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General Tabletop Discussion
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Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.
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<blockquote data-quote="seebs" data-source="post: 6984957" data-attributes="member: 61529"><p>Ignore the "other source of damage".</p><p></p><p>Say you have a base to-hit bonus of +6, your base damage is average 5 points with a +3 damage modifier, you have a -5/+10 ability, and you have the ability to "mitigate" the -5, which is to say, you have the ability to add +5 to hit somehow.</p><p></p><p>You now have <strong>three</strong> options: +6 to hit, average damage 8. +1 to hit, average damage 18. And +11 to hit, average damage 8, using the +5 without the -5 to offset it. The +6/8 only beats +1/18 if AC is 19 or 20, and breaks even at AC 18. But +11/+8 beats +1/18 from 15 and up, ties at 14, and is only worse against 11-13.</p><p></p><p>In short, you're disregarding that -5 because you "have mitigated it", but you're not considering what benefits you'd gain if you just went with the bonuses you're using to "mitigate" it, and hit a heck of a lot more often. Furthermore, hitting more often can improve things for PCs by making combat less swingy. And that's not even taking into account overkill. You get exactly zero benefit from damage done beyond what it takes to kill something. If something has <10 hp left, you're unconditionally better off not taking that -5, because hitting it will kill it anyway. And things may well spend some time with <10 hp left.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="seebs, post: 6984957, member: 61529"] Ignore the "other source of damage". Say you have a base to-hit bonus of +6, your base damage is average 5 points with a +3 damage modifier, you have a -5/+10 ability, and you have the ability to "mitigate" the -5, which is to say, you have the ability to add +5 to hit somehow. You now have [B]three[/B] options: +6 to hit, average damage 8. +1 to hit, average damage 18. And +11 to hit, average damage 8, using the +5 without the -5 to offset it. The +6/8 only beats +1/18 if AC is 19 or 20, and breaks even at AC 18. But +11/+8 beats +1/18 from 15 and up, ties at 14, and is only worse against 11-13. In short, you're disregarding that -5 because you "have mitigated it", but you're not considering what benefits you'd gain if you just went with the bonuses you're using to "mitigate" it, and hit a heck of a lot more often. Furthermore, hitting more often can improve things for PCs by making combat less swingy. And that's not even taking into account overkill. You get exactly zero benefit from damage done beyond what it takes to kill something. If something has <10 hp left, you're unconditionally better off not taking that -5, because hitting it will kill it anyway. And things may well spend some time with <10 hp left. [/QUOTE]
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Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.
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