miss.&nbsp; So this outdamages MM starting at 60% hit rate in a level 2 slot.At higher levels, adding 1d4 to the hit and 1d4 every 2 levels miss has non-linear returns (as it lasts longer).&nbsp; &quot;off to infinity&quot; that 1d4 would be worth 4.1P + 4.1, which is a bit faster than the 7*P damage of scorching ray or the 3.5 damage of MM, but the &quot;off to infinity&quot; approximation is overestimating the value by a fair bit (like 30% at level 3?&nbsp; Decreasing at higher levels.)I agree with Stalker0; I suspect something is off with your math.Maybe you are using lots of big monsters that last a long time, with plenty of time to drop the damage-over-time early, and knowledge that the monster lasts a long time?I suppose most tough fights, by your measure, end with a long series of at-will damage output, because to hit 50% death rate you either need enemies who deal a pile of damage (with high variance) really fast, or you need to run out of resources and be on a race to death....If you want to do this seriously, you'd probably want to brew up an AI learning system.&nbsp; You'd have them fight a sequence of random toughness encounters; maybe you'd feed the AI the CR of the encounter, as PCs know that an ancient dragon is different than 3 goblins.For a given loadout of a party, you'd let the AI optimize how long they last against such a random sequence.Feed something like that to Alpha or similar learning AIs and you should get resource management falling out of it.&nbsp; I mean, they can feed it starcraft and it beats grandmasters.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="NotAYakk, post: 8237375, member: 72555"] Above, my "super melf" does 5d4 on a hit 23d4 on a miss. Each turn it loses 1d4 (2d4 if immersed in water), and you can use an action and take 1d4 damage to reduce it by 2d4. That ends up pretty strong. If we drop it to 4d4/2d4 instead, we get something that is only marginally better than scorching ray: So 4d4, 3d4, 2d4, 1d4 on a hit, and 2d4, 1d4 on a miss. With 30% discount on delayed damage a hit is worth 10 + 5.3 + 2.5 + 0.9 = 18.7 on a hit, and a miss is worth 5 + 1.8 = 6.8. Or 11.9 P + 6.8 damage. Scorching Ray does 21 damage; it needs a 75% hit chance to match it. MM2 is 14 hit or miss. So this outdamages MM starting at 60% hit rate in a level 2 slot. At higher levels, adding 1d4 to the hit and 1d4 every 2 levels miss has non-linear returns (as it lasts longer). "off to infinity" that 1d4 would be worth 4.1P + 4.1, which is a bit faster than the 7*P damage of scorching ray or the 3.5 damage of MM, but the "off to infinity" approximation is overestimating the value by a fair bit (like 30% at level 3? Decreasing at higher levels.) I agree with Stalker0; I suspect something is off with your math. Maybe you are using lots of big monsters that last a long time, with plenty of time to drop the damage-over-time early, and knowledge that the monster lasts a long time? I suppose most tough fights, by your measure, end with a long series of at-will damage output, because to hit 50% death rate you either need enemies who deal a pile of damage (with high variance) really fast, or you need to run out of resources and be on a race to death. ... If you want to do this seriously, you'd probably want to brew up an AI learning system. You'd have them fight a sequence of random toughness encounters; maybe you'd feed the AI the CR of the encounter, as PCs know that an ancient dragon is different than 3 goblins. For a given loadout of a party, you'd let the AI optimize how long they last against such a random sequence. Feed something like that to Alpha or similar learning AIs and you should get resource management falling out of it. I mean, they can feed it starcraft and it beats grandmasters. [/QUOTE]

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