D&D 5E GWF vs. TWF Fighting styles

[Kryx]

I have no +X magic weapons (they're bad for the game!!). I do have crits, but those are minor.

I doubt 58 DPR from twf without rend, magic weapons or not. I'd 've curious to see your numbers.

Also on magic weapons when I tested it a while ago it benefits polearm much more. And GWM only slightly less. And that's IF you get two magic weapons vs their one.

 

[Xeviat]

1d6+8 (11.5) x5 is 57.5. That's before misses (standard hit chance is 65%, but that increases with magic weapons because monster AC doesn't increase with magic weapons in mind, though their attack seems to increase with magic AC in mind ...).

I'm starting to lean towards bringing back the -2 to hit for twfing, but Gavin offhand attacks equal main. With magic items, they're quite even up to level 11, where twfing starts pulling ahead if you let them have two magic weapons to the gwfer's single magic weapon. It could then balance against the gwfer having a belt of giant strength, or another offensive magic item.

I'll test that idea without magic weapons.

A penalty to hit could also balance out the whole trip and then attack routine; a twfer would have more chances to trip, but be at a penalty (trip uses athletics, right? I'd throw the penalty on it if I did that).

 

[Xeviat]

And I don't doubt pole arm master gets a lot of mileage out of a magic weapon.

 

[Xeviat]

With a -2 to hit on twfing, assuming no magic items, with offhand attacks equaling mainhand, twfing is equal levels 1 through 10, and is slightly ahead per action at level 11 and up. Possibly balanced by not giving it over to action surge.

But that would likely require a change to how Hunter's Mark works.

 

[juggerulez]

Sorry, man, but I don't think you explained the problem to your mathematician friend properly. Kryx is right, and his spreadsheet demonstrates his math-fu is pretty damn solid.

This most likely is the case, I can't really realize how "his" outcome and "our" were that spread out.

He actually gave you a weighted arithmetic mean formula, not the "standard" average.

I stopped lurking and made an account for a math post. Dunno what that says about me.

a warm thank you for the detailed explanation, I really needed that

And often those weapons won't be plussed weapons but things like flame tongues, scimitars of speed, swords of sharpness, intelligent swords and even artifacts. This all assume that we use items and tables from the DMG of course. Custom stuff can be anything.

p.284DMG "Modifying an Item"
You can refit a magic item to your players' characters without issues. Here it explains in detail how and even how to merge two items together!

 

[SuperZero]

First of all: I come with an olive branch, with the sole thirst of knowledge, so don't shoot me

Since this confrontation happened, I wanted to do a little research. Long story short: apparently we're both wrong.

A mathematician friend of mine, who uses maths on a daily basis and whose maths I can't even fathom the complexity of, told me that this is not the right way to do statistics, and since his kung-fu is way better than mine (that's assured) and apparently better than yours too (again, I'm just the messenger, don't shoot me ), I've asked him to elaborate his statement. Here we go:

If you reroll 1s and 2s on any die, let's say a d6. You pool together all the results and then divide them by their number, which means 1+2+3+4+5+6+1+2+3+4+5+6+3+4+5+6 divided by 6+6+4.

so apparently a GWF's d6 does 3.75 on average instead of 3.5... and instead of "my" 3.83 and "your" 4.17.

Those numbers are right-ish, but you're putting them in the wrong place.
((1+2+3+4+5+6)/6 + (1+2+3+4+5+6)6 +3+4+5+6)/6
I condensed that to (3.5+3.5+3+4+5+6)/6 because I figured it was pretty common knowledge in a discussion of dice probability that (1+2+3+4+5+6)/6=3.5, but that's really the same formula I used before, just written out more fully.

I now know that (1+2+3+4+5+6+1+2+3+4+5+6+3+4+5+6)/16 does 3.75, which translates to "all the possible outcomes summed up and divided by their number" which is precisely how you average something.

That formula assumes all of those possibilities are equally likely.
All possible outcomes are really just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, but you know that's wrong or you'd have the same probability with just 1d6.
Those first 12 permutations only happen 1/6 x 1/6 times, while the other four happen 1/6 times.

It does. You average all the possible outcomes of a die roll with a reroll over 1 and 2, thus you have twice the chance that a '1' and a '2' show up, that's why you average like this: (1+2+3+4+5+6+1+2+3+4+5+6+3+4+5+6)/16 = 3.75

You have twice the chance. That formula says those numbers come up 12/16 times. That's not twice as likely as each of the other four, that's thrice as likely as all four put together. That's not correct.

Your friend is wrong.

I suspect that there was a miscommunication somewhere.

 

[Kryx]

You want to give a -2 to hit without calculating the implications of hit.. what...

By my RAW numbers TWF is behind GWM by 45 to 66 at 20.

With Rend and without -5/+10 Fighter TWF is 54 vs 58 at 20.

New numbers with -2 to hit:
TWF is behind GWM by 41 to 66 at 20.
With Rend and without -5/+10 Fighter TWF is 48 vs 58 at 20.


That wouldn't solve anything - just make it worse.

 

[Xeviat]

No, I calculated the to hit once I started throwing the -2 to hit into the equation. And -2 to hit would be with offhand attacks equal main hand attacks, so the twfer would have 8 attacks at 8.5 to the gwfer's 4 attacks at 13.33.

Gwfer: 4x13.33=53.33; x.65=34.66
Twfer: 8x8.5=68; x.55=37.4

Magic items distort this, but again we would want to compare two items vs two items, which gets tough.

I think we're missing some things in translation. I wasn't using to hit when I was just looking at total average damage, since the to hits are the same in the base system. I did look at to hit once I started throwing a to hit penalty in the mix. And I do have to hit and crit in my excel sheet, as it's needed to compare Archery style to other styles, and to compare the champion to the battle master.

 

[Kryx]

Magic items don't distort it at all. The only thing you've done is give the fighter his +10 damage from -5/+10 more easily.

Raw w/ +3 magic items:
TWF: 66
TWF w/ Rend: 76
GWM: 93
Polearm: 77
Polearm+GWM: 96

Above w/ -2 to hit:
TWF: 60
TWF w/ Rend: 69

Without -5/+10 the GWM is still at 79 with a +3 weapon.

 

[Xeviat]

Did you give the fighter 4 offhand attacks?