Herores of the Fallen Lands - Are Slayers underpowered?

[Herschel]

Must spread XP before giving to ND.

 

[S'mon]

DPR is the heart of the "Striker" role, so it seems appropriate to me in any discussion of Striker effectiveness. Comparing eg Defender to Controller DPR may miss the point, though.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No, it is not. Doing damage at the right time is the striker role. DPR does exactly nothing in a real fight. There are always situations, where you don´t attack in a round or need to do a different trick.

I would not like to play in a group where DPR is the only measure of efficiency.

 

[S'mon]

No, it is not. Doing damage at the right time is the striker role. DPR does exactly nothing in a real fight. There are always situations, where you don´t attack in a round or need to do a different trick.

I would not like to play in a group where DPR is the only measure of efficiency.

Read what I wrote.

In my group, the Fighter player complains that my Thief gets all the kills - that's an inappropriate comparison of DPR, since I only get to make the kills because his PC is protecting me from the monsters. By comparison, comparing DPR of 2 ranged strikers or 2 melee strikers is entirely appropriate since inflicting damage is their primary role. If my Thief were not inflicting high DPR he would not be 'efficient' in combat, since that is his combat role.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

If my Thief were not inflicting high DPR he would not be 'efficient' in combat, since that is his combat role.

But the Thief might still be an invaluable member of the group. I have been toying with a Thief choosing Jack of All Trades for PP and generally becoming an unrivaled master of skills. The DPR would still be excellent, just not quite as good as it could be if that were the focus -- maybe about 80% as much, say 34 vs 44 per attack with CA.

(I know, you didn't say otherwise. I'm just piggybacking off of your comment. Nemesis Destiny wanted some non-DPR talk.)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Read what I wrote.

In my group, the Fighter player complains that my Thief gets all the kills - that's an inappropriate comparison of DPR, since I only get to make the kills because his PC is protecting me from the monsters. By comparison, comparing DPR of 2 ranged strikers or 2 melee strikers is entirely appropriate since inflicting damage is their primary role. If my Thief were not inflicting high DPR he would not be 'efficient' in combat, since that is his combat role.

And still your fight would complain even more, if your thief had DPR of 5, but does 30 Damage in a round, when he can kill a bloodied foe.

Actually this is the essential assassins role. Strike where he can take out a foe. Maybe one at the beginning of the combat and than going where he can reliably take down a foe.

DPR is no measurement at all if comparing different kind of strikers. A single nova, which the thief is surprisingly bad at without the right feats, can do more harm to the enemy as 2 points of damage per round...

DPR in a theoretical hack-beeing hacked-hack-being hacked is no measurement of efficiency.

edit: and yes, a thief who takes weapon focus instead of linguist is more efficient in combat by trading out some out of combat use...

 

[Prestidigitalis]

And still your fight would complain even more, if your thief had DPR of 5, but does 30 Damage in a round, when he can kill a bloodied foe.

Actually this is the essential assassins role. Strike where he can take out a foe. Maybe one at the beginning of the combat and than going where he can reliably take down a foe.

DPR is no measurement at all if comparing different kind of strikers. A single nova, which the thief is surprisingly bad at without the right feats, can do more harm to the enemy as 2 points of damage per round...

DPR in a theoretical hack-beeing hacked-hack-being hacked is no measurement of efficiency.

You do have a point, but I think it's worth some elaboration. I would add the following considerations:

1. Many creatures have significant advantages once bloodied -- regeneration, recharging of powers, etc. If you can take them straight from unbloodied to dead in a single attack, bypassing all of those advantages, that is a big win.

2. Many control powers have an extended duration. As such, it is often better to focus on killing the creatures that are not currently being controlled, while you mostly ignore the controlled creatures and let them make their attacks at -6 to hit, or half damage because weakened, etc. You then quickly finish them off when their allies are all dead.

3. Many combat encounters feature a dependency between creatures, for example a BBEG with minions who might surrender, run or die when the BBEG falls. Taking the BBEG down quickly could be critical.

However, there is a downside to a focus on Nova potential -- it requires a knowledge of the enemy's capabilities, current status, organization, etc., or at least a good instinctive hunch. For example, expending a Nova power to take down an illusionary copy of the BBEG might turn out to be a poor choice. Piling on extra damage to knock the bloodied foe from 50 HP down below 0 doesn't work so well when it turns out that he regenerated and has 60 HP after all, or only had 10 for some other reason.

I think UngeheuerLich may be going too far in dismissing DPR outright, but it's definitely true that DPR itself is only one measure of effectiveness.

 

[KarinsDad]

DPR is no measurement at all if comparing different kind of strikers. A single nova, which the thief is surprisingly bad at without the right feats, can do more harm to the enemy as 2 points of damage per round...

DPR in a theoretical hack-beeing hacked-hack-being hacked is no measurement of efficiency.

And the PC that novas a single foe for 40 points of damage when the foe has 3 hit points remaining does not do more harm to the enemy either.

The PC that novas and misses also doesn't do much.

Nova damage is mostly irrelevant. It's a fraction of all of the damage done by the entire party over an entire encounter.

It doesn't indicate at all how efficient a PC can be. DPR does not measure all of the aspects of PC efficiency, but it is a better rule of thumb than most other types of measurements, especially nova damage.

And party DPR is a better measurement of efficiency than individual PC DPR. The striker can do a ton of damage and if the other PCs cannot do a reasonable amount for their roles, they can still be very ineffective as a group. I've seen quite a few groups where one or two PCs are totally ineffective in combat because they either cannot hit well, or do not do reasonable damage for their role, or because the player makes bad decisions for the PC.

Lack of DPR is not the only way that a PC can be inefficient (I recently saw a player bring an AC 13 first level PC into a group), but it is reasonable rule of thumb measurement of efficiency.

 

[Uller]

No, it is not. Doing damage at the right time is the striker role. DPR does exactly nothing in a real fight. There are always situations, where you don´t attack in a round or need to do a different trick.

And this is why I brought it up...it seems the Slayer and Thief don't do high damage in certain situations and less in others...they just do high damage all the time without a lot of planning, tactics and risk taking.

The PHB Rogue has to make some choices, take risks or get the help of other party members to do high damage. The Thief simply uses one of his many "tricks" to gain CA.

[SPOILERS!] One of the two groups I run, they were fighting the dragon from the Twisting Halls adventure...the fight had spilled out into the 10' wide corridor and there was no easy way for the (PHB) Rogue to get around the dragon to sneak attack it other than wade through the kobald minions blocking the way around. He tried bluff (and failed), then then when things looked bleak he readied and waited for the druid (who was nearly dead) to use Pounce on the bloodied dragon. On his attack, the rogue rolled a crit and did just enough to finish it off. Had the dragon survived and his breath recharged, it'd have gone badly...

Another example from the 2e days of yore...a group I ran was fighting an evil wizard and his lizardman minions...The rogue drank a potion of invisibility and avoided making any attacks until he crossed the distance to the wizard. The rest of the party was getting cut to pieces by the lizardmen and the rogue was nearly dead due to being caught in AoEs. He finally made his one shot at a backstab with half the party already dead, he hit and killed the wizard. The rogue's player announced afterward that that was so exciting he was shaking.

That's what makes the concept of Strikers having to do something to get large damage cool in my book. When they do massive damage after they or others take great risk to allow them to do it. A slayer just standing there making basic attacks and dishing out tons of damage per round isn't all that fun, imo. In the fight with the wizard above, a slayer archer could simply hit the wizard with two basic attacks and kill the wizard. He probably wouldn't even have to move...

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Don't get me wrong, folks, DPR can be an important metric for measuring a Striker's capabilities, and I think it warrants some discussion. But as others have more eloquently pointed out than I did - it's not the be-all-end-all, even of a striker.

The part about DPR "discussions" that I found irritating, and hence felt the need to comment on, was that it seemed to invariably degenerate into an argument where a couple posters were back-and-forth-ing over a couple points of damage.

Seriously, and no offence intended to my fine fellow ENWorlders, but who*frelling*cares. At that point, it's just petty quibbling. A couple points of DPR isn't likely to be noticed on the larger scale (the one DMs and players can actually perceive) at that level of zoom.

Sure, there is a place for that kind of discussion, but a couple points of DPR is *not* the difference between underpowered and overpowered, let alone underpowered and balanced, or balanced and overpowered. And that, is kind of what this thread was supposed to be about.

Now that I've qualified my earlier statements, and hopefully not pissed anyone else off, I would like to encourage you all to please continue.