D&D 5E (2014) Heavy Armour Master, how does a front liner survive without it?

[keterys]

Some feats are too strong at 1st level; almost like they designed the game for feats to only show up starting at 4th level.

It's fine after that. Healer is a bit sadder, since it's also exceptional at low level but quickly becomes almost wasted due to lack of scaling.

 

[Mistwell]

That's true. It doesn't work against things it doesn't work against, but that doesn't change with level. How often you encounter effects that it doesn't work against depends on the DM.

It's a truism that CR's tend to go up as party level goes up. Hence, not a fallacy.

That's where the fallacy is. It is just as effective as before. If it knocked 3 off of 30 or 3 off of 3, it's still 3 less damage in total per hit.

If it reduced damage by 100% in one instance, and 10% in the other, then it is correct to see it is less effective in the 10% than it is in the 100%. That's not a false argument. "Effective" is a word that scales, as some things are more effective than other things. In this case, the feat is more effective at preventing percentages of damage when the damage being done in the first place is low.

It's utility doesn't change.

It does, obviously so. It is far more utilitarian to prevent 100% of damage, that it is to prevent 10% of damage. In this context, that is exactly what utility means. You are still taking a LOT of damage in one instance, and NO damage in the other. It's obviously more utility when it prevents 100% of damage.

At higher levels it knocks less off of the total of each, but at higher levels you have a bigger hp total to absorb it with and it evens out.

No it does not, because you could take 1000 hits at 0 damage, but you cannot take 1000 hits at 27 damage, no matter your level. It does not even out. Preventing 100% damage is a heck of a lot more utilitarian than preventing 10% of the damage, regardless of level and hit points.

I can tell you for a fact having a DR 4 on my paladin in a 4e campaign

Don't care, not a 4e discussion, not the same sort of balancing in the rules, and not universal DR either. Let's stick to this game.

Tell me have you found in actual 5e games that this feat has just as much utility at high levels than it does at low levels? Because in actual play I have found, over the past 16 months or so of playing it, that it has a lot less utility as levels go up.

 

[KarinsDad]

If it reduced damage by 100% in one instance, and 10% in the other, then it is correct to see it is less effective in the 10% than it is in the 100%. That's not a false argument. "Effective" is a word that scales, as some things are more effective than other things. In this case, the feat is more effective at preventing percentages of damage when the damage being done in the first place is low.

While this is true, foes rarely do 30 points of damage in a single attack, even at higher levels. An Ancient Red Dragon averages 35 (14 of which is fire damage that could also be reduced), 17, and 19 points of damage with its (non-breath, non-spell) attacks. Sure, a Balor averages 34 points of damage with its longsword (13 which is lightning which can also be reduced) or a Pit Fiend averages 43 points of damage (21 which is poison that can be saved against or reduced), but 30 points of damage with a single attack is fairly rare in the game. Only the most powerful of foes get to those damage levels and not even all of their attacks are that strong.

Players rarely play at levels 15 to 20 where they might typically fight such foes.

NPCs also rarely do 3 or fewer points per attack 100% of the time, even Kobolds (who only manage 3 or less 50% of the time).

So the 3 point vs. 30 point example is exaggerated a bit.

On average, players play from levels 1 to 10. And although a player could play a first level variant human with this feat, I suspect that there are more PCs played who are not variant humans who take this feat at level 1.

The vast majority of foes ever encountered in a game average 4 to 15 points of damage per attack and a significant majority of those hits are affected by this feat.


The feat is solid across the lifetime of a PC. It does not need to scale. Saying that it helps more at low level and less at high level is all nice and well, but it doesn't mean that the utility or power of the feat should be increased at higher levels. It's already one of the strongest feats out there, even at high level.

Compare it to Tough at level 15. 30 extra points of hit points per day. 11 or more appropriate hits in a day and HAM stops more damage. It's not unrealistic to think that a PC at level 15 could get hit 11 or more times by normal damaging attacks in a given day.

 

[Mistwell]

While this is true, foes rarely do 30 points of damage in a single attack, even at higher levels.

KD, we were comparing a specific set of creatures - kobold to dragon. It would not be unusual for an adult red dragon to do 30 points of damage (I roll for damage, as do a lot of people, and that is quite well in the damage range for a single attack). He said it would be exactly equally effective against both, and I was disagreeing with him. And, you seem to agree with me on that point (as you started by saying "that is true").

The same of course holds true for other levels in my experience as well. Preventing 100% of damage from a kobold is a lot more effective than preventing 20% damage from something that hits for 15 points damage.

Our fighter, who has the feat, barely noticed the benefit when fighting hill giants. I was talking from direct experience - one of our fighters has this feat, and as he's gotten to higher levels (we're only 6th level now) it's become less effective, with fewer creatures even doing that kind of damage. It's gotten so bad he's been asking me if he could switch the feat.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some feats are too strong at 1st level; almost like they designed the game for feats to only show up starting at 4th level.

It's fine after that.

Exactly. If anything, what we're seeing is how powerful the human variant is at 1st level (and how that power tapers after everyone else starts getting feats, too) and how problematic 1st level can be, in general, with characters being so fragile.

 

[KarinsDad]

KD, we were comparing a specific set of creatures - kobold to dragon. It would not be unusual for an adult red dragon to do 30 points of damage (I roll for damage, as do a lot of people, and that is quite well in the damage range for a single attack).

It might be possible, but it is still not likely. It is even not likely that most battles will be with anything nearly as powerful as an Adult Red Dragon. Fights of that power level might be 2% of all fights. The exception, not the rule.

And even then, the Bite of the Adult Red Dragon might often do 30 points (26 on average), but the Claw, Tail, and Wing attacks require criticals to even get near 30 points of damage (and even then, the DM would have to roll pretty darn high).

It would be unusual for an adult red dragon to do 30 points of damage with a single melee attack other than his bite.

He said it would be exactly equally effective against both, and I was disagreeing with him. And, you seem to agree with me on that point (as you started by saying "that is true").

The same of course holds true for other levels in my experience as well. Preventing 100% of damage from a kobold is a lot more effective than preventing 20% damage from something that hits for 15 points damage.

Yes, but where I am disagreeing with you is that the 100% drop is not a typical result.

Discussing the extremes is a bit disingenuous. One has to discuss the bell curve in the middle, not the most damaging and least damaging creatures to more accurately gauge the effects of the feat. What happens 95% of the time, not what happens 5% of the time.

Our fighter, who has the feat, barely noticed the benefit when fighting hill giants. I was talking from direct experience - one of our fighters has this feat, and as he's gotten to higher levels (we're only 6th level now) it's become less effective, with fewer creatures even doing that kind of damage. It's gotten so bad he's been asking me if he could switch the feat.

Odd. Maybe you have a player who forgets that he might not even have survived to 6th level without the feat.

A 6th level fighter typically has 52 or so hit points. A hill giant will on average take him out in 3 hits (at 18 average points per melee attack). The same fighter with the feat requires 4 hits to knock him unconscious.

I think this is something that is specific to your one player.

Compare this to the Tough feat. The same PC has 64 hit points and it still take 4 hits to take him out by the Hill Giants. The difference is that HAM does this all day long and if the fighter gets hit 20 times a day over a long day, it's the same as being healed with about 7 first level Cure Wounds spells. The Tough feat is like being healed with just over 1 first level Cure Wounds spell (based on how many extra hit points a day he gets).

Anyone with a little math skill can figure out that HAM is generally stronger defensively than Tough or most other defensive feats.


One final point on this. If the HAM feat saves the party 5 or 6 Cure Wounds in a day, that's 5 or 6 Cure Wounds that can be cast on other PCs. The purpose of the feat is not just to keep the fighter up, it's also to spend fewer healing resources on the fighter that can then be used for other PCs. If a player is complaining that HAM does not help enough, then he sounds like he's not looking at the big picture for the entire party.

 

[Mistwell]

It might be possible, but it is still not likely.

A bite does 2d10+8+2d6. Assuming the fight lasts more than a single round, it seems quite likely an attack will do 4 points more than average at some point.

It is even not likely that most battles will be with anything nearly as powerful as an Adult Red Dragon

KD, you jumped into a conversation about that example, and now you're trying to retroactively change the conversation we were having to something else. The response you quoted was about that example, and both parties were talking about that example. If you want to talk about something else, that's fine. But stop quoting me in doing it, as you're trying to change the context of a quote after it had already taken place.

Odd. Maybe you have a player who forgets that he might not even have survived to 6th level without the feat.

I don't think it is odd at all. How much experience do you have playing with the feat, as opposed to theorycrafting about it? We have some armor that does this as well (Black Dragon Scale Mail from the playtest docs), and so I have two things in the party to compare it to, and we've found a lot of attacks simply don't trigger this feat at all. So what is your actual play experience that differs?

 

[KarinsDad]

A bite does 2d10+8+2d6. Assuming the fight lasts more than a single round, it seems quite likely an attack will do 4 points more than average at some point.

Yup. The one encounter in a hundred Adult Red Dragon can do 30 points of damage with a single attack one round in three.

Your point?

That a creature actually can get to the stratospheric 30 points of damage with a single weapon attack that you are discussing? I've already stated that this could happen.

But 30 points of damage is the exception by a lot, not the rule. Very few creatures can even get that high with a weapon attack and very few encounters in the lifetime of campaigns starting at first level are with those types of creatures.

There might be a dozen such creatures in the entire monster manual out of over 300 creatures.

KD, you jumped into a conversation about that example, and now you're trying to retroactively change the conversation we were having to something else. The response you quoted was about that example, and both parties were talking about that example. If you want to talk about something else, that's fine. But stop quoting me in doing it, as you're trying to change the context of a quote after it had already taken place.

Everyone jumps into other people's conversations, yourself included. That's called a conversation.

I don't think it is odd at all. How much experience do you have playing with the feat, as opposed to theorycrafting about it? We have some armor that does this as well (Black Dragon Scale Mail from the playtest docs), and so I have two things in the party to compare it to, and we've found a lot of attacks simply don't trigger this feat at all. So what is your actual play experience that differs?

Our 3rd level PC fighter has the feat. He and our 3rd level Bard just held off the Half Dragon from HotDQ and a 5th or 6th level Cleric for 6 rounds by themselves until help arrived, a solid portion of that (probably 21 or 24 hit points) was because of this feat.

Theorycraft my butt. My experience is just as anecdotal as your experience, but the math backs up my POV more. Every single attack that this feat applies to is about 1/3 to 1/2 of a first level Cure Wounds spell does not need to be cast. Over the lifetime of a PC, that could easily be a hundred healing spell resources saved and useable for other spell effects or for curing other PCs. PCs in heavy armor also tend to take more than their fair share of the enemy attacks in a group. And the vast majority of monsters in the MM have attacks that this feat applies to.

The gain is not just in the hit points saved by the heavy armored PC, the gain is also in the spells saved by other PCs who do not have to heal that PC as often.

Very few monsters in the MM usually do about 3 points of damage or about 30 points of damage. That entire discussion is a bit moot because it is talking about maybe 5% of all monsters encountered. If you want to illustrate how weak HAM is at level 6, maybe you should do so with reasonable examples from the middle of the bell curve as opposed to the two extremes. For example, if you could illustrate that 50% of the attacks of all monsters above 6 hit dice ignore this defense, then that would be telling. But you need something a little more solid than your player no longer likes the feat.

 

[Chocolategravy]

But 30 points of damage is the exception by a lot, not the rule. Very few creatures can even get that high with a weapon attack and very few encounters in the lifetime of campaigns starting at first level are with those types of creatures.


There might be a dozen such creatures in the entire monster manual out of over 300 creatures.

If you consider crits there are WAY WAY more than a dozen. There are probably more than a dozen that can break 90 damage on a weapon crit.

100 Bulette CR 5
92 Chasme CR 6
90 Giant Ape CR 7
105 Nalphashee CR 13
163 Remorhaz CR 11
105 Storm Giant CR 13
106 Tarrasque CR 30
103 T-Rex Cr 8

 

[Mistwell]

Yup. The one encounter in a hundred Adult Red Dragon can do 30 points of damage with a single attack one round in three.

Your point?

My point was already made earlier, to the person I was making it too, who said it was just as effective against the dragon as it was against the kobold. You already said you agreed with me on that point...not sure why you are persisting. Nobody said it was a representative example, but you seem to be trying to slay that strawman with vigor.

Everyone jumps into other people's conversations, yourself included. That's called a conversation.

Except you keep trying to make the conversation about something it wasn't about, and then demanding I make some other point than the one I had already made.

Our 3rd level PC fighter has the feat.

OK so you have not used it yet at levels beyond apprentice levels. Like I said, in my experience the utility drops off later.

Theorycraft my butt. My experience is just as anecdotal as your experience,

You just said you have no experience at all, at the levels I was referring to.

Very few monsters in the MM usually do about 3 points of damage or about 30 points of damage.

You keep on slaying that strawman. I am sure you will win.