D&D General How do you like your ASIs?

[Bill Zebub]

I hear you. Its for the mathematical benefit. You feel that those values outweigh anything else.

Nope. You're hyperbolizing again.

It outweighs the existing benefits of playing another race. Not "anything else."

Propose different language then, because its not a need. Call it whatever you want.

"More desirable than the alternatives."

 

[Scribe]

Yup, it is.

Likewise, keeping the tradition and expressing "elvishness" through a +2 Dex is a desire. It is not required.

I'm glad we got that out of the way.

Perfect, we are in agreement then.

 

[Maxperson]

I hate to keep flogging this horse, but it's not the +1 damage, it's multiplicative damage of the increased chance to hit times the increased damage.

It's also not restricted to low level. At higher levels the effect lessens for low AC targets, but PCs also face higher AC targets.

The damage is trivial, no matter what % you attach to it. It's 1 single point more per hit, and you will hit 1 out of 20 attacks more often than before, for an additional 7.5(assuming d8) damage. It will take you 2-3 typical combats to attack 20 times. More combats at low levels or if you're using spell attacks. If you want that trivial 20-25% extra damage, I'm not going to fault you for it. A lot of people enjoy eeking out every little bonus. It's not at all important to the game math, though.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The damage is trivial, no matter what % you attach to it. It's 1 single point more per hit, and you will hit 1 out of 20 attacks more often than before, for an additional 7.5(assuming d8) damage. It will take you 2-3 typical combats to attack 20 times. More combats at low levels or if you're using spell attacks. If you want that trivial 20-25% extra damage, I'm not going to fault you for it. A lot of people enjoy eeking out every little bonus. It's not at all important to the game math, though.

Sure. And if somebody said that 200% more damage was not important to them, or that 2% was very important, I wouldn't argue either way. It's all preference.

I'm just on a mission to stamp out mathematical misconceptions.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Seems like an obvious choice. Choose the one you'd prefer for flavour. Power is an illusion, the GM has endless amount of trolls. If everyone minmaxes their characters to do hella lot damage, the GM will just use more monsters next time. Again, this is not a progression raid in MMO, the aim is not to 'win D&D.'

Great! More monsters! More carnage! Bring it on!

As for the race I would "prefer", the way my thought process goes is that although maybe I was thinking it would be fun to play a Tortle, I can have just as much fun coming up with a character concept for the whatever race* also gives me the primary ASI. It's not like I'm choosing between a colorful, unique character with a 14, and a bland, one-dimensional character with a 16.

*(Although really, as mentioned above, this is almost invariably a vHuman. But it's the same logic.)

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Indeed your calculations are useful, and I feel the disconnect between reality (the percentage) and the feeling is because there is no death spiral on standard monsters.

If one PC does 7 damage a round and another 9 damage a round, it will only matter when they fight a 17 or 18 HP monster. Less it's a one hit kill anyway, more and they'll face another attack from him on the next round before he's killed. But if he has 19 or 30 HP, killing hil will take two rounds. I don't know if I am clear but often a slight difference in damage won't result in a shortened life for the opponent, so the feeling of doing less damagr will be lessened compared to the statistical difference in real damage.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Indeed your calculations are useful, and I feel the disconnect between reality (the percentage) and the feeling is because there is no death spiral on standard monsters.

If one PC does 7 damage a round and another 9 damage a round, it will only matter when they fight a 17 or 18 HP monster. Less it's a one hit kill anyway, more and they'll face another attack from him on the next round before he's killed. But if he has 19 or 30 HP, killing hil will take two rounds. I don't know if I am clear but often a slight difference in damage won't result in a shortened life for the opponent, so the feeling of doing less damagr will be lessened compared to the statistical difference in real damage.

Yes. What’s really important is not damage per round but “rounds to die”. And, as you point out, X extra damage will in some cases reduce it by one round, which is a relatively big deal, and in other cases it won’t, which makes the extra damage irrelevant.

But we can’t model rounds-to-die without knowing which monsters, and who else is in the party, and even then it’s a white room exercise.

So in its place I find a DPR calculation to be a useful shorthand. On average, if you do 25% more damage you will kill a monster in 20% fewer turns.

 

[Lanefan]

That's what 4e did.

Also 1-20 isn't zero to hero. It's zero to epic hero. Tier 2 is hero. In 5e, hero is levels 4-10.


You are confused, my friend.

A level 1 PC is an Elite Zero.
You are a high school varsity star being scouted for the NBA. You are the Elite but Inexperienced. High Talent but Green. You are the son or daughter of a great hero or villain.

You're this guy.

View attachment 146700

In 4e a level 1 PC is already a hero. There's no zero step.

The zero step is where neither you nor anyone else really knows what talents you might have or where they might best be applied. Sure you've signed up for the high-school ball team* but whether you get cut at the first practice** or just give up on the game after graduation or go on to make it to the NBA remains to be seen.

It's that early part that's been lost. Some seem to like it that way; and they're always welcome to start their campaigns at higher levels if that floats their boats. But cutting that part right out of the designed game, as happened with 4e, is complete overkill.

* - i.e. joined an adventuring party
** - i.e. died at the first opportunity

 

[Lanefan]

There is no level 0 wizard without a spell book in 5e. As far as I know there has never been a level 0 anything in any edition except for the Dragonlance/Greyhawk 1e book as an optional starting adventure.

1e: Cavaliers started at 0th level.
1e or Basic (I forget which): there's an adventure module (not the one you note above) where the characters start out as commoners and grow into their classes as the adventure proceeds, becoming 1st level only after the adventure is done.
1e (and 2e?): the combat matrix strongly implies that there's a 0th level between 1st-level and commoner, in that 1st-level MUs fight on a worse matrix (same as commoner) than do 1st-level Thieves who in turn fight worse than 1st-level Fighters.
3e: Multiclass characters start as 0th-0th then on first bump advance to 1st-1st (this one might have been optional, but it did exist).

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe this just boils down to how a table views it's PCs. I view mine as if they were the main characters if a book. I expect them to be movers and shakers (that's what the adventures are) and be exceptional in many ways. Even from level 1.

Where instead of expecting them to be movers and shakers right off the hop I expect them to try to become movers and shakers as time goes on, with no guarantee of success.

I do not view them as Orc#3728266 fresh off the assembly line so therefore you must be a carbon copy of all the other orcs.

People from the Saruman Orc Factory located near Isengard are on the phone; they'd like a word...